A jellyfish swam slowly right through the dataveneer and hung at the center of the room, chaotically wiggling its tentacles. It was so dazzlingly multi-colored that it made Kalinka shut her eyes. She had already forgotten how bright colors could be.

Perhaps if those colors were sold separately, Kalinka might have saved up enough likes to buy a few—it would make the world that much more amusing, what with an orange ceiling and orange banner ads. And, of course, Kalinka would’ve painted the auras of all those foolish proactives with a delicate shade of fuchsia. And then she would’ve laughed inwardly in response to Mouser’s arrogant remarks.

“How do you like my new aura, Kali? Oh, forgive me, of course you can’t see, you poor thing. Should I spare you some likes?”

But the colors were sold only in a complete bundle, and the subscription cost half a dozen likes per cycle. It was an exorbitant luxury, considering Kalinka could barely afford a thin layer of dataveneer in lieu of walls. She was no pro, and didn’t want to become one. She didn’t earn likes through pointless content and flattering remarks, didn’t hang around popular users, hoping to catch a few freebie bonuses along with the reflection of their fame. She was about to hit rock bottom with no prospects of ever climbing out. Without a room of her own, without walls and some semblance of privacy, hermits like Kalinka quickly turned into mere numbers; it only took a couple of cycles. They lost themselves along with their names, and there was no way back.
At the moment, Kalinka was less than a step away from turning into a number. Half a step, even.

She didn’t fully comprehend how this had come to be.

She’d carefully allotted the likes for the next twenty-four cycles. That and the strict austerity in everything was part of the plan. Kalinka didn’t remember when and why she had come up with this plan, but she knew that she had to adhere to it.

Point one: Not to slip into becoming a number.

Point two: To get out of the Socium.

A very simple plan.

Except Kalinka hadn’t the vaguest idea where to begin pursuing point two. She didn’t even understand very well what it meant. Therefore, she focused on the first point.

Given: twenty likes. The goal: to maintain herself, and her dignity. How to avoid turning into a number if you only have twenty likes until the next bonus? And the next bonus is ten cycles away? No one could do that. Yet, Kalinka had managed.

Except the head office had lowered the coefficient without warning, and the little quiet hermits like Kalinka got the shaft.

The head office’s actions were understandable.

The Socium must function.

Everyone in their place.

Users generated and processed content, numbers milled the byproducts into flour on enormous grindstones.

Proactive users—the pros—were to be encouraged; hermits like Kalinka were to be punished. Whoever didn’t like it could go become a number.

Truth be told, Kalinka was sometimes envious of the numbers. All they had to do was walk in circles, push the wheel, and watch cheerfully as foolish comments, bad jokes, and ingratiating emojis were turned into a homogenous crunchy mass. But—point one. Do not slip into becoming a number. Obviously, there’d be no coming back from that.

Kalinka counted the pitiful seven likes she had been given instead of the expected seventy, over and over again. Never before had point one been so unachievable.

Even if, by some miracle, she morphed from a downtrodden hermit into a successful pro, became quotable and socially-useful, gained contacts and acclaim… The next round of bonuses would only be paid out in twenty-four cycles. She couldn’t last that long on seven likes. The minuses were deducted from the karma immediately. That was Socium justice for you.

The jellyfish!

Kalinka opened her eyes, certain that the jellyfish had already swum away, or that she had hallucinated it. But it was still there. Blue, pink, lilac—the jellyfish shimmered and flickered, as though deliberately hypnotizing Kalinka. That was nonsense, of course. Jellyfish had no intentions. They had no minds. Probably.

Kalinka carefully and very slowly—as though attracted by an inexorable magnet—reached out with her hand toward the jellyfish. Who would have thought a jellyfish would have swum over, not to the arrogant Barker, not to the sugary-slick Beaverton, not to one of those vile, extrovert influencers, but to Kalinka. Kalinka the hermit. Kalinka the sociopath.

And—oh, faulty firewalls!—the jellyfish reached its tentacles toward her palm. Kalinka immediately felt its touch—cold, prickly, and a little bitter.

