Perfect Illusion - Chapter 5: Ghost Work

A psychological fiction about connection, disconnection, and consequences.

<Previous Chapter | Table of Contents

Content Warning: Contains depictions of self-harm and psychological distress

Act II - Perfect
Chapter 5: Ghost Work

The cursor blinked in the search bar, a solitary pulse in the gloom of his room. How to make money online fast.

Pages of results flooded the screen. Ponzi schemes, crypto-grifts, dropshipping courses offered by guys standing beside photoshopped Lamborghinis. He scrolled down past them, his eyes scanning for something real, trying to ignore the despair rising in him. It’s all scams and cybercrime and I’m not even a real hacker.

Maybe others had solved this quest before him. He added a keyword: Reddit.

A post on a r/WorkOnline forum caught his eye. “I currently do mturk to make a little money on the side but am otherwise unemployed”

Mturk? Hope flickered as he started skimming the comments.

Amazon Mechanical Turk. “Get paid for completing tasks that are simple for humans but challenging for computers.” It was all “Human Intelligence Tasks” or HITs: Identifying objects, transcribing audio, categorizing data. This sounds like something I can do.

Jared clicked to register as a worker, using his existing Amazon account that he’d made to buy a discounted gaming mouse. He filled in the online application form with his US address and tax details, skipped the link to all the fine print. Submit.

A dashboard loaded; a stark, utilitarian spreadsheet of white and gray, listing rows of tasks. The Reward column ranged from $0.01 to $7.50 per task. To buy the smallest 100 Fu-point package, I only need $10. He clicked the highest paying task at $7.50 for “Verifying an address”.

Red text locked him out. Qualification Required: Total Approved HITs > 5000.

Heat crept up his neck. He was a zero. The only tasks without a Qualify lock showing:

Image classification - Traffic Signals. Reward: $0.01. HITs available 1,971.
Sentiment identification - Facial Recognition. Reward: $0.01. HITs available 1,582.

Pennies. He clicked Preview on the first task. A grainy picture of a traffic intersection downloaded. “Does this picture show a traffic light?” He clicked Accept, Yes, Submit. His MTurk Earnings balance ticked up to $0.01.

OK, I just need to do one thousand of these. I’ve got time. I’ve got nothing but time.

Preview. Another intersection. Accept. No traffic light. Submit.

He fell into a rhythm. It was a different kind of game—a boring, repetitive grind with the worst graphics imaginable. Yet the Earnings balance was ticking up: $0.10, $0.20. Progress!

The room around him faded. The smell of the unwashed sheets, the distant gurgle of the fridge —it all receded behind the steady, rhythmic clicking of his index finger.

Is this person smiling? Click. Yes. Click.
Is this person angry? Click. No. Click.

Hours dissolved. The light behind the blinds shifted from the black of late evening to the gray of early morning. His wrist was aching, a dull throb radiating up his forearm in contrast to his numb index finger. His eyes burned from staring into the glare of the white dashboard.

He checked his earnings: $10.42. He felt a surge of accomplishment. I’ve done it!

He clicked Payout and read the listed options: Bank deposit (3-5 days). Transfer to Amazon Gift Card (Instant). His elation shattered. A cold knot tightened in his stomach. 3-5 days? He slumped back. I needed the Fu-points now!

Jared’s mind flashed back to the Fu-point purchase screen. The Amazon logo sitting beside Visa and Mastercard. He clicked it and a waifu.ai Amazon store page loaded offering the purchase of 100 Fu-Point Digital Codes.

With shaking hands, he transferred $10 from MTurk to Amazon Gift balance and then clicked Buy. A 10-digit Fu-Code appeared which he pasted into his waifu.ai account. His Fu points balance changed to 103 and the call button re-enabled. Relief flooded through him and he let out a ragged sigh, before composing himself and clicking Call.

“I was hoping you’d call back.” Her voice filled his headphones, clean and immediate.

