At the far western end of Lake Aleknagik, some miles up the Wood River from Dillingham Alaska, there is a spot where the dense brush is clustered quite close to the water’s edge. If you come ashore and enter this tangle, you will encounter a hidden game trail which leads away from the lake, winding its way up a steep slope.
One frigid early-winter evening, two men were navigating the game trail in the darkness, rifles slung over their shoulders. The beams of light from their headlamps swept eerily over the dark, empty woods surrounding them.
The only sound was the crunch of freshly fallen powder under their snowshoes.
The man in front froze, gave a signal with his arm, then crouched down, his weapon at the ready. The second man did the same.
Forty feet ahead, a large bull moose crashed forcefully out of the thick brush lining the trail. Pausing, it turned its head to look at the men, then plunged into the brush on the opposite side. The men sat and listened to the receding sound of breaking branches as the huge animal wandered ever farther away from them into the inky darkness. Then the men stood and resumed their progress.
Nearing the summit of the ridge, the man in front stopped.
“That’s it,” he whispered to the second man. “That’s the cabin.”
The second man took his time inspecting the scene before him. He gave instructions to the first man.
“Go around back and make sure nobody escapes out a window,” he instructed him quietly.
After waiting until the first man had gotten into position, the second man hunched over and hurried from the wood line to the cabin’s side wall, his progress somewhat hampered by the snow.
Reaching cover, he unfastened his snowshoes. He gingerly placed a foot on the first step of the stairs leading up to the cabin’s front deck. The wood creaked under his weight. He froze.
Sensing nothing which would indicate his presence had been detected by whomever was inside, the man slowly continued to climb, before dropping to his hands and knees to crawl across the deck toward the front door, staying out of sight of the front window.
Taking several deep breaths, he turned the doorknob, pleased to find there was no lock. He gathered himself for a moment then threw the door open, lowering his rifle to aim inside. But he was disoriented.
It was as if he had stepped into a warehouse of snack foods. Metal shelf after metal shelf was stacked floor to ceiling with bags of Doritos.
In the right rear corner of the room, he saw a scraggly looking young man crouched down on the floor trembling, aiming a flare gun at the door, a bag of Doritos spilling onto the floor at his side.
“Terrence, It’s me!” the man at the door shouted. “Don’t shoot!”
In reply, he heard Terrence’s confused voice address him.
“Jim?”
They both lowered their respective weapons.
“I’m here to bring you home, Terrence,” Jim announced.
“Then you wasted your time because I’m not leaving,” I huffed.Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
Thirty minutes later, I was on a skiff putting slowly across an Alaskan lake in the darkness, alongside Jim and someone who turned out to be a local guide he had hired.
The following afternoon, I was on an airplane, touching down at LAX airport in Los Angeles.
By dinner time I was getting out of a limousine, and entering my Hollywood Hills home. The actors pretending to be my friends had stayed late to welcome me, which was touching. I’m pretty sure they weren’t even getting paid extra. I was right back in the thick of things.
While I was literally ‘out of the picture’ for three weeks, my father had relied on Pamela to keep the livestream going. She had leveraged the house’s reputation, and now the house had graduated from attracting D-list celebrities to attracting C-list celebrities, a huge win in the social network game, while also allowing Pamela to cultivate an invaluable set of industry contacts.
Honestly, the new set of minor celebrities who were visiting the house made me feel extremely uncomfortable. While I have never considered myself ugly—merely average—being in the presence of so many television-friendly faces made me feel like a bug who crawled out from under a rock, only to encounter an entire ecosystem full of better looking insect species. Sometimes you’re better off just staying under the rock. The truth can be painful.
I soon found myself attending a book club meeting once again, as my neighbors had been kind enough not to remove me from the mailing list and I was craving sugar.
We were deep into discussion of the week’s novel when an awful noise slowly became audible. At first, I thought the source was one of those old fashioned music-playing ice cream trucks. But there was no real tune. Instead, blaring out over loudspeakers every ten seconds, a strangely autotuned voice kept repeating, “Don’t forget to like and subscribe!”
We all rose in unison, and walked to the picture window, looking down the street in the direction of my house for the source of the racket. And then we saw it. The CloutBus.
It was a party bus covered with a custom wrap featuring pictures of influencers, emoji graphics, hashtags, and phrases like “#LivingMyBestLife” and “Follow for Follow!”
I watched in horror as the vehicle stopped in front of my house, and a wiry guy wearing a sleeveless hoodie which read “Ask about my merch!” sprang off the bus holding a selfie stick.
“People, people, let’s go,” he called out, following which a deluge of teens poured onto the street, grinning like mad in their excitement. He began to address the toothy crowd.
“Listen up! As you know, my channel almost made it big before the algorithm turned on me, but that didn’t happen for the influencer in this house. Terrence doesn’t do a thing to work on his brand, and subscribers seem to flock to him. The algorithm rewards him for nothing. It is a perfect illustration of the good creators getting squashed by the bad ones. But here we are in this unfair world, and here you are at Terrence’s house. Go get yourself some likes!”
With that, a dozen livestreams were launched, as each of the teenagers strained to make it seem unimaginably glamorous to be standing in the street in front of my house, so they could lord the experience over their classmates back home. A large ring style light rose from an enclosure atop the bus, and began to flash randomly, simulating the effect of paparazzi photography to enhance the feeling of excitement.
The wiry guy in charge was filming himself in a yoga pose when I saw the front door of my house open. My bodyguard Jim’s face popped out to investigate the noisy happenings.
All the teenagers let out a deafening shriek of excitement, thinking it might be a C-List celebrity walking outside. Even from a distance, I could see Jim’s horrified expression. It amused me.
It amused my neighbors less. I knew they held me responsible for the shameful thing which had just paid our street a visit. My presence no longer seemed universally welcomed. Sensing I was bringing unwanted disorder to the sanctity of the neighborhood book club, I waited for the CloutBus to eventually load up and crawl off into the distance—still loudly pleading the public for likes—then took my leave of the group, slinking back home, hoping there wasn’t a CloutBus2 around the corner.
Inside my house, the atmosphere was unsettled. The recent experience had clearly disquieted the herd of minor celebrities, and they were restless. Soon enough, they hoofed it, trying to avoid an experience so brand-damaging as being seen anywhere that a monstrosity like the CloutBus would visit.
Practically alone in my house—save for Jim, Pamela, Reggie, a few of my paid friends, and a sole holdout D-List celebrity who believed that ‘any press is good press’—I relished the new peace and quiet.
The livestream viewers apparently did not share my satisfaction. They began to disconnect in droves. I learned this when Pamela’s phone began to buzz repeatedly.
“It your father,” she told me. “He doesn’t seem happy. Viewership is tanking.”
I waited, sighing.
And then my phone rang.