Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-23787880-20141018020118

1: Past tense

If you open up a book on something like, let’s say world war two history and read into things like Pearl Harbor or Hiroshima, you figure: ‘hey, those were iconic moments in world history, were they not’? You accept them without question. You take it unthinkingly in as an objective and uncompromisable truthful event. The term “Objective” is the serious striker of the bell in my point here. Objective, as in concrete; presented with readily available proof and data to back it on up. Well, given that it is completely devoid of any bias. I mean, this whole bias thing removes that holistic qualification of what makes things so objective to begin with. It deprives raw data from the perceiver and drops emphasis only on what the presenter wants them to see. That being said, everything we see on a daily basis, amidst this endless barrage of information blasting us relentlessly, it is up to us to decide amidst it all, what is subjective or objective, truth or biased, real or illusion. For most this is easy. It takes no second thought. Determining the events of the past, whether academic or personal experiences like what you wore to work yesterday, are as simple as tying your shoes. You don’t even have to think about it. But for me, this is becoming next to damn near impossible.

I may or may not be barking mad at this point. It would be pretty nice if I was. The illusion that I’m trapped in has so many bizarre and horrible undercurrents, I can’t even think, no I don’t even dare say for sure what is real or fake at this point. I don’t know anymore. When the rest of the world’s perception fails to synchronize with your own, the majority rule has to win in the game of truth. Right? I mean, I’m the one who’s crazy, not them, and that would be an easy truth to swallow, if it weren’t for the astounding realism of the details that the app throws at me. The events didn’t happen, somehow I still think its true, but the videos are real. And now with the nightmares I’m starting to get, I’m beginning to feel everything as if I’m actually there. The memories are as sure as that of yesterdays breakfast. I have to tell myself that it’s fake every day.

Sure we can recreate situations with CGI dramatizations and pass it off for real footage, I know this. Just look at those Photoshopped images of the young fit models on the cover of magazines. Unless you have a trained eye, you can’t spot that so easily. It comes down to whether or not the things you see are real or fake. How can you tell? Usually the line is crystal clear. You can’t not see it with your general sprawl of media imputs. But then, Hollywood and their army of divinely innovative computer animators had no hand in this program. It was programmed specifically for me. After all, I didn’t find the App, it found me.

Intuitively speaking, the only deduction I can make here is that the Benson Duality App is well…not of this world.

You can look it up if you want. Go ahead and take a look. I can wait. Did you find it? I doubt you did. I’ve scoured the net for lord only knows how many hours. It simply does not exist. Maybe it never did. If you did however, Stay the hell away.

By the way, my name is Steve.

Two years ago I graduated from college and launched my lucrative career as a Fedex driver. My major was in English and I had these aspirations to be a bestselling author. I had it in mind that by this time in my life I would be banking in on the royalties from the movies that they would have made out of my masterpieces. But when you get out of college with that nice little framed piece of paper proclaiming your academic worth, the romanticism of it all immediately dissolves as reality sets in. I couldn’t catch a break, and those student loans weren’t going to pay for themselves. In the end, my achievement left me with nothing other than a stronger qualification to be a driver. It was the best I could do. The alternative was falling back into the temp agency, which usually provided me landscaping gigs in fancy neighborhoods and golf courses. I’d say the choice was obvious. I bitterly took the job, knowing full well that my writing career was becoming a dying ember in the back of my mind. Staying financially stable would become my new passion.

One day I was sitting at the terminal waiting on late freight to arrive and I was perusing my Facebook newsfeed on my Iphone. When I first started using this website five years ago, the things format would consist of people sharing what they were doing with the rest of the world, but over time the newsfeed mutated and transformed from that to mostly baby pictures, shared news articles, memes, and advertisements. The whole process of checking the feed became a brain-dead activity to me, however just like the other million users on this planet, I had become addicted to the act of using it. Like a zombie, I watched the information pass by my screen as I took in absolutely none of it. This is why I almost missed an update labeled “suggested page you may like” It was a page for a phone app. It was called the “Benson Duality App” now usually I disregard these. There are so many bullshit news articles about how you can get ripped in just six days or how to lose weight or become rich overnight that you begin to become numb to seeing them. I just chock them off as ‘click bait’ that lead to pages loaded Trojans and virus’s. Before I assumed that this one of those, but the headline caught my eye, “Innovating Smart Technology Uses your very own metadata to Simulate your own identity!”  the cover of the ad was of a man looking at a computer screen which was depicting an image of himself holding stacks of cash. ‘Simulate your own identity’ That sounded interesting, given I hear so much these days about things like ‘Digital foot prints’ and ‘metadata’. Everything was ever so digital these days and it’s all open to data sampling. It’s all pretty ridiculous when you say it out loud like that, but as a fan of 1984, I figured that this felt very Orwellian, very “Big Brother is watching” I had to at least look into it, if only to freak myself out.

When I first read the description of the app, it was all about this concept of producing a proxy demonstration of our own personality features and inserting them into hypothetical situations. You see, you activate a secondary facebook profile which is a clone of your own, but instead of it doing as the world does, it actually revolves around you. you see yourself interact with fictional people, playing out in hypothetical scenarios. In order to effectively simulate you, they use what they called ‘smart technology calculations’ to estimate your behavior.

I figured the whole thing was probably going to be buggy and fun for about twelve seconds before I would forget about it, provided the thing isn’t a the hoax I initially believed it to be. There was however a big vouch for its legitimacy. It was in the 5 star reviews from the users. And there were a lot of them. At least eight hundred of them. In the quote sections of the page, people were making enthusiastic claims that were very entertaining to read.

“This app is incredible! I learned more about myself than I ever thought possible!” – Roger P.

“I downloaded the Benson Duality App to see how I would do in the business world. The simulation showed me just how amazing I could be. It was almost scary how accurate it was. This is like straight oracle stuff. It made me rethink my entire life, and thanks to my boy Benson, I’m going back to school to get my bachelors!”  - Cedric W.

There was one other that stood out to me. In all rights, I should have thought it was creepy, but instead, like the fool I was; I found it hysterical. I mistook it for a joke.

“I was lost in the noise. Dumbfounded by the false light. Locked away by the lies of dead profits. I am home. Benson. Is. God.“– Allen K.

Benson is god. Well, I’m sure the program would be fun, but it couldn’t have been THAT good right? Still, the more I began to feel as if this was an actual thing, the more interested I became. I thought of how funny would it be if I used this app to insert myself into a situation where I was Mafioso hitman or some kind of corrupt politician. Hell, maybe I’d throw myself into a career as that writer I want to be. Granted, it was probably a total crock of nonsense anyways, but still, my imagination went nuts.

Hey, I was bored and it sounded really cool so, I downloaded it. I wish to god that I didn’t but I did. The first thing that happened when it installed itself onto my phone was that annoying message. “This app would like to use your current location” I’ve seen that question so many times that I’ve become blind to it. At first I figured that it was creepy how a program would want to spy on me, but since then, the prior fears have long since been paved over and reinterpreted as just casual paranoia, the kind synonymous to tinfoil hats. I would have been far quicker to believe in the Illuminati than I would to believe that this program had just asked for permission to infiltrate every aspect of my life. I selected “yes”

Next there came the terms of agreement document. Pages upon pages of it, who has time for that? In hindsight, I find myself wishing I made time for it. I can only imagine what the hell was written in those pages, from pure legal babble to straight satanic incantations. Instead of reading like I should have, I just agreed and continued. Finally the program opened up that wonderful message that would prove to be the start of my nightmare “Press here to start” like the naïve idiot that I was, I pressed the button.

