It was not, as Greg had called it, AI garbage. Though, he wouldn’t be the only oo dismiss it that way.

  Croc-face Walrus-butt moved with a siste of shape and form that geive algorithms could not yet match. But, it could still easily have been the work of a masterful 3D animator with access to Blender and Adobe After Effects. However, if that video of that monster had beeed by an artist, that artist would have had to have worked from good photos of the real thing.

  The detail that firmed the veracity of the video to me, however, was that not only were Felicity and her host’s friend in the video, running from the people eater, they were wearing the same clothes I’d just seen them wearing, and Felicity’s pride striped shopping bag was discarded on the pavement.

  I hat the video was no longer live. It had been recorded live a couple of ho, and we were watg a saved file of it.

  My brief urge to leap up and run out the doors in the dire of Felicity to try to help her, however ill-ceived, was fruitless.

  This wasn’t still happening. It had happened.

  And now the world had video footage of a people eater chasing a couple of humans across the street.

  And this people eater had survived at least one fight with a teratovore.

  “This is just the first video I clicked on,” Ayden said t. “There were others. And it looked like they were from other people.”

  “Sure,” Greg said, taking a swig of his beer.

  “Was anybody hurt?” Cassy asked, pulling out her phoo do her own search.

  “Probably not,” Greg said.

  At just about that point, the video on Ayden’s phone showed a closeup of Felicity’s host as she ran by, and Ayden leaned in really close to look and excimed, “Hey, isn’t that your crush?”

  “Yeah,” I said, letting my voie out all tense.

  Greg frowned and g me.

  I him and said, “That’s Felicity and her friend, just minutes after leaving the store. If you rewind it, you see the onions and peppers I sold them strewn out across the street o her favorite bag.”

  I really probably shouldn’t have said that much, but I found myself curious to see how this would py out here. I think I wao hope that humanity would show me something new with my coworkers’ reas. I might have had some selfish reasons for that that I wasn’t admitting to myself.

  “Really,” Greg gruhen reached out to Ayden’s phone and asked, “May I?”

  “Go ahead,” Ayden said.

  “Here’s a different video,” Cassy reported, plunking her phone down to show it, while Greg worked with Ayden’s phoo find the se I’d described.

  Cassy’s phone showed the same events but from a pletely different perspective. In fact, the person taking the first video was visible for a few seds as the view panned across the street.

  The temerity of humanity to observe and dot bizarre and dangerous events never ceases to amaze me. But, also, it retty clear that Croc-face had developed itself as an aquatic ambush predator, and was terrible at maneuvering on nd. It was still remarkably deadly, but it moved just a tad slower than Felicity was able to run, and it was focused entirely on her.

  her of these videos showed the initial attack.

  It was hard to figure out just where it had e from, with no good way to imagine how Felicity had escaped those jaws.

  “I’ll be damned,” Greg said. “You’re right. Didn’t you say she seemed preoccupied?”

  “Yes,” I firmed, though that wasn’t really how I’d truly describe her earlier behavior.

  “Maybe she’s in on this stunt, and was fog on her part in it,” Greg suggested. “But those effects are amazing. That’s not AI, is it?”

  I shrugged.

  Cassy poi her phone, and asked, “Do you really think they could have whipped up the special effects for two videos in just a couple of hours?”

  Greg grimaced and drew in his breath through his teeth.

  “Only, these were posted as they were happening,” Ayden reminded us, pointing at each of the phones.

  “Maybe they did the monster from two different angles beforehand, then used an augmented reality app to record it live,” Greg said.

  I nodded as if to agree with the pusibility of that.

  “Only,” Cassy said, tapping her phone a couple times to back out of the video and dispy a whole list of videos. There were three more of the same event, from different phones. “How about from five people?”

  “Should be equally possible,” Greg said.

  “Harder to coordinate,” Cassy tered.

  “And thus that much more impressive,” Greg insisted.

  “Look, I don’t know what’s going on here, but we don’t o be arguing about it,” Ayden said to them both.

  Cassy relented, but Greg’s frown deepened as he sed bad forth in the video on Ayden’s phone.

  The rest of the ers in Shady’s were having very simir versations, punctuated by excmations and cussing.

  Then Cassy tilted up her to say, “I don’t want to see any gore, but I want to know how it ends. Did they get away? Did a hurt? Like, even if it was a stunt, was that part of it?”

  “I don’t remember hearing any sirens,” Greg said through his scowl.

  “No, I heard some,” Ayden said. “I remember that. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, of course. But I always notice them when they happen.”

  “Huh.”

  Cassy sighed and reached for her phoo s ahead to see the ending of the video.

  Ayden noticed me watg passively and asked me, “What do you think, Synthia?”

  I’d retreated bato full camoufge mode, and so I repeated Ayden’s se, “I think we don’t ue about this. Everyone else will do it for us.”

  “Right.”

