Chapter 2: The Audience of Bystanders
Riya stared at her phone, her heart racing. The strange text—[Welcome to the Virtual Trap. System Initializing...]—stayed on the black screen for three long seconds. Then, with a sharp buzz, her phone turned back to normal. Her Instagram feed popped up again, and the numbers kept rising.
She let out a breath she didn't know she was holding. "Just a stupid glitch," she muttered to herself, shaking her head. She locked her phone and tried to forget about it.
A few days later, Riya was walking through the crowded city center. She was holding her camera, filming a "Day in my Life" vlog for her followers. For her, the busy city wasn't a place full of real people; it was just a nice background for her videos.
Suddenly, a loud screeching sound cut through the noise of the street.
A few yards ahead, a delivery boy on a bike skidded on the wet road. He crashed heavily into a fruit stall. Oranges and apples rolled everywhere. The young guy was pinned under his heavy bike, groaning in pain.
Riya stopped dead in her tracks. Her heart hammered against her ribs. But her very first instinct wasn't to run and help him lift the bike. It was to check if her camera was still recording.
She wasn't the only one. Within seconds, a crowd gathered around the injured man. But nobody reached out to help. Instead, twenty smartphones rose in unison, all pointing at the crying boy like weapons. Camera flashes started blinking everywhere.
"Someone call an ambulance!" a woman screamed. But her fingers never left her screen to actually make the call. She was too busy zooming in on the boy's bleeding knee.
Riya felt a cold shiver run down her spine. She looked at her own screen. Her "Live" viewer count was exploding faster than ever before. Comments were flying in:
"OMG, is he dead?" "Great footage, Riya!" "The world is so dangerous. Stay safe, queen!"
Riya found herself talking directly to her camera. "Guys, it's so tragic here. There's been a terrible accident. Look at all this chaos. Honestly, I'm so devastated right now; I can barely breathe watching this."
She told her audience her heart was breaking, but she didn't move an inch. She stayed safely behind her lens. She saw the injured boy look up, his eyes begging the crowd for help. But all he found was a solid wall of glass and black camera lenses staring back at him. He wasn't a human being in pain to them anymore; he was just viral content. He was a goldmine for digital views.
Riya caught her own reflection in a shop window. For a split second, she felt a wave of deep disgust toward herself. She looked like a vulture feeding on someone else's pain just to get likes. But right then, a big digital donation popped up on her screen.
The guilt instantly vanished. The digital world had completely numbed her soul. She adjusted her camera focus, stepped even closer to the blood on the road, and whispered, "Don't forget to like and share this stream to spread awareness about road safety."
She didn't even realize the irony. She was filming the death of human kindness, and she was the main director.
Suddenly, her phone vibrated so hard it almost slipped from her hand. The live stream cut off. The screen turned pitch black again, and a cold, mechanical voice echoed right inside her head:
[Task 1 Completed: Empathy Drained to 0%. Rewards Unlocked.]