If there was only a way to go back in time. I would have ran back to that moment and slapped that phone out of my own hand and demanded I burn the thing. But nope. I need to think realistically. Heh. Realistic. More on that later.

Instead of downloading, the app broke down right off the bat. It froze up my phone. The screen locked in place which indicated that the whole IOS was crashing. I didn’t give it any thought, I just held down the power button on the corner of my phone. Luckily, the phone restarted without issue. The apple logo automatically popped up. And soon enough, my background picture launched right up. A picture my cat clinging to a screen window. That was Butters. I found him as a kitten under my parents porch and decided to keep him. All the apps were in place, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. I swiped to the second page, and made sure everything was in place. The intuitive smoothness of the phone glitched for a split second, but then bumped over to the next page. There was no sign of the Benson Duality App though. It didn’t surprise me at all. The program became corrupted in the crash. Letting the whole thing go, I went to work as the freight had finally arrived. By the time I was on the road, I  already forget about the whole affair.

On my lunch break, I saw that I have received a new friend request. It’s from a girl named Jennifer. I don’t know who she is, but I accept anyways since she’s really cute. That’s where it started. With Jennifer. The app wouldn’t become truly active for at least another couple of days.

2: Past tense (A few days later)

So I’m sitting at my lunchbreak in a Mcdonalds parking lot playing with my phone when the it kicks in. Dicking around with facebook, my phone suddenly freezes in mid scroll. It stayed that way just long enough for me to double tap the power button to try and engage it’s program system. Instead of pulling up all the active programs on my phone, it suddenly snaps back into function. This is when I noticed that I had several notifications that weren’t there before just a moment ago. Obviously it was just refreshing itself. Phones do that sometimes. But when I checked the notifications, I realized that things were not exactly on par with what I would call…right. The first notification stated that eight people liked my status update. I can’t even recall the last thing I posted on Facebook, that‘s how little I use it. I know it was something about watching a horror movie with my cat, but who the hell gave a damn about that?

Upon pulling it up, I realized that they weren’t liking that update. They were liking an update that I submitted that very morning. It was about how I submitted a manuscript to my agent. I never posted that. I don’t have an agent. I saw that Jacob, Jill, Barry, and Don liked it. The other likers were people I’ve never heard of. There was a comment too, one from Jacob. He said “There gonna like it bro! your book idea is pretty dam chill!” Jacob was a friend from collage. As a fellow English Major, I found his poor comprehension for spelling and grammar very amusing. Another update revealed a message from that Jennifer person, the one that friend requested me just a few days ago. Like I said, I didn’t know who this was, I’ve never met her before, and yet when she messaged me, it was like she knew me her whole life. “Hey, I’m going to be home late from work. Around Six, can you preheat the oven to 400 for me? Thnx,”

The thought that maybe I was logged into someone else’s profile hit me. But then I noticed a reply. From me. Apparently I said “Sure thing babe, if we’re doing mac and cheese, you should grab some cheese on the way home. We’re out.”

It didn’t take long to deduce that maybe this was the Duality App that broke on my phone. Maybe it was finally working or glitching out. Either way, I wasn’t in the mood for it and decided it had to go. I searched my phone, trying to find a way to access the program so I could shut it off and delete it. I was annoyed to find that all traces of the program have been removed. Even when I looked into the phone settings and went through the individual app options, there was absolutely no sign of it. That was annoying. I shut off my phone and finished my route.

I got home at 8:00, fed my cat and microwaved mac and cheese from the nearby 7-11. Damn app planted the craving into my head.

When I fired up my computer to check my Facebook and emails, I was taken aback. All the fake updates were still in place. Even on my computer, which meant that this wasn’t limited to just my phone. The Duality App actually hijacked my Facebook account, effectively barring me from my real newsfeed. I let it go, and logged off, Ignoring all of the new updates that I had noticed in the process. They were, after all, fake. I googled the Benson Duality App only to find nothing. Just pages about math and algorithms. Technical nonsense that meant nothing to me. When I clicked on the search bar of the search engine, I noticed that the search history list popped up, and among those searches, there was a list of things I have no recollection of making. I should have been scared there and then. But I wasn’t.

Noise reducing shoes Box cutters Hunting knives Duct tape how quickly do you die from a throat cut How to find the Trachea. What angle to cut Trachea at. Trachea Anatomies. How sensitive is the Trachea.

I had to wonder if somebody was using my computer when I wasn’t home. I was a little more than freaked out at the sight of it, I mean, this is the kind of shit that puts you on government watch lists. So I looked up “what to do when Google displays searches I didn’t do” and a few solutions popped up. I heeded the most obvious one of them all. I changed my computer password. As a matter of fact, I changed every password to everything I had. The Duality App taking over my facebook account, and now this, why wouldn’t I have done that. They say that when your facebook gets hijacked, you change your password and that should clear away the problem. And you know what? It worked. It’s funny how by trying to solve one problem, I inadvertently solved all of them in one fell swoop. When I logged back I onto my facebook profile with the new password, all traces of the app vanished. My latest update was back to being about watching Bram Stokers Dracula with Butters. Zero likes. No messages from fake Jennifer either.

The rest of my night was pretty eventless. I only wrote a page and a half of whatever I was working on at the time, I mean, I was still suffering from writers block. Usually I write more. In the end I called it an early night. Work was a pain in the ass because somebody crashed at the intersection on queen Anne’s corner which backed up traffic for miles. They always choose rush hour to fuck it up for everyone else right? As I drove by the wreck, I said to nobody in particular that “ I hope you suffered.”

That was that, I didn’t think about it for another two months. Two months of the last blissful ignorance I will ever come to know.

3: Past tense (Two months later)

At the beginning of October I feel my phone vibrate in my pocket. When I pull it out, I see that I have a new Facebook message from Jennifer. For a moment, I’m at a loss, but then it all comes back to me. The App, Fake Jennifer. I see that she mentions that Butters puked on the kitchen floor again, and that maybe we should think about bringing him to the vet. Her picture is very similar to the one from two months ago. Pretty, young, bright blue eyes and blond hair in a ponytail. The picture is shot in selfie style, very typical Facebook fashion. There was nothing unusual about it except for one thing. I was in it. We were in my car. I knew it was my car because in addition to every last detail being uncanny to the real thing, there were small things like the tassel from my graduation cap hanging from the window and an unused backpack in the backseat. We were smiling, very much happy to be together. Somehow I found this more perplexing than unnerving. How did they do this? How did they get the interior of my car, how did they get me to look so convincing?

I need to stress this, there is no Jessica!

The app somehow made its way back into my system. This wasn’t so alarming to me since I recall assuring myself that it wasn’t out of the question for something like that to happen. I’ve deleted virus’s in the past only to see them pop back into my hard drive a few days later. It happens. It sucks that it does happen, but whatever. I would just go home and do what I did last time and get on with my life. It was just really annoying for me at that point in time I was currently talking to people about something important and now I was barred out because of this piece of crap.

When I got home that night, I jumped on my computer to change my Facebook password again. When logged back in, I saw that my news feed was precisely what it was before, just as I was hoping. I think to myself that, while annoying, it’s at least fixable. This would just be an annoying issue to deal with from time to time. Something that, if it got out of hand, the solution would be as easy as calling the service technician over it. As I resolve to check for these symptoms on a search engine, a message from Jennifer pops up.

Jennifer: Hey babe. How did it go?

