The System

by Gemma Malley

Genres: Fantasy; Coming of Age; Science Fiction; YA Dystopian

Synopsis

To survive you need people watching you, following your every move. That's the only currency now: being interesting, being liked ... And, of course, you have to update every fifteen minutes. It means everyone knows where you are, what you're doing; it means that there are no secrets... Everybody watches everyone else; nothing is hidden. And for those who fail to 'update' every fifteen minutes, the consequences are deadly. Evie and Raffy may have escaped the City but they still fear for their lives. Now the only person who can help them is Frankie, a total stranger, the most popular girl in the world, watched every second by millions of people. But Frankie has other ideas... And all the time, Lucas is waiting desperately for word from Evie, word that she is coming back to him. The conclusion to Gemma Malley's terrifyingly dark vision of our near future will leave you gasping for air.

Release date: December 5, 2013

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 369

Sample

Raffy watched silently as he, Evie, Linus and Benjamin were ushered into a large room by Thomas, their captor. Every so often he sneaked a little look at Evie, and each time it felt like a punch to the stomach because he knew that she would resent his gaze, knew that the only thing she felt for him was hatred and disappointment. She looked dazed, tired, desperate; she was staring ahead resolutely but he could see from her bloodshot eyes that she was having to work hard to hold herself together. And in a weird way it made him proud of her; she’d never let Thomas see her crack. She was too strong, too stubborn, too determined. It was what he had always loved about her, always been drawn to, those fierce eyes of hers, the way she was always so fearless even when she had so much to lose.

And now she had lost it all because of him. Now everyone had lost. No one would meet his eyes, acknowledge his existence. No one except Benjamin, that is, who had put his arm around him gently as they walked into the room, whose sad eyes gazed at him in pure forgiveness, which Raffy found even harder to take. He knew he had let down the one man he would have done anything for. That Benjamin might forgive him just made him loathe himself even more.

‘I’m sure you’ll find this comfortable,’ Thomas was saying, showing them around. Raffy could tell that everyone was doing their best to look unimpressed, unfazed, but the truth was that the place was incredible. It was huge, a sprawling apartment with floor-to-ceiling windows along one wall that were frosted so that they couldn’t see out. Thick rugs covered the floor, and enormous sofas sat comfortably around the place. In one corner was a kitchen with gleaming black surfaces, on which sat a huge bowl of fruit and an even larger bowl full of cakes of some sort. There were two doors with glass panels, both closed; several solid doors were open and led into bedrooms, cavernous rooms with giant beds, private bathrooms and soft fluffy dressing gowns.

And then there were the screens. Large screens covered every wall, in every room, even the bathrooms. Screens that were divided up into ten, twenty moving images; other screens that showed just one. They showed people, walking down the street, laughing, talking, typing messages into mid-air that then miraculously appeared at the bottom of the screen. Most of them showed the same girl striding down the street, a purposeful look on her face.

Raffy tried not to look at them, tried to look nowhere, at nothing, but he couldn’t help himself, couldn’t stop himself from staring at the girl who beamed out from so many of the screens. A beautiful girl in a pale pink dress, she seemed to glow as she threw her head back and laughed.

‘That’s Frankie,’ Thomas said with a little smile. ‘I expect you’ll get to know her quite well.’

‘Who … who is she?’ Raffy asked, needing to speak, needing to have his voice heard as though it might cut through the atmosphere, make things more normal.

‘Frankie? She’s the third most Watched person on the planet,’ Thomas said lightly. ‘A great ambassador for Infotec, although she doesn’t know it. Everyone right around the world either wants Frankie or wants to be Frankie.’

Raffy stared at the screen. ‘Infotec,’ he said, his voice low, unemotional. ‘This place belongs to your company?’

Thomas looked at him for a moment, then started to laugh. ‘Raffy, you don’t get it, do you? Infotec owns everything. Everything and everyone. Now, let me show you where you’re going to be working. That is the point of this little holiday, after all.’

