Silvertroll

Deep-Fried Laptop

I sit on the couch and notice right away how more comfortable it was than a park bench or cold stone floor. I resist the urge to turn on the TV. I could binge-watch something or channel surf in an attempt to drown out my wrath. Instead, I sit in silence, noticing my wife's laptop charging on the coffee table.

That I don't resist.

My work laptop, I left back at the office. I have this policy of never bringing work home. It's in my contract. I see all these other jerk-offs proudly taking work home. No way I was going to do that. The one triumph I ever achieved, resisting this idiocy.

I open it up like a clamshell.

Shit, password.

I remember her typing it in 'monkey123' when there was a 'crisis' at work and I 'absolutely' had the need to use her laptop to check an email. Why 'monkey'? Alicia never offered an explanation.

It works.

The first thing I do is the thing I swore never to do. I do a search for my name. I know everyone does it. I don't have any web presence so I didn't see the need to ever bother.

All I have is a work email.

nathan.caves@roberttrend.vg3.engineering.

And an account on Neechat set up by Julian with zero posts and zero followers.

nee.chat/nathancaves

And that was it, not including my past work emails.

Banking? Alicia's responsibility.

Billing? Alicia's responsibility.

Online shopping? Alicia's responsibility. I bought a kayak once.

A search for Nathan Caves brings up over seven hundred results. I try, Nathan Cavettes, and got mixed results, so I hit images. Nothing. I smash through each picture finding random shit. I start randomly clicking on links until a group chat captures my attention.

I enter.

qantika//nathan_caves: how come animals have not evolved to fly around outer space outside the atmosphere of Earth?

Someone posing as Nathan Caves is posting on a biology study group. A photo of my face complements the profile. I dig further and find another site.

NAWKER//Nathan Caves: Hey look, dead squirrel.

This is on a blog talking about suicide and some form of attention deficit disorder. My picture, bright as day, looking back at me, owning these words.

There's more.

Nathan Caves trolls 'copper5am'. Apparently a hotspot for internet pranksters.

Nathan Caves trolls a Russian troll farm. I have no idea what it is, but it sounds scary, especially if they're using my name to troll these places. My eyelids grow heavy. I ease my head back and let go of my struggle to keep my eyes open. I must have dozed off at around 1 AM, after hours of stalking myself all over the internet. My eyes open just after 4 AM. The laptop is about to slide off my hips, my neck stuck in an awkward, painful position. The page is on meesaobra.com, deep into the comment section of an article entitled 'How to watch this video without noping the fuck out.'

meesaobra/silvertroll: have I got your attention??? :} - posted two hours ago.

My first inclination is not to respond. But the words wait for me, taunting me. Right there and then I vow to hunt this asshole down. This guy was having fun at my expense. There is nothing worse than being aggrieved and unable to vent. I tried grief, but it only stung more, feeding my anger, fueling my desire to vent. It was and still is an irrepressible rage. If I don't stop bottling this in, it'll end up destroying me, my marriage, my legacy - what was left of it anyway.