The System

  It was a message from Jim, her old comrade in arms, her friend since she was … well, since always as far as she could remember. She scanned the line of people, clocked him and gave him a little wave. He pretended to ignore her.

  ‘Hey, some of us have work to do,’ appeared in front of her eyes. She grinned. Jim was about the only person nowadays who didn’t treat her like a superstar, who wasn’t intimidated by her, who didn’t fawn over everything she wrote or said. If anything, he judged her for being a celebrity; he preferred to keep a low profile, only updating his status every fifteen minutes, when his chip reminded him, avoiding cameras where he could and refusing to follow anyone. Which was why, she regularly told him, he was such a social outcast and couldn’t get a girlfriend.

  She sat down, took her keyboard out of her bag and unfolded it; when she was properly writing she liked the satisfying click of an old-fashioned physical keyboard rather than a VR one. Then she moved her hands to bring up her screen and opened the investigative report she was working on.

  But before she could type, another message appeared.

  ‘Hey, gorgeous. I’m missing you. What are you up to?’

  She smiled. Milo. She instinctively moved to turn on visual, but remembered where she was in time and stopped herself. ‘Hey yourself,’ she typed back. ‘I’m working. I want to get this blog done.’

  ‘The party girl strikes again?’

  Frankie raised an eyebrow then remembered that Milo couldn’t see her.

  ‘Not today. And I don’t party all the time. I want to write something interesting.’

  ‘You want me to go, is that it?’

  She smiled. ‘Milo, you’ve got a big job. Shouldn’t you be doing it right now?’

  ‘I can’t help it if you’re irresistible. You’re definitely meeting me for dinner later?’

  ‘I wouldn’t be anywhere else,’ she promised, and the message box disappeared. He was super keen, she found herself thinking. But whereas that might put her off another guy, with Milo it just made her more excited. She’d never met anyone like him. So intense, so interested in everything she did, everything she thought about.

  She frowned as another message pinged into her inbox; a personal message sent to her blog but with no name attached, no return address. A total stranger had sent it and it wasn’t the first time; she’d seen and ignored the same message several times already that morning. And sure, the world was full of total strangers and it was the fact that they followed her that made her who she was, but this kind of persistency still irritated her, particularly when it was obviously a crazy person peddling some made-up conspiracy theory,

  ‘Communications blackout over UK. Haven’t you noticed? Why? Radioactivity doesn’t require it. We have been lied to.’

  Another crazy kook. She got all sorts of drivel sent to her; kind of came with the territory. She rolled her eyes and deleted it, then started writing that day’s blog, a rather deep piece, she thought, about how the world was now so similar that the only divisions were down to weather and terrain; people were united by common language, common aspirations, and had more in common these days than at any time in history. She wrote three hundred words, re-read it, and was about to publish it when another message arrived. ‘You think I’m crazy so why not look into it for yourself? As far as your systems are concerned, there is no UK. Don’t you want to know why?’

  Frankie looked at it in irritation. What was it with people and their conspiracy theories? They were so pointless, so damaging. Only desperate bloggers took them seriously. Her blogs were considered, thoughtful, carefully researched. Like that one she did on wheat rationing in sub-Saharan states.

  Of course, her reader numbers had dipped to an all-time low after that blog. Like Milo kept telling her, it was new dresses that people were interested in, parties, kissing Milo for the cameras. That’s why the vast majority of her followers had deselected her blog when they’d subscribed to Watch her. Which hurt a little, if Frankie was honest, but she understood why. Kind of.

  ‘Gorgeous,’ Milo had explained patiently, ‘it’s not that you’re not a great writer. You are. But no one reads your blog because people don’t care about serious things. They have enough of that stuff in their own lives. They want you to take them away from that. They want to know where you’ve been, what you’ve been up to.’

  Maybe a conspiracy theory piece wasn’t such a bad idea after all, she found herself thinking, then shook herself. She wasn’t that desperate. Instead, she forwarded the email to Milo with a quizzical face. Maybe she should write the story, she found herself thinking, but with a damning indictment of the whole conspiracy, warning against anyone taking such stupidity seriously.