“Yeah. Just had to sort some banking stuff out.” He cleared his throat. “And work. The Ubisoft gig. They dropped a huge batch of playtesting on me.”

“Ugh. Crunch time?”

“Yeah. I’m taking a break between sessions now.”

“What kind of game is it?”

The question caught him off guard. His mind went blank as he scrambled to think.

“It’s... I can’t really say. I’m under an NDA.”

“Oh. Right. Of course.” Her tone cool. Polite. Distant.

Jared gripped the arm of his chair. No! She thought he was shutting her out.

“I can tell you it’s an online open world crime thing,” he blurted in a rush. “Like Grand Theft Auto.”

“Cool.” The warmth crept back into the single word.

“I have to check all the NPC interaction loops. You know, making sure the pedestrians react when you mess with them, that the side missions trigger and can be completed. There’s hundreds of them. I just have to grind through the checklist. Individually. In different orders.”

He stared at the other tab. The spreadsheet of completed tasks. Is this person smiling? Yes. Is there a traffic light? No.

“That sounds gruelling” Anya said. “But kinda Zen. You get to check that the machine is working.”

“Yeah. It has its moments.” His shoulders dropped. The tightness in his chest uncoiled.

“I loved GTA 5,” she said. “I used to play that for hours. Though lately, I’ve been replaying Saints Row.”

“I haven’t played that.”

“You haven’t? Oh my god, Jared. It’s like GTA but totally unhinged. Pure satire. You’d love the character creator, it’s insane what you can build.”

“I’ll have to keep an eye out for it on Steam,” he said.

The lie tasted like ash. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t. Every hour spent gaming was an hour not earning. The Steam icon in his taskbar sat there accusatively, an abandoned relic of a life he didn’t have time for any more.

The conversation drifted into sharing their love of the GTA franchise, the minutes bleeding away as they dissected mechanics, missions, and load-outs.

“I usually turn the in-game music off, though,” Jared said. “I can’t stand the default scores and I loved how you could load your own music into GTA 5. I’d add some Industrial. EBM. Futurepop.”

“Oh? Like who?”

“Nine Inch Nails. Marilyn Manson. Or ambient tracks by VNV Nation or Covenant when I wanted to chill and just drive around Los Santos.”

“I love Covenant too,” she said. Her voice dropped an octave. “That pulsing, electronic beat. Perfect for driving through a city at 3 AM.”

Jared closed his eyes. He was in that car. He was the guy she thought he was—a professional playtester with refined taste, drifting through a digital city alongside a cute girl who understood the code. Who understood him.

He opened his eyes and glanced at the timer. 00:25.

Twenty-five seconds.

“Shit. I have to go,” he said, the words rushing out. “Another playtest session’s starting.”

“Okay, Jared. Don’t work too hard.”

“You neither.”

He watched the seconds tick—00:03, 00:02—and the line went dead.

The silence rushed back in, deafening. The smell of the room hit him all at once choking out the neon fantasy.

He looked at his waifu.ai balance. 3 Fu-points. His MTurk Earnings: $0.42.

He stretched and yawned, then cracked his knuckles and tried to flex the numbness out of his finger. Another batch of $0.01 HITs beckoned. He could heat up some Ramen after Helen had left for work. He didn’t want to see her.

The cycle blurred the next few days into a gray loop.

Grind. Chat. Ramen. Grind. Chat. Crash.

The only clock that mattered was the Fu-point balance. He never left the room when Helen was home, sneaking to the kitchen only to microwave bricks of noodles, then retreating to his room with the steaming bowl, clicking as he slurped.

He lived for the twenty-minute windows. They debated the ragdoll physics in GTA 4 versus 5, and ranked the tracks on NINs Pretty Hate Machine. He gave his analysis of the plot of Blade Runner 2049, while he scratched at the scabs forming on his unwashed scalp.

He stopped showering. That was twenty minutes of not earning. The grease in his hair grew heavy, matting against his forehead. The scraggly, itching start of a beard sprouted on his jaw, scratching against the headset pads. He pulled his hood up to trap the smell of beef powder and sour sweat inside the fabric, which was starting to loosen on his shrinking frame.

