27. I’m Talking to a God, and Twitch Rolls in Ads
“I’m the AWS.”
The chat was frozen for a few seconds. Rippa thought it was some technical glitch until the chat window resumed scrolling. Rather, scrolling was not an accurate description of what was happening in Rippa’s chat. It was a high-speed train of text racing upward.
Her heart was racing. She had not anticipated this answer. What she had expected was… something like an alien. With supernatural powers. Heck, even E.T. could do telekinesis. Or, at a minimum, something similar to that nose-bleeding kid in the Netflix show.
What did it even mean? Rippa wondered. Her perception of reality was collapsing.
“Miss Rippa has been under the impression that you were an alien,” Goggles was saying to Buttons.
The kid laughed, as if she had just heard a good joke, but she also nodded.
“I can see why Rippa would think that. If I, for example, stuck my finger up my bottom, my E. coli would think they met an alien, when, in fact, we are—”
“Buttons!” Rippa interrupted. “Stop. And please don’t compare us humans to fecal bacteria.”
This kid was a menace. But in a good way. Rippa was brought back to her VTuber self.
“So, you are like… big,” Rippa ventured. “Like, solar system big.”
“Yes, very big.” Buttons nodded. “I’m so huuuuge, almost as big as…” she stopped.
Rippa’s eyes narrowed. Oh, this kid really was a menace.
“Buttons, remember the other day Mamapin brought you cookies?”
“Yes.”
“And you were just now about to pull a yo-mama joke, weren’t you?”
“Sorry. But I stopped, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, but it’s still not very nice.”
“Sorry.”
Rippa cleared her throat. She glanced at her chat. The fecal bacteria analogy did a wonderful job bringing everyone back to their comfort zone. Her chat was now once again spamming Buttolls and the donut emoji.
“So… Buttons. Are you like… God?”
The child’s bright eyes wavered a little, but she quickly regained her composure. Buttons smiled. “No, I am not. Although I do have the powers you often assign to your gods, I don’t have any particular plans for you, or any wants.”
Rippa noticed the shift in Buttons’ manner of speaking. This was the ancient Buttons talking.
“Oh, hang on. I almost forgot!” The camera showed Buttons reaching for something outside the frame. It was a small sheet of paper. Buttons showed it to the camera. It wasn’t very clear, but it seemed to be a single line of text.
“Goggles told me to do this line written here in case you ask me that question.”
‘OK, she’s back to being a kid,’ Rippa observed.
Goggles could be seen face-palming.
“Ahem,” Buttons cleared her throat and read the note. “You write to your gods when nothing is left but to pray.” She then put the paper down. “But nothing came. Which, when you think about it, is a good thing. But also, I guess I’m not a god. At least, not yours.” Buttons’ voice then became a bit stern. “Think of me as more of a neighbor. So, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t weave me into your narratives.”
“Well, that didn’t quite work out, did it?” Rippa asked. “I mean, the whole discourse about you being the Racist Taco Truck Girl was us weaving you into our race politics narratives. And all that beating you took.”
“Ah, that’s different.” Buttons brushed it off. “For example, if you let a baby crawl inside a chicken coop, the baby will eventually eat some chicken poop.”
“But you are that baby.”
“And are you guys chickens?”
Rippa took a sharp breath in. OK. She lost this one.
“Wait, hang on.” Rippa saw an opportunity. “Doesn’t that then make it Goggles’ fault?”
“Whoa, that is a serious accusation, Miss Rippa.” Goggles, bless that man, was once again in tune with Rippa. He knew Rippa was trying to bring him into focus.
“Well, let’s talk about you. Are you also… AWS?” Rippa internally patted herself on the back. She shifted the spotlight onto Goggles so fucking smoothly.
“In a way, yes.” Goggles nodded.
Buttons butted in with a gloating face, proud. “He can do everything I can do.”
Rippa stared at the kid’s face for some seconds. ‘Yeah, I’d be worried if he couldn’t.’ She focused back on Goggles.
“So, we saw you teleporting. I know you can just materialize stuff out of thin air. You made the dolls. You manage the pocket dimension—” Rippin’ Rippa turned to address her viewers. “Oops, sorry, chat. I should have told you already. It’s all true. He does all that.” She then returned to Goggles. “So, what else can you do?”
“Everything!” Buttons interrupted once again. “He’s omimpotent.”
“You mean omnipotent,” Rippa corrected the kid. ‘Wait… what?’
“Aw, that was the joke, but you ruined it!”
“Well, she is right,” Goggles brushed Buttons’ poor-taste joke aside. “Anything Buttons can do, I can do it, too.”
“Well, duh.” Rippa frowned. ‘Of course, you can. She’s a kid.’
“I mean it.”
Rippa sighed. ‘Bruh, just talk plainly.’ She tried again. “So, you are also some AWS-level, god-tier, whatever. And on top of whatever Buttons can do, you are also omnipotent?”
At that point, Madam J.D. appeared behind Buttons and stole the attention. She gave a pouch of Capri Sun to Buttons.
Rippa recognized that Goggles was setting up for a payoff. What would it be, she wondered.
“Ooh, chat, by the way, she’s Madam J.D.,” Rippa introduced her to chat. “She’s the nanny.” She then turned to Goggles. “By the way, a bit off topic, but why is she a Jedi?”
Goggles shrugged. “One day, Buttons saw something on Disney+. She came up to me and said, ‘OK, Google. Wouldn’t it be cool if Madam was a Jedi?’”
“Okay… so you gave her a lightsaber. And the Force. Just like that…” Then it dawned on Rippa. “And the name J.D.”
“Yes, Miss Rippa.”
Buttons gloated again. “See? Goggles can do anything.” She raised her Capri Sun. “Goggles, a round for everyone, please.”
“Any particular flavor you have in mind?”
“Let’s have Tropical.”
Goggles nodded.
A pouch of Capri Sun appeared next to Rippa’s keyboard. And a moment later, her chat exploded.
‘Holy shit!’
‘I got one!’
Rippa burst out laughing. ‘You motherfucker. You beautiful motherfucker.’
“Goggles, don’t tell me you stole them from Amazon,” said Rippa playfully.
“No, no. I just spawned them. No theft.”
“So, you can just spawn them like nothing. Are you like… a god?”
Goggles paused for a moment. He wanted to be careful answering that. “As Buttons has said, capability-wise, yes, there is an overlap. But in the religious and philosophical senses, no.”
Rippa also took her time thinking. This was going into territory Rippa wasn’t very knowledgeable about.
“Did you create the universe?”
Buttons butted in again. “No, I didn’t.”
“Well, Buttons did not, so logically, I did not either,” Goggles added.
“To be exact,” Buttons continued, “I don’t remember doing it. So I probably didn’t.”
Rippa’s intuition picked up something. Buried in what the two had just said, there was a little nugget. “Wait, guys. There’s something in what Goggles just said—”
Right then, Twitch rolled in an ad break.
“Fuck, I’m talking to a god, and Twitch throws in ads,” Rippa lamented, but to be honest, she welcomed it. Although she still wanted to press on with the topic, it was dragging on a bit. ‘Time for the next slide,’ she decided.
“Oh, by the way, YouTube. Those who joined just now, you’ll see chat is in the members-only mode.” Rippa then explained the reason behind the chat policy again for her viewers on YouTube. “So, yeah, feel free to cancel after— BeenSalmon! Stop gifting membership, dumbass! Wait, weren’t you on Twitch?”
Madam J.D. took this opportunity to pop up again and brush Buttons’ hair.