The darknet isn't as "dark" as the name might imply, nor was it as fancy as the well known "Internet". While the internet is appealing visually, the darknet has many advantages, most notably hiding your IP address from anyone, along with the advantage of only being shared amongst trusted peers. While visiting pages on the internet added points to your rank on the game system, the darknet was better for collecting data, especially data that you don't want shared with anyone.
Quickly, I accessed the government servers via the darknet, numbers running through my head as I translated the binary values to text which I was typing into a virtual keyboard.
Most people don't hire hackers because they needed sensitive information and not let anyone know they had it—that was easy enough—but because most people couldn't type or translate binary to text fast enough. Translating without a computer program was easy enough, but doing it fast was the problem. And because of that, hackers are ofter hired in political quarrels to illegally obtain information.
I read through what I had just typed, once the stream of numbers stopped, and it seemed to make sense. Branden Levy already scouting out the brightest of the year, with the list of names already. Alyssa was on top, as I expected.
It wasn't safe to stay in the darknet for a long period of time, so I sent the file on its way, the contents permanently filed away in my memory.
||The Next Morning||
Shit! Am I going to be late again? I should quit hacking someday and get some quality sleep before I sleep through my alarm again. Thankfully, I didn't have any of those stacked up on me for the next few days so that I could get some extra sleep. Honestly, taking five jobs in a row, night-to-night is pretty rare for me.
I probably ran by at least fifteen people on my rush to school, but I only pushed one kid over.
That happened to be a surprise, since I never normally ran anyone over.
"Sorry!" I apologized hurriedly, trying to move on, but he stopped me.
Chauncey Alvarez. This was almost worse than having Richard Snyder kick me out of a desk.
"Hey, uh, I'm new here," he said.
I know you are.
"So, uh, can you show me to class?"
"Sure," I replied, "who do you have first?"
"Browner, for chemistry?"
"Our class is full."
"I think they dropped a kid named Prichard Snyder?"
"Richard," I corrected instinctively.
"Oh, yeah. Him."
I started walking, and he followed, not asking questions.
I didn't expect him to, after all. After using "our" in reference to his first class, only an idiot would not know I was going to class.
"Miss Parry, you're late!" Browner seemed to hate me, and I still couldn't get over how he forced me to answer yesterday.
Both ways, it was unfair.
"Brought a new student," I answered.
"Hi, I'm Chauncey Alvarez?" he walked up in front of me, introducing himself.
Today, my usual seat was not occupied, so I took it, and the chance to hide the majority of my face behind Cassandra's hair.
In contrast to yesterday's spot, I could actually see the board.
I just had a chance to hide half of my face so that Browner hopefully forgot about my existence.
The darn guy never did, and it was probably because of the holograms documenting where every student was sitting on his desk.
At least I could forgo the eye contact. It's a pain, really.
Chauncey sat himself down in the desk at the other side of the room, the one next to the window in the back of that row.
I don't understand anyone's affinity with the paranormal, although it's usually best not to sit there to avoid being avoided by everyone except for your closest friend.
"Okay, we're starting with easy questions today," Mr. Browner said, with less volume than yesterday, but more conviction than usual.
"What type of energy is required to form the transition state in a chemical equation?" he asked.
Obviously, Alyssa's hand went straight up, and so did Chauncey's to everyone's surprise but mine.
Mr. Browner, obviously excited for one more student to start answering questions, purposely skipped calling on Alyssa and went straight for Chauncey.
"Activation energy, sir," he answered.
Damn those Arcadia students. Their education system was faster and more advanced than ours here at Taomiene, and they knew it.
Class continued, and it was the same for me as it was every day, except that Chauncey answered instead of Alyssa.
Hearing his voice just made me—snap out of it!
Class was over, finally, and I could stop listening to his freaking—shut up, self.
"Hey," I greeted Alyssa at her usual seat in the front of the classroom, right next to the window. How fitting that we always chose seats directly diagonal to each other.
"I. Am..." Alyssa said, seething with anger.
"Um... mad?" I tried for her, even though wrathful or infuriated seemed more fitting for her current situation.
"Understatement!" she yelled.
I'd better get away.
"Candace, get back here!" she screamed, and I ran out, rather artful words spouting out of my mouth as I left.