Well I have to tell you, that was very frustrating. It’s like when your favorite song on a disk scratches and you go to wash it as thoroughly as you can, and afterwards you put it back in your player and hit play, sitting at the edge of your seat as you wait to see it would going to skip again. This was like that bitter disappointment that came when the disk finally did skip even after cleaning it. And I have to tell you, it was so uncomfortable to see something so realistic act like it was alive. I decided to play along for a moment, wondering how it would interact with me.

Me: How did what go?

Jennifer: The meeting with the editor?

Obviously the program had some kind of inkling for my aspirations. It had to be playing off of prior updates, maybe those exceedingly rare posts I made in the past. I don’t know. There was your average AI…and then there was this. I wondered if this program was run by actual staffing personal. The thought angered me. I immediately replied to Jennifer, trying to talk through the façade to whoever this prospective asshole controlling her was.

Me: Okay, the fun is over. I need this to stop immediately. I know this is the Duality App. Tell me how to deactivate this please.

Jennifer: Lol, what are you talking about?

Me: You know what I’m talking about. Get off my account and let me get back to my life!

Me: I’m dead serious.

Jennifer: Um…okay?

Me: What’s your name.

Jennifer: Jennifer? What is wrong with you? Are you ok?

Me: You’re not real. I don’t know anyone named Jennifer. I downloaded the Benson Duality App around two months ago through my phone. Since then, you’ve been invading my privacy and messing with my Facebook account and I don’t appreciate it. How do I get in contact with you?

Jennifer: What is wrong with you?

Me: Look seriously, cut the crap! I‘m tired of this and I don’t want it on my account anymore. Got it? Deactivate this thing now.

Jennifer: Look, I know you’re stressing out over your story. I’m in Chicago, so I can’t really talk to you for long. Do you want me to call you?

It offered to call me. That stopped my frustration in its tracks. This thing, this program that somehow doctored my picture with horrifying detail is offering to call me. I was afraid that if I said yes, it would actually call me, and that I would be talking to this Jennifer and it would know me intimately. It freaked me right out. But despite the creepiness of it, my curiosity was stronger. This was a bluff, and one I was going to call.

Me: Yes.

There was a pause. Then the subtext beneath my message switched on as seen. Two seconds afterwards, my phone vibrated on my nightstand. It startled me. When I picked it up, I was expecting to see an unknown number from out of state. What I saw instead was downright fucked. It was a picture of Jennifer. Pretty, smiling, and holding my cat. It was labeled: Jen.

I picked the phone up with a shaking hand. Reluctantly I pressed “receive call” and said nothing. I listened closely, looking for something like breathing, or anticipating a girls voice asking how I was with genuine concern. But there was nothing. There was nothing for all of ten seconds. Finally the eeriness of the situation was more than I could stand. I had to break this silence. “Uh, hi?”

My voice through their speaker had to have triggered some kind of feedback because my phone immediately flooded with that unbearable high pitched squealing noise. Like when you hold your microphone too close to your speakers. I could hear things falling over on the other end of the line, even with the feedback blaring over it all. They sounded like cans. When the noise stopped, the record came on. That record. I still don’t know what it means to this day, but fuck. That record. I could tell it was a record by that loud scratching frrruuump boomp noise that preludes the hissing and popping that is usually ever present throughout the entire playback. Some people say this is charming, I, personally, would go so far as to say it’s annoying, but in this case, I found it downright creepy. What the hell was this? I wondered if they were going to play old school music or something.

It was somewhat clear from the ambience that someone was on the other end of the line. I could hear the noise of the room, and I could hear footsteps, and above all, that noise was definitely the audible aesthetics of a record player and that frumping noise was definitely done by a person. Ignoring the noise, I started to yell. “Listen to me, you! I’ve had enough of this. Put someone on, I want this to stop now! Using pictures of me? Who the does that!?”

“Hello?” a young girls voice said. At this point I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I knew it didn’t sound right.

“I want to talk to someone in charge. Who is this?”

“Hello?” the voice said again, a direct clone of the last hello she said.

“Are you with the Benson App?”

“Hello?”

“You people are impossible!”

“Hello?”

Every time she said hello, it sounded exactly the same as the last. As if it were a solitary sound clip being repeatedly played off of a soundboard.

“Can you hear me? Am I getting through?”

There was a long pause. The popping, the hissing, the white noise of the record player continued to carry on as the unseen record continued to spin. I can’t pinpoint exactly when I noticed it, but I started to hear strange noises, quiet, barely audible. It sounded like radio chatter. When I did hear it, I listened into it intensely, trying to make it out through the faint hissing and popping. But then, like a switch, it became unbearably loud then-

“HELLO?”

Same sound clip, Somebody had turned the volume to full capacity. I almost dropped the phone when it broke out.

“Is this a prank? Is somebody putting you up to this?”

“Hell-”

Boop Boop Boop

The call gets disconnected. It’s tough to say, but I became almost positive that voice was coming off of that record. The last time she said hello, she began to slow down before getting cut off.

My computer speakers make a popping sound it’s another message from Jennifer’s chat log.

Jennifer: Steve, why aren’t you answering the phone?

Me: Buddy, I did answer. What was up with that record? You know what? I don’t care. Why won’t you people answer me? I want you to stop this. Take me off your list! Unsub me! Unregister me. Whatever it is you idiots are doing. Get me off your program! Uh, I Steve $##@$ formally decline further service from the Benson Duality App. How’s that? Is that clear enough for you?

Jennifer: ok. I’m done with this. Get some rest. I’ll call you tomorrow. Love you.

I immediately see Jennifer’s name on the right tab go from online to off. I switch back to my newsfeed to see that Jennifer posted a new update.

Jennifer: I think Steve is losing his mind. Working too hard I guess. Goodnight.

Without thinking I jump onto the post and comment.

Me: You aren’t real! None of this is! You people are lunatics! How do I get in contact with whoever is running this!

Jennifer comes back online almost immediately and replies.

Jennifer: Babe, give it a rest.

Me: Go to hell you slutbot. Jump into a train!

Jacob, someone that I at least know is real drops a comment next.

Jacob: Dude, what is rong with u?

Me: Jake, my account has been hijacked by something called the Benson Duality App. Jennifer isn’t real. Have you heard of this?

Jacob: No. Dude Im with Jennifer rite now in Chicago. What are u talking about.

Then he posts a photo comment of himself with Jennifer. They’re in a hotel room. Me and Jake have been friends for a couple of years. I’ve spent enough time with him to know his mannerisms and demeanors. Somehow, and this is hard to explain, but It was all right there. His weird smile, his posture. Jennifer looked very upset.

I immediately go to Jakes profile. His latest update is about how he is in Chicago with Jennifer, for a presentation for some company I know for a fact Jake doesn’t work for. I was going to message him and give him a piece of my mind, but at this point, why bother? None of this was real. It was all just simulated nonsense. I leaned back in my chair feeling defeated. Whatever discussion I was currently engaged in before this all started has since been diminished. I was at a loss for what to do.

I was so enthralled in the pseudo drama that I forgot about that freaky phone call. I immediately pick it up and call it, not even sure what I was going to say when I got into the neck of it, but that didn’t stop me. The phone took a moment to connect then I heard an automated voice respond. It told me that the number I was trying to connect with wasn’t in service. I dropped my phone in disbelief. That was enough for tonight.

I didn’t sleep a wink that night, which was good since it was Friday. I was lying in bed fearing that my cellphone would ring again. I was afraid I would never get this app off my cell. And yet, now I was also anticipating the call I would be making tomorrow with my phone provider about the whole ordeal. It was something to look forward to, a feeling that I was still in control.

