The wind howls gently as the night draws in and the sun fades, turning the sky from soft pink to a deep blue, swirled with black and yellow specks. Her eyelids are heavy from another day of furiously tapping away at her keyboard, carefully dissecting and inspecting each minute of the latest instalment of her favourite series; breaking off and sharing a piece of her heart with every sentence she sends out into the void. Faintly in the background, her music hums, each beat gently pulsating her desk and travelling through the contact made at the palm of her hand, so that her entire body feels alert, despite the hour.
Periodically her screen refreshes itself, flooding her brain with new information and content, via the harsh blue glow, so that she is always up to date with the very latest developments in the fictional worlds she is tethered to. Tonight, more than ever the stream is constant; someone worlds away from her modest bedroom on the top floor of her quaint Laois house has decided that it's time for an account spring clean – and a frenzy has broken out as heavy-lidded teenagers rush to keep their mechanical counterparts live. She is no different, hurriedly pulling her luscious blonde hair into a bun and smashing her fingertips against her keyboard; desperate not to lose the second home she has built around ones and zeros. Knowing that without it her heart will beat with just a little less force, just a little fainter, and she has no interest in becoming the ghost she was before she grounded herself so long ago, amongst others who had stumbled upon their true communities after a lifetime of searching.
She knows she's equipped to outrun this latest invisible storm with all the years of experience she carries, but as she reaches for the steaming mug of tea at her side, her screen flashes white and a momentary bolt of fear strikes her heart. It doesn't matter what the exact wording is, or how well the being worlds away has strung together the syllables, the bolt still shatters into tiny pieces. Piercing her chest and restricting her breath. Her carefully constructed shelter has been torn from her, ripped into and laid bare – the key prised from her calloused hands when she was least expecting it, and the door locked from the inside. Leaving her to helplessly stand and slam her fist against the rough shell of the exterior.
In a state of shock, she does the only thing she can think to and pulls up a new bright white screen, waiting impatiently for the three little dots to become tiny pixels of colour – creating the patchwork shape of her other half thousands of miles away. After a few seconds it connects, and the patchwork shape moves slightly, waving through the darkness. She waves back, before immediately launching into an explanation of why her mechanical counterpart has dissipated, no longer accessible – lost amongst the ghosts of zeros and ones that float along unseen. Electricity pulses in her veins, bubbling just below the surface and threatening to fry her system every time she raises her voice.
Unbeknownst to her, her other half also has electricity pulsing through her veins only she's using it to her advantage - channelling it into a force she can control, her fingertips dancing over the silver keys and creating a click track as she desperately works to retrieve the slice of cyberspace that's been ripped from the one she loves. A secret force behind her; the entire weight of the FBI.
Within minutes the account is back online, a soft blue glow once more emanating from her laptop, instead of the harsh white light that had struck so suddenly earlier. She exclaims suddenly and breaks out into a smile bright enough to hang stars in the sky. Her other half hides her smile by dimming the glow from her own machine, omitting to mention that even when she cannot be seen she is tasked with looking after her – hidden behind a barrier of pixels and LEDs.
With her heart beating once more with the strength of her second home rebuilding itself around her, she breathes a sigh of relief and grasps the tether to her fictional worlds – clutching it tightly to her chest. Oblivious to the safety net that cocoons her from thousands of miles away.