The jellyfish brimmed with data, so much so that, without any upgrades, Kalinka saw, heard, and felt things she shouldn’t have been able to see, hear, or feel in her minimalistic configuration.

The jellyfish jerked and slid straight toward Kalinka’s face. It froze. The fabric of reality rippled and vibrated around it. Kalinka felt a terrible, irresistible urge to open her mouth and swallow the jellyfish, which was beautiful and juicy, like a piece of candy.

Candy … What was that?

Grandma always brings candy. She walks along the path, so slow and sanguine. Julie runs toward her, joyfully anticipating the treats.

Kalinka recoiled. The vision was colorful, full-bodied, lively. Like a vid. A very expensive vid.

In the maelstrom of content, Kalinka had always kept far away from the central currents. Likes beget likes, content begets content. This is known. Pay a hundred likes to imbibe a data-rich vid, tell your friends, and you will recoup those likes four-fold. In theory, of course. One time, Kalinka had spent almost twenty likes on some stupid trash vid based on Mouser’s life. Her review was reshared by one naïve hermitess, and liked by one newbie who hadn’t yet acclimated to the Socium. And that was that.

Ever since, Kalinka had consumed only the public vids that were played for free for the hermits and the roomless. These vids were so hopelessly monotonous that it was as though they were compiled from freshly ground scraps of content, without any additional processing. But this gruel was enough to while away cycle after cycle without becoming a number. Enough to stick to point one of the plan.

Kalinka carefully peeked outside. Had anyone seen the jellyfish enter her room? There was no doubt this was a mistake. Everyone knew: jellyfish only swam to the worthy pros. Never to the hermits who barely had a pair of likes to rub together. But, over at the head office they ultimately didn’t care who came to claim the reward. At least Kalinka really hoped so.

The gray world behind the dataveneer hummed and boiled. Ads flashed, folding into headlines and emojis, trapping the unsuspecting hermits in their advertising nets. Ads rained down from the top levels like heavy snow. Down here, with merely seven likes to her name, it was only possible to hide from the ads inside her room. That was another advantage for the numbers: ads never reached them. Numbers possessed no likes, and were therefore of no interest to the pros.

Movement within the Socium was reminiscent of Brownian motion. Kalinka watched some hermit, purposefully rushing toward the showing of a public vid, run into a bunch of intrusive ads and become persuaded to exchange his likes for a stupid post by yet another influencer. A different user, who had been too short-sighted to invest in a quality firewall, was pounced upon by a news headline. He engaged in an unsuccessful struggle against it in a futile attempt to keep his savings. It was hopeless. The predatory headline, formulated by competent pros, sucked the likes out of the unfortunate hermit. He had no choice left but to repost and repost this headline in hopes of recouping a few likes, yet the lion’s share of the earnings floated past him and toward the upper levels.

Indifferent auras flashed indifferently in this indifferent multi-level chaos, collided with each other, changed their opinions, reposted, cross-posted, parted with their likes and received new ones.

Fortunately, the Socium combined obsession and indifference in an ideal ratio. Nobody cared about Kalinka and her problems, as long as she wasn’t planning to leave her precious likes under someone else’s content—and she wasn’t planning to do that.

Having dealt with the unlucky hermit, the headline spun around in search of its next victim, noticed Kalinka, and rushed toward her room, deftly maneuvering among the ads.

Kalinka immediately slammed the dataveneer shut. A handful of ads got in as usual, but that was a minor problem. In the confined space of the room, the ads died off quickly.

The jellyfish was still there. It shimmered, buzzed, beckoned.

She should have taken it to the head office immediately, without delay, and exchanged it for likes, before someone realized a mistake had been made and took the unexpected windfall away from Kalinka. But how would she travel across the whole of the Socium with the jellyfish and remain unnoticed? How to hide from prying eyes and greedy mouths, to avoid the maw of the headline? A predator would devour the jellyfish as easily as it feasted on the likes of imprudent hermits.