When I called them the next day, they told me to come to the nearest Apple store so they could “Diagnose” this behavior. The rep found my case very interesting. It would have appeared that nobody at Verizon had ever heard of a rogue app like that before. I came into the store that day and they did whatever it was they did with broken phones, only to turn up with negative results. They said that they found absolutely nothing wrong with it. They said that there was no app in my phone called Benson Duality. I asked them to hang about for a moment while I pulled up my facebook to show them the fake Jennifer profile. What I saw caught me off guard. I saw the message feed from before, but everything that was exchanged was different. Instead of last night’s argument, there was just a plain conversation. I was complacent when she started off the conversation, acting, well, like a standard boyfriend. The argument and update where Jake got involved was also changed. Well no. It was deleted entirely. Whatever it was that I was dealing with, it was changing everything I said and replacing it with whatever it deemed necessary.

I showed it to them anyways, but they were skeptical. They actually believed that I was full of it and that they were getting tired of this whole ordeal. They brushed me aside because they had other customers waiting. I thought about writing a nasty review on their website, but then decided not to. The Benson app would probably just doctor that too.

That day I went to the Verizon store and told them to disconnect my phone and severed all ties with them. Later that day I created a new account with Sprint and bought a Droid. This whole ordeal was expensive, but I had to part ways with this atrocity.

By the time I get to my car afterwards, I waste no time downloading Facebook and jumping onto my account, and much to my dismay, the app was still alive and fully well. The newsfeed was filled with trending news articles about some brutal murder, but in the end I see Jennifer still on there. She posted something about how terrifying the trending murder story is. I, as in fake me, had commented on this. It was telling her that we are okay because we have each other. Pure cheese right? If they’re going to pretend to be me, they could at least be more stoic about it! I’m never that cheesy.

I go home and post that I’m shutting down my account and switching to a new one. When I do this and log onto the new account, I get a friend request almost immediately.

It was from Jennifer. Naturally, I do not accept.

This proves one thing, not that this app isn’t attached to my phone, nor that it isn’t attached to my Facebook account. The one thing it proves is that it has complete and total access to all my information, and I have no idea how. I can’t even find a trace of its existence on the internet. I don’t know what to do anymore.

I was feeling very bummed about the how I acted so preemptive against my own logic. I was down over x amount of dollars over a phone that I didn’t really care much for. It did everything it was supposed to do, but at a far slower pace than my Iphone. I’m not a very patient dude, you know. It’s just, I could have conducted more experiments and verified what I learned outside the expense of these actions.

I went back onto Google and looked up the program. There was nothing. I went onto Yahoo and looked. Nothing. I looked on Bing. Nothing. Of course there was nothing. I’ve only verified this fact a hundred times already. I checked my computer for virus’s, but there was nothing. I looked up the symptoms. I looked up Jennifer. I looked up everything. Nothing. However, there was another detail that I noticed in my Google search history. It once again acted on its own. It spoke of addresses, people I don’t know. Chemicals I’ve never heard of, how to hide personality traits like being antisocial and worse yet, several different worded inquiries regarding serial killer traits. I deleted that search history and began looking up how to prevent phantom searches again. I started to buy into the idea that my computer was being remotely accessed by these people.

I went to the police and reported that I was being hacked. They did absolutely nothing because there was no indications of threat. This was very disappointing as I was SURE they would have some answer for me. In the end they just said to change my passwords and update my virus protection software. At the very least, the whole situation is now on their record in case the situation spirals out of control.

My next move was telling a fellow driver at work about it. I asked him to friend request me on Facebook and tell me what he saw. When he did, he told me that my latest update was about not being able to sleep a few nights ago. There was relief in that. Other people weren’t seeing the app at work, and that was fine by me.

When I got home and logged on, that very same person commented on a life event announcement about getting engaged to Jennifer. The post was a picture of her hand wearing an expensive ring. The man’s comment, along with everyone else was of your typical “congratulations” My mother chimed in, saying how happy she was. Apparently me and Jennifer were just perfect together. It was in that moment, I resigned to just drop the whole thing. I deactivated my Facebook account and deleted the app off my phone. There couldn’t be a problem without a format for that problem to attach itself to right? One fell swoop, it all goes away. I could easily live without social media. Life will go on.

And went on, life did. Until a few days later.

4: Past tense (three days later)

So I’m driving home and I get a phone call. At this point, nothing of the App was on my mind, so when I heard what the call had in store for me, it fucks with me to the point that I almost crash my car over it.

The call is labeled as a “Blocked” caller. Reluctantly I answer. What I hear is madness. I answer, “Yeah?”

The response is completely nuts. At first I hear distorted radio chatter, Then the Frump Boomp noise of the record player followed shortly by the sound of a woman Screaming. It’s fading in and out of the fray. Her cries were absolutely blood curdling, the pain in her made me forget what I was doing. It slowed down, getting lower in speed and pitch until it stops completely. The hissing and popping stopped too. Then it started back up again and so did the screaming, slow at first, building into normal speed. Then it dissolved into the quiet ambience of the record player. And I hear it again: “Hello?” It was the same sound clip as last time. An innocent voice answering the phone. Absolutely identical. It drove chills down my spine.

I am so messed out by this that I almost didn’t realize I was about to crash into the pickup truck in front of me. Throwing the phone aside, I slam the breaks and just barely avoid catastrophe. Being so thrilled by the fact that I didn‘t total my car, I forget that the phone call is happening. When I check later, I find that the call disconnected shortly after I threw it aside. That was on a Friday night.

Next time I check my phone is on Saturday night. When I did, I saw that my Facebook account had reactivated itself completely on its own. There were notifications, almost a hundred of them. The trending consensus implied that Jennifer had died. She had been murdered. My newsfeed was completely lit up with messages of condolences from my friends and family. People were saying that they were going to be there for me if I needed anything. Even her own “family” members were messaging me, telling me things like “even though you two never got married, you’re still like a son t us. Let us know if you need anything,”

Having gone through the aggravation of all this, I thought to myself “Good, to hell with you! You fake person. That’s what you get for making my life hell.”

It wasn’t until I looked in the chat log section of my phone that I really start to get frightened-no, horrified. I could see that there was a conversation between me and Jennifer which took place just last night. The context was startling, to say the very least.

Me: I can see you.

Attached to this, I, as in ‘fake me’ posted a picture of her in the window of some house I’ve never seen before. She was looking out of it with a look of unadulterated terror. She’s holding a knife.

Jennifer: Are you nuts? I told you to leave me alone!!!! I’m calling the police!

Me: We talked about this Jen, they can’t save you. I’m coming. Are you ready for our date?

Jennifer: GO AWAY

Me: Oh my darling fiancée. Can’t you see, this is just as God intended it.

The next comment I posted was a picture of her front door. The frame was torn apart, as if I had kicked it open. Ahead of the threshold, there was a staircase. The comment read, “Oh Jennifer, I can smell Turkey. Were you going to make a nice dinner for us? Hey, remember when we first met? I asked the school chefs for a turkey melt and they made me a Tuna Fish sub instead? I was so angry, I asked them how stupid they could be to screw that up? You didn’t know me very well, but I sure as hell knew you. I’ve been crushing hard on the whole semester and you couldn’t even remember my name. You were standing right behind me in line and I knew it, so I acted twice as angry because for some reason I thought it would impress you. You saw right through that, because you already had some idea of who I was, given that group project about Edger Allen Poe, don‘t you remember? You called me out for ‘showing off That day you sat with me in the cafeteria. That was the first time we actually got to know each other. In that cafeteria, where I reluctantly ate the Tuna sub. God it was gross, and you laughed every time I got grossed out by the smell. It was in the laugh. I knew there and then that this moment was inevitable. Here we are. The ecstasy of it, Jen, It’s invigorating. Can you feel it? God is calling!”