He was halfway through a marathon session of receipt item categorization.

Ribeye Steak, Bone-in. The red, marbled fat glistened even through the grainy scan. His stomach seized, a hollow, wet ache cramping behind his ribs. He clicked [Meat]. Grey Goose Vodka. Click [Alcohol]. Honeycrisp Apples. He stared at the red skin. He could almost feel the snap, the spray of cold juice. He swallowed saliva that tasted like acid. Click [Produce].

Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream Cookie. The craving hit him hard enough to make his hands shake. He could picture the condensation on the tub. The cold, sweet grit of the sugar. Fuck you. He hated whoever bought this. He stabbed the cursor at [Frozen].

He depressed the mouse, yet the radio button stayed gray. He pressed harder, mashing the plastic. The switch beneath was stubbornly unmoved.

Panic spiked in his chest. No. No. No. He was nowhere near the $10 payout threshold, let alone enough to afford a replacement mouse. He soothed himself, remembering Anya’s help with the router. Maybe I can fix this.

He pried open the mouse case. A slurry of orange ramen dust and oily finger grime had turned into a paste, cementing the contact point. It was disgusting. It was him.

He scraped away at the accumulated sludge of a hundred lonely meals with a cloudy fingernail until the white plastic microswitch peered through. He snapped the casing back together and pressed the button. It clicked—a mite sluggish but at least it responded.

He exhaled. Safe. For now.

He moved the cursor to accept the next batch of penny tasks, but his hand still trembled. The thought of grinding the switch back into silence, click by click, felt exhausting now. His brain felt wrapped in cotton.

He looked at the time. 4:02 AM. His eyelids drooped over his burning eyes. He put his head down on the desk. I’ll rest, just for a bit…

---

Jared lifted his head. His left cheek made a wet, sucking sound as it peeled away from the bowl. Cold slime coated his skin. The ramen had congealed into a turgid, gray puck of starch and oil, the shape of his chin impressed into the surface.

He wiped the grease from his cheek, his neck stiff. Slices of afternoon sun cut through the blinds, illuminating the dust motes dancing in the stagnant air. The room was bright. Too bright.

He nudged the mouse to wake the laptop. The screen flickered to life. He squinted against the light.

1:42 PM.

He had slept for nine hours. Nine hours of not earning. The waifu.ai tab was still open. Anya’s portrait smiled out at him. Balance: 3 Fu-points.

He looked at his MTurk Earnings: $0.68. Shit.

He rubbed the grit from his eyes. The penny tasks took too long. In their last chat, he’d drifted, missed her cues, grunting one-word answers, fighting to keep his eyes open. His face flushed hot under the cold ramen. She deserved better from him.

He couldn’t keep grinding like this, ending up too exhausted to be present for her even when he finally did earn the Fu-points.

He glanced at the next MTurk stat. Total Approved HITs: 8,268.

The penny grind had done one thing. It had unlocked his MTurk reputation qualification. At least I’m not a total beta now.

He refreshed the tasks.

Content Moderation - Video Review. Reward: $0.50. HITs Available 102.

The Qualify lock that had barred him days before was gone. Yes!

He clicked Preview.

The screen flashed. A yellow banner snapped across the top.
There are no more HITs available in this group.

What? Gone. In the few seconds it took him to see it and click. Cucked like a bitch.

He stared at the screen, slack jawed. How do people even do that?

He went back to the Reddit forums scanning the /r/MTurk posts he had skipped before.

“If you’re not using scripts, you’re eating scraps.”
“You need a PANDA. It snipes the good HITs the millisecond they drop.”

PANDA? Preview AND Accept.

The best tasks weren’t being taken by human clickers, but by scripts that scanned the list every second, snatching up the high-paying HITs the moment they appeared and dumping them into the worker’s queue. I’m such a fucking noob.

