The System

by Gemma Malley

  She stopped for a moment and caught her breath; the truth was that it was a relief not to be running, just for a short while. But as she stood there, the enormity of what had happened, what was still happening, started to overwhelm her. She couldn’t trust this stranger. It was his fault she was in this mess. She had to get away, had to find Milo, explain herself. Those men had to be a mistake on his part; he couldn’t have known what they’d do to her. It was all a big mix-up and by running she was just making it worse. By running, she was getting herself into serious trouble. She was going to get out of here. She was going to go to Infotec’s offices and straighten this mess out.

  But just as she started to move again, she heard someone behind her, heard a voice say ‘Frankie?’, and it made her freeze. It was Jim’s voice; he touched her lightly on the shoulder and she nearly jumped three feet in the air.

  ‘Jim?’ She turned, saw him looking at her uncertainly. ‘Jim, thank God you’re here. Look, things have got really weird. I need to get in touch with Milo …’

  ‘No, you don’t,’ he said firmly. ‘Here, have some water.’

  He pressed a bottle into Frankie’s hands; she took it gratefully. ‘Jim, we need to get out of here. There’s been this huge mix-up. Milo – he …’

  He clasped her arm. ‘Frankie, you’re shaking.’

  She looked down; sure enough her whole body was trembling.

  ‘How … how did you find me?’ she asked, falteringly.

  ‘I got an anonymous message,’ Jim said. He looked at his watch. ‘When did you last update your status?’

  ‘My status? Are you kidding me? I don’t have a bloody status. Some bitch has taken it.’ Frankie’s voice started to wobble as she talked.

  ‘You have a new chip, and that means you are registered on the mainframe, so you need to update your status. Quickly,’ he said. ‘Do it now.’

  ‘You’re serious? You, the phobic updater, are telling me to …’

  ‘Just do it,’ Jim cut in. ‘Say something apologetic. Something meek. Just in case.’

  Frankie raised an eyebrow. ‘Meek? I don’t even know what that word means.’

  ‘Don’t joke,’ Jim said. ‘Not now. Say you’re thinking things over. Coming to your senses. Something like that.’

  Frankie opened her mouth to tell him where to go, but realised she didn’t have the energy for a fight. ‘Fine.’ She opened a hologram keyboard, talking the words as she typed: ‘“Walking around, thinking things over. Have acted rashly. Am really sorry.” There. That meek enough for you?’

  Jim nodded. Then his expression changed, became sadder. ‘Frankie, I’m so sorry. So, so sorry. But right now, we have to get you somewhere safe. Look, I brought you these.’

  Frankie frowned as Jim took some clothes out of a bag. Jeans, a sweatshirt, trainers.

  ‘You’re joking aren’t you?’ she asked incredulously. ‘I’m not getting changed. I’m not wearing this stuff.’

  ‘I’m afraid you are, Frankie,’ Jim said, his voice low. ‘You have to understand, you’re in danger. Everything has changed. So you need to put these on. Do you understand, Frankie?’

  She nodded vaguely; she didn’t understand, not at all. But something told her to do as Jim said. ‘Turn around,’ she said quietly, then quickly pulled on the clothes. ‘There’s a hat in there too,’ Jim said. Frankie took it out; like the clothes, it fit her fine but felt utterly alien. Still, she supposed that was the point. Jim took the other clothes and put them in the bag, but she refused to give him her leather jacket.

  ‘Fine,’ he relented. But give me your hand.’

  ‘Another chip?’ Frankie asked. Jim nodded. She gave him her hand and winced as he took it out and replaced it with another one.

  ‘It’s a blank one,’ he said, noticing the flicker of disappointment on her face as he put it into her palm. ‘It just connects you to the mainframe, allows you to walk around. And now that it’s active, you have to update like any other chip, otherwise the mainframe will be alerted and … Well, you don’t want that. Just keep your updates simple, nothing that will attract attention, And do it regularly, okay?’

  Frankie looked at him mutinously. This wasn’t Jim’s fault, she knew that, but he was here. ‘You carry spare chips with you?’ she asked, her tone sarcastic. ‘What are you, a secret terrorist in your spare time?’

  Jim managed a rueful grin. ‘Not exactly,’ he said. ‘But I know some people.’