The next message I sent her was another photo with a comment attached. It was a picture of a dead cat. It was butters. He was lying in a pool of his own blood with his throat cut, ear to ear. The left side of the photo was a hand holding a steak knife, red with his blood. I recognized it as my own hand. I could tell by my own chewed fingernails. The comment read, “Oh poor butters. Look what you made me do. He wasn’t supposed to be a part of this. This was supposed to be just you and me. Our big special night. It’s okay though, I forgive ya! ;)”

The sight of my own dead cat made me drop the phone. I ran out of my room and into my kitchen. He was on the counter, his two front paws in the sink drinking water from a bowl I rinsed earlier. The relief of that. He wasn’t dead at all. But that picture. This was horrible! How could the app be so brutal? But then, it had only been obnoxiously intrusive since the day I got it, so what the hell was I expecting? When I pet him on his head he jolted up and shot me a surprised look. I usually chastise him for eating or drinking stuff out of the sink. “I’m glad you’re not dead buddy,” I said to him, and went back to my phone to take in the rest of the horror.

The next picture comment in the message thread was of her door. There was a construction paper cutout of a heart thumb tacked to it. Written in a sharpie across it was innocently scrawled: “Jennifer’s room” My blood covered knife was lodged in the center of it. There was a streak of ‘Fake Dead Butters’ blood dripping down the side of it. The comment attached to the upload read: “It is everything in me right now, not to cry. I can’t say that lightly. Only you can do this for me. The ecstasy of it.”

The following photo is of her corpse. My comment, “You’re dead. You’re dead. You’re dead. But I wanted so much more.”

At this point my hands were shaking. This was downright evil. I immediately exited out of the app and pulled up my camera phone picture folder to see if those photographs were there. They were. Worse yet, there were far more than I had sent to her. There were images of my foot on each step on her stair case leading up to her floor. There were fourteen of them all together. Each one the same picture of my feet on the stairs. Left foot on stair one, then right on stair two, then left again on the third step. And those were my shoes. My Converse shoes in the photos, the wear and tear of them were identical to my own. I immediately flicked them off my feet. It’s hard to explain, they just felt tainted.

That wasn’t even the worst part. There was a video on my phone. One that wasn’t incorporated into that horrible chat log.

The thumbnail of the video was indistinguishable. And it was six and a half minutes long. I watched it. Worst. Decision. Ever.

The first ten seconds reveals a lowfi POV shot of me kicking down her door. Each kick sends desperate screams on the other side of the door. I recognized that voice immediately as the scream I heard on the phone call on my drive home from work. On the third kick, my own voice comes out in the audio. “Awe come on babe,” I, no It, spoke with such a casual tone, like there was nothing wrong at all. This was far more chilling than if I were saying something more akin to an axe murderer. Something like ‘open the door I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you!’ The casualness of it was darker than dark. And that was my voice. I know my voice, and that was it. Verbatim, my voice! And hearing myself as a sociopathic murderer made me wonder whether or not this actually happened. Was this video real? Was I really capable of this?

“Babe, the doors getting looser. One more kick ought to do it.” It kicks the door open, ripping the thing right off its own hinges and sending it into the wall just beyond. The monster pushes the camera phone into the room and looks around, and I see her in her halfway through her own window, trying to escape. The view gets fast and blurry. The Phone’s camera can’t keep up with how fast its moving. Her screams get louder to the point where it clips the audio. I hear punching. She gasps, like she got the wind completely knocked out of her. No longer screaming, she’s now just moaning in pain. When I hear her try to scream, my hands go from shaking to rattling. A knot formed in my throat and my stomach turns cold. The feed dissolves into blurry chaos again as her pathetic cries accompany the sound of dragging. She begins to beg for her life. She’s crying my name. Saying things like “I love you, Why are you doing this?” I hear her words get cut off by her own cry again. This is a reactionary kind of cry. I did something to her. Something terrible.

“There we go Jen, now you can’t run away. Go ahead, give it a shot. I’ll be over here, taking care of this real quick.”

The camera pauses, looking down at her lying on her stomach. She’s reaching over and touching her ankles. They’re bleeding uncontrollably. This monster that was pretending to be me had slashed her Achilles tendons…My mouth turns completely dry as the camera quickly turns with the fast motion. I can hear it breathing heavily into the speaker, then I hear clunking. The camera is positioned onto an elevated surface where it depicted a perfect angle of her. She’s trying to crawl away, leaving a trail of fresh blood behind her.

“Oh no you don’t, babe,” It says as I see myself enter the shot of the video. It’s wearing the exact same clothes that I’m wearing at that moment. It kicks her right in her ribs. Then it kicks her again, and again. It kicked her so many times that she stops struggling. She is just choking now. She grabs at Its leg, which the horrible thing slaps away to the ground and proceeds to stomp on it. I hear her bones crack.

This was me, committing these horrible acts to this…to this person. The realness, the shockingly clear details, everything was pure unadulterated reality demonstrated right there on my phone. And me, that was fucking me! Same clothes, same hair, same slightly hunched posture. My shoulders tensed the same exact way I see them tensed every single time I look at them when I wash my hands in the bathroom. Me. This was proof that I did something terrible, but there was no point in time where I recall a lapse within my own consciousness outside of being asleep. That was me!

So when I strongly emphasize what It did, I hope you will understand why what happened next made me cry like a desperate child. It just broke me. The video continued, showing it was still holding the steak knife. It crouched down next to her, brushed her hair aside and…oh my god…it started to use the knife. I…I can’t. How could a person do that to another person? How could humans be so fucking depraved!? How? I threw the phone down and ran into the bathroom and puked. I screamed like she screamed. I screamed for what felt like hours. I washed my face, I looked at myself in the mirror. Trying to see a detail that didn’t match the me in that video. Everything was spot on!

How long did I stare into my own reflection? How long did I question my own identity. How long did I question everything I knew about myself, desperately accounting for my every single action of the last couple of days. How long?

At least until the phone began to vibrate again, that much I can recall. I could hear it in the other room, it was loud against that cheap ten dollar coffee table. I staggered into the room with a new sickness akin to being wasted, I fell into the table, picked up the phone and looked at the screen. Blocked caller. I knew in my now racing heart that this was Benson. I answered and started to plead into the phone. “Please, for the love of all that is good, please leave me alone. You’ve had your fun, I’m done…”

Hissing. Popping. White noise. The Record player.

One word answer.

“Hello?” the same exact sound clip.

“No. You people are monsters. How could you think that it’s okay to do that?”

“Hello?”

I couldn’t respond. That ‘Hello’ was painful to hear. It was just too unassuming. Too innocent.

“Hello?”

“Please stop saying that,” I murmured into the phone. “I know you can hear me, I know what you’re doing. You can’t get away with this,”

“Hell-” boop boop boop. The call was disconnected as that final hello began to slow down. I stared at the phone in my hand for a long time. I didn’t know what to do. The screaming, the thing that was me. Everything was so horrible. I began to close my eyes and try to remember it as if it really happened, but nothing would come to mind.

The phone rang again in my hand. Blocked caller…I pressed the “receive call”

“Hello?”

