Author’s Note: I think I’m moving now to a regular weekdays posting schedule, rather than 6 days a week. It was too hard to stay ahead of the updates; on the bright side, I now have an outline that carries through to the ending. Hopefully no further delays.
Forty-Six
Ryan was practically glowing as he flipped through the channels on the television. “What did you do?” Stephen asked.
“What do you mean?”
“The last time I saw you this giddy was when you sent incriminating emails from a white supremacist to the authorities. So what did you do?”
“Okay, now, you’re going to laugh at at least part of this. You know I’ve gotten into K-Pop, right?” Stephen smiled. “Screw you. Anyway, through that fandom, I found out about… well, this.”
He stopped changing channels as a sad, defeated Drump walked from his helicopter towards camera. The man, his suit, his ‘hair’, every inch of him was dejected, deflated, and sullen. “So you made a bigot man unhappy. Sounds like a good use of your time and talents. That sounds, but isn’t, sarcastic; deserves at least a little golf clap.”
“It’s not just that. His team were crowing about a million ticket requests to his Tulsa rally- which shouldn’t have been happening anyway in the middle of a pandemic, right?”
“I don’t see the K-Pop connection,” Stephen said.
“I’m getting there. The fandom realized they were operating things entirely based around online reservations, and started gaming them. I brought on the technopaths on campus to help, and-” as if on cue, the chyron at the bottom of the screen stated that fewer than 2600 people attended the rally in the 20,000 seat venue.”
“Did you do that?”
“The chyron? No, that was just good timing. But the humbling of a short-sighted bigot? I helped.”
“Shit,” Stephen said.
“Yeah. Turns out, K-Pop isn’t just about great music- it’s got an awesome fandom. Without them, the rally probably would have been a success, or at least less of an unmitigated disaster. Want me to put some K-Pop on?”
“No,” Stephen said. “But I will make fun of you forty percent less for listening to it from now on.”
“Sounds like a win to me,” Ryan said, leaning back in his chair.