Ultimate Silence



This is a collab between JamesSun007 and KittenQueen74 for the Duos Pasta Competition.

Silence.

Ultimate silence.

Streching from the end of the horizon to where I stand.

I hide in the shadow of darkness,

Nothing keep me company, but silence.

Look around the ruins,

The broken swings! The glitching minigames!

All of this after the catastrophe!

It's hard to believe this lifeless hell,

Used to be an earthly paradise,

Of joy and peace.

I glanced at the spawn,

Which was not far away.

I waited and waited.

This night, will he come?

As he appears, I will give him the ultimate silence

Without any hesitation.

Like what he used to force on the others.

The Club
Months ago the club was the most beautiful place in the Roblox world. It was well-made by it's owner, Mary. It included a lot of fun things - parkours, minigames, relaxing corner and freind-making area. It never included PVP however. Maybe the owner is just a peace lover. The landscape was also amazing, thanks to the masterful building by Mary, the mysterious inactive creator who hasn't been online for a long time. None of her friends remained on Roblox for some reason.

I joined the club when I was in a bad mood. The club was a great choice for me because it was relaxing for me, who was depressed and had a really bad temper at that time. There were many friendly members in the club, who would listen to me patiently and advise me honestly. The club was filled with really nice people, so I'd love to stay. Soon I became an active member like them.

I found out that most active members were actually admins and bureaucrats, like a wiki community. I made some friends with them not long after. They all had nicknames, lovely ones... Elf, KoolKid, Ward, Dinose... I miss them so much.

When I first joined the server, I was greeted by a warm 'Hello!' from Elf, an energetic teen girl who was extremely active at that time. I chatted with her a lot, from school life to Roblox, and we discussed about this club, of course. I got to know other admins such as KoolKid and Ward for the first time. I played the minigames with her - she taught me while playing - and we parkoured in the warm sunshine. Oh, I could forget so much but not the lovely time with the lovely members. The chat would always be filled up with messages of joy, which would never end...

But now, only silence and loneliness are with me.

Laughs no more.

Friends no more.

I'm so cold.

The Newbie
People come and go, that's true. Soon I found that hundreds of people visited the club every day, but little of them stayed. There were new faces every day, while Elf kept waving a hi to all of them. She was so kind that I would think all visitors should stay because of her friendliness.

When I was wandering in the club that afternoon, no one was there like Elf who would say hello to every visitors. So I thought I could do that job too, as I was already an active member of the club, a part of the club.

Then, there he was. Like any normal player would do, he appeared.

I wish I would never say anything to him at that time and quit the club immediately.

But history can't be changed.

I typed 'Hello!" in the chat. In fact, I never expected an answer because people usually ignore Elf's greetings. But he did. The start of the nightmare, I can say.

'Hello, Jack.' said Torran, who walked towards me.

'Shall I show you around our club? Although I'm not an admin or a bureaucrat, I'm quite active and I know a lot.'

'Admin? Bureaucrat?' He seemed to be interested in that.

'Yea! I should tell you some names of them. Elf, KoolKid, Ward and Dinose - they are admins and they are super friendly! I think you can be friends very soon!'

'Sounds fun. I'd like to. In fact, I'm going to love this place, I guess.' But I misunderstood the meaning of his I'd like to at that time.

So I went to the game zone, the parkour zone, anything in the club, and he followed me and listened carefully. He even asked some questions, like a good student in class!

'I think I've learned a lot today. Nice to meet you, Jack.'

'Nice to meet you too, Torran.'

'I'm sure we can be friends. You're nice.'

When I heard that, I felt like drinking honey. When I think of this now, I feel creeps in my heart.

So we shaked hands - virtually -  with the help of the script created by the great Mary.

The Ambition
Torran was soon a part of the club like me.

He became one of us.

He greeted with Elf, KoolKid, Ward and Dinose one by one. He became friends with them as I expected. At least I thought it was.

He sometimes would mention the admins. 'Yes, they are kind of great people I've met. I wonder what jobs they do in the club.'

'You know, they manage the club. If there are members have inappropriate behaviors, they warn or ban them. They take part in developing as well. They take care of the club while the inactive owner is offline. In other words, they are insiders or Santa Claus(Mary)'s little helpers.'

'You mean they control the club.'

'Uhhhh.... You may say like that. Actually only the owner is in total control.'

'Oh. Mary. You told me last time. I see.'

He continued.

'Mary. Name of a girl? Huh, maybe a man in his forties? idk but I guess I should find out.'

'Admin. yeah. Admin should be first. I shall walk step by step.'

He was silent for a moment. I felt a little odd, but I didn't figure why. I had a feeling that I knew what he was thinking about...

'Do you want to be an admin?'

'Oh sure, I'd like to. And even a bureaucrat. Bingo.

I like this place very much. I'd like to be a manager of it.'

'Good. You may ask the admins and bureaucrats if you want to.'

Then we joined the minigames. I cannot remember which game we played, anyway he died and lost the game. Probably got blocked by a wall and fell into the lava at the last moment.

But I cannot forget what he said next.

'Nobody can block my way.'

The Victim
I was talking to Elf, about how weird it was. "Nobody can stand in my way" sounds like it came from a Marvel Movie. We talked about it for a bit, but then it was almost like she changed tone. Before you ask me, it was like when you just know what tone they're talking in. This was serious.

