My cheeks went hot with all the emotions. Anger, despair, fear. Abyssal lament. Self-loathing. “You just, what, went to the library and posted that thread?”

“No, no. This thing has internet,” he said, twirling a shining finger up toward the ceiling. “Your planet’s technological robber-barons have flooded its thermosphere with communications satellites. So that’s what I used to do my web surfing and our little conversation after you slid into my DMs. Anyway, the funny part is that I still needed you to show yourself. Even once I’d hacked your account, none of your registration information was legitimate. You used an anonymous ISP routed through servers on four continents. Telltale giveaway for a porn addiction. I had to flush you out into the open, you dirty little space herpe.”

“It’s not just for porn!” proclaimed Patton, surfacing from his trip and still trying to make himself a plausible me. “I know the Chime is important. I didn’t want my research to be traceable.” He flung his hands out to the sides, then slapped his legs. “So much for that!”

I was about to shout him down again but realized the shifting dynamic. Now that we were captured, we both had to insist on being Flyguy as long as we could keep it up. Otherwise, Patton risked being sold off as a probing dummy.

Something else didn’t make sense to me. “Why wait four days to meet us once we took your bait?”

Earthrbro placed hands onto narrow hips as casually as someone considering a used car. “I couldn’t risk spooking you. It would have been super suspicious if I’d said that I just happened to be in your tiny little town in the middle of nowhere – or would you still have come? I had to ‘get’ here. Lol – that’s what I say at this point, correct? Lol?”³⁵

“Oh no, he knows lol, Ben,” said an increasingly agitated Patton.

“Besides,” Earthrbro continued, strutting across the floor like a supermodel, “I used the time to digest a wide selection of your planet’s strange and mostly unintelligible media. I really like that Michael Jackson. Good people, him.” He did a little spin onto tiptoes just like the King of Pop.

Suddenly I had tunnel vision. My brain was cramping. The entire situation was so utterly ludicrous that I wondered if I was dissociating, having an episode, falling into shock. A single, terrible choice had irreversibly changed the course of my life. I’d agreed to meet with a stranger from the internet and had gotten myself kidnapped into space along with my best friend.

Patton and I stood there dumbly as Earthrbro walked to a sleekly crafted cabinet, almost like a wardrobe, running up the opposite wall. It was made of the same iridescent, shelllike material as his armor. The doors opened and Earthrbro backed into it. The armor cracked open along invisible seams and was pulled apart, then into the cabinet, leaving the figure in considerably less threatening clothing. Tight and... form fitting? Wait a second – Earthrbro was fit. Then the helmet lifted off last and I heard myself exclaim something like Jesus Fuck.