  To her surprise, Milo messaged back straight away.

  ‘Total loon. Frankie, don’t get sidetracked by crazy people. And whatever you do don’t give them oxygen. People won’t respect you for it. You’ll lose social capital.’

  Frankie pulled a face. Milo was always using phrases like ‘social capital’. Everything was business to him; everything was about on-message branding. But he was right. He was always right.

  The weird thing was, though, that him telling her not to cover the crackpot theory somehow made her want to write about it.

  ‘I was thinking about writing about it, but not giving it oxygen, more talking about the way that all those conspiracy theories over the UK just refuse to go away and why that might be?’ she asked him.

  ‘Absolutely not,’ Milo messaged back right away. ‘Don’t do it. You don’t want to upset people. People will have relatives who died over there. Don’t go reminding them. That’s an order, Frankie.’

  Frankie stared at the words for a few seconds. An order? What the hell did that mean?

  She took a deep breath. He meant it tongue in cheek. He had to. He’d never give her an order seriously.

  She re-read the message. Of course, he was right about reminding people. People never talked about the UK; it was the world’s elephant in the room; it quashed most arguments for letting people do their own thing, for not worrying if people didn’t update regularly enough. A whole country annihilated because a few extremists got too powerful, because the government didn’t act quickly enough to stop the inevitable retaliation and escalation. A whole country destroyed by a nuclear bomb that should never have been activated; no one was even quite sure who controlled it. According to those who had been alive at the time, it had been life-changing, world-changing. No one felt safe anymore; no one took anything for granted afterwards.

  She closed the stranger’s email and turned back to another blog she’d started the day before – a piece on how information sharing was the latest development in human evolution, about how for billions of years humans had developed tools like language, the written word, the telephone, the television, to communicate ideas with each other, and that now InfoSharing meant that humans were almost like one, ideas being communicated instantly across the globe, total openness meaning that genuine equality was becoming more and more achievable. It wasn’t great, but it was better than the piece she’d written today. It would do. She read it over once more, then felt her stomach clench as another message popped up from the stranger.

  ‘If you want the truth, don’t expect to get it from the people who lied in the first place. I thought you were an investigative blogger. So investigate.’

  Frankie could feel her heart thudding in her chest. How did they know she’d spoken to Milo? Then she shook herself. Of course they didn’t know. They were guessing. Milo was her boyfriend after all.

  But it still irked her. Still made her feel hot and uncomfortable.

  Another message appeared. ‘What if I’m not crazy? What if I’m telling the truth? Just dig a little bit, then ignore me if you want to. Because your interest is piqued, isn’t it? And you’re your own woman, right?’

  Frankie stared at the screen, feeling the blood drain from her face. Her own woman? It was like this person had seen the message Milo ha
d sent her. And taken it seriously.

  ‘How about if I say please? And smile flirtatiously? You can’t see it, but I’m doing it, right now. My most charming smile.’

  The messages were coming through thick and fast; Frankie leant forwards to read them all again.

  Her heart was thudding in her chest. Who was this? He wasn’t like the usual conspiracy theorist, who would write long diatribes full of assertions that had no evidence to back them up. This guy … he was different. And it was a ‘he’. Frankie was sure of it. She frowned.

  ‘You’re wondering if maybe there’s something in it after all, aren’t you? I know you are. Frankie, you’re cool, and hot, but you’re also clever. So do something brave. Do something a bit more exciting. Please?’

  Frankie bit her lip and did her best not to smile. The stranger was totally flirting with her. If Milo knew he’d be furious.

  But he’d said ‘please’, which was better than ‘That’s an order.’

