The System (8 page)

‘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.

‘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.

But that was before she became … Well, before she became famous. Before she met Milo. Now, his smart little jokes and his sarcastic humour didn’t seem so funny. Now she resented the way he liked to think he knew what she was thinking, particularly because he got it so wrong these days. And he was so anti Infotec, so anti Milo. It was unfair. She’d never be rude about his girlfriend. If he ever got one. If he ever took his nose out of his screen long enough to notice there were girls around.

The fact of the matter was that they moved in different worlds now, and Jim had to get with the programme. It would probably do him some good.

‘You know what, I’m kind of in the middle of something,’ she said with an apologetic shrug. ‘Maybe another time?’

Jim raised an eyebrow. ‘I guess writing about parties does take some concentration,’ he said.

Frankie’s eyes narrowed. ‘And writing your inciteful blogs for an audience of two must really take it out of you, too,’ she said archly. ‘No wonder you need coffee to keep yourself awake.’

She stared at him, waiting for his comeback. They both knew that he was the brilliant one; he always had been. But it wasn’t her fault he’d failed spectacularly to make anything of himself. After school, he was headhunted by Infotec; they offered to put him through Oxford University (now situated in Lille) and guaranteed him an amazing job afterwards. But Jim being Jim, he turned them down, refused to take the funding, refused to consider working for them. To the surprise and dismay of all his teachers, he self-funded himself through a distance-learning degree, then set up a blog that aimed to awaken the world to all the terrible things going on. But the trouble was, there were no terrible things going on, not really, and other than a handful of equally nihilistic nerds, no one ever read his blog. What Jim failed to grasp was that things were okay. Better than okay. Infotec was a force for good. Then again, Frankie often thought to herself, if he had grasped that Infotec wasn’t the megalomaniac evil corporation he made it out to be, it just would have made him more depressed. Ultimately, Frankie had realised long ago, Jim didn’t want to be happy. And he didn’t want to write things that made people happy either. In a world where happiness was a big priority, that kind of made things difficult for him. But he didn’t seem to care; he just kept on writing his gloomy blog full of stories of poverty, of invasion of privacy, of fear and loathing for anything new, or anything that seemed to make Infotec yet more money. Milo called him ‘deranged’ and she totally saw why, but a bit of her was also jealous because he never pretended to be something he wasn’t, never seemed to care that no one was interested in Watching him or even reading his blog.

She realised Jim wasn’t looking at her; he was looking over her shoulder at what she’d written. And he was smirking. Frankie moved herself in front of the screen.

‘I thought you were going for coffee,’ she said. ‘Shouldn’t you be going instead of reading my blog? Unless you want tips on how to get a few more Watchers, that is?’

Jim shook his head wearily. ‘You know, Frankie, you used to be a really good writer. I just hate seeing all that promise go to waste.’

Frankie turned around. ‘It isn’t going to waste,’ she said, angry now. ‘I have a zillion Watchers, in case you’d forgotten. And anyway, you should like this particular blog. I’m investigating just the sort of conspiracy theory that you love.’

‘Investigating? Is that what you call it?’

Frankie felt herself flush. Why had she ever defended Jim? Why had she ever thought it was a good idea to be nice to him? ‘Yes, actually,’ she said. ‘Why, what would you call it?’

‘I don’t know,’ Jim said, folding his arms. ‘But as far as I can see, you’re raising the question about a blackout over the UK and then answering it with Infotec spin. I mean I get why – this isn’t stuff anyone wants to read about, not least your boyfriend. It’s much more my territory. But if you’re not going to do it properly, why cover it at all?’

‘I am doing it properly …’ Frankie said irritably. ‘It’s a whole load of bullshit and I’m treating it as such.’

‘Whatever,’ Jim said. ‘Look, I really need some caffeine. I’ll see you around, okay?’

‘Suit yourself,’ Frankie said stiffly, refusing to even turn around. She was incandescent with rage. How dare he? How dare Jim with his poxy little blog that no one cared about criticise her, when she was Watched by so many people? Sure, barely any of them subscribed to her blog, but she still had way more readers than him, even if the stats suggested that people clicked on her blog, read the first sentence then closed it down right away.