The Young Pirate and the Mystery Movie

"Hey!" his friend shouted from across the cafeteria. As energetic as always, his friend ran towards him quickly, nearly dropping his lunch bag out of sheer excitement. The boy looked up to his winded friend in curiosity. “What’s got you so hyped about?” His red haired friend sat across from the boy, a smug shit eating grin plastered on his face. “So, I’ve heard about a movie online that has never been released in America.” The boy shrugged and went back to eating his sandwich.

A little perturbed by his friend’s disinterest, the friend slammed his hands on the table, drawing some attention from the surrounding tables. He hushed into a whisper. “You don’t understand, this movie is like, the movie of all movies. My brother, in college, pirated it but before he could even watch it, it was mysteriously deleted from his computer!” The boy rolled his eyes but in truth that got him a little bit interested.

“So what’s this movie about?” The boy asked, picking the crust off his sandwich. His friend leaned in closer, “No one knows. It’s the most mysterious movie of all time! It’s called “Total Miracle” and the only way to get it is to pirate it.” The boy flinched visibly. “P-Pirate?” Grinning hard, his friend nodded. Pirating movies has always scared the boy. Those FBI warning’s in the beginning, that one cheesy ad in the previews trying so hard to be “hip with the kids” with it’s black and white filtering and rock music. The boy swallowed. The movie of all movies, his friend says. It’s almost too tempting. Much too tempting. The movie of all movies, never released in America where everything is released!

“I’m going to pirate it.” The boy whispers back to his friend. “I’m going to do it.” With a gleam in his eye, his friend nodded.

That night after school, the boy hurried into his room. Nerves got to him, the mere thought of pirating something so mysterious excited him to no end. But where to begin? The boy sat on his bed in deep thought. He remembers seeing ads on video streaming websites about a VPN. Even some of his favorite content creators were sponsored by VPN companies. How on earth would he persuade his mother into buying a VPN though? He shook his head, anything to pirate that movie.

After a few moment’s his mother called him downstairs for dinner. She seemed to be in a good enough mood to talk about it. His mother laid his plate out in front of him despite his protests of being able to serve himself. He looked down into hid food, but no or never. “Hey, mom, I’m thinking we should get a VPN.” His mother had just sat down when she looked at him in question. “Dear, what is that?” The boy took a deep breath. Truthfully he himself didn’t exactly know other than it protects online activity from the IP. “Well, mom…” The boy began as he picked at his food.

His mother is never good with technology, bordering on techno-phobic at many times. It took him quite awhile to explain everything to her without getting angry. She asks the same questions over and over in different ways and it’s nothing less than irritating. Finally, after telling her she can watch her favorite UK shows without an issue she nodded her head. “Ok, honey. You sold me.” The boy smiled. One step closer to that mystery movie.

The next day at school during lunch time, his friend came to the boy’s table once again. The boy picked the crust off of his sandwich as he said, “I talked mom into buying a VPN last night during dinner.” The friend grinned widely. “No way! Your old hag of a mom!? That’s a miracle!” he quickly sat down and reached into his back pack. “I got the URL to that website my brother got it from. Be careful though, even with a VPN it might mysteriously vanish.” The boy rolled his eyes, a strong habit around his friend. However, the boy is thankful, he would never know where to start looking for it for he had never done something so risky before. So scandalous, so illegal. He felt his heart race. Only fifteen years old and he feels like one of those super hacks shown in movies.

He could hardly focus in school for the next week or so while the VPN was set up, but finally the day of reckoning had come. It’s a Saturday night, the boy didn’t want to pirate during the day in case his mom found out. Not like she’ll even know what he’s doing, but still, his anxiety is off the charts. The boy turned off the singular overhead light in his room. The dark always a sort of comfort to him but it didn’t stop his chest from feeling tight. He sat at his desk and stared at the blank monitor. Now or never he thinks. Now or never.

Shaky, he pressed the space bar to wake up his PC. Moving his mouse slowly to his browser after it wakes up, he opened it and went to the search bar. Digging the note out of his pocket, he let go of the mouse and began to type slowly. He stopped, quickly making sure the VPN is on then continued the URL. His friend’s handwriting completely sucks so it took a few tries to type it in correctly, each time it doesn't work making him more and more scared.

Finally, it brought him to the website. Obviously very shady looking which only excites him more. A sort of high coursed through the boy once he clicked the giant green download button. It gave him an .exe file of some program, guess he wasn’t supposed to click that. Searching the rest of the page, he found the smallest text to download the movie. That seems counter-intuitive but whatever. The movie begun to download. Slowly and slowly it downloaded. The boy grabbed his head, he’s really doing this.

An eternity passed when it was finally complete. Quickly, the boy turned off his internet to avoid the movie being deleted by some unknown force within cyberspace. He clicked the movie to watch it.

It was a terrible movie and not worth it.