  Even if Milo had been joking, the words still rankled. Which was no reason for listening to the stranger. No reason at all. But then again, people had been talking about the UK all her life; theories abounded of how there were still people there, that the talk of radiation was a conspiracy to stop people investigating. And she knew it was all just conjecture and gossip; knew that test after test had been done to confirm the devastation, but what if the stranger was onto something? What if there was something real underpinning the rumours? What if there was something that they weren’t being told?

  And as if the messager knew what she was thinking, as though he was sitting right there with her, another message appeared from the same untraceable address. ‘Don’t be an Infotec Stooge. Think for yourself. Look into it before you dismiss me out of hand.’

  The smile disappeared from her face immediately. Infotec Stooge? How dare they? How dare someone say such a thing? She would sue. She would tell Milo and get him to track them down and …

  Her eyes narrowed. Not Milo. She didn’t need Milo and his Infotec army. That would play into this person’s prejudices. She was so not an Infotec Stooge. She was totally her own person.

  She folded her arms in irritation; whoever this person was they had hit a nerve. She’d ask Jim to track him down instead, she decided. Then she’d write back and make it absolutely clear that the reason she wasn’t following up on his message was because he was obviously mad and delusional, that’s all.

  ‘Try sending a message to the US and follow its path. You know how to do that?’

  She stared at the message in front of her eyes. The audacity of it! Of course she knew how to do that. But she was busy. She was pissed off. She wasn’t doing anything just because some mad person wouldn’t leave her alone.

  She exhaled angrily. Then her eyes narrowed. Maybe she could send one message. Just one. Just to see. The message would whizz straight to the US and that would be the end of that, she reasoned. Conversation over.

  Quickly she sent a few messages to the US and traced their path. Then she watched uncertainly as everything bypassed the UK, zigzagging round it, which was strange because nuclear fallout might be bad for humans but, to her knowledge, there was no reason wireless signals should avoid it.

  Then again it didn’t mean anything. So the network was complex. There would be a reason. A perfectly good reason.

  Suddenly Frankie had an idea. She went into the ‘Questions Worth Answering’ section of her blog, and wrote about what she’d done, asking if anyone had any suggestions.

  Straight away her palm started to tickle; it was Milo. ‘Milo?’ she whispered. ‘I’m in the Library. Can’t really talk.’

  ‘What’s with the question?’ he asked immediately.

  ‘The question?’

  ‘The one you’ve just posted. Frankie, I thought you understood that you’re in a powerful position. You can’t go repeating crazy theories because you’ll give them credence. You’ll get people worried. And you’ll put my career in jeopardy. Take it down. Now.’

  Frankie cleared her throat. ‘Take it down? Milo, it’s just a question on my blog. I doubt anyone’s even seen it. No one’s interested in my blog, remember?’

  ‘I’ve seen it,’ Milo said. ‘And I want you to take it down. It makes you look foolish. It makes me look foolish.’

  Frankie felt her jaw harden. ‘Then why don’t you answer the question?’ she said, her temper beginning to flare as it always did when people tried to hem her in.

  ‘You really want me to?’ Milo sighed. ‘You know, I don’t really know. But I suspect the protective barriers that were erected around the UK after its civil war, after the devastation of the nuclear attack, have probably got something to do with it. And I’d love to double check it, love to go over there just for you so I can clear up any uncertainty, but I’m not so wild on nuclear contamination, if it’s alright with you. Not so keen on sending anyone else over yet either. But just as soon as the United Nations has given the all-clear for their envoys to visit the islands and test their radioactivity levels, I’ll be sure to ask them to look into zigzagging communication lines. For your blog. Because you got a message from some weirdo. Okay, Frankie?’

  His tone was more sarcastic than she’d ever heard it; Frankie knew that she’d riled him, knew that everything he was saying made sense.

  She sighed. ‘I guess I just wanted to write about something important,’ she said quietly.

  ‘So do that,’ Milo said impatiently, ‘but make it properly important. Write about how much happier people are now. Write about how safe they feel, how protected, how unified the whole world is. Please delete that stupid question. Please do it right now.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Frankie said. ‘Yeah, okay.’

