The System by Gemma Malley

really wasn’t her issue. As she approached the café, she could see that someone had hastily erected a ‘Café Honore welcomes Frankie!’ sign and that a group of people were hovering outside waiting for her. She smiled, waving at them. ‘Hey, I’ve got a welcoming committee. How nice!’ she said, the words immediately appearing in front of each of her followers, courtesy of some new software that she was trialling for Infotec. The group of people cheered.
    ‘Have a coffee on me,’ one of her followers messaged immediately. ‘I’m thinking of you over in hot Kentucky!’
    ‘Will do!’ Frankie said, before several thousand more messages appeared. She couldn’t answer them all; couldn’t even scratch the surface. But she always commented on the first one or two she received, always replied like they were old friends. And in many ways they were; they knew everything about her. She just knew nothing about them. Nothing except the messages, the constant dialogue right in front of her eyes.
    ‘Oh my God! It’s her! Frankie! Over here! Over here!’ The screams rose in pitch as she walked towards the cluster, mostly girls, as always, all desperate to be caught on camera with her; the image would be sent to everyone they knew in the desperate hope that it would be circulated more widely, that they would attract a few more Watchers. Some were very young, some were maybe a year or two younger than her; a few were in their twenties, thirties.
    ‘It’s me!’ She smiled, gave a little self-deprecating shrug. ‘I can’t believe you’re all here already! So great to see you all!’
    Immediately another stream of messages and status updates swam in front of her. She high-fived as many of the group as possible then made her way into the café, where a table was waiting for her.
    ‘So, what shall I have?’ she mused out loud. Immediately several million suggestions appeared. She considered a few of them, then picked up the menu. A waiter hovered over her.
    ‘I think …’ she said, hesitating for a second, ‘that I’ll have eggs over a bagel and a coffee. Thanks, Paul. Great suggestion!’
    It was a trick she’d learnt from Milo, to scan quickly, zoom in on one comment, memorise the name, the exact suggestion. It made her millions of followers feel like it could be them, that they were really in this together. Made her one of them. It had felt cynical the first time she’d done it; she’d felt uncomfortable. She knew what it was like to look up to people, to watch them, to want to be like them, and she wanted to be able to get back to people properly, answer their questions, thank them for their nice comments. But it was impossible with these numbers; Milo was right, as always. And his technique worked; people felt like she was really listening to everything they said, so maybe it was okay that she was just performing a little trick, the same way Milo had taught her how to make her eyes all shiny and sparkly when she was on camera. ‘Tricks of the trade,’ he’d told her with a little shrug. ‘Welcome to being famous.’
    The food took a few minutes to arrive; all around her people were updating their status, mentioning her, taking photographs of her or purposefully moving close to her so that the café’s surveillance cameras could pick them up with her, beaming their image across the globe and updating their status simultaneously.
    She saw a waiter walk past her towards the corner of the café, where a man was sitting hunched over a coffee. The waiter leant down, pointed to the cameras; the man ignored him. Frankie frowned as she watched the waiter shrug and point to his watch. He had missed the fifteen-minute deadline; at least she assumed he had. You didn’t have to say much, didn’t have to do anything much at all. But you had to update every fifteen minutes unless you were in direct sight of a camera or unless your bed sensors could verify that you were asleep. Most computers could be set to