Sockpuppet: Book One in the Martingale Cycle (9 page)

‘You weren’t there this morning,’ she says. ‘It was scary, yo. Those boot boys trying to shut us down. Fucksake, the guy had a
gun
.’

‘They’re Parliamentary Protection officers who’d had a warning of a credible threat. Sure they were armed. It’s not like he drew on you?’

‘But, right. Exactly. The bit of the police that’s there to protect the government is
trying to shut us off
. Come on, shit – don’t we care about free speech and, and – and everything?’

Her last reserves of energy are leaving. After this conversation, she’ll find a cupboard to crawl into and black out behind some toner cartons.

‘I happen to care a great deal about that,’ says Sam. ‘But you need to let me do my job. Right now, and in time for the six o’clocks, I need clear lines on why this couldn’t have been caused by Parley and sorry, but everything you’ve given me so far is way too techy. I can tell you now, I’m briefing none of this in.’ Gesturing at his notes. ‘Not a word. They need something they can hook on simply. Something painless.’

‘Then they’re fucking idiots,’ she says. ‘I’ve told you the facts. They should report them.’

‘I don’t think even you believe that but it doesn’t matter. I need to do my job.’

Her skin itches with an energy she can’t define. These idiotic questions. Christ sake, Parley isn’t rocket science. Sic_girl and thirty-five other software-generated Personas speak online, their words assembled from the screen-lives of thousands of people. Human fans flock around them, loving their fakeness and wishing for one of these sham personalities to hear them and speak back to them. Parley, d’uh.

Sam takes a sip of juice and places the glass down with a careful
toc
. His lips are ribbed like a reptile’s back. That stormy look, crossing his horizontal brows, triggers a chemical reaction in her gut. There’s something wound between his shoulders. What would happen if he turned proper angry?

Dani pours herself another slug of Mountain Dew Cherry-Citrus and tries again.

‘So is she covering something up?’ she says. ‘Bethany Lehrer? Did she really lie to Parliament about the hack?’

Sam sighs and aligns his crimson Moleskine on the tabletop.

‘Bethany?’ he raises his eyebrow. ‘I used to think she was the real deal. The honest politician. But then I worked with her team – did you see the
Take Gran Surfing
campaign?’

‘Yes, I saw it. It was fucking idiotic.’

‘OK, listen,’ he says. ‘I realise I’ve never lived up to your intellectual standards but I know what I’m doing, all right?’

Dani grips the sides of her seat. What did she say?

‘I know how to keep the press off your back,’ he says. ‘But you need to toss me a bone. One simple fact that says
THIS IS NOT PARLEY
’
S FAULT.
’ He marks the words in the air. ‘I’ll do the rest. Your Personas may be fake, but so are most celebrities. Sic_girl and tvjoe are in the software A-List. Even LabelMabel and riotbaby. People already love them. It won’t be hard.’

Dani is quiet. She has something. Sam is good at waiting.

‘So – OK,’ she says. ‘It wasn’t Parley who said this. It was the whole Internet. My team is mining a hundred gig of data right now to find out who originally posted this stuff about the hack. Because somewhere out there, somebody said it all before – maybe ten or fifty or a hundred people who each said a fragment of this thing. Because sic_girl doesn’t speak from nowhere. All she does is scrape up words other people already said and kludge them into something that sounds like reality. This shit about Bethany Lehrer? It came from somewhere but it didn’t come from us. If people want someone to blame, they can blame the Internet.’

Sam’s broadening grin is such a reward, Dani is sick at herself. He’ll leave now.

‘Now that I like. Yes. Yes, I think that will do. I knew you had it in you.’

He slaps his book shut: a professional wrap-up. He has what he wants. He’ll be off to have conversations that leave no trace but redirect the flow of words and change their meaning, between the lunchtime and the evening news. Dani does nothing to stop him. Why isn’t she the person who suggests a coffee, demands a date? People think she’s tough. She isn’t tough, she’s helpless.

