Cassidy watched two women lying next to one another in bikinis pass something between the two of them. It looked like a phone, but then one woman put it to her mouth and let loose a cloud of vapor. “What about the drugs that have been getting passed around?”
Edie and James both shook their heads.
“I don’t think it’s the drugs. Like, I’m not naïve and I don’t think the medicsweren’ttaking any drugs over the last few days, but I don’t think they could still function if drugs were making them forget things that quickly,” Edie said. “Drugs also wouldn’t explain what’s going on with all the videos and photos getting changed.”
“Do you think all that is still AI?” Cassidy asked, directing her question to James.
He paused, arms crossed over his chest. “I’m not sure anymore ...” he slowly admitted.
Both women eyed him closely, waiting for him to finish his thought.
“What do you think it is, then?” Edie asked.
James raised his hands to his head, elbows spread wide in a fake stretch, and looked around. Although no one came any closer to the group, he lowered his voice to answer. “If they’re keeping us from calling off of the island, maybe they’re controlling what’s coming into the island as well. It could be that everyone knows something we don’t, and maybe people even know about Ryan LeHane because of Cassidy’s video and similar stuff that got posted about it, but we don’t know that they know.”
“You’re making my fucking head spin. What are you trying to say?” Edie asked, pinching the bridge of her nose.
“Have you two looked at which of your posts have been changed and which have been left alone?”
“None of mine have changed.” Edie answered so quickly that Cassidy nearly questioned how she could be so sure.
“What kind of stuff have you been posting?” James asked.
Edie threw an errant braid over her shoulder. “Mostly just photos of Rose and I. Selfies. Paid ads. Stuff like that,” she answered in staccato, like she didn’t want to talk about it.
“So, personal stuff? Nothing really about the island, good or bad?”
Edie thought on it and sighed. “I mean, I’ve been saying I’m having fun, but no, not really.”
“What about you, what have you been posting?” James asked Cassidy.
“I mean, I haven’t been posting as much as Edie. A couple photos of Apricot and Daisy and me when we first got here, some pictures of the scenery and stuff. I’ve put a lot of videos in my stories, but I don’t really check them after I post them.”
Even thinking through her own posts, Cassidy couldn’t really recall the photos clearly or their throw away captions. Nothing she posted was very telling, intentionally. She wanted to be able to have a profile for friends to visit and to support people she liked publicly, but she really didn’t put very much online and having a presence on a public social media profile wasn’t important, especially during a festival.
“Here’s what I think. Someone with power is monitoring us and our posts. If they don’t like something we post, they change it, and if they like us or like something we post, then they’ll keep it. Maybe they’ll even do things for us in exchange for certain videos,” James said.
Edie narrowed her gaze at James.
“You really expect us to believe that? That you just posted a ‘rumor’?” she asked, making quotation marks with her fingers above the surface of the waves. “He’s fucking with us, Cassidy. He’s full of shit. He knew the set was going to change and Bad Bunny was going to headline and he’s trying to act like he didn’t to freak us out.”
“If you were told something ahead of time, you can tell us here, and we’ll be the only ones to know,” Cassidy said to James, trying to sound more even keeled than Edie.
“Are you both going to attack me like Rose now?” James snapped. “Edie I fucking get because she’s made it clear she doesn’t trust me if her fucking buddy doesn’t, but you, Cassidy? Come on. I genuinely made up that rumor, okay? I’m not fucking with you. I was testing what kind of lies I could get away with posting and what would be taken down. I knew just as much as you two did and I wanted to do some experiments. So, I made up the rumor that Bad Bunny was going to play, and he fucking did.”
“It also could have just been a coincidence. Everyone on this island likes Bad Bunny and he wasn’t on the original set for the festival. Someone probably has an in with him or something,” Cassidy said.
“It could have been a coincidence, but what are the chances of that, really?” he asked.
“And what are the chances that someone with the ability to contact all of us, like, including big time celebrities like Brad King and Missy Lauder and Bad Bunny, what are the chances that you— no offence, but seriously, you?—fell into their good graces enough that they were monitoring you and decided that they should do what you asked?” Edie scoffed, crossing her arms, and raising a single eyebrow.
“I think,” James said with pointed articulation, “that I suggested something that was good for the festival, and so someone at the festival took notice and decided to pull some strings to make it happen. Think about it: What are all the things that you’ve noticed have changed since the first day here?” He started pulling fingers down on his left hand with his right. “The fat bikes everyone was biking into the ocean are gone, the food is better—”
“All of the waiters and waitresses are shirtless now or in bikini tops?” Cassidy said. “Is that ‘for the better?’”
“There are weird art installations around the island that weren’t here before and are getting tons of screentime,” James continued, ignoring her. “The music lineup is supposed to start three hours earlier today, and at noon tomorrow, which is a full seven hours before it started on day one and means there are, like, twenty more artists playing.”
“I mean, the bathroom situation did get better for the people in tents. It was getting prettyMad Maxout there,” Edie said.
