Sockpuppet: Book One in the Martingale Cycle (45 page)

‘When is this data wipe happening?’ says Sam through a cloud of reverb. ‘We need to stop it. That data needs to stay on those disks – at least till they find their way to the police or the Cabinet Office.’

Something is missing from the light, stealing the signal. Dani slams the empty glass on the countertop as hard as her arm can land it. Both men look up in alarm. It wakes her. The light is telling her nothing. She shakes it off.

‘Both of you! Shut it!’ Sam stands and raises his hand. ‘No! Shut the shutting fuck up and listen to me! They’re killing the Personas? Killing sic? And you just sit and drone the fuck on?’

‘Dani, I don’t—’ says Gray.

‘Shut! Up! You, both of you, stop ignoring me! What have either of you done this past Christ knows how long but lie to me?’

‘Dan?’ Gray’s voice is level. He slides the laptop shut. ‘Listen. We don’t have time.’

‘You, though?’ she says. ‘This slick fuck I understand –’ Sam regards her with the same cool piety he uses on Gray. ‘– but you?’

‘This matters,’ says Gray. ‘You don’t know everything.’

‘Always! Trying to fucking control me.’

Gray stands up.

‘No. Mondan. Sean Perce.
He
’
s
trying to.’

Sam stands behind the sofa, behind Gray, looking on. Dani advances, pounding her sides with empty fists.

‘Is Sean Perce in this room? How’s
he
controlling me?’

Gray holds up the laptop like a shield.

‘On Wednesday night, Perce sent a USB stick to a journalist called Will Samber. That name ring a bell?’

He just chucked acid over Dani. She stops dead.

‘The guy who wrote the story about me,’ she says. ‘The pictures. He started the trolls.’

‘This afternoon, Sam sent me this.’ Gray holds up a small grey USB. ‘He got it from, from –?’

He clicks his fingers at Sam.

‘From a contact,’ says Sam, ‘on Samber’s newsdesk.’

‘Right,’ says Gray. ‘And tonight I cracked this flash drive open. All your data, Dan – it’s on there. Your passwords, pictures, emails. Perce sent it all to this guy Samber. He must’ve had someone hack your workstation.’

Sparkles crash like a wave. Dani pulls herself back from the black wash.

‘
Sean Perce
doxed me? Some billionaire decided one day to take me to pieces? Like my boss’s boss? To why? Who the fuck am I?’

Gray shrugs. Dani lands on the sofa.

‘Oh, fuck this all!’

Gray doesn’t come to her, doesn’t try to comfort her. Just stands where he is and waits.

‘It’s like – sic_girl is really Sam,’ she says. ‘You too, Gray. Now my own company is fucking with me. Even Colin.’

Gray and Sam exchange a sharp look she can’t parse.

‘Colin?’ says Gray.

‘Never mind,’ she says. ‘Really never mind. But for you to do this and never tell me – not even in the yard the other day? It feels: you must really not trust me.’

‘I – oh, hell. Dan, I guess we were protecting you.’

‘Oh, fucking
men
!’

The silence isn’t silent. There’s an after-hum of the building’s industrial past. After a moment, Dani and Gray both notice that Sam is laughing.

‘She does have a point,’ he says.

‘Like you have any fucking leg to stand on,’ says Dani. ‘If you knew about Sean Perce doxing me and turning the trolls on me, why did
you
never say so?’

He thinks for a moment.

‘But I didn’t know. It makes total sense but I heard it first from Gray, just now. I couldn’t read the USB.’

Don’t believe him. That needs to be the rule until she has more data. However real it sounds. A decision circuit flips in her head.

‘OK,’ she says. ‘OK. We’re going to rescue sic – and the others.’

Gray is the first to respond.

‘
Rescue
sic_girl? As in: you are not serious.’

‘Do I look not serious? We’re going to pull everything off the Parley servers and get them back. We’ll do it from here. Gray: you have superuser.’

‘No, in fact, I don’t. The Mondan team took over Parley this afternoon. First thing they did was cut the privileges.’

‘Then – we go in to 404. We go in there and we grab the hard disks. Rescue my babies.’

‘Dan, these are algorithms. You can’t
rescue
software.’

‘I
made
them.’

‘There’s more important things than your coder’s ego trip.’