  Frankie stared at him. ‘What people?’ she demanded.

  ‘People,’ Jim said. ‘Just people. People who can help you. Come with me and you can tell me what’s happened. Please?’

  ‘I suppose,’ Frankie said, her tone still dubious. ‘So where are we going? Who are these people you apparently know? What’s going on, Jim?’ She felt tears pricking at her eyes and did her best to blink them away.

  Jim took a deep breath. ‘Look, we have to keep moving. Make it as hard as possible for them to keep track of you. I don’t know where your chip comes from; it might be a six-foot man for all I know. If the biometrics don’t add up, the mainframe will notice a discrepancy soon enough. So we’ll get you another one soon. And in the meantime, we need to keep moving. I’ll explain more when we’re …’ He hesitated, looking around nervously. ‘When we’re where we’re going,’ he said eventually.

  ‘And where is that, exactly?’ Frankie asked, pushing her hair back and pulling her hat down. But Jim didn’t answer; he just waited for her to follow him.

  ‘We walk quickly,’ he said. ‘But not too quickly. Pretend we’re talking to each other. Make sure you smile a lot. We’re sharing a joke. Okay? Now, just wait here one second …’ He ran off and immediately bumped into a group of girls, who shouted at him. He apologised profusely and ran back to Frankie. ‘Okay, and we’re walking again.’

  Frankie stared at him uncertainly. ‘What was that all about?’ she asked.

  ‘The chip I just removed from you,’ he shrugged. ‘Infotec will be following those girls for at least a few minutes, giving us a chance to disappear.’

  ‘I see,’ Frankie said, her brain trying to process this strange world she seemed to have fallen into where no one was what she thought they were.

  ‘Good,’ Jim said, then walked towards the main doors and out into the road. ‘This way,’ he said, tugging her arm. ‘Remember. Smile. And stay with me whatever happens.’

  Frankie had thought she knew Paris; thought she knew every road and café, no matter how off the beaten track it was. But as she walked with Jim, down alleyways she’d never even noticed before, she realised that there was a whole underbelly she’d never encountered: tiny roads with barely one camera covering everything, no screens, no personalised adverts jumping out at her as she walked. It felt like she’d gone back in time; the feeling was enhanced by the fact that she had no communication with anyone. Well, no one except the stranger, anyway, and even he had gone pretty quiet. She kept checking her instinct to update her Watchers, to make little wry comments about what she was doing, what she could see. And it made her realise how little she ever really observed her surroundings, how little thought she gave to her environment, to her thoughts, to her life. Instead, she had spent her days viewing everything through the lens of Watcher numbers, reducing every event to a sound bite to be sent out into the ether and read by people she’d never met. Now, for the first time in a very long time, she was really here, in the present, experiencing, looking, seeing. And in spite of her anger, her fear, her indignation, she realised that it felt good.

  ‘This chip,’ she said. ‘How can it be blank? How come there aren’t messages? For the person it belonged to, I mean. And where are they? How come they don’t need their chip anymore?’

  Jim frowned. ‘As far as I know, your chip will have been wiped clean of everything except its code, which is what connects it to the mainframe. There’s no address book, nothing. Every time anyone sends a message to someone else, it’s recorded and makes it easier for someone to join the dots
. So it’s better if your chip is empty. And better if you don’t try communicating with anyone. Okay?’

  Frankie digested this.

  ‘So the mainframe thinks I’m whoever this chip belonged to before?’

  ‘It should do now, yes. But these clean chips usually come from people who have died, or sometimes they’ve been smuggled out of one of the chip manufacturers. Either way, the chip is an anomaly and will soon be ringing bells somewhere. That’s why we keep changing them.’ Jim caught Frankie’s expression and stopped walking for a moment. ‘You’re still the same person Frankie. You just don’t have your chip anymore. It feels like you’re naked, I know. But you’ll get used to it. And hopefully soon you’ll get your own chip back. Okay?’

  Frankie bit her lip. ‘Okay,’ she said, as Jim started to walk again.

  Eventually Jim ducked under an archway into a little cobbled cul-de-sac, then into a café where, to Frankie’s distress, the chip reader emitted the same low beep she’d received before, only this time the waiter saw Jim and ushered her in anyway.