"Jack, just remember that we can't always take something as propaganda."

That was weird, but she was back to normal after. Like it had never happened.

Later, everyone in the server was panicking for some reason. As we tried to jump through a laggy crowd, we saw KoolKid trying to calm everyone down. Ward was nearly on the ground, crying. I tried to get further, but Elf pushed me back and announced to everyone.

"The server is experiencing a huge lag spike. Nothing important, just leave and take a break for a while."

"What about our daily rewards?"

"Do you want your device to survive or not?"

'''That silenced them. '''Finally they were quiet. Group by group, they began to leave. At last it was just Elf, KoolKid, Ward and me (though they didn't notice me). KoolKid whispered to Elf, but it was loud enough for me to overhear.

"The silencing is beginning. Dinose was just the first. The slaughter is starting."

"KoolKid are you right in the head? He's probably just terminated or something. YOU sound ill. You should probably take a break."

With that, he left the server. Elf proceeded to talk to Ward.

However, before I could continue eavesdropping to their conversation, I lost my connection to the server. Did they notice me and kicked me out? Not likely, because the error code was not that. Anyway, I didn't think much and decided to play another game.

When I was playing random games, I was still curious about their horrifying conversation. Slaughter is starting? Creepy! And, what is 'silencing'? I couldn't understand.

I didn't expect that Ward would come to me first before I ask the admins.

I returned to the homepage from a certain game, and saw my chat box popped up. I opened it. It was an invitation from Ward:

‘Hi Jack, I’m quite sorry about what happened in the server earlier today. Anyway, I invite you to a VIP server of the club I created right now. If you are free, please come and we can have fun.’

Ward wanted me to play with him. Privately. He must wanted to discuss about ‘the matter’ with me, though Elf and KoolKid kept silent to me.

It seems that he calmed down from that great misery he suffered. I joined the VIP server, and saw him standing there, waiting for me.

I walked towards him. ‘Ward?’

He didn’t react.

‘Ward? You wanna play with me?’

He kept silence until 2 or 3 seconds past.

‘Oh hi Jack! Yeah, come on, let’s go to the minigames area.’

It’s funny that he didn’t say anything special. Maybe he just wanted to play with me just in order to comfort himself?

We played and chatted. Of course we had a great time there, but he was missing the point all the way - he didn’t mention about the incident at all.

Finally I decided to ask him.

‘Why did K-’

Before I could finish typing, he replied as if he knew what I was thinking.

‘You must be curious about what has ever happened to Dinose.’

I quickly cleaned my chat and retyped:

‘Why, of course! I don’t even know what is happening.’

He replied with:

‘To be honest, we all don’t know what has ever happened to Dinose. But I got to know something else just now.

‘About your friend, Torran.’

That Torran? Everyone admit him as MY friend, but in fact I don’t think so. I just only talked to him sometimes, why does everyone think he’s my friend? While I was confused at this, Ward spoke again.

‘Do you ever know Torran applied for being an admin?’

‘No - I’m not an admin, but I know he has said he wanted to be one.’

‘That’s probably the beginning of all troubles.’

‘What? Troubles? With Dinose?’

‘Yes. All admins accepted Torran’s request, except Dinose. He was against that.

‘I was quite confused at that time because I didn’t know what reasons are there to refuse Torran. Anyway, Dinose and me were close friends so I asked him about this - more like bombarding - and he finally showed me the reason.

‘Dinose sent me some links. He said he was investigating Torran after Torran applied for the admin, to make sure Torran was behaving well. However, he accidentally discovered Torran’s secret alt, or sockpuppet. According to the links, Torran used his alt to make a lot of hate speech, bullying, harassing, insulting, threatening and vandalizing to other users on several users. He almost did all bad things you can do on the Internet.’

‘What????? That’s unthinkable, he talked so politely!’ I yelled.

‘Yeah, true. But you know, people can hide themself, especially on the Internet, in the cyber-world. Dinose has just discovered the dark side of Torran. He told me that we should get rid of Torran as soon as possible. But right after that, he never said a word...

‘I checked the links again, and I also visited those users’ activity who had been bullied by Torran. Oddly, I found none of them has ever replied to Torran’s hate speech. In fact, none of them had ever said anything ever since then.

‘It just like they have been banned, or terminated, or... silenced.

‘I’m afraid that happened to poor Dinose as well - who knows.’

I was quite shocked after hearing those words, but I still had questions.

‘But why was KoolKid so sure that Dinose was slaughtered?’

‘Have you ever joined our group? Club group?’ He didn’t answer my question directly.

‘Group? Uh-oh... Not yet.’

‘Well, check the group members then, I will be waiting here.’

So I successfully found the club group, and opened up the list of the admins.

Elf, KoolKid, Ward and DeanStevenson16 - Wait what? A scambot on the admin list? I can’t understand how could it got onto that. Is scambots nowadays so powerful...? The avatar was truly a standard blockhead scambot.

Suddenly I realized that it was Dinose.

He was slaughtered. He was doomed.

He was silenced.

Those thoughts ran in my mind like a wind, and I chilled in them.

Curiosity drove me to visit his account page. His description was a line of hashtags.

“##### #### #######”

He’s been silenced. I believe it now.

I quickly turned on my Roblox client. As the window popped up, I saw a familiar avatar in the game.

Torran.

He broke into our private VIP server.