Sockpuppet: Book One in the Martingale Cycle (36 page)

¶TurdoftheDay

He fired me.

I only ever did what I was told. Now I’m fired.

Today’s turd is called Sean.

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Six

‘My grandmother believed that if we wish to know freedom, we must first be free to know.’

Bethany looked across the crowd. Her grandmother’s dog-eared book lay on the lectern under her palm, ready to brandish as the speech hit its final confessional spot. J-R had done her proud with that moment of spontaneous candour. This speech must be completely
meant
if it was to stand a chance of holding back the tide of hearsay and spite.

‘Elyse Martingale was a firebrand. A radical. Quite a contrast, you might think, to the behaviour we now demand of politicians. I wonder what she’d think if she looked at me now, a Minister of State, a not insignificant cog in the machine of state –’

If she only believed that.

‘– that state which, according to her, will soon be swept away by a tide of freely available information. Well, perhaps her more apocalyptic predictions have not come to pass. Or, perhaps, in a way, they have.’

A pin could drop. All eyes sharpened. She could do this. Maintain this heartfelt register. Deny, discredit. Lie to the crowd, lie to Krish, lie to herself. So swallowed in spin she wouldn’t know an honest statement if it spilled out of her mouth.

She spoke on, the wide hall packed. There were even a couple of fixed cameras from the rolling news. In theory, this could go out live, though she doubted they’d bother – filler at best. That was OK. Boring she could handle.

She slid the page sideways and drew breath on
BENEFITS OF THE DIGITAL CITIZEN
. Dotted around the hall, people stood in unison. It was unclear what had been their cue. More people – maybe twenty – moved in from somewhere to line the side aisles. Bethany kept reading. All the people standing were young. Other audience members craned their necks to see. She ran her finger down the words, keeping place, and the words emerged in sequence from her mouth.
Real opportunities. Digital empowerment. Access to all.
From behind her politician’s face she watched the double doors at the rear of the hall jar open. A group in parkas and hoodies progressed up the centre aisle, a uniformed security man moving uncertainly among them.

Perhaps a hundred people were standing now, faces measured, young, attractive. They filled all three aisles and the area below the stage. A glint of stage light reflected from the lower-lip piercing of a girl near the front of the pack, her dreadlocks tied back with a batik scarf.

They stopped their advance. Again, no visible cue. The security man struggled up the centre aisle. Nobody blocked his way but the volume of bodies slowed him. A few were filming him on their phones. Quiet panic slid around the hall but Bethany was glassy calm. She turned another page.
TAKING BRITAIN PLC ONLINE.
In the centre of the group, directly in front of the podium, stood a lean young red-headed man. In the spill of light, he stared up at Bethany and smiled slightly, making his face shine. She struggled to move her eyes across the hall as she read. This young man was magnetic. Dreadlocks, pierced nose, little tufts of facial hair. Still smiling, he put a finger on his nose, pressed it flat and let out an enormous
oink.

Shit.

The boy kept his finger there. Everyone else reached into pockets, bags, belts, and pulled out little rubber pouches. They shook them loose. Not pouches: masks. Some kids were pulling them over their heads. Nubbly ears, bald pink heads. Snouts.

Shit.

Cameraphones were being raised in the crowd. A technician hopped up to train one of the TV cameras on the group. Krish was at the sidelines, shoving an angular young man who was blocking his route to the stage. Everyone but the boy had on a pig mask.

Shit shit shit.

The boy reached for the zip on his hooded jacket and slid it carefully down. As he shrugged the jacket off his shoulders, the whole crowd of pigs began to unbutton plaid shirts, unzip parkas, pull T-shirts over heads. Beneath his jacket, the boy was bare-chested. His ribs showed in the half-light like a mediaeval Jesus. He couldn’t have been more than twenty. His eyes were on her.

