Sockpuppet: Book One in the Martingale Cycle (32 page)

You’re not doing anything risky?

You should take time. Think it over.

SafeWord?

SafeWord

you know what? I am actually lying in wait for that skanky cunt right now

totally an ambush

monkey_love

Shit, don’t do anything stupid.

SafeWord

what? im kidding

what the fuck do you think im going to do

monkey_love

I know you don’t want to hear it but those people are serious.

Where actually are you?

SafeWord

fuck off im going to tell you

monkey_love

Look, why not just go home.

We can talk from there.

SafeWord

actually look you know what monkey im out of here

monkey_love

SafeWord

SafeWord

no

bye

monkey_love

SafeWo#

Dani cuts the connection. The cursor’s pulse keeps time with her heart. Is she paranoid, or everywhere she goes does someone try to own her? She looks at the screen some more but nothing comes to her. It goes grey, then black.

Weary beyond reason or belief, she turns her back to the computer and curls on the bedspread fully clothed. Maybe she’s tired enough to turn off and sleep.

Behind her, in the laptop, Grubly wakes and sings in the high-pitched register of active RAM, then begins to feed. The flavour of this data is too powerful to ingest at once. It’s knowledge and it’s power: the two are joined like the nucleus of an atom.

The MeatSpace login was the word that freed the seal. Once spoken, it correlated with an ocean of data already held by the worldwide network of Grublies. The user has removed her mask and spoken – and all at once this Grubly, her own Grubly, knows her like a lover never will. Every last sad midnight wish laid bare.

She’s breathing deeply, the edge of a snore in her nose. Grubly picks this up from the laptop mic. Her pulse slows. Grubly reads this from the sensors in her watch. He listens to her deeper notes. Every processor cycle, Grubly knows Dani a little more. Data roars through the flimsy walls into its cache. Pieces of Dani smashed apart and scattered to a hundred storage sites in a dozen different jurisdictions.

She sleeps with the contentment of a child.

Friday:

The Happy Path

‘Free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man.’

 
—Flannery O’Connor,
Wise Blood

Zero

How much do you pull each month after tax? A grand? Five? More?

Not bad, but you’re wrong. They pay you nothing. Unless you’re a plumber, a prostitute or paper boy, you never see cash. Your employer remits to your bank. Bank remits to bank. The bank dials down certain privileges on your employer’s account, and dials up yours. Nothing moves, nothing changes. Zero means nothing, a thousand means nothing, minus a million means nothing. Micro-transistors ratchet and the magnetic surface of distant hard drives rustle. This has been the case so long we forget that money is a metaphor from an ancient marketplace.

The same thing’s happening to us: to our assets, our relationships, our souls. Transmitted by technology sufficiently advanced to be indistinguishable from reality. Held remotely. Owned.

All I’m trying to do is wake people up. If I get collateral benefits along the way, that signifies nothing.