"Oh my freaking gosh!" she was seething with anger again while we waited in the lunch line for our lunches.
"Alyssa..."
"Candace! Don't tell me you didn't enjoy watching me get insulted by that new jerk."
"I didn't really."
"Liar."
"I'm not lying."
"Well, I care. You should care, too."
"As long as it's not me with the answer, I don't care who it is."
"I've already got President Levy of our Taomiene Pod's eyes on me!"
That's not a good thing, I wanted to say.
Instead, I replied with, "Good luck in whatever position he offers you."
At that moment, we reached the front of the line and I reached out for one of the trays plopped in front of me. I paid with my money, and Alyssa usually paid with her points.
Only the top fifty could pay with their points.
I made more money with my hacking job, anyway. If you converted the amount of money I had into points, it'd be higher than even Alyssa's total, if she never spent any of her earned points.
Smart government, trying to set everything up so that it seemed like a game.
That's even what they told guests in Antarctica, that it was a game.
However, game is not synonymous to real life. I think that's the only fact that most of the ignorant citizens misunderstood about living here. It's not a game. It shouldn't be a game, either. You can die in a game. You can die in real life.
The difference is smaller than anyone could ever imagine.
I sat in my usual seat, Alyssa more paranoid than usual that she wasn't going to end up on top when she didn't answer every question on the test.
"I think I'll have to go in for another testing session today," she said.
"Why not just take one at the testing stations?" I asked.
"I can't do that, I already finished all of those," she said.
"If it makes you feel any better, he's from Arcadia," I said, in an attempt to calm her down.
"Arcadia?" she asked quite loudly, "If it weren't for my parent's shit jobs, I could test into one of their schools!"
I tried not to mention that I was kicked out of Arcadia a few years back for "academic incompetence". I started my hacking job in Arcadia, and after I found out what happened to the highest scoring students, I slowly let my point total drop until I was shipped to Taomiene. Arcadia was the only pod that shipped people to others for falling low on the scoreboards, and I couldn't blame them; wanting to keep the top and all.
Alyssa wouldn't be able to keep up with the competitive nature of the system there. The system mattered around ten times more in the Arcadia pod. It mattered enough here, but there were usually plenty of people giving out jobs to people with a low score total.
In Arcadia, only the top 100 of each age group, usually out of 200, get jobs. Normally, the people in the bottom 60 or so move to another pod, and the remaining 40 can barely scratch by with their desire to remain in Arcadia.
For Alyssa, her point total would lie somewhere in the 4000s, based on the fact that she incorrectly answered that question yesterday, which is slightly higher than her current total here, but that would land her somewhere in 150th place, even when competition was tight, meaning that they would ship her out anyway.
"Yeah, Alyssa, you wouldn't really be able to stay there for very long."
"What?"
"You have no idea. I've seen the top scores for our age group there and the guy in first place has over a million."
"Well, I could still score in the top fifty, right? He's probably an outlier."
"Sixtieth place has a total in the 500,000s."
I didn't mention that Chauncey had been sixtieth place before his parents undoubtedly got kicked out. I knew that they hung out near the bottom every time, and the government there probably got tired of them being there, even when their son hadn't placed high, by any means.
When he transferred, they probably reset his score total somewhere in the 3000s, so he wouldn't stand out as much.
Alyssa was fuming with the idea that she wouldn't be able to scrape by in Arcadia—it wasn't my problem—even though I might have failed to mention that there was more cheating in the form of hackers artificially increasing their point totals so she'd end up way closer to the bottom, with no hacking skills on her side.
||After School||
First thing on my agenda today showed up when I reached home and cleaned up after my parent's incessant drinking problems.
A message showed up in my vision, another hacking job, which was weird because I mostly told people to send them to my constructed holographical screen positioned in my room.
From: Branden Levy. Subject: Job
Accept?
I hit accept on the ping, and read it quickly. Now? I needed to get the information now?
What's more, he needed information from a political enemy.
The same one I did the job for last night.
I opened the composer and sent a decline message, even though I usually wasn't one to give up on challenges.
It was who it was for. I, myself opposed Branden's political position, and most of his decisions.
He replied immediately.
Did he have this much free time?
Get over to the Capitol building, now.
Would he send security after me if I didn't?
I didn't want trouble, so I complied, getting ready, until security came knocking on my door anyways.