Kalinka thought about it. Seven likes. Just enough to subscribe to a basic firewall package for a quarter of a cycle. It was more expensive to buy piecemeal, of course, but there was nothing to be done about that. It would provide a safe path through the ocean of news. A solid firewall was too much for the little headlines to handle, and the big headlines were too clumsy and too lazy to chase a scrawny hermit like Kalinka.

That still left the problem of hiding the jellyfish. The solution appeared self-evident.

Kalinka opened her mouth and the jellyfish climbed inside as though it was waiting for the opportunity, its tentacles wiggling all funny.

It was a wondrous sensation, like holding a bit of living luck in one’s mouth. Kalinka had never won the lottery before. At least she didn’t think so. She couldn’t be certain: her memory wasn’t especially reliable on a diet of public vids, which was barely enough to remember the two points of the plan.

Point one and point two.

Not to slide into a number.

To get out.

Kalinka activated the upgrade interface, tossed the likes into the feeder, and confirmed her purchase. The firewall materialized immediately and wrapped Kalinka in protective flames.

There was no going back. Kalinka had spent all of her likes. The dataveneer of her room would dissipate into bytes in half a cycle’s time, and then the only remaining path would be toward becoming a number.

That could not be permitted to happen. See point one.

Kalinka resolutely left the room, chose one of the vertical streams, stepped into it, and it carried her up past the envious glances of other hermits. The firewall looked fashionable and cool, and it was great fun to watch the ads burn in its flames.

Except the jellyfish didn’t want to remain still in her mouth. Instead it fidgeted, burned with its tentacles, tried to get in deeper. It seemed to be losing its patience. Nonsense. Why would a jellyfish have patience? As if a lottery ticket could have a will and principles of its own.

The wind blows snow-white poplar fluffs toward her. The surrounding world is bright and blooming; reflections of the hot summer sun dance in her hair. Julia had just failed an exam, foolishly relying on chance. In the past she had always spent the night before the exam studying, and it had always been enough. But this night… What a night! Kasimir, Kas, her dear, cheerful, warm beloved. She had flunked the exam but she was happy—happy in a sweet, full, endless way.

The data hit sharply, abruptly. For a moment Kalinka was there, in the warm happy place. She didn’t truly understand those pictures and sounds and thoughts—they were more complicated than the vids made by Mouser and other top influencers. It was a story out of a perpendicular world, one that was insane and unknowable. But this experience was the brightest Kalinka had ever sampled within the Socium.

What is a jellyfish, anyway? Kalinka thought and became frightened for some reason.

She only knew as much about the jellyfish as any other user. Rumors. Many rumors about an unexpected stroke of luck—a lottery ticket, bonus, gift from the Socium—showing up in the form of a tiny jellyfish and jumping right into the hands of the pros. The most proactive and energetic pros, of course; the most well-meaning and socially dynamic. Certainly not into the hands of passive hermits like Kalinka.

Collect one thousand likes and you’ll earn a bonus jellyfish.

It’s a peculiar idea, if you think about it: what do the pros need a jellyfish for? They’re already rolling in likes. Although Kalinka didn’t actually know anyone who’d caught a jellyfish, not even a tiny one. It was all just talk.

Talk was what pros were known for. Baby Angel’s new aura, Vito’s reinforced shimmering dataveneer (a four-letter username in itself a sign of an old-timer)—those were reality. Secret envy and feigned friendliness, social activity for the sake of tiny perception upgrades—those were reality.

Jellyfish were a fairy tale, like the ability to leave the Socium or at least to climb to somewhere near the top of its pyramid. To evolve from a consumer and regurgitator of content into a true creator. To wit, a fairy tale.

Although, if one were to believe the persistent ads played during the commercial breaks in public vids, the likes paid in exchange for a jellyfish were real enough.

Ten thousand likes for a tiny one. Ten thousand! Enough to surround the room with firewalls. The colors… Forget colors, the music! Oh, the music. One time Kalinka had used a bonus to upgrade her hearing—just for one cycle, to try it out—to hear music just once. The music had been heavenly. Except, sharp hearing combined with cheap dataveneer turned that cycle into a true torture. But now, protected by the firewall from outside noise, she could have…

Kalinka choked on the wave of emotions—free and unaccounted for, like everything she felt in proximity to the jellyfish.

