Beyond the Global Eye

Triniti sank into the only couch in her studio apartment. She was usually home much later in the night, after monitoring the last script being broadcast on live news. Her couch faced one of two rectangular windows. The sun had not set yet, but its color was waning into a brownish gold and so was the city of Noldon below her window. She gazed at the still-busy streets, hearing a siren here, a Kawasaki there, and a concerted murmur that is difficult to drown in any metropolis. As she let her senses trail with the dying day, she wondered whether she had made the right decision in quitting her job today.

“This is how we do it, Triniti,” exclaimed Rupert, her copy editor. “This is how you have done it and done it well for the last four years!” He did not seem to believe she was not coming back.

The truth was, that is how they did it, thought Triniti. The Global Eye was one of the biggest TV news stations in Together Isles (TI). They got news from the world, she wrote scripts for the news anchors, and at regular intervals in the day, the anchors would read the scripts for an audience of more than 10 million viewers daily.

It did not really matter what the news was. So long as it was a story, made room for subtle product placement, was short enough to allow time for illustrious advertising and was presented in formal language, Rupert never complained about her scripts. In fact, he seemed quite disappointed when Triniti told him she was never coming back.

Someone would replace her in no time, she thought, and they would keep doing what they did best.

She continued to watch as the city lights began coming on and as the sun began to sink into the horizon. The brownish gold now only occupied about a quarter of the sky she could see out of her window, the rest fading into a dark, almost blackened, blue above her apartment building.

It was a warm day, but Trinity shuddered. It wasn’t the thought of being replaced that scared her, nor the thought that the Global Eye would keep churning news for reasons other than truthfully informing the people of happenings in the world. What scared Trinity was that the Global Eye received the same news of the world as every other news agency she had known since she was a child.

That morning she had come into work early. Her day’s main task was to script a story about a suicide bomb just hours earlier in a Government building in the capital of Rysia, Madascus. The news wire from Tureurs briefly mentioned 48 deaths and 74 serious injuries to Government employees. It stated quite surely that the Government was holding an armed gang of rioters, who called themselves Anonyone, responsible for the deaths. Triniti had compared this wire to the account from Action Print (AP), and the report was almost exactly the same, except the AP wire mentioned 78 serious injuries.

As Triniti had begun piecing the story together in the usual style that the Global Eye represented itself, she received a startling e-mail. It contained one line, and was signed Anonyone. It read:

“We did not do it.”

Triniti could feel a sweat breaking out on her forehead. She turned her head slowly from side to side, checking that none of her co-workers was watching her or could have sent her this. She then turned back to her screen and examined the contents of the e-mail again.

It had been sent to her direct Global Eye e-mail address, and the sender’s e-mail address simply read anonyone@anonyone.fm, with no first or last name.

At that instant, two memories swiftly passed Triniti’s mind. One was from a few months ago, when she was working on a story about how the MV Prosper had capsized off the shores of Morosalam, Zantinia. The Tureurs and AP wires had, as always, been very similar: An accidental leak had triggered the sinking, and 359 out of 400 passengers had died as a result.

As she had been sending her completed script to Rupert, she had received a phonecall. As soon as she had picked up the phone, the caller began speaking to her in a ferocious tone. She could not identify whether the voice was a man or a woman, but in an accent that seemed Zantinian they had said very few words before hanging up:

“The story is lies. Prosper had no accidents. They needed to capsize the ship in order to seal an International Aid contract!”

And before even Triniti had the time to ask who “they” were, or how aid was related, the angry voice had left her with a dialing tone. Triniti had not paid attention to the call, and disregarded it as a prank from someone who was not pleased with the Global Eye.

The second memory that flashed Triniti’s mind as she stared at the Anonyone e-mail at her desk this morning was from 3 years ago. She had just passed her probationary training period with the Global Eye and had been certified to write her own stories. One her second day of work as a scriptwriter, she had been documenting a success story in forest conservation in Sito, Cuadecor. The Government of Cuadecor was being awarded by the Nations Together on Environement (NTE) for allocating vast expanses of national forests previously planned for building residential complexes for conservation instead. As a result, the wires on her desk that day read, biologists and other natural scientists globally were being invited to investigate Sito’s biodiversity.

As she had been keenly writing her script, excited that one of her first stories was good news, she found that a yellow post-it note had landed on her desk without her noticing. It seemed deliberately stuck to her phone, facing her. She had asked her co-workers in nearby cubicles whether they had dropped off the note for her, but nobody seemed to know what she was talking about. She had shrugged and dumped the note in her wastebasket.

It had read in obnoxious, black, capitalized handwriting: “NTE DECEPTION. HEAVY INVESTMENT FROM DRUG CARTELS IN SITO FORESTS”.

A loud beep broke Triniti’s thoughts. She looked around her apartment and found that the sun was gone. The city of Noldon was darkened except for the yellow and white lights that outlined the streets and the cubic buildings. She realized that the beep had come from her computer just a few feet away, and that it was not loud at all. It just happened to be the only sound inside her apartment, apart from her breathing which seemed to have gotten heavier.

She got up and went to her refrigerator. There wasn’t much in it; yesterday’s left over Chinese, a few apples, a near-expiry carton of milk and a few bottles of Stella Artois.

She grabbed one Stella, cranked it open with her teeth and spat the bottletop into her sink for later disposal. She pulled out her desk chair as she took a sip and sat in front of her computer. The beep had come from an instant message from Morfeuse, a new chat friend she had met a few weeks ago online. He seemed nicer than the other friends she made online, and strangely aware of many of the stories she wrote.

“How has your day been?” Asked Morfeuse. It briefly struck her as awkward that Morfeuse had guessed that she was home early today. But she did not dwell on this for long.

“Well… I quit my job today,” she replied, half smiling.

There was a pause. Triniti thought how Morfeuse might think she was disappointed, but she couldn’t wait to tell him that she was relieved. She couldn’t wait to tell anyone how relieved she was to stop working for a news agency that seemed to regurgitate the same news from the same people day in and day out.

Another beep, and a new line from Morfeuse appeared: “Congratulations.”

She frowned. Then she smiled. “How do you know I’m not broken?” She asked.

“The Global Eye is a broken system. I’m glad you see that now.”

Triniti wondered why Morfeuse had not told her that he never liked watching the Global Eye when she first told him she worked for them. Perhaps it would not have made a difference, she thought. It might still have taken the e-mail from Anonyone – as well as the two previous memories that came to her – to understand that there was a whole version of news that was happening around the world that went unnoticed.

But after she realized this, Triniti felt unclean. She felt she had abandoned values that had been taught to her since her childhood, when her grandmother Nur was still alive. She felt guilty that over 10 million viewers in Noldon and even more worldwide were watching a narrow, monopolized and convoluted story, maybe even a fictitious story, and seeing that as the reality of the world they lived in. Most of all, she felt that the Global Eye, Tureurs, AP, Rupert – the whole lot of people and organizations that made up the industry that she used to regard so highly – were a blind industry who wanted to be blind. Today, she had completed the Madascus story as the Global Eye would usually have it, and had waited until it passed to the anchors to let Rupert know she was leaving.

“I now see beyond the Global Eye,” wrote Triniti.

What Morfeuse asked next intrigued her. Little did she know it would change the course of her life.

“Would you like a new job?”

What happens to Triniti next? Stories invited!