‘Two days ago you thought they were coming to life,’ she says, ‘and now –’

She figures it out a second too late to stop herself saying it. Gray gives his barking laugh.

‘Get real,’ he says. ‘I strung Jonquil a line about that AI bullshit. It was Sam’s idea.’ Gentler, then. ‘They aren’t alive.’

‘You’re still killing them.’

His face darkens.

‘I am not your boyfriend any more and I don’t have to take your shit.’

Her nails bite into her palms.

‘Stop punishing me for fucking Sam!’

‘You can fuck Sean Perce for all I care. This is not on me.’

‘She’s right, though,’ says Sam.

He’s been quiet so long it takes them a moment to locate him, on a fancy Scandinavian swivel chair by the desk between the room’s two big arched windows. His computer, a gunmetal Mac, sits on the floor spilling cable round his feet. He has four or five Parley continuities up on an enormous flatscreen.

‘Come on, no,’ says Gray. ‘We’re not going to screw the whole campaign for the sake of her horseshit.’

Sam shakes his head. He has on his over-serious face.

‘Dani doesn’t want her Personas wiped,’ he says. ‘And we need the evidence of the hack to be found. I’m not pissing away three months of work. We need the DigiCitz hard drives bagged up and safe until the plods can get their hands on them. You, me, Dani – we’re all after the same thing. The police get the evidence of the hack; Dani “rescues” her precious Personas. Everyone’s happy.’

The bastard does air quotes. But he’s making sense.

‘What time is any of this happening?’ he says.

Gray is flush with anger. He thought he was running this show. But there’s no holding back on Sam.

‘They pull the plug on Parley midday tomorrow. Just as the press release goes out. Then they’ll start the wipe.’

‘So.’ Sam does a 360 on his swivel chair and grins his lovely grin. ‘We have time to grab some sleep before we save the Internet.’

Saturday:

Demos

‘So, who here has an iPhone? Who here has a BlackBerry? Who here uses Gmail? Well, you’re all screwed.’

 
—
Julian Assange

‘Move fast and break things.’

 
—
Facebook developer’s credo

Zero

In sleep, Dani’s features lose their anger and bewilderment. The hard set of her jaw and cheeks reconfigure into the face of a lost girl. There’s always been a wounded childishness behind her toughness. But I’ve never seen her so defenceless.

Does she always sleep with her birthmark to the pillow? She looks so young and normal. Like someone’s kid you meet and worry about whether it’s OK to fancy.

She took me by surprise, last night. I wonder if she was surprised, too. It was the kind of intense you can’t recapture.

Will anyone else respond to her? I’m in the market for a new poster child. The Personas give us reach and cut-through but people won’t believe my imitation game for long. To maintain the story I need continuity. For brand loyalty I need empathy. People need someone to feel for; feel with. Flesh and blood. Ideally with cheekbones and perfect skin but hey, this is the real world. Dani will have to do.

One

Three muffled crashes and the sound of busy work with cups and cupboard doors. Dani levers herself off the pillow. Sam is up already, working a long metal machine at the kitchen counter. He carries a soft white coffee over to her and places a slow kiss on her forehead. She props herself against the whitewashed wall and cradles the coffee. Gives Sam an unaffected smile. Then a gravel voice cuts in from behind him.

‘So apparently I have to make my own hot drinks? Woot.’

Graham’s head has appeared above the sofa back.

‘Not at all.’

Sam heads back to the counter. Gray gives Dani a shit-eating grin and wags his little finger. Which means either Sam’s cock, or
I
’
ve got him wrapped around my.
Dani raises her middle finger in reply and takes a sip through the doughy froth. The coffee smells of scorched wood. She puts it down, checks her phone – not yet seven – and rubs muck from her eyes. Over on the sofa, Gray takes a bright orange shirt from his rucksack and pulls it on. It reads
THERE
’
S NO PLACE LIKE 129.0.0.1.
He looks up and winks. He knows she’ll get it and Sam won’t.

Sam puts down a coffee for Gray then walks to his desk and stuffs his tablet into a leather man-bag.

‘So,’ he says. ‘I know what we’re going to do.’

Dani shifts: there’s the pain in her arsehole again.

‘But first,’ says Sam, ‘you both need to know: something’s happened.’

Dani sits forward in alarm.