She stays in her chair as he packs up, already raising a new-model iPhone to his ear. He gives her shoulder a brief squeeze then the colour in the room dials down: he’s gone. She’s served her purpose. Sleep beckons.

‘Well, Fiona, it’s perhaps inevitable that this affair should have gained the name
Pig-gate.
It’s certainly “hogging” attention here in Westminster. And the pressure on embattled minster Bethany Lehrer shows no sign of letting up.

‘Ms Lehrer was unavailable for comment but a spokeswoman told us, quote,
This is the act of a petty Internet hoaxer. We are treating it seriously but the information posted on the Parley website is not accurate. The public can rest assured that Digital Citizen data is quite secure.
Referring there to the controversial new online ID card.

‘And though the leaks first surfaced on popular social network Parley, their ultimate source remains a mystery. The hunt is widening across the entire Internet.

‘Now, interestingly, Fiona, the Prime Minister, questioned this afternoon at a visit to Marlesbury NHS Trust, expressed, quote,
full confidence
in his embattled minister. But I’m told she has been summoned to an early meeting tomorrow, here at Downing Street – at which, one suspects, she will be asked to account for the reality or otherwise of this alleged hack; for her words in Parliament last week; and – most importantly – for the invaded privacy of several thousand taxpayers.

‘One thing is certain. That meeting will be anything but “boar”-ing.

‘Fiona.’

¶tvjoe

Haha look at the reflection on this political editor guy’s head! IT IS BLINDING ME.

Ooh!

Time for Celebrity Pie-Eating Contest on Five!

Eight

The clock was a hand-me-down, like the house. It had held post on the painted bookshelves as long as Bethany could remember. Its low tock was part of the fabric of the kitchen. It took an effort of concentration to make it out – like the stink of dog she was sure hung about the house but that she and Peter were too attuned to notice.

She gazed at the dial and tried not to consider how many ways she was screwed. A hair after 12:45 – time yet.

Her eyes tracked the rows of cookbooks, their marker ribbons hanging over the shelves like mouse-tails. Here was continuity, through her childhood and back to times she hadn’t known and didn’t understand. Bottom to top, Nigellas and Hestons blended into titles her mother worked from in the seventies:
Cuisine Minceur
,
Robert Carrier, white spines stained as elderly teeth; and on the top shelf, the shredded papyrus of Pattens and Davids: her grandmother’s books.

Even today Bethany inhabited the house as though minding it for Gramma. She repeated her routines in the kitchen and spring borders. You could say the same about the bedroom, too, though she didn’t choose to explore that thought. She scanned the room for other traces. On the Aga bar, the ratty tea towel –
Famous British Breeds
– was nearly as old as Bethany and should be chucked. The mid-century Kenwood that she used for cake mixes always gave off a metal-and-petroleum smell, making her think of the war. On the wooden counter, one of Jake’s books –

Dammit!
Giggly Pigglies go to the Theme Park.
That dire TV spin-off book Jake couldn’t get enough of. Her politician’s brain filed this intrusion in a deep interior chamber, where it could detonate without disturbing her conscious mind. She cast her eyes back to the spread of business on the big oak tabletop. Here she was again, where she’d been when the whole thing began.

This table was her refuge. Each night she laid the debris of her day across its grain like archaeological finds. This was the only place and time that was wholly hers. In the mornings, when she eased the front door into its frame and tiptoed out to the polite hum of a ministry Prius, the sun was still down. The car rolled her to the underground car park at Artemis House, where her driver handed her off to Emily Candlewick, her Private Secretary. Daytime was spent in a so-called Private Office where there was no privacy, battling to ensure her intentions, her policies, didn’t drown beneath the tidal surge of officialese and debate about the finer points of law. When she could stand no more her civil servants passed her battered frame back to the driver, who delivered her to husband and sons so she could spend a few hours role-playing marriage and motherhood – until Jake, Hugo and Peter in turn withdrew upstairs, unacknowledged, leaving Bethany to her nightly exercise.