She would no longer have to chew on the gray public vids stuffed with ads. She wouldn’t have to consume them at all.

With ten thousand likes she could easily afford to create content. To become a pro, or better. To record visuals and emotions into vids. To write music. To paint. She’d earn likes, so many likes!

Above her appeared the shape of an enormous rotund headline. The stream poured directly into the predator’s maw, with several inattentive users already caught and stripped of their likes. Kalinka hurriedly switched to the parallel lane, again and again. Away from danger. She looked around. There were few hermits here. Envious glances were replaced by arrogant ones. Too bad. They wouldn’t dare chase her off.

The jellyfish insistently tickled the top of her throat, as though the foolish thing wanted to be eaten. Each touch reverberated in a kaleidoscope of feelings and pictures within Kalinka.

A dusty office filled with old-fashioned bookcases featuring multicolored archaic book spines. The sheer curtain sways, obeying the light touch of the wind. The wind does nothing to dispel the humidity.

“My dear girl, you must understand, when signing a contract with them for even one year, you’re practically selling yourself into slavery. The contract is renewed automatically, unless either of the parties chooses otherwise. And they’ll make certain you don’t choose that. You won’t even remember what to choose. They have their ways, you know.” He’s too old and too fat, but even in this heat he can’t part with his uniform: a black three-piece suit with a striped shirt and a necktie. Adintsev keeps dabbing his sweaty forehead with a checkered handkerchief he keeps in his pocket.

“This is why I’m here, consulting with you instead of mindlessly signing those papers. You’re a monster at this, Mr. Adintsev. Surely, you can think of something.”

“Where did this ludicrous idea of entering the Socium come from?”

Julia is stubbornly silent. She retrieves a handkerchief of her own, only to crumple it over and over in her hands, preventing her nails from digging into her palms.

“You have a brilliant mind, my dear Julie. Why are you offering it to those vultures? To process accounting reports? To look for the next prime number, which nobody needs? To render a pink rabbit for some terrible movie? Stay, Julie. It was only by chance that you failed. Pfft. By next year you’ll be the most brilliant student these walls have ever seen!”

How to make this old, fat man understand that she can’t, she won’t survive a year? Not with the terrible pain in her heart. Her heart, which didn’t break overnight like a porcelain saucer, but is slowly crumbling under the pressure of a dark weight. It’s becoming more difficult to breathe with each passing minute, knowing that her beloved, dear, red-headed Kasimir had betrayed her, betrayed everything they’d had together, for some stupid blonde in a striped dress. Who is she? Why is she there? Oh, god, Julia, what are you thinking about? Focus!

That had been oh-so-painful!

Kalinka had completely forgotten what pain was. Sometimes she purchased a little bit of cold and a little bit of warmth. The warmth by itself was three times cheaper, but without the cold it was not nearly as pleasurable. The cold was painful. The most painful thing she could remember. Until now.

There were those among the pros who consumed the feeling of pain on a regular basis, and at a high cost.

Why did they need it? Kalinka hunched, cordoning off the pain that came with the vid. It was too dark, too deep. She would do anything never to feel such pain again. Anything!

The jellyfish tried to climb out, as though having read Kalinka’s mind, but she didn’t allow that. The jellyfish darted back and forth in her mouth, stinging Kalinka relentlessly. Her aura filled with data.

A large, white, shaggy dog named Bom runs across the grass, shaking off drops of dew. Julia runs after him. She feels her sneakers and socks getting soaked through.

Dad brought a real paper book—a huge one with black-and-white pictures and maybe a million letters. The letters don’t dance and don’t tell their own story at Julia’s gesture. They stand still, lazy, arrogantly waiting for Julia to read them herself.

Mama, Mommy, where are you? Little Julie got lost in a huge department store, among automated forklifts and shelves filled with identical gray boxes.

Kalinka shook her head. The head office was within arm’s reach. There were no headlines in her path. She only had to move. She only had to be patient. And everything would be fine.

