Chapter 1 -- The Police-y Staff [Edited!]

The destinies meet… the events of the present and past combine. The journey of discovery awaits…
“Have you ever thought that PC’s staff could perhaps be police?”
“Nah, it’s… completely impossible.”
“I guess you’re right. Well, I better finish off creating this, so back to PC.”
“Yeah, I’ll PM you on PC.”

A quiet atmosphere swept throughout PC. The threads were all inactive, like the life had been sucked out of them and the same goes for the ones who once posted in those very same threads. New posts had no replies for more than an hour, plus, in all the posts that were previously posted there was no or little content available to be viewed. I scrolled down the active users list, to my surprise I was the only user online. I had to reach a decision within a few seconds, before another member managed to log on… this was assuming that this was a forum wide problem, and not just an issue with this computer. My mind’s first reaction was to take a screenshot, for further research if necessary. As fast as I could, I reached over to my computer’s mouse and frantically pressed it until the program paint opened up.

The screenshot was successfully pasted; next, I had to discover what happened to PC.
Without any doubt in my mind I clicked my fanclub and waited patiently for its deadly reality check to kick in. Nothing. The whole damn thread was equipped with nothing, aside from a few attachments, but that didn’t concern me at the time. I clicked each page, and to my surprise it was all me posting. My post count way over 100000 and I started to get the image that I adopted everyone else’s post counts. This didn’t scare me as much as the next thing that happened would. The creepy thing was, all the administrators’ posts were there, post counts, join dates, everything…. Except on every list on PC, I was the only member, there was no staff listed there. The one post that was visible from the administrators was the one that was announcing PC’s highest member count ever. I decided I might as well check it out, but like all the other threads, it too was blank, except from a post from me stating that I have been caught. This… this didn’t make any sense… of course I didn’t post that… though; I did have a rough sleep last night… so… maybe I sleep typed. Sleep typing would be interesting, if that WAS what happened. I still couldn’t figure out what I’d been caught for, so maybe MSN was able to help me discover the truth.

I signed in as usual, and at that point in time, Internet Explorer reset itself to its default website of Ninemsn. My heart started beating rapidly at that resetting because I had fear in my system now… I had an idea… no, I was sure… PC HAD NEVER EXISTED! All of my PC contacts who were once on MSN were gone, and when I added them, the system stated that those addresses didn’t exist and the same popup that normally appears when somebody adds me on MSN was different this time…
"Nica, you have been caught by the staff… HAHAHA!”

It really made me scared that MSN knew my nickname… but then something struck me; it could’ve been possible that someone hacked my computer and was able to delete all memories of PC… But who would want to do that? I had to contact someone, so I typed in all the ways to access PC. I went to my forum, I had zero members yet I had all the posts in-tact. I clicked the link from each post to the member but no luck, and when I pressed back on internet explorer all posts from that one individual were gone. There was only one left, this was Alex’s posts. I decided it would be in my best interest if I kept his there for future reference. There, of course, would have been another way which I could keep his posts, yet view his profile successfully; this would be the long method of writing it out by hand. I tried PC again and success, it loaded. But only two other members existed, which were Alex, and a random member that I hadn’t seen at any time before. It was blurred for some reason, so I tried to contact Alex instead. I chose the method of PM, because it would be most reliable. "ZOMGZ, PC ONLY HAS THREE MEMBERS, WHYYYY?"

Caps lock would be the best way to express my curiosity, and get Alex’s attention. To my disappointment, he replied back with little interest and I began to feel as if he didn’t care, though if you think about it, he should have cared. I thought of the best thing to reply back and sent it away to him. I got a reply back almost instantly and the computer began to slow as I opened the PM up.
"Nica… all this time, useless, worth nothing… the moderators, administrators… they have us on file, they’re going to catch us sooner or later". Without hesitating, I replied back "Wtf". I wasn’t sure what Alex meant by them catching us, so I read a book for the few minutes he took to reply. To my surprise he had written a paragraph on the true story of the staff. In short, he said that the staff were really police, and that since we were criminals they wanted to bust us. This made the whole situation even stranger; I’ve never committed a crime in my life -- since when was I a criminal? I needed the perfect reply but I couldn’t think of anything. I decided it’d be best if I went along with Alex until I get a proper understanding and some light is shed on this. "Um right, like… how can we escape from these killer staff members?" "We can’t -- they’ll haunt us forever unless we get a completely new identity.” We decided that we would sign up to a popular social site, Myspace was the best candidate because it was too popular to be able to track two people for reasons even I didn’t know of. I signed up as NicaZomg, and Alex as FlavaSpecial. It was what we liked so it could be easily identified without sending to each other in a way that PC could track. Now, once we were at a secure location, free from staff, we began PMing each other. “So, what are you on about? Seriously, I ain't a criminal!”

Alex replied back in an almost opposite attitude “So, what are you on about…Seriously, I am a criminal”’. I couldn’t believe what I was reading, my closest friend at this time was a criminal and I didn’t even know beforehand. Before I had a chance to think, he sent me another PM. Instead, this one was a more serious one "They must’ve gone by now. I’ll tell you the truth... we aren’t criminals, but PC is an organisation to catch criminals. The PC community supporters knew about it, and decided if they ‘donated’ the story would be more believable. The community supporters haven’t donated one cent! At least I can trust you with this information, oh, and by the way, John told me, but I wasn’t sure about believing him at first until he showed me an image of PC’s donating record. The only ones that donated were the moderators, and that’s the only reason they became mods. The strange thing was though, Matt hadn’t donated, yet he was apart of the staff at one point. John also showed me some members that actually did donate, but PC’s staff kept it quiet. These were: Shayla, Tali… and more. Could this be the reason that they disappeared? Ryouki’s theory is that the staff realised that they were getting closer to us, and that to keep the staffs secret a secret, they had to remove all the people that could potentially tell the truth. Oh, and incase you’re wondering how come Ryouki has a theory, it’s because he lied. I knew him in real life, we are really best friends. But, you have to keep that a secret, plus, don’t dare tell anyone else about it. Take a picture of this PM via camera and then delete it. The fact that we know could get spread out and that wouldn’t be good if we want to be able to stay on a computer that works. I’ll keep you updated, bye~".
I read through each line and examined what he was saying, it was all logical, it just needed to be proved. Somehow I needed another staff members’ input of this, just to make sure it wasn’t an April Fools joke, like other pranks the staff have been capable of pulling. This first of April 2008 was sure weird, of course, my initial thought was that it was a joke, but now with MSN and everything how it is, I’m starting to believe this.

Two to three hours later, I tried to get back into PC and everything was restored to its previous state. I saw that all the staff were on, but I was the only member visible. Was everyone else was all on invisible as a joke? I blinked twice and finally, half the staff members that were online were gone, infact, there was only three online. Chi, another mod and a SA were the only others besides me online. I thought it would be best to PM Chi, because she was about the only one I could identify without constantly refreshing the page. "Is this all true… are the staff members out to police people?" Her reply was quite simple, "No, you’re crazy~". I took that as either a real thought or that she was covering the real secret that she was really apart of the police... but because of the donating thing… maybe not. I decided to go along with that, and then signed onto MSN, Alex was on, so I quickly IMed him. "PC’S RETURNED TO NORMAL!" He came back with the simple reply of "When wasn’t it?" After ten minutes of wondering what had just happened I assumed I had imagined it… or not, could the staff members really be playing real members in a disguise, and acting ‘n00bish’. I guess I’ll just have to wait until any of this is confirmed as real…