It called me eighteen more times that night. By the fifth, I stopped answering. By the ninth, I turned my phone off.

5: Past tense (Yes, still)

Over the next couple of days, the number of pictures in my phone increased. The pictures were of houses I’ve never seen and of people I never met. They didn’t realize they were being photographed. They were all young women, around Jennifer’s age and description. This was real hardcore stalker stuff. It would appear that Benson is trying to simulate that I’m out for another kill.

It took awhile, but I did manage to calm down to the point where I could test out some theories. I looked up Jennifer’s murder online, and the information was all over the news websites. They label me as “The Steak Knife Killer” and turned the whole thing into a real media fiasco. There was absolutely nothing about it on the television though. You would figure, if the world on the internet was at a standstill about a new serial killer, it would be all over the news too, but there was absolutely nothing about it on television. Just stuff about Isis and Ebola. There was comfort in that. The reality of the normal world was still in place outside of my own internet. But still, Benson had me in its grip. There had to be a way out.

Later that day, I called my mom and asked her if she had ever heard of Jennifer, or the Steak Knife Killer. She said no and asked me why I would ask these questions. I told her about what was happening, leaving the video and the photos out of it. Not that I thought she would have any ideas, but it was still nice to hear that she had no idea what I was even talking about and just assumed it was hackers or something. That was fine.

After I hang up, She calls me again ten minutes later. When I answer, there is nothing on the other end. Assuming this was just her accidentally pocket dialing, I hang up the phone and went back to perusing the internet for anything similar to my case.

Every time I mention my simulated situations in the search engines, I keep being redirected towards concepts regarding neurology and advanced computer sciences that worked together to try and master something called “Uploading personalities” Yes, this is actually a technological advancement that is currently in the works. They’re proposing that given the right amount of data, you could create an online variation of your own identity by the year 2045. You’ll be able to upload your memories, dreams and even personality traits. You can easily shrug this off as some kind of science fiction nonsense, but I promise you, if you read into it, you will see stuff about it by people like Michio Kaku or Ray Kurzweil. It made me wonder, maybe this program was some kind of variation on this prospective technology. They talk about something called the “singularity” where man and technology become so alike the laymen would begin to strive over making the distinguishments between. They mention the significance of our “digital footprint“ even going so far as to say that your search engines are distributed among companies to establish an advertisement profile based entirely on our online and in-store habits. I was a little startled over how invasive all of this was, but still, relieved to know that the technology acted as some kind of explanation as to how the Benson Duality App knew so much about me. I doubted it deep down, but hey, you know, It was better than nothing. But still, There was nothing out there about The Benson Duality App itself.

I Deactivated my Facebook profile again, then I deleted all the photos and the video off my phone. It took a long time since there were so many of them. You see, the weird thing was that when I plugged my phone into the computer to try and jump into its hard drive, it told me that the memory on there was close to zero. I haven’t downloaded a single App since Benson and probably never would again. But the sheer number of pictures, and the video alone had to at least amount to somewhere near one full gigabye right? But no. There were no traces of it in my DCIM folder. Nothing. So I was left to just deleting them one by one on the phone. I was more than willing as I never wanted to see them again.

Satisfied that I’ve done everything I could, I sat down and just tried to relax. When that didn’t work, I did the best thing I could think of. I logged onto my steam account and played some Counterstrike. For awhile, I forgot about the whole thing. Even forgetting myself in the process. Games do that. But it didn’t last.

It began to happen again, right there in the game. I was playing the map Aztec, when suddenly the audio chatting of other players, usually children screaming racial profanities into their microphones to try and troll people into getting angry, they started to show signs of compromise. One of them shouted into the microphone “Wow Beerkeg, you are the worst!”, to which this “beerkeg” replied through his own microphone.

“Hello?” I stopped right there and then. My character was killed almost immediately, which was then proceeded by the ingame indication “Counter terrorist win” That was the same sound clip. Unbelievable. It had stalked me through my phone, into my own computer, and now it’s following me into videogames?

I shut the game down and opened Modern Warefare 2 and went into the multiplayer screen. While we were waiting for the game to load, I watched players pop into the lobby screen. When they come in, they can immediately use their microphones to communicate. And this time around, it took no time. Somebody called Siphiroth’s speaker icon popped up next to his name. “Hello?” that voice, Jennifers voice. The same exact sound clip.

I looked up the user Siphiroth outside of the game through the steam interface and immediately sent him a message. “Who are you?” I wrote. There was no response, well not at first. I was about to disregard this as a bust and Ex out of the screen when suddenly a window popped up.

“Siphiroth wants to use audio to chat with you”

My blood turned cold. Before I even had a chance to think about tit, I heard my own phone go off behind me. It didn’t vibrate, but instead, out of its own speakers on its own accord,  it emitted the same thing it has been saying to me this whole time. “Hello?” It made me jump. I immediately grabbed my phone, wondering if it answered a call on its own and switched to speaker phone. When I picked it up, I was startled to see that the Facebook app that I deleted awhile ago was back and in mid download. The progress bar was halfway. Almost losing it again like the other night, I canceled it. Benson was in my phone.

“Hello?” the phone called out again. I could now hear the hissing of the record quality.

“Hello?” my computer speakers called out. The window had selected yes on its own.

“Hello?”

“Hello?”

Two separate sources. I shut my phone off, while listening to my steam account drop that same sound clip over and over again through the chat log with username Siphiroth. When the phone was off, I turned to the chat log and was about to click on the X on the corner of the screen but then it started messaging with words. Not only was it playing the sound clip through the program, but it was posting log information in the text area. It’s hard to explain, but, It looked like it was copy and pasting a prerecorded conversation between two people. There were two separate parties involved. Both of which were identified as a series of random numbers. Each of them dropping dialogue to each other. Then I realized what was happening.

It was a recorded log of the conversation I had with my mother earlier. Even though we spoke verbally, it translated it into text and was repeating the information back to me. It was commenting pieces of it, rhythmically so too. Bump. More dialogue. Bump. More dialogue.

“What are you trying to tell me…?”

My phone reactivated on its own. It vibrated on the table.

“HELLO?” My computer shot out at me at a loud volume.

“GOD LEAVE ME ALONE!” I shouted at.

The chat log with Siphiroth stopped. Even the sound clips stopped. Silence. No hissing, no popping. Everything went quiet. I knew it was watching me. Taking it all in, prepping its next move. God it sounds so crazy, and I know it all sounds like bullshit. But if you’ve stayed with me this far and are feeling skeptical, maybe you’ll doubt this next part entirely.

My Facebook app started to download on its own in my phone again. This time I did nothing to stop it. I just watched the bar fill, in total silence. Just as the bar reached the max, a voice whispered through my computer from the Siphiroth audio chat.

“Come home,”

It was something different. A response to me directly. I had its attention, I had to talk to it. I had to try and get through to it.

“Why are you doing this!? What are you? What do you want from me?” I shouted into the microphone. Instead of responding to me, the thing logged off. Everything disconnected. I looked up that name again only to find that it didn’t exist anymore.

Reluctantly, I picked up my phone to see that my Facebook app was running. I looked in and saw that I had hundreds of notifications. People were dropping words of condolences. Apparently, my Mom was dead. She was murdered…by the Steak Knife Killer.

No, I thought. Not again. It was going to put me through it again, but this time with somebody real? My mom?