“You could say hello,” she heard a haughty voice nearby. Kalinka turned around cautiously. Mouser. A bore and a philanthropist, an unusual combination. It’s easy for an influencer to be a philanthropist, he has plenty to give away, and it will come back to his karma tenfold, a hundredfold. It’s just business, like everything in this world. It was Mouser who’d saved her each time she was a step from sliding down into becoming a number. Therefore, she should’ve at least smiled at him. But the stubborn jellyfish persisted in painfully stinging her, and Kalinka’s smile looked more like a grimace.

“I’m serious, Kali.” She could now hear a threat in Mouser’s voice. And why not? Pros are very protective of their reputations, and the philanthropists especially so. What would happen to a philanthropist’s reputation if some destitute hermitess failed to be aura-deep thankful to him?

Kalinka shook her head pitifully. She dared not open her mouth—the jellyfish might jump out, and all would be lost.

Mouser’s aura darkened. The jellyfish shrank back. He never let offenses slide, and rancor was the key to his popularity. It was better to offer a like before Mouser suspected ingratitude. Let him say anything he wants to her, let him write a scathing post about her or even make her the antagonist of his new vid, an ugly roomless specimen languidly sliding into a number, anything but…

A minus from someone like Mouser weighed heavily and—like any minus—would count immediately. Kalinka glanced at his enormous karma. Ten dislikes, or more. Her own karma was at zero after purchasing the firewall. This meant that all of her property and real estate would go toward covering the minus. Including the firewall.

The most dangerous, agile, and ruthless headlines, used to hunting tough pros, waited for her above. They could even bite off a good chunk of likes from someone like Mouser. They would part a humble hermit like her from her jellyfish in seconds, if her firewall were to disappear.

No, Mouser, please, anything but the minus!

“Such ingratitude deserves a minus to your karma.” Mouser was taking his time, as though he hadn’t made a decision yet. He was toying with her.

Kalinka shook her head desperately. The jellyfish was kicking harder and harder, and Kalinka pressed her hand to her mouth so as not to accidentally spit it out.

Mouser interpreted the gesture in his own way.

“Wait… Did you trade away your ability to speak for the firewall? What a fool, how are you going to repost with this configuration?”

Kalinka nodded in relief. It was better to appear stupid than to earn a minus to her karma.

“Why didn’t you say so?” Mouser laughed nastily at his own joke, and jumped into another stream without saying goodbye. He would go on to share the funny incident and it would earn him two hundred likes, easy.

But it didn’t matter now. The stream brought her near the roof of the world and pushed her out onto the top level.

A dozen long headlines milled about the entrance to the head office, ready to attack anyone without sufficient protection. I’m too much for them to handle, Kalinka thought, watching as they scattered, burned by the flames of her firewall.

The jellyfish went nuts and it kept stinging, stinging, stinging. Kalinka was learning what true pain felt like.

“Julia Kalinskaya, our school’s best graduate in a decade!” The director adjusts her triangular glasses.

Bom the dog is dying. Slowly. Painfully. He whines and jerks his paw. Why? Why?

“Did you know that the name Kasimir means ‘stubborn’ in Turkic?” He has red hair and funny freckles all over his face. He smiles like the sun. Laughs like the wind.

She deletes the traitor’s letters from her inbox, one after another. They’re too much! Awkward, laughable excuses. Does that stubborn man not realize that he only demeans her further by prolonging this spectacle?

“You’ll be in a giant freezer, along with thousands of others like you. Having signed the contract you will cease to exist in this world, cease to belong to yourself. Your brain will become the property of Socium for the duration of the contract. It’ll have to work, and believe me, this will be a strenuous labor. Of course, our experts will do everything they can to keep your personality in good shape. The basic configuration is provided free of charge. You will receive communication and an imitation of a social life, but no guarantees of safety. Everything is individualized.” The Socium lawyer recites the familiar words somewhat mournfully, in the same tone employed by the beggars on the subway. He talks about guarantees, insurance, and guarantees again. About the money that will be paid to Mom. It’s good that Mom won’t find out about this until it’s too late for her to stop it. Julia listens indifferently and nods thoughtlessly, crushed by her pain. Soon. Soon, she will forget all of it.

