Read Online The System by Gemma Malley - Free Book Online

reader numbers were dwindling. But still the bloggers came, to think, to write, to rant. A lot of the time they wrote blogs on the sad implications of the demise of the blog, ever-diminishing circles that were chock full of irony, but written anyway. And Frankie knew why. She didn’t need to write a blog anymore; the income she received for it was peanuts, utterly inconsequential. But she’d never give it up.
    Milo didn’t get it at all, could not see why she would spend so much time writing stuff that no one read when she could be out and about gathering more Watchers. The problem with the Library, he’d say with a shrug, was that there were no cameras there. She could still update her status, but if she wasn’t visible, people would switch off, would watch someone else. Words didn’t matter anymore; people wanted visual stories, not boring text. And she owed her Watchers, after all. They needed her.
    He was right, of course he was. But there had to be a balance. Frankie hadn’t decided to be a blogger because she’d thought it would bring her fame and fortune. She’d done it because she’d always done it, because it was her way of pausing the world, of figuring out what she thought about stuff. She’d started when she was a teenager and had got enough people reading it to make it vaguely financially viable. Now there was no need for her to do it, but she just couldn’t give it up. It was as though the blog kept her on the ground; without it, she was afraid she might just blow away with the wind.
    Plus it meant she got to hang out at the Library most days, and if she was completely honest, she rather enjoyed a few hours out of the glare of being watched; being like she used to be, anonymous, a person known for what she wrote rather than for what she looked like, what she did, the minutia of her day. It still amazed her how many comments she got from complete strangers following her decision to have cereal for breakfast or a chicken sandwich for her lunch. Until recently, such comments had come only from her friends and family – or, rather, her extended network of friends-of-friends and acquaintances built up over her life. Fifteen hundred or so Watchers; respectable by most standards.
    Now, though, it was something else; now she had followers in America, in China, Africa, the Middle East. Now she was a role model; a beacon of the new world, inspiring and engaging people everywhere. And she loved it; loved the knowledge that she was making people happy, that they were rooting for her, that in some way she was giving their lives meaning. Because, as Milo had pointed out, not everyone lived in Paris; if you lived in a village in the middle of nowhere, reading about the life of someone in the metropolis would help you to feel connected, part of the whole. But it was still a little overwhelming. Still a bit terrifying sometimes when someone from Kazakhstan commented on the toothpaste she was using.
    So Frankie’s balance was that in the mornings she worked. In the afternoon, she’d be out and about, shopping, partying, going to launches, whatever; being visible. But from nine to one, she got to focus on her blog. Her blog that barely anyone read. Her blog that was, according to Milo, utterly pointless.
    She walked in through the grand entrance, past the download terrace and through to the work bank, where fifty or so people sat, typing furiously onto keyboards, hologram screens in front of them. The room was silent, one of the few places such a thing was possible; no audio or visual updates were allowed.
    She sat down in front of a screen, then opened a hologram keyboard by opening her hands and choosing a tab button.
    ‘You made it, then.’
    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,’