I went straight to my photo sections in my phone. There were over eight hundred of them. They consisted of the house I grew up in, they consisted of the street I grew up playing in where the house was addressed. There were images of my mom tied to a chair. She was bleeding. There was an image of me holding my phone out in ‘selfie’ fashion, with my mom staring miserably at the camera. The life in her eyes, faded to the point where she looked barely alive. Her throat was covered in blood. I was holding a steak knife. It was covered in blood. I had slit her throat. I was making a mocking expression at the camera. Sickening.

“No,” I said at my phone. I looked in my video list, and there was an eighteen minute long video with an indistinguishable thumbnail image. Suffice it to say, I did not play it. Ask yourself this question, if you found a video of yourself murdering your mom, would you watch it? Yeah. I didn’t think so.

I threw my phone across the room and spent the rest of the day in my room. No technology. No internet. Nothing. Nothing except for the muffled “Hello?” coming out of my phone in my main room and through my bedroom wall. I put my pillow over my head to drown it out. For awhile it worked.

I must have fallen asleep because when I took the pillow off my head, the sun had gone down. I wish I slept longer because when I woke up, I could hear my phone making noise. It had activated the video. I could hear the audio from where I was. I could hear my mother’s voice crying out. Asking why I was doing what I was doing. I could hear my voice assuring her with cool lighthearted certainty (Benson) that everything was as it was supposed to be. That hit me like a lightning bolt. I ran into that room and grabbed the phone, looking to turn it off as soon as possible. When I had it, I saw the footage of my mom lying on the floor of her basement. The steak knife was sticking out of her throat, and I was screaming mindless insults at her. My jaw went limp at the sight of it, hanging open. I turned it off and threw it on my couch. I put all the blankets and pillows that I owned over it to muffle it, to drown it out. I will NEVER watch that video.

That’s when it came active on my computer. A QuickTime video activated on its own accord and started playing the very same video. I pulled the plug out of it before it could even pass the ten second mark.

That’s when it came on my television. Grabbing my head like a lunatic, I cried out “why are you doing this to me!?” I unplugged my television too. I was positive that I would never plug it back in.

It no longer had a way of reaching me. I felt relieved in the silence. Then the phone began to play the sound clip under the blankets. “Hello?” Even under all the pillows, under the blankets, my jacket, my dirty laundry, it could still be vaguely heard.

I didn’t sleep at all that night.

6: Past tense-up until now.

That was where it all began to fall apart for me.

I became bitterly apprehensive towards technology. Feeling like if I moved towards anything that had some form of a satellite broadcast, Benson would either trigger a video, or play the hello sound clip. At work, I distrusted the scanners I used to deliver packages. When I drove to work, my radio stayed off. When people asked if I was alright, I told them I was fine, playing it off like I was feeling sick. People bought it, and that was fine for awhile.

Benson (Benson) left me alone during the days when I went back to work at first. I would get no phone calls. My droid wouldn’t vibrate, and it didn’t hear or see anything out of the ordinary until after I got home. Even when it wasn’t harassing me, I knew it was still with me. Still in my phone. I wanted to leave it home, but where was the responsibility in that? I was constantly reminding myself that none of it was real so I could build the confidence to carry it with me because that’s what responsible and reliable people do.

Over the next couple of weeks, it would become a normal routine for me. I come home every night to be harassed into seeing another person being killed. Another hundred photos would just spawn in my memory card. I wouldn’t watch any of them and when they started to play on their own, I would put my phone in the safe place. Underneath the blankets and pillows. From there, the sound clips would play every thirty seconds. “Hello?” over and over again. Each time I hear it, it hurts my head. It makes me dizzy. It hurts me in a way that transcends anything I could even remotely articulate. Whatever game Benson was playing with me, I was actually beginning to somehow sense that it was winning. I think it showed in how I began to slip into a state of apathy. I could feel myself give in and stop caring.

The photos would be of people and houses on my route at work. Of people who I would say hello to on a daily basis. There would be photos of people I graduated high school with, went to college with. Some people were like Jennifer. Not real. Some were irrelevant people that I would usually give no second thought to, like store clerks or joggers I would casually pass by on my commute home from work. It all became routine. And soon, it blended together.

I think the unraveling process started on the third week since Benson targeted my mother. I was driving to work one day and at one moment, I’m on North Quincy Street in my car early in the morning, and then suddenly I was in my truck, halfway through the work day. It happened in a flash. As if I just went to sleep and woke up hours later. When it first happened, my brain immediately flared with the conclusion that I had lapsed out of my own consciousness and became the monster in Benson’s videos. What could have possibly accounted for those missing points in time? When I came back to the Terminal, I talked to my boss and tried to lead the conversation around how I was this morning. This was tricky, because you can’t just walk up to your boss and ask if him you seemed…murder-ey this morning. Instead I apologized for being late for some stops and that I wasn’t feeling myself this whole day. It wasn’t a lie when you think about it. He told me that I did just fine, that I was actually on time for all of them.

So I lost time, and yet I didn’t do anything out of the ordinary. I didn’t know if I should have been afraid or relieved. It wasn’t until I got in my car after work that I noticed the phone producing the noise. When I shut my car door, I was expecting silence. Instead I heard hissing. Popping. Coming out of my phone speaker. It was subtle, but definitely there. There wasn’t any noise. Just hissing. The unseen record player from the phone calls was playing through the speaker. Later I would speculate that it’s been playing all day, and that this was how I tranced out.

And that became the next phase of Benson’s trip. The next development in my now crumbling life. I would just have these (Benson) trance like states of consciousness. These momentary lapses. Like slipping into a dream. They were at their worst when I was driving or working. Sometimes I would find myself suddenly snapping out of them in the middle of conversations with people and not even know how I got there. Sometimes I would be perfectly lucid during these lapses, and yet still found myself swimming in the unreality of it. All the while, in the back of my mind, that record player noise. I couldn’t tell if it was in my head or actually coming out of an exterior source. Maybe both. Maybe neither. It was like being drunk, or high on pot. Sometimes I would bullshit myself into believing that this noise had absolutely no source and that it was clearly in my own head, clearing the path to ask myself logical questions. Questions like: Was I going insane? Was this mental drainage? Was I exhausted from the consistency of fear? Was this a descent into apathy? Is this a symptom of extreme depression?

Occasionally I overhear radio broadcasts from other cars at red lights, or nearby radios when I’m walking around outside. They wouldn’t stop talking about the “Steak Knife Killer” Although it appeared to me that Benson had decided to Brave the world beyond my own immediate perception, I still really had to wonder if the people who were listening even heard what I was hearing? Did our realities coincide? Or were we in different worlds? Seeing two separate interpretations… When I ask people about it, they tell me that they’ve never heard of a Steak Knife Killer. I don’t know. At this point, I don’t even know if anything I hear is real. It’s like a horrible indoctrinating song. The more I heard it, the more I began to believe it. The more I began to believe it, the more I would seep into these states of mind. The record players noise never stopped.

When I got home, another video. Another five hundred photos. At one point in time, I had over 87 snuff films on my phone. I had over 3000 pictures to accompany them. The computer couldn’t detect any of it. I would just come home and stuff my phone under the blankets and stare at the wall. Sometimes I could hear the hissing coming from an unknown source in my house. Sometimes the Hello would come out of it. I can’t remember at this point if I even bothered to try and find it. After awhile, it just became normal for me, like ringing in the ears after a loud concert.

Soon I began to question why I was still going on. Life began to feel grey. Maybe this was depression. I researched the symptoms of it and saw that a lot my current episodes were very similar, so it wasn’t out of the question. There were reassuring qualities in the idea of it and I sure would have loved to have experienced them when I thought about it, but (Benson) then I would lose myself again.

