The Popularity Contest by Julie C. Gilbert

Author:Julie C. Gilbert [Gilbert, Julie C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-06-12T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter 8:

High Roller Advantage

A very long week dragged by before Officer Rathberger directed James Turner to the storage closet for another illegal communication with the outside world. A shipment of toilet paper must have come in because the large rolls took over every flat surface, including much of the floor. Only the beautiful sight of a cell phone sitting atop a pile of toilet paper rolls on the lone stool let James endure the tight space.

Picking up the phone, James found one short text message awaiting him. It consisted of three letters: HRA. Tapping on the hyperlink, James found himself on a simple website. The font choices and graphics screamed amateur, but he guessed some of that might be on purpose to avoid drawing unwanted attention to the site.

A popup window asked him for a username and password. Both had been autofilled.

The username read: jet25716

The password box showed only nine asterisks side by side.

Hitting enter brought him to a welcome page. The long-winded passage worked out to be a “thank you for your generous support” missive combined with a generic “enjoy your time” message.

Below this, James found another innocuous hyperlink that read: Popularity Contest. Following the link brought him to a page with four titles: Judge, Teacher, Physician, and Waiter.

Clicking on the first profession showed him a woman’s picture and a brief profile.

Name: Tara Olivia Sidell

Profession: Family Court Judge

Age: 36

Description: Tara is a loving sister, daughter, wife, and pet parent. As a pillar for her community, she enjoys helping those in need. Vote for Tara if you want her to survive.

A warning after the description told him to read every profile before casting his vote because he could only support one person each round. If his candidate survived to the end from Round One, he would earn a bonus of $10,000 on top of the credit earnings, which would be evenly split among the winners.

The first picture posted obviously came from social media. It showed a beautiful blond woman in a wedding dress. The two pictures below the warning were much more recent. These featured the same woman at varying stages of captivity. The left image showed her sitting on a cement floor bound hand and foot and staring up at the camera with haunted eyes. The right picture showed her sleeping on a blue blanket.

Links clustered at the bottom would bring James to the other contestants’ pages and the main game page. Since he didn’t have a great grasp on the game, James opened the Popularity Contest main page and speed read the description and rules.

The game consisted of three rounds with one person being eliminated each round. The loser from a given round would be subject to the Tribunal, a panel of randomly chosen High Rollers, who would decide his or her manner of death. Standard level gamblers would be able to spend credits to vote on which three kill methods went before the Tribunal. They would receive a payout if the method they voted for was employed.

James thought it might be more interesting if the contestants had to do tasks to survive.

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