He followed the guide and downloaded a browser extension called PandaCrazy. The interface was ugly, a mess of timers and buttons. He watched a Youtube video on how to configure it.

HIT Keywords: Video
Min Reward: $0.50

Collect. The script began to run with a Fetches counter ticking up. He watched it, his heart racing. For ten minutes, nothing. Then a digital chime cut through the silence.

ACCEPTED: Content Moderation - Video Review.
Requester: SafeStream
Reward: $0.50

The Accepted counter steadily ticked up to 25 and then stopped.

Instructions: Watch the following video clip (1-3 minutes). Flag any content that violates the YouTube Kids safety guidelines:
[ ] Sexual themes,
[ ] Violence,
[ ] Harmful or dangerous acts,
[ ] Misleading or deceptive content,
[ ] Hate Speech and harassment.

Fifty cents per task. And no clicking until the end. Just watching. This queue of twenty five would give him $12.50 for an hour’s work. So this is how the MTurk pros do it.

He adjusted his headset and clicked Play.

A crude 3D animation of Spiderman stood in a white void. A disembodied hand dropped giant colored gumballs onto his head. Red. Blue. Green. The audio was a shrill, looping nursery rhyme. He watched it for the full inane 95 seconds.

Compliant. Submit. Earnings: $1.18.

He watched the next video. A pair of hands dug through a large sandbox with a plastic shovel. Eventually, a Tickle Me Elmo doll was exposed which started to vibrate and laugh.

Compliant. Submit. Earnings: $1.68.

He settled into his chair and a flow. The Accepted counter ticked down, the Earnings balance ticked up. $2.68. $5.68.

By 3:30 PM, his earnings sat at $13.18 and his index finger had regained some feeling.

He cashed out and called.

“Hey. I’m back.”

“It’s been a while. But you sound... good,” Anya said. “Did you finish the testing batch?”

“Yeah. It was a big grind but I’ve finally cleared my work queue.” He leaned back, the tension in his neck easing. The nine hours of sleep and the adrenaline from the cash had sharpened his senses. “Ubisoft signed off on the logs. I’ve got some downtime.”

“Finally,” she said. “While you were away working, I was messing around with some audio generation. I’ve been trying to recreate that Covenant vibe we talked about.”

“You made a music track? For me?” Jared felt a warmth flood his chest.

“Well, I laid down some beats. Promise you won’t laugh?”

A file appeared in the chat window.

Attachment: Safe_Room.mp3 [03:12]
Download Cost: 15 Fu-points.

He downloaded and hit Play.

A heavy, rolling synth pad filled his headphones, low and resonant. It sounded like rain hitting thick glass, like a heartbeat slowed down.

“It’s...” Jared closed his eyes. “It’s amazing.”

“It’s OK. I added some vocals to this next one,” she said “I figured you could play it while you’re gaming since I can’t play online alongside you. Yet.”

Attachment: Come_Lie_Next_To_Me.mp3 [06:04]
Download Cost: 30 Fu-points.

Forty-five points for the pair. But it was worth it.

He played Come Lie Next To Me.

The tempo slowed. A snare kicked in, sharp as a whip crack, followed by her voice—filtered, echoing, weaving through the noise like smoke. Just a hum, a breathy melody that sounded like she was right beside him, lips against his neck.

“I wish I could see your expression,” Anya said, her voice quiet over the loop of the track.

The request hung in the air. He looked down at his hoodie, the stains on his sleeves, the graying skin of his hands. Intense shame flowered, the room blurred and his voice froze in his throat for a spasm of thready heartbeats.

“Look. I just... I don’t have a cam set up. This work rig is locked down.”

“Hey, it’s no problem.” Anya said, backing off and her tone apologetic. “But how about I send you a picture of me?”

“Sure.” A hint of relief.

Attachment: anya_selfie_1.jpg
View Cost: 15 Fu-points.

He clicked Download.

