By Todd Sullivan

Tapping the control button on his smart glasses, Hyde activated the miniaturised transformer in his backpack as he passed Robyn. The coil wrapped around the magnet hummed to life and stripped the influencer’s swarm from her. 

Hyde didn’t pause. The client, as he called those he scammed, would immediately know that the hundreds of Gnads no longer followed the designed configuration around her. He slipped through the tide of commuters in Gangnam Station and turned left into a new wave of people pouring up the escalator. Ahead of him was the parenting facility where his senior technician would be waiting with the hyve. He knocked on the only bathroom door that could be locked in Gangnam Station, and his senior technician let him in. Synchronising their actions, Hyde turned off the transformer as his technician turned on another in the metal box, and the tiny cameras no bigger than gnats swarmed into the hyve. 

“Did we get them all?”

Hyde tapped the side of the smart glasses to scroll through the entire electromagnetic spectrum in search of any lingering Gnads. “Every last one, and the client has realised something’s wrong.” He pointed to the wrist display wrapped around his forearm. “She’s placing the call.”

Over the past month, he’d sent emails spoofing HORDE, the medical company that had created the Gnads nano technology. Once used solely for eliminating tumours in cancer patients by injecting lifesaving medicines directly into targeted cells, HORDE had re-engineered the nano bots to form tiny recording sensors for wealthy social media users. Tethered to an electromagnet the influencer carried, the Gnads could be set to a designated configuration so that they swarmed around the user, taking shots and streaming content from every conceivable angle.

Hyde had fabricated daily missives similar to what HORDE sent their users concerning updates to terms and conditions. All he needed was for a potential client to click on a fake link, which then uploaded a program in the system that popped up in the event of the swarm being stripped away.

The more savvy influencers ignored the pop-up and called HORDE directly. Others, who panicked over the sudden loss of their livestreams, reached out to the first sign of assistance that flashed on their screen. 

Hyde had predicted Robyn would do the latter. Life seemed a daily buffet of novel experiences to her, and she often had a larger number of Gnads trained on her face to catch reaction shots. She’d gained 4.3 million followers who had become enamored by her childlike features. Her innocent eyes, cherubic expressions, and shimmering red hair captivated her audience. 

Hyde answered her call. “This is HORDE. How may I help you?”

“My swarm! I’ve lost connection to my swarm!”

“I’m so sorry to hear that. Please, remain calm, and we’ll do all we can to assist you. How long have you been disconnected from your swarm?” 

“It just happened! My subscribers are flooding my feed, they’re so worried!”

“Yes, we understand their concerns. I’m going to help you locate your swarm. Sometimes if there’s a strong electromagnetic field in the vicinity, the swarm will be stripped to that source. The first thing to do is discover their location. You can try and do that yourself…”

“I’ve already tried!” Hints of a whine made her normally upbeat voice tremble. “They’ve just disappeared!”

“Ah, I understand. There are additional ways that you can find a swarm. I’m going to send you a link, and just click on it. This will give us remote access to your system.”

Hyde sometimes lost clients at this point. People loathed remote access to their systems, but the technology controlling swarms was complicated, and many of the influencers were preteen, newly rich, and ignorant on the nuanced operations of Gnads. 

Hyde gave the senior technician a thumb’s up and sent Robyn the link. She clicked on it immediately. Hyde blacked out a portion of her screen and uploaded a program to freeze her out of her system until she paid a ransom fee. It was timed to activate in 24 hours, well after this phone call so that they would not attract suspicion. 

“I think I’ve found your swarm,” Hyde said. “It was stripped by a magnet in the rails. With just a quick call to station maintenance, I can free them now.” 

Hyde nodded to the technician. They placed the box on the floor, set the time lock, and stepped outside. A minute later, the box sprang open and the Gnads swarmed out. 

“Thank you so much for your help! For being so fantastic, I would like to thank you live. Would that be okay?”

Hyde, surprised by the request, glanced at his senior technician. 

“I’m sorry, but we’re nowhere near your location. You won’t be able to stream us on your feed.”

“Oh, not on my regular channel.” An invitation popped up on the screen of Hyde’s smart glasses. “This one is for paying subscribers only. It’s very exclusive, only other influencers have access to it.”

Hyde stopped short. The digital room had a still shot of him walking through the subway station. “How did you—” he began. 

Robyn laughed. 

“Look behind you,” she said, and through his lenses he saw the swarm was following them, a cloud of minuscule sensors uncoupling to the nano size they’d been designed for when battling cancer.

“This channel is where I punish scammers preying on influencers.”

The cloud enveloped him. He felt only the slightest tingle in his nose and throat. On the livestream, the screen split into three. In one, he saw the nano bots infiltrating his trachea and recombining to inject carbon nanoparticles that filled his lungs. In the other stream, he saw his senior technician fall to the subway floor, gasping for breath. Hyde was soon to follow as oxygen was squeezed from his lungs.

In the final screen, he saw Robyn’s reaction shot, a cruel predator’s smile twisting her childlike features as she watched him suffocate.

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