  It was a tiny café with room for just three tables, all decked out in old Parisian style with red checked table cloths and a zinc-topped bar. The lights were dim and the blinds at the windows let in minimal light. Jim and the waiter conferred silently, then the waiter nodded and walked towards Frankie. ‘Hold out your hand,’ he said.

  Frankie stared at him, but she did as she was told. Deftly he took out her chip yet again and pressed a new one in.

  ‘Now you need to go for a walk for a few minutes and return via the other entrance around the back.’

  ‘But …’ Frankie frowned. ‘But why?’

  ‘Because Infotec can backdate its tracking,’ Jim said. ‘They will have had every camera searching for you, every Informer looking out for you. We can’t afford to take any chances; once they home in on this chip, they’ll be here in minutes to take you away. We have to stay a few steps ahead. Even with a new chip they’ll have historical tracking and camera footage that they’ll study. You have to be caught on camera walking away because they will know soon enough the time at which you swapped chips, then, if your new chip doesn’t move away, they’ll put two and two together, check the cameras, find us on it, and they’ll raid this place. So. Say goodbye to me, look at me like I’m giving you directions, then rush off, okay? Pierre here will deal with the chip. We want them hunting in as many different directions as possible.’

  Frankie did as she was told, taking a convoluted route along several streets and alleyways before arriving at the back of the café, where she slipped inside a tall door that opened in front of her; Jim was waiting there. ‘Come on, downstairs,’ he said.

  Frankie hadn’t realised there was a downstairs, but Jim quickly opened a door that revealed a stone staircase down. Tentatively she followed him, the door clunking firmly behind her as she made her way down the steps. At the bottom was a small wine cellar with another door to the right; Jim opened it and walked through, beckoning for Frankie to follow him.

  ‘Where are we?’ she breathed as she found herself walking into a small room with stone flooring, stone walls and two low sofas covered in cushions. A small gas light flickered in the corner and a man sat at a table under a tiny window, which let in a dim glow of light. There was a small pile of vintage books by the sofa, a large blanket folded up behind them and an old-fashioned rowing machine in the corner.

  The man looked them both up and down, then stood up. He was tall, but his posture seemed stooped; he was in his sixties, his face grey, his eyes watery. ‘Jim,’ he said. ‘Good to see you. So this is Frankie? Or rather, was Frankie, should I say? I don’t think I’ve ever met a socialite before.’ His voice was gravelly, dry; Frankie regarded him uncomfortably.

  ‘I’m still Frankie,’ Frankie said pointedly. ‘And for the record, I’m not a socialite. I’m a blogger.’

  The man smiled. ‘I see.’

  His expression was incredulous, his tone patronising and Frankie bristled. ‘Do you?’ she demanded. ‘What is this place anyway?’ She could feel her anger building up, her frustration, and she needed to vent it. She rounded on Jim. ‘Where have you brought me? What am I doing here? We should be at Infotec, demanding my chip. We should be telling someone what Milo did. We should be shouting from the rooftops that the girl running around in my clothes is not me.’

  ‘Isn’t she?’ the man said gently. ‘Who are you, if not the messages you send and the picture everyone sees?’

  Frankie’s face creased with irritation. ‘Who am I? I’m me. I’m the thoughts in my head. I’m this arm. This leg. Who are you, anyway? What is this place?’

  The man held out his hand. The light was behind him, making his whole face shadowy. ‘My name is Sal,’ he said. ‘It’s very nice to meet you.’

  Frankie hesitated, then shook his hand. She owed it to Jim to be civil at least; owed it to him to give this Sal person a chance.

  ‘I need to let everyone know what they’ve done, what Milo’s done. The men he sent round, this girl who looks like me. She’s an imposter. People have to be told. They have to know.’

  ‘But they have to know what?’ Sal said with a little smile, motioning for Frankie and Jim to sit. ‘That the flesh and blood of their favourite blogger has changed? If they are in the Yemen what do they care? What do they know of your flesh and blood anyway? They know your words, your images. These continue, therefore you continue, whether it is truly you or not. You see, that is what the world is now. We are interchangeable. We are no longer essential to anything.’