The word
flashmob
appeared in Bethany’s head. She’d never been clear what it meant, but surely it was this. For the first time, she stumbled on her words. People were standing, talking openly, confronting protestors as they slowly disrobed. Bras were unlatched, knotwork tattoos revealed – along with other black markings on their skin. The security man’s West African features creased into a shout.

The boy unbuttoned his jeans and eased them down. His cock flopped out as he bent forward. The others leaned down to undress their lower halves and kick off shoes.

Bethany stopped reading. How absurd to pretend this wasn’t occurring. She had to engage them.

‘Hello. Perhaps before you – no, please. Please, before you –’

Could she not say ‘strip’? Was she really so much of a politician she couldn’t even mention a hundred naked people?

‘I don’t know what you’re hoping to do here –’

But really? She did.

Cameras fizzed and splashed across the hall. The boy in the front rose to full height, facing her. Others followed suit, creating rank after rank of naked pigs. Bethany tried not to look at the boy’s penis, which was long, slender and surrounded by thick red hair. It was an effort of will, but MINISTER STARES AT MAN’S COCK was not the headline she wanted from this costly event.

‘Please, please. If you have a point to make there are better ways to make it,’ she said into the mic; but their dogged stillness called her out.

Something was written on the young man’s body, in permanent marker. She scanned the bodies shaking off their last bras and socks. All were covered in scratchy capitals and numerals. She could not make them out.

The whole group was naked. They stood motionless but in control. Krish, who had made it to the apron of the stage, was mouthing and pantomiming at her. Could something turn this situation? Something she could do?

The pig-mob began to peel away towards the steps at each side of the stage. Krish was caught up in the group to her left. Another question arrived in her head: was she in danger?

She backed away from the podium. Glancing behind her she saw the projection screen, which should have been displaying a giant Digital Citizen logo – the winking face made up of ones and zeros. It had been co-opted. Shouting from the vast screen now was a pig face, also drawn from text characters: the same one they used when they hacked the homepage. Below it, the words
STRIPPED OF OUR DATA
, then an animated flurry of information, too fast to read: names, dates, code numbers. Personal data. Presumably real data from this group. Underneath the scrolling data was a static message she knew only too well:
NAKED AND UNADORNED.
And beneath this, a logo.

She turned back. A file of naked protesters lined the front of the stage, their skinny ribs and pert young arses accentuated in the strong shadows of the lights. Krish was trying to navigate round the group without touching anything inappropriate. Down to the side, DS Raeworth and DC Ackroyd forced their way through the crowd, Ackroyd clipping a young man in the head with his raised elbow. Two TV cameras were now in front of the stage, one trained on her, the other on the young ringleader, who still stood in front of the stage, staring up at her.

Not waiting for Krish to reach her, Bethany made a little scream of frustration and turned tail to the right-hand wings. Nobody was there. She glanced across the stage and saw her team and the event managers beckoning frantically from the opposite side. No sign of Sean. Before the event began he’d barely caught her eye: where the hell had he got to now?

She shook her head and pointed behind her, indicating the way she’d go. No way she was about to be filmed doing a comedy double-take walk across the back of the stage. She needed to get a long way away. She turned and entered the dark of the backstage area, led by the green glow of a fire exit.

She pushed the door beneath the sign. As she stepped through, a hard little hand grabbed her forearm from the darkness. Another grabbed her torso, sliding up from behind her to cross her breasts. She struggled to get free but the hand and arm were locked in place. They pulled her backwards, forcing her arm behind her. As she struggled, in the light from the closing door she caught a spike of purple over pale, pale skin. Her assailant was small but strong. An acid voice hissed from the dark.

‘Going somewhere, cunt?’

From
The Electronic Radical

by Dr Elyse Martingale (1957, Gollancz)

What will decide our fate? Who shall control this information? In reply I repeat as an
a priori
fact: it is in the nature of information to make itself free. On this basis, there can be no doubt who shall prevail.

I tell you with confidence: our future is an electronic pastoral where all roam free. No longer shall petty-fogging officialdom determine our fates, simply by virtue of the control we have foolishly ceded over our information. All that is true shall be transparently displayed. All falsehood shall be cancelled out.

