Chat, My Friend is a Literal God. What Do I Do?

“Thomas, did you max out my card again?” the message from his father read.

Thomas Robinson placed his phone back on the desk and went back to studying Google Maps on his MacBook. However, after a few seconds, he decided he would be a decent person and let his father calm down.

“You can afford it,” Robinson replied.

It was indeed true. His dad could easily afford the few thousand bucks that Thomas spent every month.

His father sent another message. “Your mother says you’ve left and don’t call her back. What’s happening? Where are you? She’s worried.”

Robinson decided to ignore it. ‘You are worried she’s worried?’ he scoffed. As if his father would care. His mother had suffered generations of misogynistic oppression, and his father hadn’t even batted an eye. But now, ‘He cares she’s worried? Unbelievable,’ Robinson shook his head and shifted his focus back to Buttons.

The little, privileged princess really was all over the world. And her random appearances through portals made it nearly impossible to camp for her arrival.

Nearly.

Among the seemingly random appearances, there were two anchors.

One was the cartoon whore girl, Rippin’ Rippa. The brawl at the taco truck. The failed justice at the intersection. And Walmart. The three dots were clustered in an area of some fifty-mile radius. People like Robinson were sure that the Nazi VTuber was based somewhere in that area. And if Rippa was there, so would be Buttons. Eventually.

The other was the City Park. It was nowhere near the suspected area of Rippa’s base, but, for some inexplicable reason, Buttons frequented that park. Whenever she was in the area, the kid would eventually visit the City Park and sit on a bench she had not used previously. She would then have a snack, followed by a thirty-minute nap.

The ButtonsTracker community was the first to notice the pattern, and the discovery spread. If anyone wanted to meet Buttons, the City Park was the best bet, unless, of course, they had personal access to Rippin’ Rippa. The park was now crowded with tents and people sleeping on benches, waiting for Buttons’ eventual appearance.

Robinson, on the other hand, managed to secure an apartment not too far from the City Park. Yes, he had to do some shady magic with his father’s credit card for the deposit, and yes, the rent was impossibly high, but he had no intention of paying it anyway. Fuck parasitic landlords.

From his apartment, he could reach the park in a few minutes by car, but he would then have to spend maybe half an hour looking for a place to park. No, he could not afford to lose that much time. Uber was not an option, either, as Robinson disagreed with the billion-dollar corporation’s exploitative business practices. He thus had settled on a bicycle, which had the added bonus of being environmentally friendly.

He was interrupted by a new alert from the ButtonsTracker app. The location was too far from Robinson’s. He sighed. ‘Today is not the day.’

The community was quickly adding links to the initial sighting report. He clicked on the latest addition, which opened a TikTok live-stream.

From the look of the profile photo, the stream belonged to a person who had been assigned female at birth. She was shoving a camera into Buttons’ face. The kid was clinging to her butler like a small monkey.

“Free, free Palestine!” the cameraperson was chanting. “Free, free Palestine!”

“Yes, that’s right!” Robinson cheered for the person.

“Lady, please. Leave me alone,” Buttons was pleading.

Goggles, on the other hand, snapped his gaze and looked straight into the camera.

Robinson felt as if Goggles was looking him in the eyes.

“Free, free Palestine!”

Buttons sighed. “Alright. Go ahead, I’m not stopping you.”

The cameraperson stopped chanting. “What?”

“Go ahead,” said Buttons, “go and free Palestine.”

“Me?”

“Yeah.”

“I— what I’m saying is you should free Palestine.”

“You can’t?” The kid’s eyes went cold. “Sounds like a you problem.”

As if on cue, Goggles turned and carried Buttons away.

The cameraperson tried to follow, but hesitated at the sight of the Jedi nanny appearing through a portal.

Robinson slammed his fist on the desk. ‘That little bitch!’

Oh, the little Satan was guilty of many things. Not only was she a racist, but she had also declared herself to be a fascist emperor in the faces of democratically elected officials. On top of that, she and her cartoon whore friend were Nazis advocating for the deaths of millions of trans kids, were they not? And now she was being so fucking complicit in the literal genocide happening in the Middle East!

Robinson glanced at his notebook. He had not been wrong. He was so right. All the preparations he had been making over the past few months had not been misguided.

He had been preparing. He could now disassemble and assemble his handgun with his eyes closed. He had gone to the range every day and made great progress. All he would need was just twenty feet. Thirty, max, if it came to that.

But today was not the day.

‘It will come soon.’ With that, Robinson decided he’d better finish his manifesto. After all, it would be a great blunder if he rushed to the park with the manifesto left unfinished.

***

Weeks passed. Robinson ignored the landlord’s messages demanding this month’s rent. He ignored texts from his mom, too. He did, however, reply to his father and promise to charge back the five hundred dollars he had spent on gacha pulls.

In the meantime, he watched all of Rippa’s streams. Especially the weekly afternoon session featuring Buttons, with his eyes peeled and ears perked, trying to catch any mention of a planned visit to somewhere or a little slip of a specific location.

And the day finally came. A ButtonsTracker alert reported a sighting in the city.

Robinson’s heart was racing.

For now, the kid was watching some street performers breakdancing. But she would reach the park, eventually.

Thankfully, Robinson had already finished his manifesto. Not only had he finished it, but he had also transcribed it to a new notebook, with clear paragraph formatting and grammar and spelling errors corrected. He left the manifesto on his desk, clearly visible so anyone could find it easily.

He took a deep breath and got dressed. He checked his gun one last time and put it in his hip holster. He then pulled his hoodie down over it.

This was going to be the day that the world was rid of a satanic cancer. He was glad it was him. Proud that he would make the world a better place.

Robinson checked the tracker again. Buttons still had not gone to the park. He had time. He would be there before her.

After taking another deep breath, he opened his apartment door. He stepped outside.

And he died.

His lifeless body fell backward. It was silently dragged back into the apartment, and the door closed behind. Click, click, and the door was locked.

***

“Goggles, Goggles, look!” Rippa shoved her phone in Goggles’ face. She was sitting on the beach lounge sofa beside him. “Buttons is dancing with some breakdancers!”

Goggles put his tea down and watched the video on Rippa’s phone. Someone was live-streaming Buttons on Instagram.

To be frank, dancing was a rather generous description. The kid was just bobbing up and down, clapping her hands to the beat as the street performers were spinning on their heads around her.

“So cute!” Rippa’s eyes were bright.

“I am more impressed with this move,” Goggles said and pointed at a dancer. “Doesn’t this make his head hurt?”