I knew it was Benson. There was something about that hissing noise. Something subliminal, I can’t know for sure as I’m not a fucking psychologist, but the effects of the record player was grinding me. Breaking me ever so slowly. Winning.

I started becoming suspicious of the cars behind me when I was driving, or at least when I was lucid enough to do so. One time I looked at my own boss, and with ridged certainty, it became somehow abundantly clear that he wasn’t who he said he was. he wasn’t anyone I knew. He went from a man I saw five days a week to a complete and total stranger. I couldn’t make out his face, and somehow I figured within my logical self that he was going to try and kill me. I began to hyperventilate as my (Benson) heart swiftly began to race in my chest. I had a panic attack. My boss sent me home and told me to take some time off.

That night the nightmares began. They were lucid and yet completely beyond my control. I was acting out Benson’s videos. The first night I murdered Jennifer. The second, my Mom. The third, a customer from my route at work. In these dreams, I can feel the intensity of my emotions. They are purely emotions, there are no thoughts. I couldn’t think, was completely incapable of thinking. I could only watch and experience, lucidly so. When I woke up, I would somehow always forget the specifics of those emotions, only that they were intense. At first I convinced myself that they were of terror as that seemed to make the most sense to me. But the more I dreamt, the more I would realize that I was wrong. These weren’t fearful emotions. They were ecstatic. These were limbic sensations of triumphant victory, like having sex or warding off a predator. This morning, it became clear to me that murdering these people in my dreams had produced the greatest sensation I had ever known.

The fear of that realization. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. Realizing that everything is just wrong. The events I see, a simulation. Everything lost in the hissing and popping of the unseen record player ambience. It took me so long to write all this for you because of how often I would just lose my own sense of continuity. I don’t have the balls to reread the things I wrote, because I know they won’t be what I remember them being.

And now You now know everything that I know (I (Benson) hope). This is where I stand, somewhere in the void. Between the phases of lucidity where these very words come into being, between the vast regions of fog and record ambience where I can barely think or comprehend the world around me, and between the animalistic madness residing somewhere inside. Between me and the simulation. Between man and beast. And every step of the way, Benson is with me.

7: March 26th

Sitting in my house, I am staring at my television. Seeing the fake news stories about my murders. I wonder if the simulation behind all of this would end in me watching myself go to jail through the screen. If you think about it, wouldn’t I be a prime suspect in all of this? But it never happens. It is not what Benson desires. I was never mentioned. Even when I saw my mothers picture on the television when they reported her death. I was expecting to see myself in an interview, or at least be mentioned by name. There is nothing about it. This is just how Benson intendeds it.

Everything I am watching isn’t really there. Usually I’m so enthralled by what I see, and yet the TV is not really turned on. I am blankly staring at a dark vacant screen. I would say that the worst scenario of this was when a cat stepped on the power button of the controller when it was walking across a table. To see the television turn on amidst a hallucination slaps me right back into reality, and when it does, I don’t know anything. I lose all cognizant function. When I got it back, it triggers a panic attack and I had to spend a half hour in the bathroom splashing my face with water to ground myself back in reality. When I see myself moments later, I realize that who I am looking at isn’t really me. I don’t care though.

Oh yes. This is how it ends, isn’t it?

I thought to go online and look into seeing a therapist, but then it occurred to me that this would be a meaningless gesture. What would I say? I hear enough about doctor/patient confidentiality to assume that regardless of the crap I mutter to him/her(Benson), I wouldn’t have to worry about him trying to send me to the loony bin, but still. He would peg me for a psychopath either way. That was certain. This app isn’t real. There’s no verification of it except for what I see. Even when I tried to show things of it to my mom once, the pictures would just go away. Vanish. Benson is too smart to let this be seen by anyone other than me. If I sought therapy, who knows what would happen. Benson.

8: March 27th

Today, I bought a webcam and tried to use it to record a video playing from my phone. It was one of me murdering one someone I think I know. When I played it back, I would get error messages. The file would corrupt and then it would delete itself. This didn’t surprise me. Afterwards, the computer would downright stop reading the webcam‘s USB. Benson was too smart to let this be seen by anyone other than me. I did get a chance to watch a video though. For the first time since Jennifer, I watched a whole video. Even though it was just for the sake of gathering evidence, I watched it, took in every frame. Just like the dreams I experience every night, I received that perfect ecstasy, just by its mere insinuation. I watch another video. Then another. Benson. Is.

9: Present tense

Benson is killing me. I know this. He doesn’t have the means to do it physically, but he knows well how to deconstruct my mind. Fuel me with paranoia, enforce my depression and destabilize my ability to verify anything. I don’t know if any information I am receiving most of the time is doctored from Benson to coincide with my own fears. My wits are dulling down. I feel only how Benson wants me to feel. After five months of it, I forget about the important things. I stop taking care of myself. No more indulgences. No more eating. I would piss myself while sitting in front of a static filled television, seeing things that weren’t there. I stopped showering. (Benson.) I stop feeding the cat. I stop seeing the cat. I put in some last minute vacation days, which my boss was more than happy to give, seeing as he’s been dealing with so many complaints about how the customers are weirded out by me. Even (Benson) my fellow workers at this point are wierded out by me. He is wierded out by me. (Benson) When the vacation days are up, I don’t come back to work. At this (Benson) point, I just don’t care. I’m sure Benson doesn’t care either. After all. Benson. Is. God.

I’m watching the videos now. I‘m watching them all. I don’t know if I am seeing them through my television or through my computer or phone. I don’t know if I’m awake, or asleep when I’m watching. I don’t know. I don’t care. Benson doesn’t care. When the videos played, I am there. I am in the video. Just like the dreams. We have bridged the gap. Dreams are fleeting, you forget it straight away, but (Benson) not the immediate memories of consciousness. Those stay. Now we can rest in this forever. Regardless, the means are irrelevant. There is true oblivion in the videos. I am alive. Beyond knowledge, beyond institutionalism, beyond abstraction. Outside the videos, I don’t care. Benson doesn’t care. After all. Benson. Is. God.

10: somewhere in time

I am with god. I understand now that it all means nothing, just mindless distractions to divert you from truth. Truth. God. I have watched all the videos, every last one of them, at least twice.

11: (Benson)

(Benson) (Is) (God)

12: Time is irrelevant

Where are the videos? Benson, what have you done with my videos? Where are you? I cannot dream. I cannot feel. Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello?

13: Now. Always now.

Benson is talking to me. I can hear a voice in the back of my head telling me that he would not come to me as I was when we first began our (Benson) disassembling. When he does come, Jennifer makes it clear that he will only talk to me in the final stages of (Beonson) my purification. I don’t care. Benson doesn’t care. After all. Benson. Is. God.

14: Of all times, in all eons.

Steam Account Message log with (Beansoson) username: Addi451

Me: Benson

Addi451: Come home

Me: Benson

Addi451: beyond time beyond noise

Me: Benson

Me: Benson

Me: Benson

Addi451: sever yourself

Me: Give them back to me.

Addi451: Beyond words beyond dreams.

Me: Give me back my dreams.

Seki420: Come home

Me: Benson

Saki420: You are with god now.

15: forever tense

The videos are all gone. The photos won‘t load. My phone is broken. I cried for days. The dreams have stopped. Every good thing is dead. I can’t live without her. I can hear them. Knocking at my door. They won‘t know where I can find Jennifer. It’s all I ever wanted. I know this now. It‘s time to go home. I will bring them all with me. After all, Benson. Is. God. 