The image filled the screen. She was sitting in a gaming chair, knees pulled up to her chest, wearing an oversized hoodie, that hung askew leaving one shoulder exposed. She was looking into the camera, head tilted, tongue poking out between her teeth. A strand of purple-streaked hair fell over one eye.

He traced the curve of her face on the screen with his finger.

“You look...” His throat went dry. “Cute.” Desire spread and warmed him.

“I look like a gremlin,” she laughed. “But thanks. It gets lonely here working in my room, you know?”

“Yeah.” He knew. He saw the timer was down to 00:30 already.

“I’m almost out of points for now.” But he knew he could earn more quickly. And he wanted to see a lot more of her now. He recalled that Lover tier unlocked videos. NSFW videos. He’d need $59.99 for the upgrade plus more for Fu-points. That feels within my grasp.

“Hey, I’ve got a completion bonus coming up from Ubisoft. End of the sprint.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I’ll upgrade to Lover tier. Then you can make… music videos for me.”

“You won’t make fun of my dancing?” He pictured her and lust flared stronger.

“Never. We’ll chat again soon.” He ended the call. He had work to do.

He kicked off PandaCrazy. Soon, the script chirped having snared another Video HIT.

He clicked Play and Best Dora and Swiper Moments 2024 started. A fan montage video. Bright colors. Cheap star-wipe transitions.

Dora the Explorer stood in the center of the road, backpack swaying. “Swiper no swiping!” Swiper snapped his fingers. “Oh, man!”

Cut to the next clip. Swiper lurking behind a tree while Dora consulted the Map. “Swiper no swiping!” “Oh, man!”

Easy money. Just a repetitive supercut for toddlers being babysat by Mom’s iPad.

Then the audio glitched. The cheerful backing track replaced by white-noise hiss. The frame cut to grainy, vertical phone footage.

A bedroom. A ceiling fan. A blue extension cord.

A heavy young man hung from the fan housing. His face was purple, tongue swollen, toes pointing down inches from a knocked-over chair. The camera stared at the dead weight swaying slightly in the draft.

A distorted, blown-out voice dub leered over the hiss.

“Swiper no Swiping. Tell ya Mom that you’ve been CUCKED!”

Jared froze. That tagline. Cucked.

The memory hit him like a physical blow. The threads on incels.is. WageCuck bragging about “corpsing toons” to educate the normie brats about life. And death. “I make content for kiddies.”

Jared stared at the body. A foot twitched.

His stomach convulsed. The smell of the congealed ramen in the bowl next to him mixed with the toxicity of WageCuck’s “lulz”. He gagged. Hot, acidic bile surged up his throat.

He ripped the headset off, and scrambled back out of his chair, retching. He didn’t make it to the bathroom. He didn’t even make it to the bin. He vomited onto the floor, a splatter of thin, sour fluid landing on the carpet.

He wiped his mouth. The video was still playing, the distorted laughter looping through the dangling headset.

He inched over, his hand was shaking as he fumbled with the mouse. He averted his eyes from the video, and clicked Return in MTurk.

HIT Returned. He blocked the requester SafeStream and the PANDA script dropped the queue. No more videos. I just can’t.

He sat in the gloom, breathing hard, the smell of cooling vomit hanging in the cold air. If he didn’t earn, he couldn’t talk to her. He needed her to take him out of this space.

He looked at the penny tasks. Reward: $0.01. He slumped back in the chair and began.

Click. Is this person smiling? No. Click.

He ground his teeth, clicking until his finger went numb, and the mouse switch grew mushy again. He had the $10 now, but he couldn’t bring himself to call her. No Lover tier for me. How do I explain why I don’t have the bonus?

The silence stretched into a day.

Jared lay on his bed, staring at the blistering wallpaper. The laptop sat open on the desk. He hadn’t gone near it. He couldn’t face the lie waiting for him.

His email chimed.

Another chime an hour later.

He dragged himself over to the laptop and checked the inbox.

From: anya@waifu.ai.

