The System by Gemma Malley

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.
    The point was, she was no way going to be lectured by Jim. No way at all.
    She re-read her blog. It was fine. It was more than fine. It raised the questions the anonymous messager had posed about the UK, then it dismissed them all as complete nonsense. Quoting Milo, mainly. Or rather,