Eris and the Apple
A Medium Fable
The MacBook glowed, icy as Eris’ eyes, pulling her sharp cheekbones and prominent clavicle into high relief, washing her alabaster skin in its milky light. The raven of her spiked hair faded into the black of the midnight flat. Outside, pre-Brexit London hummed. She’d have to think about moving, but not yet.
A woman twenty years Eris' senior stared back at her from the screen. She’d chosen the profile image carefully, a face old enough to suggest experience but with the hooded eyes and soft jawline of a smoldering sensuality. The firmly set mouth and direct gaze suggested courage and determination dwelt beneath the flaxen waterfall of racial purity. And the name? Eris had chosen that as well, one with voluptuous vowels and a whiff of mystery, Natalia.
Her stats were low, but that’s where she wanted them, just below the radar. Her plan was unfolding beautifully.
It was like baiting bears with honey: stake out the watering holes where disaffected men hunted, #feminism, #freespeech, #LGBTQ, #blacklivesmatter; identify the hungriest; throw them a bone.
Her mother had been right. Men were simple creatures. “Listen, agree, compliment,” her mother had told her, “and they will eat out of your hand.”
That’s exactly what Natalia did.
Her opening gambit had been a femur ragged with red meat, fetid with sarcasm and juicy to the marrow. She’d found a piece decrying sexual harassment and responded with a belittling pen-lashing of the female author, setting herself up as a Valkyric defender of sexuality — and, by extension, men — against the tyranny of feminism. She spiced the meal with pinches of her own ripe physicality and salted it with enough buzzwords to light up search engines: PC, trigger warning, safe space, echo chamber.
They scented blood. They came.
It was just a few strays at first, but Natalia built on her success. She attacked progressive pieces and her detractors. She fed and petted her supporters. All the while, she artfully feathered in just enough detail to construct a coherent, if skeletal, backstory and an aura of humanity.
Despite her training, juggling a myriad of communications, Eris occasionally dropped a ball, and a breeze of incongruity would tickle the whiskers of one of Natalia’s followers. If a round of placating doublespeak didn’t settle him back, she quickly blocked the inquisitor lest the infection of doubt spread to the rest of the pride.
And a pride it was, an injured one, growling and licking its wounds.
Eris did her best to insure the wounds stayed raw. Healing would ruin everything. Her whip cracked. The pride roared on cue, neatly jumping through hoops she held aloft, eager for reward. The crowd gasped.
Transfixed by the display, snarling resentment viewed through protective bars of pixelation, no one noticed Eris’ toe edging the cage door open bit by bit. A hint here, a suggestion there, and soon it would swing wide. Eris looked forward to that.
“When the law is subverted by bureaucrats and the courts are corrupted by activist judges, one can no longer rely on traditional remedies,” she typed. Through her fingertips, she felt the web quiver.
Eris closed her laptop and stretched, purring a crooked smile. A platinum incisor glinted in the darkness. It had been a good day.
Author’s Note: Eris, Goddess of Strife, is alternately described as Ares’ sister or daughter. She is credited with instigating the Trojan War by deploying the Apple of Discord.
