Computer Friendly

Gunn, Eileen. "Computer Friendly." Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, June 1989. Anthologized in The Wesleyan Anthology of Science Fiction. For other translations, reprints, and awards, see Internet Speculative Fiction Database; we give the link to what may be the French version, which includes a synopsis (below).[1]

Seven-year-old Elizabeth gets dropped off at the testing center by her dad. In the lunch break in between tests to assess intellectual skills, personality, and physical skills she meets a boy, Oginga, and a girl, Sheena [...]. Sheena is aware that her parents expect to be shortly sending her to the "Asia Center", some facility where "you go to sleep". In the evening (after Elizabeth walks home with her dad, whose daily end-of-work mind wipe of sensitive data leaves him confused enough for an hour or so that Elizabeth is the one guiding them to the correct house), Elizabeth's father is happy to report that the results delivered by electronic mail reveal that she did well on her tests. At night however, Elizabeth is disturbed by an overheard conversation between her parents (they converse vocally, although her mom, due to her job, is now a disembodied brain in a computer)[2] regarding the danger of Elizabeth having interacted with an ill-fated child, and Elizabeth grows suspicious that her new friends — especially Sheena — may need help. She ventures onto the computer network, in search of help from her dog (who had been requisitioned at some point, and is now a brain wired up somewhere to direct data traffic). However, as a child poking around in sysop-monitored systems, leaving clumsy data trails, she may be in over her head, unless an ancient computer program she's introduced to named "Norton" [...] can lead her to someone who can fix things.

See for a number of motifs, including mind up-load to a computer, and others usually thought of as cyberpunk.

RDE, finishing, 3Ap21