42. A Scale Issue
The Minecraft stream featuring Buttons caused a frenzy among history enthusiasts.
‘She’s been among us!’
Fans in East Asia, however, were rather disappointed that the desert and the mountains had turned Buttons away. ‘You are always welcome!’ they posted on X and Instagram.
The mentions of the Children’s Crusade, the Mongols in Serbia, Samarkand, and Marco Polo gave people a map and a time-period window to be scrutinized. People dug through records and paintings to see if a one-legged ginger child was mentioned anywhere.
“There is nothing,” Goggles flat-out told Rippa. “Nobody bothers to leave a record about a wandering beggar child.”
“Aw… Would have been cool, though, if there really was something,” said Rippa.
Goggles smiled. “Well, at least her first appearance in historical records is now… hmm, how do I put it?”
“Spectacular?”
“Exactly.”
“Which you will delete later.”
“Oh, Miss Rippa, we haven’t settled on that yet, have we?”
Rippa poked Buttons’ cheeks, and the kid jerked her head away, annoyed.
“Buttons, behave. We wanna have only good things to write about you, don’t we?”
She then turned to Goggles and changed the topic. “Anyway, I wanted to ask you whether you’d be interested in doing interviews with big corpo news media.”
“Ah, those? Well, I did read the emails—”
“You read my emails?” Rippa frowned.
Goggles shook his head. “No, Miss Rippa, I do not read your emails. As I said before, you are filtered out of my all-seeing eyes.”
Rippa let out a sigh of relief. But then again, how was he reading the emails from CNN and FOX addressed to Rippa?
“I read their outbox. Not your inbox,” Goggles said nonchalantly.
“Bruh, how’s that different?” Rippa put her hands on her hips.
Buttons interjected. “But Rippa hates big news.” The kid looked up at her adult friend. “She will be upset if we go on CNN, no?”
“No, I won’t be upset with that.” Rippa shook her head. “But I’ll be upset because they’ll put words in your little mouth.”
“Oh, the hangman thing!”
“Strawman,” Rippa corrected her little friend. She faced Goggles again, this time scratching her head. “Eh, but the thing is… they want you, not Buttons.”
“Yes, I am aware,” Goggles nodded.
Buttons was indignant. “But why? I’m the main character!”
Rippa ignored the brat for now. “So… what do you say? I mean, although the emails came to me, I have no say in this…”
Goggles thought for a few seconds before opening his mouth. “I have a few conditions. One, all interviews with Buttons and me must also be made available on your channel.
“Two, they must not copyright strike you for doing watchalongs or react streams.”
“Goggles…” Rippa was speechless for a moment. Then it hit her. “Yo, wait! I’ll be the one relaying those demands! Everyone will think those are mine!”
“Ah…” Goggles realized that, too.
“Just say it wasn’t you,” Buttons suggested.
Rippa pinched her nose bridge. How could this kid be so profoundly dumb when she’s joined at the hip with a literal walking supercomputer?
“How about the podcast?” Goggles suggested. “The one that invited us for a religious discussion?”
“Huh? Why that one?” Rippa was puzzled. She had indeed received an email from a small-time podcast channel that barely managed a thousand views per episode. They wanted to talk about how Christians should perceive Buttons.
“Well, the ‘Buttons is a god’ narrative is still going strong. We need to put a lid on that,” Goggles explained. “And while we are there, I can make my conditions known to other media, saving you from the bad optics trouble.”
“Hmm…” Rippa contemplated the proposal. She thought Goggles made some very good points.
***
“—So, the kid was among us all along?” President Dodson asked the room.
“That’s what she says,” Ciceron, the White House Chief of Staff, answered, “but, of course, we have no way to corroborate her claim.” He looked around the room for any other opinion. There were none. “As far as we know, she’s all talk. The real deal is Goggles.”
“She really doesn’t do much, huh?” President Dodson commented.
“No, sir,” Ciceron nodded. “She just… walks about.”
They were sitting on the sofas in the Oval Office, having just briefed the President on the ‘god kid’ situation.
“It’s puzzling. Why does he put himself beneath the child? And all those puppets he controls… just for her.”
“Paternal instinct, perhaps?” Gabby Talbot, the DNI, offered. “We will have psychologists look into it.”
“Right. In the meantime, make sure the kid is left in peace. For God’s sake, we can’t have things like the last time happen again. No matter who she is.” Dodson then changed the topic and pointed at the windowsill. At Rippa’s acrylic stand, to be precise. “And still no ID on the cartoon girl?”
“We are still working on it,” answered Talbot. Her eyes followed the Gawr Gura plushie that was being tossed between the President’s hands like a football.