Tonight, though, there’d been no time for more than a cursory peck on the cheek for Hugo, as she rattled instructions into her BlackBerry. Jake was sickening for something: she left him with barely a scuff of the hair and a Lemsip. It was after eleven before she shook her pursuers, the chance of getting her up on
Newsnight
having finally evaporated. It would start again in a few hours.
Today
, the breakfast shows, then every time-slice of the media day: all wanting their twenty second clip of a minister crumbling under questioning, to drop into the hourly bulletins. She would have to talk to them eventually, though Krish was firmly agin it. Somehow they had to fix this whole rotten mess before she took to the platform on Friday morning, to announce that Digital Citizen was live across the nation.

The house breathed and creaked. She had a stark five hours of calm: during which she should also, in theory, sleep. She put down the paper she’d held unread in her hand for the last half hour and moved her reading glasses to rest on the top of her head. Ah: no wonder the room had been looking so blurry. The heating had been off for nearly two hours but the sealed room carried a homeopathic trace of warmth. She shivered as the day unfolded back at her. Incredible how quickly things play in a crisis. You don’t seem to
do
anything, just react as events fly past. Bethany hoped she’d retained a can-do spirit – at least the team seemed buoyed. They thrived on the hands-to-the-pump stuff.

They’d gathered round her desk when the summons came from Number 10. An early morning slot: Karen Arbiter was fond of Gestapo tactics. Bundle the victim out of bed at the crack of dawn, bombard them with questions till they crack. At least the PM was unlikely to be there: she wouldn’t like Simon to see her break under torture.

In any case, she wouldn’t crack. She was big enough and ugly enough to cope with Karen. But the thought that this brouhaha could scupper the Digital Citizen put an acid lump in her throat. All that graft to get things to a place where she might do real good: and in a way Gramma would have been proud of. She couldn’t let her own idiotic behaviour bring the programme down.

All the more need for the steadying presence of Big Krish Kohli. Her instinct to retrench was working against her. So much she wouldn’t and couldn’t tell her spads, but they were primed to help her. They’d be waiting for her call right now. And why not? No cause to suffer this alone. She tapped out a text suggesting a conf call: a functional text, with no
babes
-es or kisses. She included Krish and J-R on the message and pinged it off.

While she waited for a response she flipped her glasses back down onto her nose and pulled the next paper from her dispatch box.
Digital migration of regional libraries: DECISION REQUIRED.
She sighed and began to read, Pentel hovering.

Each afternoon her Private Office primed these Parliament-red valises with progressively more impossible tasks to test her mettle. They knew precisely how to pull her strings, her puppet-masters. They filleted her days into six-minute chunks until her diary resembled a bar code, leaving her no time for actual decisions. Then they crammed all the real business into these boxes for her to work on through the night. The resulting sleep deprivation left her tender and suggestible for the next day’s programming. She might as well be Linda Kasabian.

Though in fairness they’d rallied round her today, as the press pack tooted their horns and bore down at a gallop. Without a word, her civil servants had moved into a defensive screen. Wasn’t it in adversity you found out who your friends were? In which case, her officials were showing themselves second only to Krish and J-R.

Speak of the devil – there was Krish now, on her BlackBerry.

Krish pulled J-R onto the line.

‘Up at this hour, too, J-R?’ asked Bethany. ‘You boys need to lay off the lattes.’

Their laughs were token but so was her joke. They got down to business, making efficient use of their narrow slice of midnight air. J-R gave a brief report on Parley: positive, but no meat. He sounded guilty about this. He shouldn’t.

Bethany had only today found out that Parley was owned by Mondan. Odd that accusations about a government supplier should appear on a social media website run by its subsidiary. Did it mean anything? For the zillionth time since entering government she wished she knew more about something beyond politics. How companies bought and sold each other: what happened when they did.

Krish and J-R were talking about Parley’s artificial characters – the Personas
.
J-R reeled off stats on the elusive sic_girl.