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Turning from the door, Sandy immediately went to the reading room.
It had been two days since Rane had been forced to come see her, and she hadn’t heard a thing from him since. She definitely wasn’t getting information from the scaley boys, so she would just have to be patient some more. However, they no doubt fully expected her to take advantage of her newfound freedom, and likely expected her to look up her mate-to-be.
She would hate to disappoint, she thought to herself with a sardonic grin as she stepped inside.
She might have been told this was a reading room, and that she could use the consoles, but no one actually taught her how to operate these things. She was just lucky her grandmother wasn’t one of those types who stopped keeping up with technology in her older years, or she might really be lost.
But, not really caring if she broke anything, and certainly not concerned with whoever might be watching, she picked one of the chairs and sat down and got to work figuring it out.
It wasn’t a desk chair like she was accustomed to. It was more similar to a recliner, comfortable and able to lean back and let her relax at her leisure. The computer, attached to a swivel beside the chair, turned in towards her and adjusted based on her position without her input. Though it wasn’t a screen or a keyboard like she was used to. Instead, it was a simple panel that she tapped experimentally, hoping for a response.
And she got one. A holo display immediately opened in the air in front of her. It brought her to what she guessed was a home screen, but it wasn’t helpful enough to have files on it or anything that she would know how to click like a desktop.
However, some trial and error eventually helped her figure out how to bring up a menu of options for her to peruse and she began clicking through them one by one, trying to find the alien equivalent of the internet. She was pretty sure the information pamphlet called it a subnet, and it was promised to be universally wide. Which was astounding. The internet on Earth was already huge enough, she couldn’t imagine multiplying that by the entire universe.
It took a while for her to access it, and even longer to figure out how to make it bring her the information she wanted. It was probably very intuitive to people raised on this type of system, but it was different from the Earth way of running the internet, so she had to learn it all from scratch.
However, she did eventually manage to search for Rane el Elffa, and the results were…
Interesting.
Pursing her lips, Sandy spent the next few hours learning about a tragic case of immaturity and addiction that would have made anyone clutch their pearls. Rane el Elffa was a menace. Not necessarily to society, more to himself.
Going back years, she found tons of stories about him. ‘Rane el Elffa Caught Stumbling Out of a Kinky Sex Club!’ ‘Trikballer Rane el Elffa Found Collapsed Facedown in Puddle; Rushed to Healers! Drugs Suspected!’ ‘Is Rane el Elffa Addicted to Amgris?!’ ‘Famous Trikballer Seen Posing for Celebrity Models After Big Loss! Teammates Mortified!’
On and on and on it went, each story more salacious than the last. Not a single image, not a single video recording, did him any favors. He looked high in some, drunk in others, absolutely plastered in most. Quite a few depicted him in the arms of some female or another – and she was surprised by how uncomfortable those made her. But she pushed past the feeling to keep looking at all the bad PR this guy was getting.
There wasn’t a single good story. Nothing. Not a charity mention, not a victory celebration – though his team apparently won a lot, it was only ever his teammates highlighted in those stories. He was practically an afterthought posted on at the very end. The only time she did see wins mentioned was when the story said something like, ‘Rane el Elffa Caught Fornicating With Entire Band After Victory Last Night!’
Who did this guy’s press? Because they certainly weren’t a friend. It was like every single story was crafted specifically to make him look bad. More than that, it didn’t appear that any damage control had even been attempted. These stories were allowed to run wild, and not a single good, or even okay, story was there to try to combat them.
More telling to her, though, was just how often there were flashes of green and blue in every picture and every video she found.
It wasn’t typically a body shot. Green and Blue often turned their faces if there were pictures, but not always. Almost like they were trying to hide or, at least, be subtle. Not like she was likely to mistake them for anyone else, since they were the only scaley people in a greater majority of the shots.
But there were their hands, picking Rane up off the pavement, his eyes totally foggy, drooling like he was gorked out of his mind. And there they were again, dragging him out of a club, that same dazed look on his face.
It was always them. The stories never brought attention to them. They were just bodyguards, who cared what they were doing? In fact, it was expected that his bodyguards be there to get him out of bad situations.
But it was also a bodyguard’s job to protect his image, wasn’t it? It was like Rane was purposefully being dragged out the front door, no attempts made to hide his face or identity, baring him before anyone that wanted a photo or video of him at his lowest.
Sandy wasn’t one to condone behaviors such as these, but she did find it interesting just how often he was caught doing it. Just how blatant it all was. The public was eating it up, so of course tabloids and news stories kept being run, but she would think that a famous person would have some kind of team with plans in place to prevent this kind of thing – even, and especially, if they were as degenerate as these articles were suggesting.
What she also found interesting was that there wasn’t a single mention of her.
Sandy personally didn’t find herself newsworthy, and she doubted the greater majority of this planet would either. But she would think that the horniest, sloppiest, most out of control, infamous trikballer on the planet being mated would be big news, regardless of who it was to.
Yet, nothing.
Sandy was used to being a ghost, but this was a bit much.
Sitting back in her chair, crossing her arms, she thought quietly to herself as she digested all of this, staring at it all spread in front of her. A timeline of debauchery. The perfectly documented downfall of a famous male.
No. Not a downfall. It seemed like there was no height for him to fall from. It was like he had always been like this.
Trapped by his mother, he said. Sandy didn’t know the connection between what she was seeing here and how he was trapped, but it felt like too much of a coincidence for them to be unrelated. Especially with the scaley twins there, constantly dragging him around.
And role did his secret mate play in this?
