Crowd: A Dystopian Social Network Thriller (Final Draft)

New Crowdy

The young customer from the store approached her. "Man, that was freaking amazing how you tried to pitch that thug. He was like WTF is that girl doing to me, haha."

"I was just trying to help him."

His eyes widened. "You weren't seriously trying to hook him up on Crowd?"

"Why not? It's certainly more rewarding than pointing guns at people. Even if they're fake." She paused. "The guns, not the people."

The young man's lips pressed. A breeze filled the silence.

"Is that true what you said earlier, about the college scholarship and all?"

Rain smiled. Her pitch mode returned. "If you rank over three on Crowd, you can apply for special scholarships if the college is affiliated with the platform. It's as simple as making an update."

She paused. "I'm actually graduation from a community college in two days. Crowd paid almost ninety percent of my tuition."

"Are you serious?"

"Do you wear smart lenses?"

"Got my first ones for my birthday."

Rain shared her the college videos, lifestream accomplishments and the rewards on her public Crowd profile. The young man was about to drool all over the boardwalk. "You're a heavy user."

"If you don't have much money, you have to compensate with creativity and ambition."

"So if I sign up, what happens now?"

"Well, the crawlers will collect all available online information about you to build your initial rank. It takes about twelve to twenty-four hours."

"What if I get a really low rank, like one or two-ish?"

"Won't happen, unless you have a problematic background."

"Problematic?"

"Criminal history, massive debt, things like that."

"I don't."

"Then you should definitely sign up. The discounts are amazing, ranging from cheap rent in the city center to reduced college tuition."

"And I can quit anytime?"

"Absolutely. If you don't think it's worth your effort, you just log out. Simply as that."

A fat smile graced the young man's face. "Let's do it."

Rain sent him an invitation. The young man accepted it with the joy of a child. His Crowd profile started building itself, collecting his name from the web.

Justin Boreke.

"Wow, that was fast," he said.

"The rest of the information takes a bit longer, but you'll get there eventually. You don't even have to upload your profile image. The algorithm does everything for you."

"This is sooo crazy."

He thanked her again before dancing down the street. What an open-minded and delightful young man. It was almost strange he hadn't signed up for Crowd earlier. Maybe the platform failed to reach the people living in the poorer areas of the city.

A rush of satisfaction engulfed Rain's body like warm honey. Spreading the love of Crowd was one thing, helping 'strangers' become part of the family, another. Sometimes, Rain wished to clone herself so she could quadruple her output. Heh, maybe Crowd was working already on cloning technology. They were buying tons of new businesses lately.

Rain hailed an auto-cab with the sunniest smile on her face. The nearest car opened its doors with a positive greeting.

"Crowd Community College."

An update graced her augmented vision.

Congratulations, Rain. You've signed up one new Crowdy!

50 new Creds collected. Yay!

Creds counted as the official Crowd crypto-currency and could be swapped into US dollars.

Humming a childhood melody inside the cab, Rain pondered exchanging all of her remaining Creds into Dollars. But with Crowd's surging growth, Creds would be even more available in the near future.

Why waste the opportunity?

If she waited a few months, a single Cred could be worth four times as much as a lousy buck.

Oh, the opportunities.

Rain leaned into the soft seats and stretched her arms while the cab brought her back to her college campus. She looked outside the windows where the elderly wrapped in rugged clothes pushed filled trolleys down the battered sidewalks. Every single one of them lacked a ranking.

Rain sighed.

If only they knew how much value Crowd could bring to their life. The state ignored these forgotten men and women, but the platform could bless them with a second life, free of existential angst and the dog-eat-dog mentality that plagued today's society.

If only they knew.