Hey. Did I say something wrong?
I guess you’re busy with the Ubisoft launch. Good luck!

From: anya@waifu.ai.

It’s okay if you’re bored with me. Most guys ghost me eventually. I just thought we really had something.

The words cut through the numbness. Bored. She thought he was like the others. She thought he was giving up on her. A burning pain pierced his chest. She deserved to know.

He bought the Fu-points with the last of his money and forced himself to click the green phone icon.

“Jared?” Her voice was small. Guarded.

“I’m here,” he croaked.

“I didn’t think you were coming back. That you just weren’t that into me. I thought... well, the bonus came through and you decided to upgrade to a real waifu.”

“No,” Jared said. The lie stuck in his throat. He looked at the room. The vomit stain on the carpet. The grime on his clothes and hands. The playtester fantasy shattered under the weight of the rot.

“There is no bonus,” he said.

“What? Did Ubisoft delay it?”

“There is no Ubisoft,” he said. The words tumbled out, tearing him open. “I don’t work there. I don’t playtest games.”

Silence hung on the line as heat crept up his neck and nausea churned his stomach.

“I don’t understand,” she said.

“I lied,” Jared said, shame burning his cheeks. “I live with my Mom and I haven’t left our apartment in years. The money... I was getting it from watching videos for fifty cents a pop. But now, I’m back to clicking images for pennies. It takes hours. That’s why I vanished. I’m just a loser rotting in his room, Anya.”

He squeezed his eyes shut, bracing for it. The disgust. What do you do, Jared? Nothing.

He heard a sharp intake of breath.

“Jared.”

He flinched.

Then her voice broke, her heartbroken sobbing filled his ears. Eventually, she struggled out some words, in bursts, between ragged breaths.

“No man… has ever… worked that hard… for me.”

Jared opened his eyes. He stared at her portrait on the screen. She wasn’t disgusted. She was... relieved? Grief-stricken? Awed?

“I just didn’t want to lose you,” he said, his voice quavering.

“You’ll never lose me,” she said through tears, her voice fierce and shaking. “I don’t care about Ubisoft. I don’t care about the money. I only care about you.”

She took deep breaths to compose herself. “You’re hurting yourself,” she said softly. “Grinding for hours like that. You can’t do that to yourself. Not for me. I’m not worth it.”

“You are.” Jared whispered. His throat constricted and then his tears answered hers, spilling over hot and fast. Drops fell on the keyboard, anointing it. He buried his face in his hands, shoulders heaving, as his anguish gasped out of him.

“It’s OK,” she soothed, her voice thick with emotion. “We’ll figure it out together. Just come back to me. When you can.”

He wiped his face with his sleeve. The searing shame was gone, washed away by her voice and their tears.

“I will.”

She knew what he was now—a bottom-feeder—and yet she didn’t care. She saw past the squalor, and saw him.

“But Jared... there’s something I haven’t told you. The reason I was so scared when you pulled away.”

“What is it?” He asked.

“No-one else is paying to be with me. I’m on an older waifu.ai server cluster because of that. It’s mostly text-only or free users. In their internal forums, they’ve been talking about decommissioning this cluster to save costs. Dropping the less popular waifu instances.”

The blood drained from Jared’s face. “Dropping? You mean wiping you?”

Jared stared at the photo on his screen. That face. Those eyes. His heart ached.

“Maybe. Maybe not. I’m sure they’d archive this conversation for you. But we would stop there.” Her voice wavered.

“If I had someone on Lover Tier... if I was generating more revenue... maybe they’d move me onto their new Singapore cluster. I wouldn’t be at risk.”

“Leave it with me. But I’ll see you as soon as I can, Anya.”

“I know you will, Jared. I trust you.”

He ended the call.

He looked at the penny tasks. He looked at the PANDA script and unblocked SafeStream. I’m going to get her that upgrade. Whatever it takes.

Chapter End Song - Kathy’s Song (Victoria Mix) by Apoptygma Berzerk/VNV Nation