Watchers

Live Stream #284: There Are Worse Things I Could Do

It's 2 a.m. the next time Elvis appears on screen.

She has missed several scheduled broadcasts and no one in the comments section knows what to think. A lot of them have agreed that the evidence presented was valid and she must be a Watcher, and her continued absence only proves that she has something to hide from them.

The comments have been growing increasingly hostile, with many people calling for her head on a spike. They feel betrayed and manipulated and they can't reconcile their former enjoyment of her show with the fact that she's one of them.

The Watchers.

Society's watchdogs, slobbering and greedy. Corrupt. Willfully antagonistic, making the life of the average citizen hell for as long as there have been surveillance cameras mounted all over the city.

The comments section is equally split between those crying Not Elvis, it can't be! and those who want her head.

When the camera flips on a little past two in the morning, no one is expecting it and there aren't many people in the chat room. It doesn't matter, though - unlike her usual broadcasts, Elvis sets this video to record so that it will be available whenever people want to tune in.

The comments go silent the moment she sits back in her chair. There's no chipper introduction, no sign-on phrase. Good morning everyone and welcome to another episode of Dystopia Today. Elvis looks disheveled, her clothes stretched out in places and dirty all over. She's out of breath and there's a cut in the corner of her bottom lip, although the blood has already dried. The butt of a handgun is visible on the corner of her desk, almost out of frame, and she's breathing heavily as she finally addresses her audience.

"I know that you owe me nothing," she says. "And I know I've betrayed your confidence, but I am begging you to call off this witch hunt.

For the past week, I have feared for my life in a way that I never did before. Even with the most extreme and violent regime changes that we've seen in the past few decades, I was never afraid to leave my house, to simply live my life.

Since my last broadcast I have received death threats by the thousands, hate speech, and invitations to take my own life," she says. "And that's just what's happening online. I've been harassed and physically attacked on multiple occasions. I can't even leave my apartment without fearing for my life."

Her voice is shaky and she pauses, hands shaking on the desk in front of her. Then in a fit of frustration, she rips the mask away from her face and throws it beyond the range of the camera. Tears are streaming down her cheeks and her hair is wild and unwashed, but her eyes are a remarkable sky blue. She isn't pretty at this moment, but it's easy to see how she might clean up to be an attractive woman.

She presses her lips together in a thin line and goes on.

"The mask doesn't matter anymore," she says bitterly. "You all figured out who I am - you made that obvious when you showed up to my apartment in the middle of the night and threatened to kick down my door."

She grabs a cup from the desk - a regular plastic tumbler instead of her usual to-go cups of soda - and takes a long sip, trying to compose herself.

"Let me make one thing clear," she says. "I understand your anger, and in another life I might respond the same way. But this isn't another life - it's mine - and I need you to understand why I did it.

My real name is Marie Northwick. I am thirty-one years old and I have been a Watcher for eighteen months. That was not a decision I made lightly, nor would I have made it if I had any other options available to me.

My story is the same as a lot of yours. I grew up believing I would find a way to navigate the adverse economy and make a living for myself, and when I entered the job market I learned how very wrong I was. I worked a lot of different jobs - low paying, low reward, low skill - and most of them were outsourced to other countries or to the growing robot workforce.

A few weeks before my thirtieth birthday, I lost another one. It was just a fast food job but I was lucky to have it and it was the only thing keeping me off the streets. I was desperate and scared, I had no marketable skills and no money to go to school and be trained. I'd been living hand-to-mouth for the better part of a decade by then, after all.

So when a friend told me about the Watcher training program, it was the best and only option available to me. I didn't stand behind the Watcher philosophy - I never have and I never will - but I was looking down the barrel of homelessness and I had no choice."

She glances at the gun on the corner of her desk, then goes on.

"The plan was always to get out as soon as I could. I would save up some money and go back to school, or figure out a different job I could do," she says. "Well, about a month after I graduated from the training program and became a bona fide Watcher, I had the idea for Dystopia Today.

I used my access to the city's surveillance cameras to entertain you guys, and I used the show as a way to displace the guilt that I felt for being a part of a corrupt system. I thought at least something good could come out of it if I entertained a few people, kept them company, and maybe revealed a little bit of the corruption going on.

The only problem was that I got stuck.

The show took off, I started getting donations, and I desperately wanted to quit Watching but I couldn't because I needed the footage to keep the show going.

It was an ugly cycle and I was naive to think you'd never find out.

Look, there are worse things I could have done to earn a living. In fact, I'm sure a lot of you are doing those worse things when you're not logged in here, and I don't judge. We all do what we have to in order to survive.

That's all I did - what I had to do to survive."

She picks up the gun and still the comments section is deadly silent - either because they're hoping she will use it, or because they're hoping she won't. No one says a word as she looks into the camera and says, "I have nowhere else to go. My recent fame and even more recent infamy have made me nationally recognizable and my only remaining choice is to seek asylum within the walls of our nation's robust prison system until all of this blows over.

It's that, or let you all kill me."

She looks down at the gun again, caressing it with her thumb. It's a standard-issue Watcher service revolver and evidence that despite her apparent aversion to the system, she has managed to work her way up through the ranks in the last year and a half. New Watchers and those who haven't proven themselves are not trusted with such lethal weapons.

"I have one last thing for you to chew on while I'm gone," she says. There's a long pause while she collects her thoughts, and then she says, "We're all watchers. We're all part of the problem. You think just because I get paid but you sit there for eight hours and view all my security footage for free that there's a difference between us? If you watch instead of act, you are contributing directly to the decay of our society.

We are all Watchers."

Then Elvis stands up, leaning over her desk and inadvertently pointing the barrel of the gun at her audience as she stops the recording.