Hideout by Jack Heath (iphone ebook reader txt) 📕

‘Oh, of course you’d pick that one,’ he says. ‘The publisher said I would struggle to get reviewed if the book seemed too “niche”. I knew what they meant, so I tried to write the most over-the-top, British-sounding poem I could think of. You know, something that would appeal to white people.’

He waits for me to read the poem, but it sounds like a trap. I don’t know whether I’m supposed to like it or not. So I put the book down and sit in front of the laptop. Click the tab. Type in the login details on the post-it note. An inbox appears on the screen.

‘Those are support tickets we’ve received, sorted by priority,’ Cedric says. ‘Keywords that already appear on the FAQ page are considered non-urgent, messages about downtime or police activity are urgent, questions from paying subscribers are non-urgent and so on.’

‘Shouldn’t the paying subscribers be urgent?’ I ask.

‘No. They’re already giving us money, and we’re not likely to lose them. The main purpose of support is to convince the free users to become paid users. Similarly, messages that pass certain spelling and grammar checks are prioritised, because that implies a level of education, which is correlated with income. You dig?’

I raise an eyebrow. ‘Did you just ask me if I dig?’

He looks embarrassed. ‘Sorry. That’s my hippie dad coming through. Don’t say things like that when you’re answering the tickets. Keep it profesh.’

‘Sure, I dig.’ I scroll through the messages. ‘Your dad still around?’

‘No. Bowel cancer.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Thank you. I dedicated my first book to him.’

‘Oh, you have other books?’

‘I’m working on a few ideas,’ he says defensively.

Whoops. ‘Well, I’ll get started.’

‘You do that. Make sure you don’t respond to any messages about Emmanuel Goldstein.’

‘Who?’ I say without thinking.

He looks taken aback. ‘Fred didn’t tell you?’

Too risky to pretend I’ve just forgotten. Goldstein might not be forgettable. ‘No.’

‘Goldstein isn’t real,’ Cedric says. ‘We invented him as a kind of anti-mascot, and seeded rumours about him all over the web. We told conservatives that he’s a gay child molester who entered the country illegally. We told liberals that he’s a racist cop who shot an unarmed Black teenager and doesn’t pay his taxes. We told feminists he was a CEO who preyed on young, female employees, we told Jews he’s a Nazi, we told Nazis he’s a Jewish banker who secretly controls the media—you get the idea. Whatever makes people angry.’

‘Why would you do that?’

‘Part of our escape plan.’ Cedric says this like I’m supposed to know what he means. ‘But now we get emails about him all the time. Our subscribers are always begging us to kidnap him, which we obviously can’t do. So just ignore those messages, okay?’

‘Okay.’

I start opening the emails. Most of them are questions I have no idea how to answer:

—When will the recording of Scammer’s death be mailed out?

—How much does it cost to see the full library?

—Can I see the criminal records of the inmates?

A few other messages are simply fan mail:

—Can’t believe that pedo is still squirming.

—I want to see what happens to the KKK Queen!

As unsettling as it is to find myself in a house full of killers, this is the more disturbing part. There are thousands of fans out there, all masked by anonymous usernames, Tor browsers and VPNs.

‘Who are these people?’ I wonder aloud.

Cedric doesn’t look up from his computer. ‘We’ve identified most of them. It’s not hard, if you have a mailing address. We run an algorithm over the messages they send to guess their age and gender, and there’s usually only one person per household who fits. But there’s no typical customer. Some are poor people, some are millionaires. Grandads, moms, teenagers. Soldiers, civilians, dental receptionists. Americans, Chinese people, foreign diplomats. The popularity of our product crosses social, cultural and economic borders. Everyone loves seeing bad guys get hurt.’

Eventually I find a useful message. It’s a question about billing details, and it features a link to the Guards’ actual site on the dark web.

There are descriptions of all the prisoners, detailing their crimes. Their names aren’t used—they’re referred to only as the Nazi, the Pedo, the Rapist, the Scammer, the Abuser, the KKK Queen and the Terrorist.

Again, seven names for six prisoners, one of whom is already dead. Maybe the site isn’t updated very often.

There’s also a link to payment plans. When I click it, I finally understand how the Guards make money.

The site has several types of customers. There are free users, who can download some but not all of the videos. There are ‘postals’, who receive flash drives in the mail with premium videos loaded on to them. The postals can also submit the names of people they’d like to see kidnapped, and vote for a prisoner to get killed every month. There are contributors, like Lux, who make their own violent videos and submit them in return for discounts. I wonder about Abbey, the young woman Lux abducted—what crime did she commit that meant so many people wanted to see her tortured?

There are also gamblers, who pay bitcoin to enter a random lottery. The winners get to visit one of the prisoners and hurt them in person.

Cedric is looking over my shoulder. ‘Don’t worry about the lottery,’ he says. ‘It’s bullshit—we would never tell anyone where we are.’

The movie sets make sense now. The Guards pretend the prisoners are in several different countries so they can sell lottery tickets in those countries. ‘Don’t the customers notice that no one ever wins?’

‘That’s why we wear the masks. The viewers are supposed to think it’s a different person each time.’

I wonder how the Guards can trust each other, when so much of what they tell their subscribers isn’t true. ‘Mailing flash drives is an expensive way to deliver