Richard J. Ronayne

Novella

Phenix Publishing Ltd

Nation-X Project

Dozens of my stories are currently being illustrated for release by Phenix Publishing Ltd for their Nation-X project, a multi-year project for 4-8000 word educational novellas.

This series was designed for young adults and high schoolers across Chinese and American schools, harnessing anthropomorphism to help digest mature, dark or joyful topics, whilst reflecting life, and exploring real social issues in an exciting and educational way.

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Hack-Cat
By Richard Joseph Ronayne

CHAPTER 1: Social Media BBQ
“Look out!” Tim heard his young cousins shout, spinning around just in time to athletically catch the soccer ball with his face, successfully protecting the barbeque.
Standing dazed and still, he blinked the slight pain in his snout away and sarcastically replied. “For what?”
Everybody burst into laughter as the adults checked he was ok. Natalie grabbed the ball and approached apologetically, while June fought for his attention so she could show everybody the video she recorded of the amusing incident.
“It’s ok, Natalie, I’m not hurt but thank you for apologising. You’re a good kid,” Tim said, ruffling her hair. “OK, OK, June. Go on, show us the video then.”
They all gathered around to watch her mobile phone screen, and somehow, it was even funnier on the recording. “I’m going to post it on social media. I bet it will get millions of views,” June wagered excitedly.
“Well, if it does and you get rich off of it, just remember to give my poor face some of the money,” Tim jested.
“Of course, I’ll buy you a brand-new face that will be much prettier,” June said with concerning seriousness.
“Lord knows he could do with that charity donation!” Jack bantered, bringing more laughs. 
“Leave my beautiful boy alone, his mother loves his face,” Delora cut in.
“Yeah. Big mean uncle Jack,” Tim comically said as he pulled his least serious modelling pose.
“It doesn’t matter if nobody else loves his face!” His mother said, roaring with laughter before she could even finish her joke, as everybody laughed also.
The Foxe family was having a wonderful day. Near the end of the dinner though, the mood dimmed drastically as June began crying inconsolably.
“What’s wrong June?” They asked, but she was so upset she couldn’t answer and ran off into the house.
“What was that all about?” Jack asked as his wife ran in after her.
“No idea. I hope she’s ok,” Debra said, concerned.
“Do you know what happened Natalie?” Myke softly inquired.
“Yeah, she put the funny video of Tim getting hit with a ball on her account, and some people were really mean to her on there about it,” Natalie announced.
“Oh no, poor June. Can she block the bad people or report them to administrators?” Tim suggested.
“She’s tried that before. They keep saying bad things anyway,” Natalie said, suggesting that this was not the first time.
“Her phone doesn’t let her download any apps without our permission, we always make sure it’s safe for kids to use first. She loves the videos, always cracking up at them. She’s never said anything about mean comments,” Jack explained.
“Can you show me the comments Natalie?” Tim asked.
She handed him her phone and he began to scroll through the comments, startled by what he saw. “Oh wow. These are extremely obscene. I think you might need to see this, Jack.”
Jack took the phone, underestimating how explicit the comments were. He immediately froze in fury at the horrific things people were saying to his baby girl. There was racist, sexist, and sexually threatening slurs and insults, as well as death threats. She was such a kind and compassionate child; how could anybody speak that way to her. It was just a funny video, but the abusers weren’t commenting about the video, they were just targeting June personally, for no logical reason. 
He calmed slightly so as not to upset Natalie. “Can you take screenshots of those comments and send them to me in an email please, Natalie?” 
“What are you going to do?” Tim concernedly inquired.
“I’m going to the police,” Jack replied through gritted teeth.
 
