A Friend on the Inside by Will McIntosh (Future Science Fiction Digest #14, March 2022) begins with Candace, a poor student, on the roof of her high school trying to hack into the school’s Axon network to get credit for lunch. Then, when she succeeds, she receives a message from an Izzy Mahfouz asking her if she is “outside”. Candace quickly disconnects and leaves. Later, after she is the victim of some routine bullying in the lunch hall (insert your own Heathers, Mean Girls, etc. scene here), Candace looks up Izzy’s name—only to find it belongs to a dead college basketball player.
When Candace next goes up on the roof and connects to the network Izzy comes online again and begs her not to leave. He tells her that his last memory was of a car crash, and that now he is in darkness and connected to three other “nodes” who are people like him. Then Izzy asks Candace to call his mother to let her know what has happened to him. When she pleads poverty, he provides her with a code for a “system” like the rich girls in school have, and which she later picks up from the shop:
[I] told her I was picking up a system. I gave her the code, and held my breath, half-expecting a platoon of Axon security people to come busting out of the back room, heaters raised.
A sparkly transparent ball rolled out of a slot. The ball, which felt like skin, broke open in my hands, like it was giving birth to the system rolled up inside. Triumphant music played.
I ran for the exit.
“Have an A day,” the associate called.
“Eat shit,” I called back as the door swung closed behind me.
Moving out of the flow of pedestrians, I unrolled the system. It was silver with green speckles, lighter than it looked, the material so thin it felt like it would dissolve in my hands. I pulled the sleeve up my forearm, looped my thumb through the smaller hole on the end. It extended just past my elbow.
Everything shifted. The air took on a golden tint. New Main Street was perfectly jet black, and each building was a different pastel color. Everyone who passed was smiling brightly. It was like I’d stepped into a new reality. I knew what the world looked like through a system—I’d seen it on TV a million times, but I’d had no idea it looked this real. I didn’t understand how something I put on my arm made my eyes see differently, and I didn’t care. I wanted to see like this for the rest of my life. pp. 7-8
The benefits of the system don’t last long because the phone connection drops when Candace tries to call Izzy’s mother: Izzy realises that Axon are monitoring the calls, and disconnects her from the net so she can’t be traced.
The rest of the story (spoiler) sees Candace learn from Izzy that there are lots of nodes, and Izzy later says to Candace, “I’m just a brain, aren’t I?” They realise what Axon’s “revolutionary [network] technology” is and, when Candace learns that Izzy’s body was donated to Good Medical like her sister’s, she wonders if her sister is one of the nodes. Candace tells Izzy that if he wants any further help he needs to find her (and during this conversation she learns that the nodes suffer terrible headaches and pain when they are not doing the network tasks assigned to them).
The story turns into a chase when Axon put Candace’s picture on the net and she is recognised by a group of teenagers. As she evades capture by them and the others who start pursuing her, she repeats her demand to Izzy about finding her sister.
Eventually, and after a few more narrow escapes courtesy of Izzy’s magic hacker skills, the story comes to a conclusion when Candace contacts Izzy’s mother and Candace is then shot and wounded by an Axon guard. A driverless car then drives into him, while Candace is protected by a cyclone of drones and vehicles controlled by the brains/nodes. Video of the event goes viral, along with the nodes/brains’ demand for time off and pay for their families. Finally, Izzy tells Candace he has found her sister.
This is a well enough told story (McIntosh is a slick writer), but it is essentially a piece about stealing brains for God’s sake, something that might work in 1932 but terminally strains credulity ninety years later. And even if this is all a metaphor about the way corporations treat their employees, it is a silly one. (I’d also add that having “Pay for our families. Time off” as the brains’ first demand is ridiculous—what about the fact that Axon have essentially been kidnapping sentient beings, using them as slaves, and torturing them?)
** (Average). 8,250 words. Story link.