Shards Of Glass

Making Up

So this show or more specifically the episode San Junipero was recommended to me by one of my English professors over a year ago, but I never really gave it much thought. Then I was watching the Twilight Zone marathon on New Year's Eve and a lot of the talk in the hashtags for that was about the new season of Black Mirror that just came out so I decided to start bingeing the entire series. I'm up to 4x02 now and I'm probably looking at finishing up the show later tonight, but I already had some fanfic ideas in my head and I needed a break anyways. Anyways here's something for 3x01 that I sorely needed after watching the episode. I was listening to Lights Out by We Are The In Crowd while writing this. I hope you like it.

She had been fourteen when it all started. It began small, just another social media site to rival Facebook and Twitter. She was a shy, socially awkward girl with few friends and so she hadn't felt the need to join in that initial wave. Her father had called it the latest fad that would pass into the dustbin of social media history along with Myspace before too long; she had believed him. Only it wasn't the latest fad and it didn't become the next Myspace; instead it became something that the founders of Twitter and Facebook could have only imagined for their companies. That initial wave of users were almost all 4.8s and above now. If she had been one of them she might be sitting pretty on a private island somewhere still brainwashed that the ratings system actually meant something. She knew better now.

Knock, knock, knock, the sounds seemed to reverberate through the very air around her as she tried to calm the nerves coursing through every fiber of her being. They had only kept her in jail for five days and most of that was only in order to make sure she had no side effects from the procedure that removed the ratings system from her head for good. She wasn't sure what she was going to do now, where she was going to go. The world revolved around the ratings system and there were only a few remote locations where one such as herself could make their way in the world. Maybe she'd head to one eventually, but she needed to take care of something first. Another series of knocks and she shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. This had to be the right address; he had to be here.

"This better be fucking important I was in the middle of killing this boss," her brother trailed off as he stared wide eyed at her.

"Lacie," he said softly after regaining himself. "What happened to you?"

"I've been," she paused searching for the right words.

"I've been a colossal bitch Ryan," she settled on. "Without that thing in my head I can see that now."

"They cut you off," he said ignoring her earlier comment. "How'd you manage that?"

"I crashed a wedding full of higher ups and held a knife to the throat of a rag doll," she said snorting a laugh at the absurdity of it all.

"Really," he was laughing too. "Well considering that piece of information right there I think any former colossal bitch behavior is more than made up for."

"I really am sorry," she said. "For everything I said before I left and for how I acted before that."

"Like I said big sis; consider it brushed under the rug," he said. "Now come on, this calls for a celebration."

He grabbed her hand and she soon found herself sitting on his couch with a beer in her hand.

"What was her face like," he said sitting down next to her.

"Naomi's," she questioned.

"Of course," he said.

"Pissed off," she said. "But in that stuck up, refined way where she didn't actually want to express it."

"Well big sis," he said clinking his own bottle with hers. "I'm proud of you for finally giving that bitch what she deserved."

It had felt good to finally let out all of the pain and anger that she had repressed over her life at the things Naomi had done to her. Ryan wasn't mad at her though and that felt ten times better. He was a good brother, better than she deserved after everything that she said and did in the name of chasing the highest rating possible. He was the only one that stood by her through it all, no matter the social blunder. He didn't even care about the ratings system but had seen how important it was to her and hadn't judged, at least not until she started judging him. Family was something that a ratings system just couldn't quantify and that's why he could forgive her and they could sit on the couch drinking like nothing had ever happened. Still she felt the need to apologize again.

"You don't have to pretend to be okay with what I said to you," she said. "It was some pretty stuck up shit."

"Here's the thing Lacie," he said sitting his bottle on the floor. "I'm not okay with it."

She waited for the tirade, the words that would tell her this was all a cruel lie and that she had damaged their relationship forever.

"I'm not okay with any of it really," he continued. "Because you were a stuck up bitch and some of the things you said really hurt."

"But I know that wasn't you," he said. "That was the ratings obsessed, wannabe Naomi version of you."

"So if you tell me that that person's gone now and that you're ready to be my sister again then I have no reason to stay angry," he finished. "Clearly you've been through a lot."

She tried to fight off the tears welling up in her eyes but couldn't manage it.

"You're the best," she said reaching to pull him into a hug. "You know that right."

"I try," he said returning the hug only slightly awkwardly.

"Do you have somewhere I can crash for the night," she asked after a minute.

"Of course," he said.

The room he showed her to was a small rec room lined with shelves that contained rows and rows of movies and games in physical form that he had gathered over the years. He liked his VR, but there was also something special about having something physical to hold onto. Most of it was things that she had never heard of before or hadn't seen since childhood, but one grouping of cases stuck out to her. "Sea of Tranquility: An Epic Sci Fi Adventure" followed by season numbers ranging from 1-7 sat there in raised lettering. She had heard about it before the ride on the RV obviously, but something like that wasn't the kind of thing that one who cared about maintaining a high rating watched on a regular basis. She took the disk out of the case marked season 1 and popped it into the video player hooked up to the TV on the far wall. Those ratings had no control over her anymore.

She had been 21 when the ratings system was enacted by the government as a policy to reduce negativity and do away with the dependence on physical currency. Arguing or physical altercations would result in harsh penalties from your peers and all transactions were based around the buyer and seller rating each other. Those with the inside edge on the system from seven years earlier immediately found themselves at the top of the heap and for the most part they were still there. There were those who resisted of course, people like her parents too stuck in the old system to adapt, but for the most part the transition was relatively peaceful. Previous social classes no longer meant anything and the public at large was now chasing after those few who had gotten the insider's edge on an even playing field.

It was all bullshit, she knew that now; a glossy exterior designed to cover up the same shit as before with different people at the top. She had given fourteen years of her life to that system, letting it tell her what to do and who to interact with. Friends she had known for years who weren't quite as adept at the system as she was were thrown to the wayside and likewise she had been thrown aside by people like Naomi. Now, without the system, practically everyone looked at her like she carried the plague. She was an outcast and while she had had to come back to make up with Ryan she knew that she had to leave eventually. She would think about that later when things were a little bit more settled in her mind. For now she was just content with the fact that no government enforced ratings system would distract her from what really mattered or keep her from being herself ever again.