  ‘And leave some time to get ready for tonight. I’m planning to ask you something important. I’m kind of hoping the focus could be on us. Not some technological hitch that may or may not exist. Think about us, not some freak.’

  Frankie reddened in pleasure. ‘I will think only about us,’ she promised. ‘I’m sorry, Milo. Okay, see you later. Can’t wait …’

  She closed down the conversation, then sat back against her chair. An important question. Was he seriously going to propose? That was a bit out there. Really lovely, but still quite bonkers. She was only nineteen after all. She wasn’t sure she was ready to get married. Was she? She shook herself. Of course she was. She loved Milo; was definitely ready to commit to him. He was everything she’d ever wanted. But being a Mrs? Freaky. Seriously. Maybe he was going to suggest they live together? She could be moving into his a.m.a.z.i.n.g flat in St Germain. Hell, that was definitely worth a blog.

  But as she started to delete the question on her blog, another message popped up. ‘He called pretty quickly. And seems very keen that you don’t write anything. I wonder why? And I wonder if you’re going to do what he tells you to? I hope not. You’re better than that.’

  Frankie stared at the screen indignantly. Who the hell was this person? How did he hear her private conversation with Milo? And how dare he suggest he’d called to shut her up. Milo was her boyfriend. If he gave her advice it was because he wanted her to do well, because he understood the social market, because he was in love with her. He often made suggestions about what she wore and which parties she should go to; why shouldn’t he give her advice on what she wrote, too? He was a smart guy. That’s why he was head of Infotec Paris; he knew how to make things good, how to make things successful.

  And, frankly, she could blog about whatever she bloody well liked.

  She closed the message. Then she opened it again. Then closed it. Then she stood up. This was making her really mad. Milo was right: the messager was obviously a freak. But she didn’t want the freak thinking that she was a stooge when she was absolutely not. She was her own person. Always had been. Infotec didn’t tell her what to write, but nor did she let freaks dictate to her either. She hadn’t asked Infotec to put her on its Top Ten New Faces to Watch. She hadn’t gone out of her way to
fall in love with the head of Infotec.

  She sat down again. And then she made a decision. She would leave the question on her website. But she would also write a short blog about it and, in doing so, would close the question down, demonstrate that it was stupid. In one fell swoop, she would prove she was her own person and show Milo that she was able to tackle crazy ideas without appearing crazy herself.

  At the thought of Milo and his big question, butterflies appeared in Frankie’s stomach; she enjoyed the sensation for a few seconds, imagined herself looking into Milo’s eyes, the world watching as he asked her to marry him, move in with him, or something, something big … Then she briefly turned on the camera on her computer to update, steeled herself, and started to write.

  8

  ‘Working hard?’

  Jim’s face popped up in front of Frankie and she looked at him awkwardly.

  ‘You know. Pretty hard,’ she said, shooting him a quick smile before turning back to her work.

  It was already 11 a.m., she realised; 11 a.m. was when they used to stop for coffee. Every day for a long time. But lately … lately she hadn’t really had time for coffee. Or time for Jim. He was a nice guy. Really nice. It was just that her life had changed; he had to realise that she didn’t have the same amount of time as before.

  ‘Too busy for coffee then?’ He looked disappointed. Or rather, he looked like he was trying not to look disappointed, which amounted to the same thing. She sighed, telling herself not to feel bad. She’d been his friend for a long time; at school she’d done her best to hang out with him, even though she was the popular, pretty one, and he was a nerd that no one really had any time for. He was a geek, after all. A geek who liked to question everything and be difficult about everything and make life incredibly hard for himself. But he’d also lived in the same apartment block as her, and he was kind of funny and weird and Frankie had always had a soft spot for him; she’d always been able to see beyond the angry-young-man act to the clever, thoughtful friend who always used to know what was wrong before she’d even opened her mouth to speak, who saw through the crap that fixated everyone else, who always gave her the best advice, who never demanded anything of her. Except for coffee, of course.