  Frankie frowned. This man was beginning to irritate her. ‘This is not helping,’ she said, turning to Jim. ‘You said you knew people who could actually help me.’

  Jim pulled a rueful face. ‘Frankie,’ he said slowly. ‘Frankie, what I was trying to tell you …’

  He trailed off; Frankie looked at him in frustration. ‘What?’ she said. ‘What did you try to tell me? Will someone please tell me what the hell is going on?’

  ‘This place,’ Sal said, ‘is the Safe House, the only place in Paris that is not logged, tagged, linked in.’

  ‘Except for the reader at the door,’ Frankie said, unable to keep the sarcasm out of her voice.

  Sal nodded. ‘There is a reader, just as there has to be. But your chip has now left the café, and been taken by car into the centre of Paris. It will be updated every fifteen minutes and passed from person to person to make it as hard as possible for the Infotec thugs tasked with your murder to track you down. Eventually they will find your chip in a pile of rubbish and will start hunting for you, but by then you will be out of the country with a new identity.’

  Frankie laughed. ‘You’re joking, aren’t you? I mean, you have to be joking. Because I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to get my apartment back. My blog back. My Watchers back.’ She stood up, marched to the door and tugged it open. ‘Thanks Jim, but this really isn’t what I had in mind. I’ll leave you conspiracy theorists to your little safe house if that’s okay. I’m going to …’

  ‘Here. Watch.’ Frankie heard a voice that sounded a great deal like hers and she turned. Sal was holding up a screen; on it Frankie could see herself. Only it wasn’t her. It was her doppelganger. The imposter. She was holding her award up in her arms. The award that Frankie was supposed to have got. There were tears in the imposter’s eyes. ‘This is just the best day of my life,’ she said. ‘And I couldn’t have done any of it without Milo. My true love.’ She turned and Milo was there, next to her, grinning proudly. ‘And I can’t believe that in a few months I’m going to be his wife!’ There was rapturous applause.

  Frankie’s eyes widened and the blood drained from her face. He had proposed? At the prize-giving? Milo was marrying this imposter?

  ‘Tell us why you love Frankie so much,’ someone was saying.

  Milo smiled. ‘That’s easy. There are many pretenders to Frankie’s throne, so many people who would love to be her. But Frankie’s the real deal. Frankie’s th
e only one who comes close.’ He smiled into the camera and Frankie felt her stomach turn.

  ‘He’s lying through his teeth,’ she whispered, stepping backwards and letting the door close again.

  ‘Yes,’ Sal said simply. ‘And you, Frankie, are in grave danger.’

  12

  ‘You’re kidding me, right?’ Frankie looked at Jim uncertainly, forcing a smile, telling herself that there was some joke that she wasn’t getting, that maybe this whole thing was some weird set-up and any minute now someone was going to jump out and tell her it had all been engineered, for entertainment, for …

  For what?

  Jim’s face was deadly serious. And Jim wasn’t the sort of person to get involved in publicity stunts.

  ‘Frankie, you have to understand that everything has changed,’ he said.

  Frankie nodded slowly, trying to suppress the bile that was coming up the back of her throat. She felt a huge urge to run, to get out of this place. But she knew, deep down, that there was nowhere to run to. And it made her more angry than she’d ever thought she was capable of feeling.

  ‘How do you even know about this place?’ she said eventually, her voice choked. She couldn’t look at the other guy. At Sal, the man who hid in the shadows. ‘How do you know all this … stuff?’

  Jim exchanged a glance with Sal, who nodded what Frankie took to be his consent. ‘Some of us …’ Jim stopped, corrected himself. ‘There are people, of whom I am one, who find our current society oppressive and intrusive, who believe that Infotec’s hold over us is … unhealthy. It’s impossible to discuss with anyone because we’re being watched all the time, not just by other people but by Infotec themselves. If they hear something that alarms them, that they don’t want to hear, they move in, cut you off, reduce your credit rating, deny you access to places, to people. That’s what happened to me. And Sal found me. Sal and the … others. We meet here, sometimes. It’s a safe place. Our feeds are updated for us upstairs but here, downstairs, there are no cameras, no one watching, no one listening. Infotec doesn’t know it exists, otherwise they’d be in here like a shot.’