  And as he accepted that, I was thinking that Croc-face seemed to have its sights on Felicity in particur. And maybe it wasn’t a people eater. Maybe it was a remarkably bold teratovore trying to get revenge for something Felicity had done, and my friends would be safe ooilets.

  And I was w if I really did want to get more involved. Did I really want to make tact with Felicity again, now? Or should I sit and watd be ready to run, as usual?

  I may have wao be able to talk about this with another monster, but I realized what I probably should do was seek out others of my kind. They’d be friendly. They’d appreciate the heads up, and would love to trade notes. And they wouldn’t be the targets of a headhunt. They also wouldn’t be teratovores themselves. Not like Felicity said she was.

  But I think I liked Felicity.

  Why?

  I carefully posed myself a go of a bunch of tension, which I’d trained myself to outwardly echo with a huge sigh, so that I seemed natural. I was as safe as I could be where I was right then, so there was o really fret about any of it. It would be better to foy immediate performance.

  And if Felicity was still alive and she needed my help, she did know where to find me.

  There wasn’t much I could do otherwise.

  “I bet these events are part of a viral movie promotion,” Greg said. But he kept w Ayden’s phone, eyes darting bad forth across the s. “Basically advertising stunts.” But his voice sounded distant, like he wasn’t really paying that much attention to what he was saying.

  “What do you see, Greg?” Cassy asked.

  “The shadows and lighting on this thing are phenomenal,” he said. “It’s super top notch work. Does anybody mind if I turn the sound on?”

  We all shook our heads.

  He pressed his thumb on the volume button and, slowly, screams, shouting, grunting, and spping sounds became more and more audible. He still kept it fairly low, so it wouldn’t carry much further than our table. And then he leaned in to listen carefully as he watched it.

  “Shit that’s good,” he said after a few moments, and hahe phone back to Ayden. “If you listen carefully, that thing makes a deep shuddering noise a lot like a gator. Infrasonic rumbling. mate artistry, that is.”

  Ayden put the phoo his ear to listen to it and nodded while raising his eyebrows, eyes widening.

  “What if something like that were real?” Cassy asked. It was iing seeing her reas to this, because she loved the idea of monsters. But she preferred the mythical ones. And though urban legends caught her attention as modern myths, she didn't really believe they are mythical monsters were real. She just wished they were. Sort of.

  And my mouth went and said, for the sake of amusement as anything else, “People would find all sorts of ways to expin it away, until fronted with solid evideo the trary. And then they’ll find themselves arguing with the remaining skeptics.”

  “That’s the truest truism if I’ve ever heard it,” Greg said. “t me a skeptic for now. But that’s the way it goes with everything like this.” From his emotions, I wasn't sure he was a skeptic, actually.

  “Yeah, but that’s not what I mean,” Cassy said. “I mean. What if we, us four, saw enough evideo prove to us beyond a shadow of a doubt that monsters like this were real? What would that mean? What would we do?”

  “I think,” Greg offered, “that, in all likelihood, statistiotacks are so favorable that we really wouldn’t have to worry about it. Like, it probably happens less often than airpne crashes. Certainly car wrecks, and we all drive cars.”

  “I don’t,” Ayden said. “I’m too gay to drive.”

  We all gave him a sensible chuckle for the joke.

  “OK, I guess that makes sense, Greg,” Cassy admitted. “But, I feel like it would mean that everything I know about the world is wrong. I sort of felt that just a few moments ago, when I first thought these videos were real.”

  “Ah, well, you know, Cass,” Ayden said, “people have kind of always had moments like that. Anybody traveling to a new ti and seeing the fauna there has had to have a ‘monsters are real’ feeling at least once. Look at how many liviant creatures are called ‘dragons’!”

  “Sure, sure. And, yeah, I’d probably get used to it after a while.”

  “Exactly.”

  There ause, and then.

  “What’s eating you, Synthia? Are you alright?” Greg asked out of the blue, studying my face closely.

  I looked at him, and then down at my drink, which was not nearly as far along as his. Or anyone else’s at the table. But I’d had a few visible sips. And in moving my focus about, I discovered I was so much more drunk than I’d realized.

  “I think I’m a real lightweight,” I said. Of course, what was actually happening was that I was feeling everyone else’s inebriation added up.

  “Is scaredy-drunk a thing?” Greg asked. “You look terrified.”

  “Huh? I do?” I asked, looking around at the room, trying to clear the expression from my face, whatever it was.

  “Yeah, actually,“ Ayden said. “You kinda do.”

  “Maybe it’s one of your autistic things,” Cassy suggested. “Maybe your face just does that when you’re drunk? Kind of aimuted kind of thing?”

  “But alcohol is a depressant,” Greg said.

  “Autism is weird, Greg,” Cassy responded.

  “Touché.”

  “I think I o go home,” I said, deg it was time to bow out if I wasn’t in trol of myself anymore. “Walk this off.”

  “I’ll give you a ride,” Greg said, starting to pick up and pack his things, rearranging his gss and coaster as well. “Or walk you home. Your choice.”

  Oh. That would be awkward.

  theInmara