He walked towards the two glass doors and opened the first. In the room was a desk and a computer, which immediately said hello, making Raffy start slightly; on the wall was another screen.

‘Linus, you’ll be in here,’ Thomas said. ‘You have the latest technology at your disposal. Raffy, you’re in here.’ He walked out of the room and into an identical one next door. ‘Linus, you will build the System; Raffy, you will check his code. My people will then check it again. If any discrepancies are found, any errors, any little worms or viruses, Benjamin and Evie will be punished. Do you understand?’

Linus looked around the room thoughtfully. ‘Where are we, Thomas? Paris? Somewhere close to Paris?’ Raffy glanced at him, suddenly realising why Linus had spent the journey here, by helicopter, with his face pressed against the window. Raffy had assumed travel sickness or anger, or both. It had taken them about two hours; in that short time they had travelled from a cave in the desolate scrubland outside the City to a civilisation that they had been led to believe had been destroyed many years before. Then again, they’d been led to believe a lot of things, and most of them had been lies.

Thomas nodded, smiling. ‘Pretty good,’ he said. ‘So, let me introduce you to Milo. Milo, get in here please.’

Raffy didn’t know who he was speaking to, but a few moments later the door opened and a man appeared, much younger than Thomas, his dark hair swept to the side, his face lightly tanned, his shoes shining. He was wearing a suit with a polo-neck jumper underneath; his teeth gleamed white.

‘So, which one of you is Linus?’ he asked, his face breaking into a grin that didn’t reach his eyes.

Raffy stared at him sullenly. ‘Which one do you think?’ he muttered.

‘I’m Linus,’ Linus said then, stepping forwards, his voice soft, his expression unreadable. ‘You’re Milo? Nice to meet you, Milo. And how do you fit into this nice little set-up?’

Milo didn’t answer; he looked at Thomas, who was staring at Linus, a strange look in his eye. ‘This is him,’ he said. ‘This is the man who built the System. This is the man I created this world for.’

‘No,’ Linus corrected him immediately. The tone of his voice was still light, but there was no mistaking the seriousness in it. ‘I can’t take any credit for what you’ve achieved here. You didn’t build any of it for me, Thomas. I didn’t ask you to do any of this.’

‘You’re right.’ Thomas shrugged dismissively, then his eyes lit up again. ‘I did it all myself. And it’s brilliant. Truly brilliant.’

‘You’ve certainly been busy,’ Linus said, nodding to himself as he gazed around. ‘Tell me about the screens, Thomas. Who are these people?’

‘Well, you’ve met Frankie,’ Thomas smiled at Milo. ‘The lovely Frankie, eh, Milo? She’s Milo’s girlfriend, lucky guy.’

Milo smiled bashfully.

‘And the others?’ Linus asked. ‘They work for you?’

‘Work for me? No, Linus. None of them work for me. Not even Frankie. No, they are just going about their lives, but everyone watches them. Well, not everyone. Only people like Frankie get watched by everyone. Only the most popular. Most people are just watched by us, by their friends and families, by ex-lovers, by prospective ones. But everyone is watched. All the time. It’s part of the deal. And the best part is they love it. Everyone wants to build their numbers. The more Watchers they have, the more income they receive, but more importantly, the cheaper everything becomes. Restaurants give them money off because they’re advertising their establishment. Clothes are virtually free. They get to the top 1000 most Watched in their country and they can get pretty much anything they want for free.’

‘You’re watching all these people? All the time?’ Evie asked suddenly, her mouth hanging open as she stared at the screen next to Raffy’s office, which had thirty or so images on it, ten of them Frankie. Raffy watched too; watched a man walk into a bathroom and urinate, watched a man undress a woman, kissing her breast.

