Episode transcript: Stinky Dan was a “hacker” that Squatty knew. He was massive, like a figure drawn by someone who recently learned that the human shape is just a series of different circles, and he hulked behind his mutil-screened desktop. And, he did have a kind of chemical odor that Linda couldn’t quite place.

“Is that why he doesn’t live at the squat?” Linda asked Squatty.

Squatty smiled tightly, “Everyone is on their own path, and no judgement, but you also have to have your own boundaries, you know? But I think he can help you.”

It was the first time Linda had seen Squatty slightly uncomfortable. They had come to Dan’s with Joe, another member of the Squatty crew who seemed to be the actual connection here. Joe and Dan exchanged cryptic hellos that Linda tuned out as peacocking blather. She also thought she saw something change hands during their elaborate high five, but she also, also didn’t care.

Squatty and Linda sat on Dan’s fairly nice couch in his fairly dark living room while Dan and Joe hunched over the computer screen. Linda asked if there were any new Western Toilets but Squatty said he didn’t like to watch them when he couldn’t give them his full attention. Joe kept hurling questions over to Linda as they worked.

It didn’t take too long for results. Once Dan got down to digging, he found that all of the bleats urging Linda to rejoin “The conversation we’re all having” — they all came from a similar cluster of IP addresses. Which suggested that one person had taken control of the various accounts.

“If you look at, say, Sarah’s posting history,” he said of an old neighbor’s daughter’s account, “she stopped posting regularly about 2 years ago. This post here, ‘This place is getting stale. I’ll see you on the Green Mountain!!’”

“That’s that platform for all the weenuses,” Joe interjected.

“That was May 2030,” continued Dan, without acknowledging Joe. “And then she doesn’t post again until a few weeks ago. ‘Have you dabbed, yet?! Don’t miss Beany Beanz,’ with a ‘z.’”

“Beany Beanz is so based,” said Joe.

“Don’t click that link,” warned Dan. “Beany Beanz is malware dressed up as cryptocurrency.”

“That’s what I meant,” said Joe.

“I mean, that sounds bad, but what does this have to do with someone impersonating my dead aunt Rose?” asked Linda.

Dan summed up his findings: “It’s bots. Someone has taken control of these dead … sorry, abandoned accounts to hawk shit to idiots, and someone else hired out these accounts that have a connection to you to target you.”

Dan said that he could set up a blocklist of the IP addresses, so that Linda didn’t have to see them anymore. “Or you could join your friend Sarah on Green Mountain, where most people are now anyway.”

“But, like, can you get them?” Linda asked, feeling both bored and enraged by what was happening to her.

“What do you mean ‘get’ and who do you mean by ‘them’” Dan asked.

“Is it Button? I know it’s Button,” said Linda.

“This IP address is in Moldova,” said Dan, like that meant anything.

“So do your little clicky clacks and find out who it is in Moldova!” she said. They had spoofed her aunt’s account, or whatever, and Aunt Rose had been Linda’s favorite. Desecrating her memory should come with some consequences. “What if I really did think it was her ghost?”

Linda was on the verge of tears, which had made Joe retreat to the kitchen. Dan just shrugged his shoulders. “If you wanted to monetize this solution, we could talk next steps.”

Squatty put his hand gently on Linda’s shoulder. “Maybe let’s get some fresh air before we put any money down on … something we might regret.”

“You came to me, these are the tools I have, man,” said Dan.

Linda was shaken out of her rage by the quickly escalating tension and let Squatty bundle her out of Dan’s apartment. But she filed away “next steps,” just in case.

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Episode transcript:

After hanging out long enough, the kids started inviting Linda along for what they liked to call their “small acts of pointless rebellion.”

“Purposlessness is a great joy of life,” said a young woman with short, purple hair called Wendy, who seemed to be the ringleader for this faction of the crew.

“Is that a Western Toilet?” asked Linda.

Wendy rolled her eyes, “No. It’s a me.”

Squatty just laughed and said, “You know she’s cool, because she’s kind of mean.”

The acts were stuff like, one afternoon, they went around the neighborhood and taped little paper mustaches to the face scanning screens at all the apartment complexes. Mostly, if the security guards noticed them, they yelled them off. One even gave half-assed chase.

But more than one amused themself by examining their own mustachioed face in the screen.

“Is this what changing minds feels like?” Linda asked Wendy.

“God. Have you never taken an art history course,” Wendy responded. She snapped her fingers at an, well, underling, who rummaged through her backpack.

Wendy peered in over her shoulder. “Give her ‘Grapefruit,”’ said Wendy.