“Hmm…” The President stopped playing with the plushie and examined it. “You know, this VTuber thing… I think there’s a lesson we could learn here.”
All staff waited for the President to continue.
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Dodson went on, “but by hiding behind cartoon characters, they free themselves from their real identities, yes?”
“That’s right, Mr. President,” Ciceron nodded.
President Dodson continued, “And so they are judged solely on merit, and not on how they look, their ethnicity, nationality, age, stereotypes…”
“That seems to be what levels the playing field.”
“Good, good,” Dodson nodded, satisfied that he was getting it right. “So… can we adopt it somehow?”
His staff exchanged glances.
“No, I don’t mean the cartoon. I meant the idea behind it,” the President had to clarify.
There was a brief moment of silence, which was broken by a very junior staff member in the corner of the office raising her hand.
“Erm, Mr. President, I think we already do that. Blind hiring, for example.”
“Oh, that’s right, of course.”
Everyone joined in, nodding and murmuring acknowledgments. But there was a shared sense of relief. This cartoon woman thing had just become a whole lot more legible.
***
While Rippa was corresponding with the podcast team to work out the schedule, Buttons went out into the world and caused yet another huge drama.
To be fair, the kid really didn’t do anything this time. She and Miss Pendrake just went to a water park and had a good time. That was all.
They did not fight anyone. They did no magic, other than Miss Pendrake walking on water and Madam J.D. appearing to brush Buttons’ teeth after a snack.
Ah, but the kid was filmed in the changing room.
The internet giants immediately sprang into action. Google, Apple, Facebook, X, Weibo, and VKontakte… All of them went into hyperdrive and purged all that they could find, fighting a relentless battle against an undying hydra.
Within hours, on the personal order of the Attorney General, the FBI came crashing down on the idiots who had filmed and shared the two underage girls changing into swimsuits.
The uproar was immense. Celebrities chimed in with their own personal nightmare anecdotes. Privacy concerns in locker rooms and bathrooms were brought to the spotlight. Pundits were blaming TikTok brain rot. And Rippa decided Goggles was at fault.
“How could you let this happen?” Rippa barged into Goggles’ office. “You had Miss Pendrake right there! You knew they were filming!”
Goggles looked up from a stack of income report forms he had been filling out.
“Now both of them are on the internet!” Rippa yelled.
“And?” Goggles asked back flatly.
“What do you mean ‘and?’ They were filmed changing!” Then Rippa remembered millions of Saber fan art, and counted Miss Pendrake out. “Buttons is on the internet!”
“Well, she wasn’t in any danger—”
“This is the danger!” Rippa yelled even louder.
Buttons poked her head in through the door. “Are you guys fighting?”
“Buttons, why did you let people film you in the changing room?”
“Huh? They did?”
Rippa, exasperated, pulled at her hair.
“Miss Rippa, those who did it are already facing the consequences as we speak. So, what exactly is the issue?” Goggles demanded.
“Goggles, please, listen carefully.” Rippa took a deep breath. “She. Was. Filmed. Naked.”
“An act that is punished by a system which seems to be working rather well—”
“No! Please, Goggles!” Rippa reverted to yelling. “She’s a victim!”
“Erm, I’m not hurt?” Buttons interjected, but seeing Rippa’s face, she yelped and ran to Goggles.
Rippa had to take a deep breath again. “OK. Guys. Buttons. Your dignity was violated—”
“Ah~” Goggles seemed to finally get it.
“Yes, Goggles—”
“Dignity in whose eyes?”
“Huh? What?”
“I see, I see,” Goggles was nodding. “Scale issue. I will take it into consideration.”
“I don’t get it, though?” Buttons was still confused.
“You see, Buttons, Miss Rippa loves you so much she becomes very upset when people wrong you—”
“Aw, Rippa is so nice.”
“Yes. It seems we had a misunderstanding about how serious that wrong was,” Goggles faced Rippa and gave an assuring smile, “but it’s fixed now. So no worries, I will not let Miss Rippa be upset again.”
Rippa was silent. She glared at the two.
‘Fuckers.’ Then she recoiled. She didn’t really mean it and was very sorry.
To her, the water park incident was a massive catastrophe. But to Goggles… a few flies were on the wall when Buttons was changing clothes.
Rippa was relieved that Goggles now understood where she was coming from. But on the other hand, she couldn’t ignore the absurdity. The very fact that Buttons needed Goggles to explain it to her was peak insanity. If one tentacle of the octopus understood it, the other one should, too.
Rippa shook her head in disbelief. Just how hardcore were these two LARPing?