The Troll Read Online Free Page B

THE MAINFRAME THAT CAN DESTROY PSI, WE WIN.
    “ What’s
to stop me from sending people after them?”
    IRIS—NOTHING.
I ASSUME YOU WILL. BUT I CHALLENGE YOU TO PLAY FAIR.
    “ We’ll
iron out the details later. I assume if we catch this person, you’ll
accept defeat without crying about it?”
    IRIS—IF
YOU CATCH THIS PERSON, YOU CAN PUT A BULLET IN THEIR AND THE SURFER’S
HEADS. I DON’T HAVE ANYTHING INVESTED IN THIS BECAUSE PSI HAS
ALREADY RUINED MY LIFE AND I WILL NEVER RECOVER. I ONLY CHALLENGE
YOU, BECAUSE YOU USED TO BE A PERSON, RIGHT? IF YOU’RE
DEMANDING PEOPLE TO TREAT YOU LIKE A GOD, THEN PLAY FAIR…
    “ Give
me a name and I’ll send them out with The Rainbow. The Surfer and Wigeon are
off the table though. Pick your candidate and I will give them a fair
shot, but understand that when they are caught, I will have Rainbow
destroyed.”
    The
Surfer watched the screen, hypnotized by it. He didn’t know if
he even knew who Iris was, but she was smart. She knew what she was
doing. He just hoped she had someone in mind who really could get an
impossible job done. He hoped she’d pick The Guide, or The
Wrestler, who was one of his more athletic warriors, or anyone on
team Surfer.
    IRIS—THE
TROLL…
    “ The
Troll?” The Moderator asked, his brow creasing. “Did I
hear that right? Troll?”
    IRIS—THE
TROLL WILL GET THE JOB DONE.

Chapter 4

    The
Troll spoke with his fingers. He spent more time typing than talking,
and even when he talked, his hands would motion the act of typing. In
fact, he was incapable of talking without moving his fingers because
before the words were out of his mouth, he was thinking about typing
them and felt the impulse to reenact the sensation.
    He
was only comfortable with keyboard and mouse in hand. When he woke up
in the morning, he rushed to the Boards. Most of the Midwest was
filled with warehouses that housed members of the Boards. When the
world shut down, access to information was limited, but computers
were accessible, only to interact with other people via the Boards,
which were closely monitored by the good folks in Chicago.
    The
Boards were a kind of comfort zone for the bulk of population who
needed interaction, but didn’t want to live in the world
without technology. The Troll was an appropriate name for Bobby
Bryson. Long before Psi, he would frequent all the big message
boards—the ones with heavy traffic—and he would
antagonize the masses, whether it be teenage girls who were head over
heals in love with the latest boy band, or fans of the films he
hated. Politics, religion, the media, social topics, ethics,
paranormal beliefs, people who love poetry; No topic was too big or
small for The Troll to make an appearance, take the unpopular
opinion, play devil’s advocate, and rile the other users.
    He
was, to the Boards, an asshole, a provoker…a troll.
    Then
the world ended and everyone began going by labels instead of names,
and he happily and proudly took the name before anyone else could
grab it up, but no one else wanted to be called The Troll.
    Of
all the fights he instigated, there was one topic he refused to
address, and that was the moral implications of Psi, the revolution
of Surfer and Wigeon, and Circular Prime. He had Psi injected at a
young age, younger than most, and loved it. Suddenly, he was sitting
in his basement, watching Westerns and interacting on message boards
just by navigating with his mind. Throughout it all, his fingers
typed away at thin air.
    The
takeover by the disgruntled engineers at Circular Prime was a
sensitive subject. There had been too many stories of people who
conveniently disappeared or had a stroke in the night for speaking
out against Psi. The revolutionaries in the early days after the
shutdown were dead before they could start a revolution. The idea of
an uprising often prompted The Moderator to deactivate the minds of
the rebels. It seemed that the only way to survive was to agree, and
the Troll had too much work