‘Me personally? Oh no. No, I don’t have to Watch them. I can if I want to. If I sniff a problem. But mostly we just sit back. Because everyone else is doing it for us,’ Thomas said, a little glint in his eye. ‘Incredible, isn’t it?’ he asked, turning back to Linus. ‘Fear got me through the door. I mean if it hadn’t been for the Horrors, I’d never have convinced the governments of the world to install cameras on every corner, in every room of every building. But what I never expected is how much people like being looked at. The narcissist in all of us is quite a potent tool, you know.’

‘It certainly is quite something,’ Linus said, frowning as he looked at the screens. ‘But this woman, she’s at home?’ He motioned at the image on the top left hand of the screen, a middle-aged woman drinking a cup of tea, carefully dunking a biscuit into it.

Thomas nodded enthusiastically. ‘CCTV captures people outside the home, but ninety-four per cent of people now have cameras in their homes too and they’re better quality generally.’

‘People actually have cameras in their homes now?’ Linus asked.

Thomas looked very pleased with himself. ‘What can I say? People like them; won’t stop installing them,’ he said with a little shrug that belied the glint in his eye. ‘They want higher Watcher numbers, and they like the security. And of course it makes updating much easier. Every fifteen minutes – that’s the rule. Unless you’re in sight of a camera, you have to manually update your status. So that everyone knows what you’re doing, so everyone knows you’re safe. Having cameras in your home makes everything much easier.’ He laughed.

‘How do people sleep?’ Linus asked, curiously.

‘Motion sensors on the bed capture DNA from the skin,’ Thomas said proudly. ‘People can switch them on and switch off the cameras if they want to … if they want some private time. Although people don’t care so much about private time these days. Private time means that Watchers lose interest. Got to keep those numbers up. Got to be entertaining. Sometimes people share just a little too much for my liking, but what are you going to do when they’re all chasing Watcher numbers? Far be it from me to get in the way.’ He winked, and laughed again, like he’d just told the funniest joke. But no one else laughed.

‘And these Watcher numbers,’ Linus asked conversationally. ‘How do they work?’

Raffy looked at him curiously, wondering how he could stay so calm. Because Thomas was no ordinary man. This man had manipulated a war so that Linus would build a computer system that was capable of controlling people’s lives, capable of reading their thoughts. This man had made Linus believe, along with all the other survivors in the UK, that the rest of the world had been destroyed, that there was nothing left, that it was up to them to build a new civilisation. And this man had manipulated them every step of the way, bribing, corrupting, controlling them. All so that Linus would build his System, which, as he’d told Thomas years before, during a brief internship at Infotec, required an impossible situation: a small population who genuinely desired to be controlled, cut off from the rest of the world. He had said it as an off-hand remark, little guessing that Thomas would take him at his word and would spend the next ten years engineering exactly that.

Thomas grinned. ‘Watcher numbers are ingenious – I know you’ll agree. We don’t have celebrities anymore; we just have people who are Watched and people who no one cares about. Each Watcher generates a penny a week in income. There are no benefits anymore, there’s no state to give you money. If you need money, you earn it, by living your life on camera, by convincing people to Watch you every minute of every day. And it’s not just income; with Watchers comes power, influence. If Frankie wants to buy a dress, the shop will virtually give it to her because she’ll make it famous. For everyone else there’s a sliding scale. Try to buy one when you’ve got Watchers in double digits only and it’ll cost you a fortune. Which is why everyone wants to be followed. Everyone! See this girl?’ He moved his hand; immediately every screen showed the same person, a girl with cropped white hair, wearing a pink dress and a black leather jacket, laughing, then embracing another girl. ‘She’s copying Frankie, hoping that some of Frankie’s magic will rub off on her. Good luck to her.’

‘And your hand. What’s that? Some kind of chip?’ Linus asked, his brow furrowing.

Thomas moved towards Linus, putting his arm around him and showing him his hand. In the fleshy area beneath his thumb, Raffy saw a flesh-coloured panel, barely noticeable. ‘See this hardened skin? Look what’s inside.’ He tugged at the panel and it came out smoothly, like a drawer. Out of his hand. Raffy’s eyes widened.

