Legal Letters

Gemma had come in with the Monday coffee orders and joined us in the conference room afterwards, though you were left working solo for a little bit as Eric’s dating app profiles got a makeover from both women for about a half hour until they joined you in working. You had gotten a good morning kiss from Gemma, little more than a peck, but it was still more than you could do with Sabrina so you made do with squeezing Sabrina’s hand when you were positioned behind some boxes on the conference table. That made her smile and squeeze back.

It was mid-morning and Sabrina had just come back from dropping off Eric’s phone to him when Garrison came into the conference room with a bemused smirk on his face. “How goes it in here?”

“It’s going fine, sir,” Gemma said. “Sorting it all is taking some time, but we’ll get it done.”

“Good, good,” Mr Garrison nodded. “Look, you two. I’ve received another cease and desist letter directed to you. Are you certain you’re not doing anything to antagonize this internet troll?”

“Sir, neither of us are doing anything like that,” you said.

“No social media quips, no making the meme things?” Garrison asked.

“Sir, I was with them most of the weekend,” Sabrina piped in. “Neither of them even mentioned the internet guy while we were hanging out. We watched movies, we went out for lunch, and we even went to a little party and to a pub. We were too busy, y’know, being alive for them to be spreading rumours online about someone.”

“Well, he seems to think you are,” Garrison sighed, wiping his face for a moment and shaking his head. “What about Eric?”

“That… we can’t say either way,” you said. “I can go talk to him.”

“Just got get him and bring him in here,” Garrison said.

You glanced at the girls and then went out to fetch Eric. After the first cease and desist letter you’d hinted that you might have known who it was doing it, but couldn’t remember if you’d named Eric or not. Or if you were supposed to talk to him before now. Everything that had been going on had shifted that whole situation with the online rapper/commentator idiot from the club out of your mind.

Back in the usual intern conference room, the space felt sort of empty with just Eric and Andy in the room. Andy was currently typing with just two fingers, while Eric had his sport coat hanging on the back of his chair and looked like he was about ready to sweat through his golf polo he was working so hard. You knocked on the doorsill as you entered. “Hey, Eric; Garrison wants to talk to us in the other conference room.”

Eric looked up and blinked, stretching his fingers. “Right now?” he asked.

“Yeah,” you nodded. “You good?”

“Just trying to make do,” Eric said with a vapid, fake smile.

“Well, let’s not keep the man waiting,” Andy said as he started to stand up.

“No, Andy - it’s just Eric,” you said.

“What? How come?” Andy asked, looking hurt.

You suppressed the urge to tease him or give him a little barb. As he looked over at you, you could tell Andy was either still high from last night or had smoked a bit before coming in that morning. He was just as rugged as usual but had a sort of dreamy haze in his eyes to go with his tiredness. “It’s not about intern work,” you told Andy. “He’s actually in heaps of trouble.”

“Oh, shit,” Andy said, turning to Eric. “It’s been nice knowing you, man.”

Eric gulped and followed you out of the room. “Am I really in deep shit?” he asked.

“No,” you chuckled, then thought for a moment. “Well, not heaps of it anyways. I just said that to distract Andy.”

“Well, what’s this about then?” Eric asked.

“I’ll just let Garrison explain,” you said.

Garrison had Eric sit down in one of the conference chairs while he perched up on a clear spot on the table. This began a soft, almost insidious grilling of Eric that led to your fellow intern spilling his guts about how he’d gotten invited on a half dozen different podcasts in the ‘Manosphere’ and how he’d gotten a ton of new social media followers. That had all been around the time of the first cease and desist letter though, and while you and Gemma sat and listened, and Sabrina listened in while working on the other side of the room, Garrison talked Eric around to spilling about the last week.

“I just needed another push, right? I mean, I was hoping to try and connect with some of the YouTube lawyer guys who do commentary in the Manosphere but I lost momentum so I did a supercut with my own commentary on the original video, along with commentary from some of the podcasts and other red pill guys that covered the story. And I sort of ended it with commentary on DeezChains rebuttal streams, where I went a little hard but it was all just opinion stuff and I made sure not to cross the line into defamation or anything. And it worked! It’s spinning in the content cycle again and I might have some more podcast guest spots coming up next week.”

Garrison took in a deep breath and then blew it out slowly, closing his eyes until his lungs were empty. Then he resumed normal breathing and opened his eyes. “Alright, Eric,” he said. “You are going to come to my office, I’m going to need to see everything you’ve said publicly about this. Every tweet or post, every podcast appearance, and this ‘supercut’ you made. You three-” you pointed and you, Gemma and Sabrina who had blatantly stopped working to listen in at the end. “Back to work.”

Eric followed Garrison out of the room, looking nervous as hell.

“Well, at least he’s getting famous out of it,” Sabrina said when you were alone.

“Yeah, but famous with who?” Gemma pointed out. “A group of people who think ‘DeezChains’ is a legitimate name to go by.”

You coughed to try and hide your laugh, but both of your girlfriends looked over to you with a raised eyebrow.

“Sorry, I just- Kat18,” you said.

Sabrina blushed cutely, and Gemma tried and failed to suppress a little smile.

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