The Wired Man

11

Personal Entry: The Wired Man

I woke up to a bright prompt in front of my eyes.

Daily status meeting: 15 minutes.

My heart sank; nothing like a reminder of the good ol' times to ruin the rest of a day. I dismissed the message and got up. I flicked my side view to the social activity feed. Two more people had lost their jobs; one was a female network engineer for the state, and the other was a systems analyst for Sunstar Systems, a networking consulting company. Both had been struggling before the trial and the meltdown dropped them enough to put them under water. That brought the grand total to fourteen. Fourteen people dragged down to the briny deep, never to return. Then again, at least they got to do something productive in the factories instead of sitting on the couch all day praying for freedom.

I snatched a can of green beans out of one of the plastic bags by the door and went into the kitchen. I peeled the featureless, white label off and opened the can. In the past, I would've heated it up, but that seemed pointless now. Temperature didn't improve the flavor, so why bother?

I grabbed a fork and dug in, sinking my taste buds into what texture was left in the small, rubbery strips while I browsed more profiles. Sometimes it's nice to know that you're not the only one getting crapped on.

I finished up the can and set my fork near the sink. I was about to shut down my display when I saw my brother's profile at the bottom of the list. Bile rose in the back of my throat and the anger that had been buried resurfaced.

I opened his page and stared at the outline of his smiling, stupid head. Normally the SPA updated the picture to the standard prisoner photo, but this time, they left his happy-go-lucky mug up for all to see. Anyone who saw the page would know he was guilty, and maybe he was, but it still seemed strange that the SPA wouldn't follow through with normal protocol.

The mixed emotions swirling around inside my head caused my stomach to turn, and I felt woozy. I dragged myself through the fading daylight of the living room and headed into the bedroom. I needed to put it all behind me, at least until tomorrow. I fell back onto the mattress and pulled the bedding up to my chin. I closed my eyelids and was about to plunge back into the abyss when something strange caught my eye. Against the black backdrop of my vision, a new button blinked with a faint yellow flash at the top of my display.

Delete...

I glared at the tiny button. Block/Unblock, Report, Comment... Delete?

It didn't make any sense. My mind flew into a flurry, and I checked the recent patch notes for the system.

Nothing.

My heart jumped up into my throat, and I grabbed the inside of my wrist. The SPA did stealth patches but not for something like this.

I checked the mains of my other connections. On every page, there it was: Delete. Deleting was reserved for system administrators; if normal people could delete connections, that would screw the entire system. Nobody's score would matter because everyone would be in the 3000s. I must've been set to admin by mistake.

I settled back into bed and tried to calm down. I'd link with the SPA in the morning and inform them if it wasn't removed by then. Yeah, that's what I'd do.

///

I hadn't slept since I found it three days prior. My hair was greasy, and my clothes smelled, but I didn't care. I needed to be awake. For what? I didn't know, but I needed it.

The drive to keep thinking, keep pushing forward, kept me from heading to bed. That and the Accelerate. Accelerate was a cheap upgrade to caffeine when you needed energy or wanted to get high for a few hours. Unlike crystal meth, it was normally side-effect free and non-addictive, but taken for long periods of time it would cause delirium and eventually hallucinations. The government used it to improve production in the lower factories by providing rations of it to the workers, but since most of them needed money it usually ended up in the hands of the dealers.