CHAPTER 2: Vigilante Hacker
The family dinner ended on that sour note and several days passed before Tim decided to check up on how poor June was doing. He called the house phone and Jack answered, “Hey Jack, it’s Tim. I was just checking in on how June is doing after the other day?”
“She’s not good, Tim. She’s really scarred by what she read. She’s scarcely eating or talking, we’ve had to start taking her to counseling, she won’t go near her phone anymore and wakes up every night from nightmares about it. She’s like a different person,” Jack said, trying to hold back tears.
“I am so sorry. I suppose she won’t want to talk to Tim on the phone then?” Tim said, saddened by the news.
“I don’t think so, but I’ll ask,” Jack replied, leaving the phone for a moment before returning. “Sorry Tim, she doesn’t want to talk to anybody. I am so angry at these people; how can they do that to a child!”
“It makes me angry too. What did the police say?” Tim inquired.
“The police? Useless. They said they couldn’t do anything and told me to report it through the app as it is their responsibility to police their own platform. Ridiculous! We’ve done that already, but the app designers don’t seem to do anything either, I check it at the end of every day, and June is still receiving hostile messages on there!”
“I’m really sorry to hear that, I wish there was something I could do,” Tim said earnestly.
“Actually, there is. I was wondering if you could maybe use your journalistic powers to shed some light on the story. Maybe there’s a story here for you, which could embarrass the app designers into action?” Jack asked awkwardly.
“Oh, I don’t know Jack. Let me have a think about it and see if there’s an angle that the paper would be interested in, it’s the least I can do, for June,” Tim offered, mostly out of surprise.
“Really? Thank you, Tim. That’s the last idea I have, I don’t know what else to do,” Jack expressed with clear relief. 
Later that day Tim downloaded the app onto his phone for research. He was looking to see if cyberbullying was commonplace on the app. He didn’t have to look too far to find instances of it, it seemed as if the app was infested with a culture of abuse.
He then found June’s video and made a list of all the profiles that had attacked her. He investigated the worst ones to see where else they had commented and how long they had been abusing others.
Some of them had been doing it for a long time which showed that the developers were not policing their app as well as they could. Most of the abusive accounts had not been active for very long, perhaps the developers had blocked their account, so the abusers just started a new one. Tim decided to see how easy it was and created another account with random fake details. It took him literally two minutes.
Tim had another test to see how long the developers would investigate the profiles. Using his fake profile, he attacked his original profile with similar obscenities through the app’s instant messaging system.
Then he switched accounts to his original and reported the messages as abusive. It said that the account in question would be immediately investigated and could potentially be temporarily banned if the behaviour continued.
 Back to the fake account, he found no notifications warning him, so he decided to send another message, reported it again and still found no warning. He continued this process for the rest of the evening with the same results. All the while, he could see that June’s biggest abusers were still leaving comments on her account as well as others.
These people really need to get a life, Tim thought as he gathered all the data he had collected, to pitch to his supervisor at Central Newspaper tomorrow.
“I’m sorry Tim, it just isn’t very interesting. Cyberbullying isn’t anything new, people just don’t care. It’s not news,” Toney Tonkins explained to Tim after his pitch at the office.
“Yeah, I know it’s not exactly headline worthy. I promised someone I would try though. Thanks for hearing me out anyway Toney,” Tim said, feeling bad for Jack and June. 
He sat back at his desk and called Jack to tell him the story would not be published. “Hey, Uncle Jack, it’s Tim. I just wanted to let you know that I really tried hard, but the paper isn’t interested in a cyberbullying story at this time. I hope you’re not upset; they just have limited resources, and they are chasing other stories at the moment.”
“Oh yeah, I’m sorry Tim, I forgot all about that. I really appreciate your efforts, you’re a good brother to June, but she’s fine now, back to normal,” Jack replied.
“That’s brilliant news, I’m so glad. I guess she’ll just stay away from that app then?” Tim inquired.
“Oh, no she’s gone back to it, she’s got someone on there protecting her. Apparently, someone hacked the bullies accounts and made the people in their real life aware of their online behaviour. All the abusers removed their comments and apologised, it’s amazing!” Jack said elatedly.
“Someone hacked the bullies’ accounts to expose them in real life? That’s incredibly illegal, but I’m glad they got results,” Tim laughed.
“I know, it’s pretty crazy, someone called Hack-Cat, apparently. They made an announcement on June’s profile that they would expose any bullies. She’s safe to continue using the app now, that’s all that I care about,” Jack defended.
“Well, I’m just glad she’s ok. Alright, I’ll catch up with you later Jack, bye,” Tim hung-up. He turned around to get back to work and found Toney’s face extremely close to his. “Can I help you, Toney?”
“Vigilante Hackers?” Toney said very slowly.
Tim’s eyes shot wide as it dawned on him as well. “I’ve got a story!”


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