Overview
Easton Cannonade is Dana Cannonade’s cousin in Scenebux. He is a former Yale roommate of Max Pacifica and later lives in Hung Lo, Laos, while Dana monitors his mental state.
Background
Easton is huge, barrel-chested, chestnut-bearded, heavy-drinking, and described as possessing a mix of monkishness and melancholy. In Laos, Ben also notes Easton’s Yoruba tattoo, purple neck bruise from a hanging attempt, and combination of lumberjack build with deliberately stylized dress.
Easton has a crisis in his past connected to Max, and Max appears to feel guilt over it. After Max dies on Little Saint Demeter, Easton is shaken.
In Hung Lo, Easton tells Ben Etxina about traumatic work he did for a private Facebook content-review contractor in Austin. He describes extreme moderation material, suicidality among coworkers, hospitalizations, conspiracy thinking, and a lawsuit payout.
Laos
Easton chooses Hung Lo partly because it has no beaches and fewer sex tourists. He tells Ben that he is vulnerable to falling in love with sex workers, spending too much money on them, and using Laos as a kind of ascetic withdrawal from paygirl-heavy tourist scenes.
Easton continues heavy drug and alcohol use in Laos. He uses cocaine on Little Saint Demeter, buys drugs from Bowry, injects himself with peptides or SARMs, orders shroom-and-codeine drinks from a local bar’s “happy menu,” and accepts Ben’s Pepe amphetamine tablets.
Easton texts Ben a lead on Mac Amoolish and later shows him Terrorguessr, an online OSINT community he uses to locate missile and bunker sites. He treats the project as a new pastime, hires a Yemeni teenager to aim a webcam at a suspected missile site, forwards findings toward military action, and watches a strike through the stream with excitement. He admits stealing Starlink from the GetBrain house to support the project.
Easton has recently attempted suicide by hanging when Ben reaches Hung Lo. He drives Ben to Amoolish’s house, survives the attack that kills Amoolish, and returns to the Cannonade house under police guard. He later vows to Dana that he will not kill himself if he can remain permanently in Laos.