‘Impressive, huh?’ Thomas laughed. ‘We tried getting people to just carry them in glasses, jewellery, that sort of thing. But they always took the things off eventually. This way, the chip’s with them all the time. It’s a simple procedure. The skin hardens over time so you can take them out and exchange them like an earring. And look what they can do,’ he said, replacing the chip back in his hand and waving it around, watching for Linus’s reaction as all the screens changed. ‘Chips make everything so much more secure. Everyone has one – a tiny computer at their disposal 24/7. They can talk to their friends, and Watchers, download information, anything, all in front of their eyes, no screen required. And of course it’s linked to the mainframe so we know where they are and what they’re doing. They love it. And why wouldn’t they? A chip that allows them access to everything.’

‘And, presumably, denies them access when it suits you?’ Linus asked, his voice deadpan.

Thomas laughed. ‘So cynical, Linus. Always so cynical. Chips have revolutionised the world. Made it safer. World peace, Linus. That’s what the people want. And that’s what I’ve given them.’ His voice was serious, but he winked as he spoke. ‘Nothing like the destruction of a first-world nation to shake people up, make them review their priorities …’ His eyes were gleaming as he moved away and stood next to Milo, both of them apparently scrutinising Linus’s face for a reaction. Linus offered them nothing; he just looked right back at Thomas, his crinkly blue eyes giving nothing away.

Thomas frowned. ‘But look at me, talking too much and forgetting my own priorities,’ he said briskly. ‘So. Here’s the deal. This is where you live for the next three months. Everyone has their own room; there will be plenty of nice food, drink and screens to watch. As I’ve already told you, these two cubicles are for you, Linus, and you, Raffy. In three months the System will be delivered to me. If it isn’t, Evie and Benjamin will be taken from here to somewhere … well, somewhere less comfortable. A lot less comfortable. And they will be filmed so that you can share in their discomfort as you rush to complete the System. After four months, one of them will die. After five months, the other will die. After that … well, I don’t think it will come to that, will it Linus?’

Linus didn’t say anything; he just stared back, his expression unreadable.

‘You’ll find clothes in the rooms, toiletries, everything you need,’ Thomas continued. ‘Oh, and I wouldn’t try opening the windows. They’re locked, of course, but they’re also electrified. Touch them and you’ll get a shock. Keep hold of them and the voltage increases until … well, sixty seconds and game over.’

Everyone regarded the windows warily. ‘Seems you’ve thought of everything. And on about an hour’s notice,’ Linus said thoughtfully.

Thomas smiled bashfully. ‘You know me,’ he said. ‘I like to plan ahead.’

‘Know you? I wouldn’t say that.’ Linus shook his head, his eyes suddenly very serious. ‘I wouldn’t say I know you at all, Thomas.’

Thomas appeared to consider this; then he laughed. ‘You’re right. But it doesn’t matter, because I know you, Linus, that’s the thing. I know you. I know everyone.’ He turned to Benjamin, who looked at him stonily. Raffy tried to imagine Benjamin as the young boy who had worked for Thomas, the gang leader who Thomas had tried to recruit, who had eventually resisted. But he couldn’t see it; he could only see Benjamin, brave, thoughtful leader of the Settlement that Thomas had destroyed, just like he’d destroyed everything else.

‘Where’s my room?’ Evie said suddenly.

Thomas pointed to a door and she rushed towards it, opened it, then slammed it behind her. Raffy felt his stomach clench; he knew that she needed to be behind closed doors because the pain of what had happened, what was happening, was overwhelming her.

And it was his fault. It was he who had led Thomas to them, driven by anger, by envy, by jealousy. Of Lucas. Always his brother, Lucas. Lucas, who was so noble and strong. Lucas, who Evie loved. Lucas, who was now alone because Raffy had stopped Evie from escaping with him, making her hate him even more than before. Thomas knew how to manipulate, and he had manipulated Raffy. He had manipulated him to the point where Raffy had lost sight of who he was, of what he believed in. To the point where he had betrayed his friends, betrayed everything he thought he had stood for.

