~SPECULATIVE FICTION~

Welcome To My Neocities Site! My Story Is Below...

HTML Dog

~THE CULT~

Every morning Riley goes through the same routine; He wakes up, has a cup of coffee with his bowl of lucky charms, takes a shower, gets dressed, brushes his teeth, and then sits down on his computer. Riley is 23, meaning he grew up in time period where the internet was not a big deal because it had intertwined itself into society. Riley had elected not to go to college, so he is working at a local computer hardware shop to make ends meet before he gets his online degree in computer science. He logs onto his computer, a computer he built himself because he thinks he is better then the companies who make them. After he logs in he starts his research and dates his new document September 24, 2020. HTML Dog

What Riley doesn't know is that his parents founded the first and only Multi User Dungeon in the 1970s. When Riley's parents were born in the early 1950s, the Internet had not been invented yet, so they saw it grow right before their eyes. The MUD, to this day, is an exclusive club specifically designed for organized crime. Not murder, or assault, but heists, specifically. The reason why the MUD has been so successful is because once it made through the 1990s, MUD's started to lose popularity, giving Riley's parents the perfect platform to stay lucrative. Riley's parents are actually extremely wealthy, and extremely intelligent. This may have been why his parents weren't mad when he opted to skip college, or when he took a job at the local computer hardware store. His parents had always hoped that one day Riley would discover the MUD himself, and join the lucrative world and business opportunity created by his very own parents.

After Riley dates his document, he begins right where he left off. The day before Riley had stumbled upon a new piece of information, one that could lead him to what he might be searching for. He had found a link between two crimes in his home city of Boston. All of the suspects had backgrounds in computers, but when police seized their equipment at home, they couldn't find anything. In addition to that, when each suspect was questioned, none of them knew anything about the other person, odd right? Riley knew there had to be some way they could communicate underground, some platform that was so exclusive no one could ever find out what they were talking about.

Riley's parents monitored him, never helped him, but tried to keep him on his toes. They knew it was only a matter of time before he somehow stumbled upon the MUD, and they weren't quite sure if they were ready to be confronted about the way they chose to use their platform. The family's best friend, The Millers, already had their son discover the MUD, so it was killing them that it had taken their son a little bit longer. They had raised Riley right, taught him right from wrong, but knew when the time came for their truths to be exposed, it would be tough a tough pill to swallow.

As Riley continued to stumble around this new trail of evidence, he knew he had to start looking for answers in places he would have never looked before. His friend had mentioned the week before how cool it could be if you could create your own private server, and only let people you wanted on it, but Riley thought that type of technology was still years from being developed. Then it hit him. He always wanted to see what his parents were doing on their computers, and they both worked from home, but every time he snooped on their laptops he couldn't find a thing. It always donned on him that his parents always used to take extended business trips and dropped him at his Aunt's house.

Riley's parents had created a mirror display on their son's computer, so they could monitor his progress on the investigation. As they watched him connect the dots in his research document, they began to feel excited but scared. They were scared for what their son might think of them.

Riley had been working on a code to hack into the processor of any computer, something in which he worked on when he got home from work everyday. He decided to put it to the test, after his suspicions of his parents grew increasingly strong. Riley went over to his parent's house for dinner, unaware of how close he was to finding out the truth. He went upstairs to his old bedroom, which had been turned into a home office and plugged the USB into his parents' desktop. He couldn't believe what he saw.

HTML Dog

Riley's parents knew the day had come, and they did not try and stop it. When their son told them he was going to check out his old room, they knew what he came to do. They waited downstairs nervously as their only son discovered the truth about his parents.

Riley knew exactly what he saw. He had thought the technology was years, if not decades away, but somehow it was in front of his eyes. He found the MUD, he discovered the usernames, and most of all, he had discovered what his parents did for a living.

Riley walked down the stairs to the living room, where both his parents were sitting there anxiously awaiting his arrival. They greeted him with,

Welcome to The Cult