Naked and unadorned we shall stand. What remains will be bare facts alone. We shall be judged as we are.

Seven

‘Is this what you people do? Click!’ The girl snapped tight fingers three inches from Bethany’s face. ‘And you ruin someone?’

Speech had abandoned Bethany. All her life, words had flowed from her mouth like melting wax. Why would they run dry now?

The girl grabbed another handful of brochures from the cardboard box and flung them at Bethany, who ducked as best she could from a sitting position – but one struck her in the lip, hard. Print-work slithered down her and spilled from her lap, joining the dozens of brochures already carpeting the concrete floor.
WORLD CLASS FACILITIES FOR WORLD LEADING EVENTS
,
read the cover copy.

‘You took my fucking life, you condescending hag! In a day you took it. And you just sit there?’

It’s true that Bethany was sitting, on a plastic utility chair: unbound but certainly a hostage. The concrete echo chamber smelled of solvent. A table was rammed against the door. In front of it stood Dani Farr, her whole face livid as the claret splash that coated her neck and jaw. She turned to pull more brochures from the box on the table and wielded them. They seemed to be her only weapon. Was anyone ever killed by a brochure? Bethany wiped at her bruised lip: blood or sweat?

She should get up and walk, of course she should. She had five or six inches on this crazy scamp. She should push past, move the table, figure out the push-bar lock on the door. But how long would all that take? The girl had shown extraordinary strength when she dragged Bethany down here; punched her stomach and kidneys; yanked her six flights down the emergency stairwell by a handful of hair. And, Bethany would freely admit, she was terrified. What was the girl after? How far was she prepared to go? Forcing her way out was not an option. She had to tip this back her way. An unwanted thought came to her:
I
’
m going to be late for constituency surgery.
As Dani raised the fan of brochures to head height, she found her voice.

‘Let me help you, Dani. How can I help you?’

The girl froze. But before Bethany could speak, the brochures were rammed back in her face.

‘I did nothing! Nothing! Do you know what they’re calling me, cunt?’

The word was a gut punch from such a small and shrill attacker. Bethany had spent her life fighting for a sister’s right to be spared that word of hate. That male word. Now this torn rag doll was using it to assault her. The absurd unfairness on top of everything.

‘Listen. No!
Listen
to me.’ She brushed aside the glossy paper handful. ‘This stunt of yours is ruining something important you stupid –’ don’t call her a girl, don’t belittle her ‘– child!’

Shit. Come
on,
mouth!

The girl stamped on the spot.

‘Fuck! You!’

She slammed the brochures onto the table. Her frustration was nuclear. Her white cheeks were coloured with baby-flush and there were tears in her eyes.

‘Dani?’

There. That was it. Bethany had struck the note. Teacher. Carer. She looked into the face of a wounded child. What
is
your story, girl?

‘All right. It’s true I’ve said critical things about your system. About Parley. And I’m sorry for that. I hope you can understand how much we – I – have been hurt by the things being said there. But you need to believe that we – I – had nothing to do with those personal attacks on you. Nothing.’

‘You. Lying. Cunt. You all. Fucking. Lie.’

Openly sobbing now, surrendering to a huge weight of sorrow.

Use her name again. Give up something to her: and let her see it hurt.

‘Dani. I’m going to tell you something I never tell anyone. I’m doing this because I trust you not to repeat it. And because there’s something I want you to understand.’

A petulant cluster of wrinkles formed above the girl’s nose, but she was listening.

‘I was nineteen. A student.’

Framing herself young and powerless to undercut the power imbalance. Was it landing? Hard to tell.

‘I ran the Women’s Group at University College, here in London. I suppose I’ve always been a bit of a politico.’

A crash, somewhere distant. A door? Both women’s eyes darted sideways then locked back onto each other. Could someone get into this room from outside, with the table wedged against the door?