‘Parley? Already?’

‘No.’ He’s gauging her reaction. ‘Not to Parley. To Leo.’

While Dani dresses, Sam and Gray huddle together in the kitchen. The last week is starting to make a kind of sense if she reruns it in a use-case where Gray helped Sam take over Parley and stir up TakeBackID. But most of the who-did-what-whens are still unclear – for instance, who did the Digital Citizen hack? Assuming there was a hack.

This much she does get: the finale is today. The centrepiece will be a takeover of the giant screens at 404 City. Leo was prepping for this last night when he fell. When they pushed him. When whatever happened. Anyway, when he died.

Her head goes back to yesterday evening.

 Leo handing her the gun

         do what you want with it he said

                 the weight of it in her hand

                         now hes dead

She walks over to join the others in the kitchen.

‘What’s wrong with the front door?’ asks Sam. ‘You have a swipe card. You can just walk in.’

‘Not with security and police all over the building, after—’

Gray stops himself. After Leo fell to his death, he means.

‘Plus
I
’
m
not going anywhere,’ he says. ‘I need to run the screen hack from here, now we don’t have—’

Now they don’t have Leo.

‘So . . .’ says Gray.

Both men turn to Dani expectantly. She’s missed something.

‘What do you think?’ asks Sam.

‘I think you’re both dicks.’

‘Oh, cheers, Dan,’ says Gray. ‘We’re trying to make this right.’

‘With your secret master plan to so-called
save the Internet
? What, did Julian Assange fuck James Bond and shit you both?’

Sam smiles at that.

‘Sounds about right.’

Dani smashes her cup down on the table.

‘No, but Leo’s dead, Sam. Do you even understand that?’ Her stomach’s on a fast spin. ‘I never knew anyone who died – I mean, who’s my age. I only just met him!’

‘Then why this, if you only met him yesterday?’

Dani doesn’t reply for fear of crying. Bastard tears. Even Gray looks wounded.

‘Jesus, that’s cold,’ he says.

‘No, I’m serious,’ says Sam. ‘You never even met him, Gray. I knew him. He was a good guy and I’m sorry this had to happen. But I can’t stand phony sentiment.’

Dani turns to Gray.

‘Do you actually know this guy?’ Then she rounds on Sam. ‘You made him go in there, remember? This is on you.’

Sam gets up, super-slow, tucks his chair under the table and sighs. The patience of Christ coming down from the mountaintop.

‘I do remember. That’s why we need to put this right – and stay calm while we do it.’

Gray is shaking. She puts her hand on his – an old reflex, wired up somewhere. Sam walks to his desk to gather stuff. He keeps on speaking in the same uninflected tone.

‘So, Dani.’ She sits up: why? ‘If Gray stays here to set the dogs on Perce, someone else needs to go into 404 and get the disks. Someone who knows how to find the DigiCitz and Parley servers and get out the drives undamaged.’

Dani grinds her chair round to face him.

‘Oh, me?’ She points to her chest, gets up and talks to his back. ‘You want me to go into the place where Leo got killed? I told you: the police are after me.’

Sam zips up his leather satchel.

‘OK, fine. We let Parley die and Perce gets away with fucking up your life. Your call.’

She gets up to march about the apartment, wanting to push things off its neat surfaces, groping for words.

‘This is – people don’t do this kind of shit in my world. We work things out. You know, with brains? There’s going to be a clean way – a systems way – to fix this.’

‘Well,’ Sam checks his phone, ‘you have four hours to find it. Good luck with that.’

‘We can get at Perce from here, online. Gray just said so.’

Gray stands from the kitchen table.

‘No, Dan, he’s right. We need the hard drives. Evidence. Before they wipe them. And I can’t save the Personas from here without server-side permissions.’

 Leo handing her the gun

         do what you want with it he said

                 the weight of it in her hand

                         now hes dead

Dani screws up her face and pushes her hair back with both hands. She bores a look into Gray. She knows he’s right and he knows he’s right. He shrugs
.
She drops her hands to her sides.

‘All
right
,’ she says. ‘OK, fuck!’

She sits on a sofa to think it over but there’s no thinking to be done.

‘So I go in,’ she says. ‘I work there. Why shouldn’t I be there?’

Sam is quizzical, like he was expecting more of a fight.