But he’d been a willing participant. He’d been easy prey.

‘Teenagers,’ Thomas said with a little sigh. ‘So, Linus. What do you think? Bit better than that cave you were working in, right? I’ve even got you a kettle. Loose-leaf tea. I know how much you love your tea.’

‘I do like a cup of tea.’ Linus nodded, a little smile on his lips. ‘So I guess it’s just like the old days then.’

‘Exactly!’ Thomas said happily, his eyes shining. He was looking so pleased with himself, Raffy found himself thinking. Like a child. Were they all just like toys to him? Was all of this just some elaborate game? ‘Well, I’ll leave you to get to work shall I? The computer will talk you through the operating system. Obviously yours mirrors, but isn’t connected to, the mainframe. Just in case you get any ideas,’ he said lightly.

‘Obviously,’ Linus said.

‘And you, Devil, what would you like?’ Thomas asked, turning to Benjamin, using the street name he had shed many years before.

‘My name is Benjamin, and I would like to leave this place. I would like to go back to my people,’ Benjamin said, his eyes thunderous.

Thomas looked pained. ‘Yeah, I’m afraid that’s not going to happen. So, second choice?’

Benjamin glared at him. ‘You used me,’ he said, his voice low and angry. ‘Many years ago you used me, but I fought back. I escaped from your clutches, Thomas. And now you think you will use me again. You think that by threatening me, my friend Linus will do your bidding. But I will not be used, Thomas. I will not.’

Thomas raised an eyebrow ‘No? And exactly how do you expect to escape from me this time, Devil? There are no police to run to, no prison that will protect you. You’re in my world, Benjamin. I control everything. And I control you. The sooner you accept that, the better for us all.’

Benjamin appeared to contemplate this. He turned and stared at Thomas. Then he smiled. ‘You like to control people, Thomas. You always have; that’s all you’ve ever wanted to do. Manipulate, control, create order. You think so little of people, Thomas. You think we are all like you, that we are all susceptible to bribery or punishment of some kind or another, that our morals are changeable or even non-existent. You have never understood people who believe in something, who stand for something. We unnerve you; make you want to control us even more. But a controlled life is not a life, Thomas. The human spirit needs more than what you can offer. You think you have control of the world but I can tell you that you don’t. There will be pockets of people across the globe who are conspiring against you. Pockets of people right here, wherever we are. Little weeds pressing up against the concrete you have laid. And they will find a way through. They always do, Thomas.’

‘Giving me a sermon are you, Benjamin?’ Thomas sneered. ‘What on earth makes you think I am interested in anything you say? You were a drug-running lowlife when I met you. In my eyes you still are. You’re pathetic, Benjamin. You stand for nothing but self-preservation.’

‘Self-preservation?’ Benjamin laughed. ‘Nothing could be further from the truth, Thomas. I stand for many things, but not that. I stand for freedom. I stand for allowing people to achieve their potential, for encouraging independence of thought. I stand for hard work and duty. I stand for loyalty. I stand for forgiveness. And I stand for making a stand. When required. To make a point. To remind people who they are, what they àre capable of.’ He turned his gaze to Raffy, who reddened. ‘You remember the Bible, Thomas? Remember you liked me to recite it to you? You like this, Thomas? “Because you despise what I tell you, and trust instead in oppression and lies, calamity will come upon you suddenly – like a bulging wall that bursts and falls.”’ Benjamin’s eyes were flashing; Raffy had never heard him speak like this, like he’d been possessed, like his silence in the past few hours had all built up to this huge eruption. ‘“In an instant it will collapse”,’ he said, almost shouting now, ‘“and come crashing down. You will be smashed like a piece of pottery – shattered so completely that there won’t be a piece big enough to carry coals from a . . .