The underling hefted a large hardcover into Linda’s hands. Linda examined the spine. “By Yoko Ono. … I notice this ones not from the library.”

“No,” said Wendy. “I stole it. From Garden Book in Shanghai.”

“What if I steal it from you?” asked Linda.

“You should,” said Wendy. “And then give it to someone else who needs art in their life.”

Another evening, the gang snuck up to the roof of a nearby abandoned building to add to the graffiti that was already there. Some brought chalk, some brought spray paint. Linda brought a permanent marker.

She didn’t know what to draw, so she pulled up to a section of wall and just started making small squares. Wendy came over with a beer for Linda.

“Nice geometry,” she said.

“I can’t draw,” said Linda.

“Everyone can draw,” said Wendy.

“Everyone keeps saying that, but I don’t know if that’s true,” said Linda.

“Suit yourself,” said Wendy.

A small circle of drinkers coalesced in the middle of the roof. Adrian called Linda over to sit by him. There were no stars, but it was a peaceful night. Noise of the city drifted up from below, sounding a thousand miles away.

“Do you guys do stuff life this every night?” asked Linda.

“More recently,” said the underling who had given Linda the book. She was called Danny.

“I think we’ve been energized by the new blood,” added Adrian.

“Oh, who’s that?” asked Linda.

“It’s you!” said Adrian.

The small circle toasted Linda, “To new blood!” Linda felt warm and happy.

Recounting this to Brian later in bed, he remarked that she seemed happier lately.

“And, like, your sleep numbers are better, too. Wanna check the graphs?” He offered his watch to Linda.

“Nah. I feel like you’ve got a good handle on our bio-metric optimization,” Linda teased.

“Hey. When we’re sixty, but we feel thirty, you’re gonna thank me,” he said.

Linda hauled her laptop on to the bed.

“Babe, the blue light,” Brian said.

“I’m just checking my bleats real quick. I’ve got the polarizer on,” said Linda.

Brian tugged down his eye shade and slipped on his sleep-vibrations ring. “Good sleep makes good brains,” he said.

Linda didn’t answer. She refreshed the tab that would bring up new messages, barely even registering the slowness of the browser-based social experience. Among the posts of vacation photos and video news — both of which were too depressing to engage with for long — there was a new bleat urging Linda to “Come back! It’s the conversation we’re all having!”

She had been getting these lately, from old acquaintances. A college classmate she had fallen out of touch with. A friend of a friend she had met once at a party. An overzealous grocery store clerk who got Linda’s contact info before Brian had enlightened her on proper information hygiene. This one, though, was her aunt Rose.

Her aunt Rose had died 8 months ago.

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Episode transcript:

There was a man. There was a myth. There was a series of videos.

Western Toilet, by all accounts, was just some guy living in a place he wasn’t from, making videos about … current events? Politics? Technology? Kind of all of that and none of that, as far as Linda could see.

To Squatty, they were sacred texts to live by. They revealed things about the world that he had never seen before, and pointed out a path that was hiding in plain sight.

“Don’t be the man they are insisting you be. Be the person you are.”

This wasn’t something Western Toilet ever said. He didn’t have to. Squatty got his message loud and clear, and was dedicated to living it out in the world.

Squatty wasn’t some freak, though, obsessed with an internet man. He had a job, and hobbies, and friends. But to truly know the man, you had to watch the Toilet.

It was rumored that Western Toilet lived here in town. Squatty and the boys always kept half an eye out for him, primed with questions. Sometimes they’d take special expeditions to see if they could track the locations from his videos. And if there was good barbecue nearby, well, that was all in the course of a day’s work.

To Linda, the fervor was a part of youth she had left behind. She was a serious-minded 30-something, after all. Seeking answers from an online guru felt a little … misguided.

But then again, that was something that Western Toilet himself said. And, Linda had to admit that life was a little more exciting with something of a quest to pursue. Hanging out with Squatty and his boys, Linda had to wonder if maybe the thing she was missing in her life was just … friends.

She liked spending time with the boys, and working on the zine made her feel like a part of something. If anything, it gave her a chance to brush off her traditional paper cutting skills that she left behind in middle school.

“He talks about that, in ‘Work is for Jerks,’” explained Squatty. “Don’t be reduced to a paycheck. Do things that are useless to find your true purpose.”

Linda argued back that arts and aesthetic crafts weren’t useless, and they were off to the races: a spirited discussion about society’s values and what made life worth living.

She could have found similar advice in the self-help section at the library — a place Western Toilet argued they should all be frequenting more often. In fact, the gang arranged a trip to their local library where Linda got her first library card. Her family had reasoned that if they needed books, they’d just go to the bookstore.

And then, they never really needed books.