Kalinka thought she was about to explode. To blow up in colorful chunks of data, into little ads and lines of text. She squinted, trying to rein in the untenable stream, and when she opened them again—

—she lay in a cramped, cold space, and her eyes were still shut, and there was nothing except a solid tube in her mouth and a stinging liquid in her lungs. She tried to breathe in, choked on her pain, and once again fell into oblivion.

The entrance to the head office swung open and two specialists helped her in. Julia smiled at them gratefully.

“Attention!” the first specialist shouted. “We’ve got a JELLYFISH!”

Those dandies could always see right through the users. It was no wonder: to have a full configuration in the world of the Socium was almost akin to being a god.

A specialist reached out his hand, in a soft but demanding manner.

“It’s your lucky day, my dear. Not everyone gets such a windfall. My congratulations! The jellyfish, if you please.”

The jellyfish refused to vacate her mouth. It hung on with its tentacles. It tickled, jumped, stung, stung, stung. It tried even more insistently do drill somewhere deeper. Seemingly, it really didn’t want to return to the jellyfisharium, or wherever these things were held in between lottery drawings. Kalinka felt terrible for the jellyfish, but she felt even worse for herself.

Yes, her plan demanded some ruthlessness. Point one: not to backslide. Point two: to get out. If she left the head office and released the jellyfish now, instead of returning it to the specialists, both points would have to be crossed out as unachievable. She’d have nothing to look forward to but the trip all the way down, to the numbers and their mills.

That is why Kalinka opened her mouth and spat the jellyfish rudely out onto her palm. The specialist immediately and deftly grabbed it by the tentacles. Kalinka was horrified by how quickly the jellyfish turned gray and wilted in his hands. The specialist smiled, and in some imperceptible way came to resemble a predatory headline.

For a moment, Kalinka feared that he would chase her off without any reward. But she almost immediately felt her karma filling with likes, becoming wider and heavier.

It had all worked out.

Her new life awaited her.

Adintsev sinks heavily into the opposite chair and dabs his forehead with a handkerchief. He frowns. He always frowns when he speaks about something important.

“I found some guys. A small firm, you know, an underground one. Those guys are my students, so I trust them completely. At the right time, they will send a letter with a cast of your memory. You will receive the letter, I guarantee it. The rest, Julie, depends entirely on you. Best of luck to you, my dear. See you in a year.”

He is a nice man, that Adintsev.

 The hermit left, and the specialists exchanged meaningful looks.

The first one said, “We almost lost her this time. Semenych was about to signal an awakening.”

“One user more, one user less,” the second one replied philosophically.

“I wouldn’t say that. If we lose a head such as Kalinskaya’s, they’ll take our heads for it, and they won’t stop there.”

The first one unloaded the jellyfish squeamishly into a container and reached for the disposal interface.

The second walked to a viewport. Beyond it buzzed the bright and restless imitation shell of the Socium.

“Don’t let those things near her again, and we won’t have a problem. As if you don’t know how to do that.”

“Oh, I’d love to, but this is a different matter. Adintsev himself wrote her contract. You know what sort of a man he was? My father studied under him. He wrote perfect contracts: point by point, unassailable!”

“But he died, that Adintsev of yours. Many years ago!”

“Adintsev may have died, but the contract is immortal.”

“Whoever is sending the jellyfish will get tired of it. That person isn’t immortal.”

“That’s something, at least. The bastard sure is stubborn, though. What was it, the fourteenth jellyfish?”

“Either that, or the fifteenth.”

“Hang on, it hasn’t fried yet.”

The first one retrieved the jellyfish from the disposal unit, deftly opened the package, and read theatrically:

“I’m still here, still waiting for you, still stubborn as a mule. You recall that Kasimir means ‘stubborn’? I still love you. Come back, dearest.”

“So, was it the fourteenth?”

“The fifteenth.”