(from a dream)
Two children from Mongolia have been brought to the big city in the US, to work on the worm computers. The computers won’t work without them being connected to it. Them, specifically.
The computers are boxes with thousands of worms stretched out between connectors. Living worms. They are quantum computers that use the emotional states of worms. They create ear worms.
The computers analyse hit songs and output something like songs. To experience an ear worm you need special AR glasses, and you experience it via sounds, vibrations and infrared light pulses. It is like a drug that fills you with a song you cannot hum.
They have made their master very rich. They work 12 hours a day to make enough “songs” to keep it optimally fresh. People tire of individual ear worms.
By night the boy takes his magic parasol and goes on adventures. When he wills it, the parasol spins rapidly. When he tilts it, it flies off in that direction, pulling him with it. The flight has a general direction, with chaotic movement, and crashes 100 yards away. No soft landing. That sometimes means crashing into crowds of people. But the boy is small and soft and “resilient”, and the parasol is insignificant when not whirling.
The siblings from Mongolia were outed by the media, and the 12-hour-days were noticed by the authorities who pressed charges, citing child labour laws. The master however has started a years-long process fighting the charges, by proving that the children are not human.