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Darwin's Game
By Wayne Webb
CHAPTER 1
There was no return address on the
envelope, there were no postmarks or stamps or any courier tags on
the outside, just a plain A4 envelope, with thick card inside it
about the size of a disc cover. Someone must have delivered it by
hand, there was no note on his desk, no one let him know he had a
package, but here a thing had arrived on his desk to his attention.
A mysterious envelope with anonymous
heritage showing up on his desk was an almost daily occurrence, he
put it on the pile for the interns to sort through and decide what
would be bubbled up to the featured wall today.
Jacob Edgerton worked in a shared
office space in San Francisco, not in the city but out in the Mission
District, where it was a little cheaper and easier to get settled
without outlaying a huge amount of money. He was getting by with a
couple of staff helping him man the service he ran on the internet, a
news aggregation and blog opinion hub where they tried to make sense
of the news without bias. Or at least that was the plan when they
started out.
Jacob and his partner Blake Hilliard
had founded the site, “facts alone” out of a desire to not have
to find their news in between jokes on the saitirical late night
comedy programs that regularly embarrassed the 'actual' news media
with more reasoned and balanced coverage, along with drug and dick
jokes. So they started pulling news feeds and made their own news
aggregation site that had a focus on data and information and no
commentary.
They did not have reporters, they had
themselves and some clever algorithms that helped them break stories
down into just the facts that were verified or actual rather than
couched opinions. They were probably left leaning if you had to put a
label on them, but they also held some quite conservative views on
crime and punishment. They disagreed on a a lot of things and the
people who met them, wanting to label them or pigeon hole them found
it hard to do it consistently as they were so very similar, yet poles
apart. It made them a good filter for what they were trying to do.
News stories that came in through them
went out in vastly reduced forms, they were boiled down to the facts
only and they removed all the hyperbole and opinion that coloured
almost everything that was consumed in mass market media. They and
the generation they catered to, had just had enough of the language,
the spin and the 'balance' that tipped dramatically one way or
another. They found a corner of the market where people like them
looked to see what was behind all the front and words that other news
shows had. All emotive language was removed, disaster and tragedy
were never used, nor were charged terms of judgement like heinous or
evil. They took it the other way too and removed all the over hyped
positivity like things that were 'once in a lifetime' or 'positively
received' and anything that was not quantifiable was just not there.
It was not perfect but it was a start
towards honesty and that resonated with a large section of younger
viewers fed up with being sold news rather than being told it. That
was their motto, when they printed business cards “Telling News,
not Selling News.”
Jacobs bugbear was the phrase “some
people say”, there was no hiding behind anonymous sources in Facts
Alone, if you didn't want to say it publicly, then they would not be
the mouthpiece for you. They did not accept press releases as news,
they were instantly suspicious when stories found them instead of
being found by them. Above all they wanted integrity and honesty back
in the media.
That was why it was a day or so before
an intern opened that envelope and found that there was a disc inside
and that it needed to be seen straight away.
Jacob was talking to Blake over a
coffee in the conference room they had booked for meetings in the
shared office, they made time to meet once a week and review the most
critiqued articles and feeds on their site. They had plenty of
volunteers who for a small fee or a chance to access and be part of
the new paradigm, assisted in the filtering and re-packaging of news
back into facts. The more feedback they got from left, right and the
audience they actually wanted, the more they sanity checked their
approach. Pissing people off who thought they were being evil, or
blind or plain stupid was perfect in their eyes. Provoking that kind
of reaction usually meant that they were on the money. When words
were charged and interpretable different ways they would examine them
and add it to the learning dictionary that the software used to
de-charge the copy of any bias. This worked because people wanted the
facts, and when anything else crept in they protected it fiercely.
Susan was 19 and studying journalism,
learning how to produce news during school hours, and learning to
reconstruct it in her work hours. She stood in the doorway of the
conference room and knocked on the door jamb to get Jacob's
attention. She reported to Jacob, no one reported to Blake, because
he was a grumpy and mean person to work for with a short temper and
and ill humour. Blake was easily irritated into losing his temper and
ranting at the drop of a hat. Jacob was easily irritated into finding
a solution. Between them they had passion and logic for truth, they
just found it on a different path to the same destination.
“What?” Blake had been in a dark
mood since he had arrived, later than usual due to a car problem that
only served to wind him up and take his temper out on everyone he met
from that point of his day onwards. Jacob had seen him posting on
social media all morning and knew that by the time that he presented
at the office it would be all drama and noise, so he booked a hurried
meeting, bringing it forward a day. Blake knew he was being a douche
bag, but he was downing in the black mood and it was hard to not
circle the drain. They knew each other well enough to yell and bitch
and moan and think nothing of the words exchanged, but think of it as
an emotional blood letting.
“Shut up dickhead. What is it Susie?”
Jacob smiled at her and gave the finger to his business partner and
friend who managed to scowl and smile simultaneously back at him.
“Um, I think you should see this.”
Susie was holding the disc very carefully with a finger through the
centre hole and one pinching the outer edge, like it was precious or
dangerous, maybe both.
“I'll look at it afterwards, just
leave it on my desk and I'll get to it soon. Thanks, Susan.” Jacob
smiled wide knowing how much this annoyed his partner. Susan held the
disc and did not move.
“He said he'll look at it later.”
Blake growled but then he saw the look on her face and he knew
something was up. Normally the interns and junior staff would blush
or cringe when he acted like the way he always did, it took them a
long while to realise that it was just his way of dealing with his
anger an frustration, and how to deal with that themselves. Susan was
still quite new and shy, while she felt very comfortable with Jacob,
like everyone did, she was a long way from that with Blake, and he
knew it, played on it and secretly enjoyed that impenetrable facade
that made 90 percent of people leave him alone.
Susan's face was pale and white, like
she was not going to cry because whatever it was that affected her
was shocking not necessarily emotional, but shocking. She was having
trouble processing something, and it was obviously a big thing. Blake
may not have thought much of her in public, but in private he had
thought her sensible and capable when pushed the right way. He had
hopes for her being a future part of the Facts Alone if she could get
over the shy part and just get on the with the job.
The pale, drained look though spoke
volumes. Jacob saw it too, but it was Blake who now reached for the
disc and looked at it.
It was a plain DVD disc, and written on
it in permanent marker were the words “Darwin's Game” and the
numbers “1.1”.
“Darwin's Game?” Jacob was reading
the disc over Blake’s shoulder and then moved to turn the monitor
on, connecting his laptop to the Wi Fi media server, connecting to
the big screen. Blake handed over the disc after turning it up and
back a few times looking for clues to content, but finding none.
“You better come see this you guys!”
Susan yelled that to the office, and a few heads popped up and saw
through the glass walls of the conference room that the bosses were
there and putting something on the screen. Within a few minutes half
the staff present were crowding the door with grins and eager looks
on their faces, while Susan now looked like she was going to be ill.
Blake and Jacob were sitting at the table while everyone else stood.
Susan pulled up a chair and sat between
them both, cradled her head in her hands and peeked through her
fingers at the screen waiting for it to play.
Jacob looked around the staff
assembled. “Now unless you want to get a seriously loud “Shut the
Fuck Up” from Blake here, you will want to keep your comments to
yourself until afterwards.” A few of the people started to turn on
tablets and notebooks to make notes as they went, this was not the
first time they had been over a new story as a group, they were
experience and this usually meant something juicy.
Blake took the remote and with a final
glance at his business partner and the shaken intern he pressed play.
The screen was black, slowly the words
faded into view.
“Darwins Game.”
They faded away again, then a second
title else came on screen.
“Episode 1.”
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