Sockpuppet: Book One in the Martingale Cycle

by Matthew Blakstad

  Any case, everyone has their levers. Two things were guaranteed to set Danielle on course: one, a near-impossible intellectual challenge; and two, the Stern Mom treatment.

  ‘Find out where this thing came from,’ said Jonquil. ‘OK? We know this didn’t start with sic_girl. So give me just one link to the person who originally made these accusations, and tell me how the sic_girl algorithm picked it up. Do this by close tomorrow and you’ll make me very happy. OK?’

  Danielle did that duck-of-the-head nod. The lights had come back on. Good girl. Jonquil pressed on.

  ‘And make nice with this guy Pemberton, OK? Tell him everything he wants to know. We need a friend in government right now.’ Then a wink. ‘And he seems a nice boy. No?’

  Danielle looked over at Pemberton. With his back to the women, one hand holding the smartphone to his ear, he was hitching up his suit trousers with the other, leaving great folds of shirttail unaccounted for. Danielle turned back to Jonquil, shrugged, whatever, then got up to go; but Jonquil touched her pale forearm to stop her.

  ‘Hey, two things, remember.’

  Danielle parked her butt on the table and Jonquil turned the volume dial down to setting one.

  ‘I’m going to get Sam our PR guy to talk to you, OK? We need to get our story straight before this thing lands on us. You can fill him in. I want the two of you tight on this.’

  Danielle just stared in response. Then she was gone.

  Jonquil watched Pemberton rattle information into his phone and make swoops with his free hand. Which presumably represented cricket. Either she was going to have to spend the whole day whispering, or she needed to find somewhere else to park this dorky but effective infiltrator.

  ¶Nightshade >>whisper -> ¶thegrays

  jonquil’s face gets even tauter when she’s stressed

  if she has any more work done, her eyes will end up on the back of her head

  ¶thegrays >>whisper -> ¶Nightshade

  Maybe that has already happened and she is actually facing away from you.

  ¶Nightshade >>whisper -> ¶thegrays

  AAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHH

  Six

  ‘Our PR guy Sam’ is now twenty minutes late. Bad enough Dani has to meet a public relations person when all she wants to do is sleep but to wait for the privilege? Wrong. She double-steps down to reception, looking for someone to complain at.

  She passes Gray on the stairs. His T-shirt today reads, Bluetooth? You can’t HANDLE Bluetooth! He gives Dani a two-finger wave over his Mountain Dew but she stumbles past him without responding. Get used to it, buster.

  She peers round the frosted pane dividing the stairwell from reception. Apparently ‘Our PR Guy Sam’ is already here and is kicking back an oversize cappo while schmoozing Mary at the front desk. Mary pats and strokes her beehive as though it’s an erogenous zone. Perhaps it is. No sign someone might be upstairs waiting for an appointment.

  )) ignorehead ((

  Dani’s primed to give them a dose but something holds her back. The man has his back to her but his possessive slouch gives out a signal. It takes three seconds to register: ‘Our PR Guy Sam’ is Sam Corrigan.

  Sam.

  Dani puts her head down and makes it to the lift without running or blacking out. Only when she’s heaved the grille doors shut and hit Four does she manage another breath. The car grinds upward.

  She first knew Sam at sixth-form college, though he never seemed to know her back. They moved with different tribes. She the raging goth-girl, lording it over the Computer Centre nerds, he the lean and beautiful boy who shared the impeccable politics and the perfect skin of his whole golden circle of friends. Star-crossed and fucked-up from the start, Dani never stood a chance. For the whole two years she stumbled in his presence, tongue-tied with longing, sure he was mocking her each time her back was turned. Then at last, panicked by the fast-approaching headlights of graduation, she bet everything on one great declaration at the post-A-level piss-up. Come the night, though, he was walled off by a gauntlet of glowing teen perfection she didn’t dare run – and by the time she’d drunk up the courage to approach him, he and his angel cohort had already swooped away to some hip and distant London club. Dani had missed her last and only chance at Sam.

  Except that she saw him one more time, by the purest chance, on a trip to Greece in the summer after uni. Holidays sometimes expose us to these sideways swipes of coincidence. Usually the spell fades when you return to daily life, but sometimes you don’t shake it. That’s how it was for Dani. It’s seven years now since Sam materialised at that island resort but he’s stayed with her like an after-image of the sun.

  Maybe if he hadn’t happened to be staying on that particular island, in that particular week, she’d have forgotten all about him. She was already going out with Gray by then, and she barely knew a world existed beyond the two of them. Fresh from uni, with nowhere much to be and no idea how they’d go about changing the world together, she and Gray had moved from 300-mile-apart student digs to find themselves crammed together in a tiny Bethnal Green studio. Their love – if that’s what it was – had started in the cloud. They hadn’t met physically for the first three months they were together. Now they were boxed up together in a single barely furnished space, lit by four unshaded bulbs, their only view a bare brick wall two metres outside their window. Every night they sat dual-screening on a fraying sofa, messaging one another to break the silence they’d discovered in the real. The future lay open in front of them, empty as their fridge. One day they dropped it all and flew off on the sunny promise of a last-minute online package to Paxos.

  Dani shed her jeans and steel-cap boots, picked up a flowery little dress. Gray stuck to his standard-issue nerdwear. He hid from the island sun inside a long black jacket and a wide-brimmed hat. His T-shirt – once black, now washed a hundred times to mossy green – bore the motto: GOT MY MODEM WORKING, UH-HUH, UH-HUH. Sweat dotted the strands of his weak beard. He could not have looked more out of place, or more bedraggled: a lost Hassid, hustling in the shade of adobe bungalows. In the midday heat he would linger on shady terraces, poring over his dog-eared copy of The Electronic Radical and ogling Dani as she moved with her surroundings.

  It was the peak heat of afternoon. Dani read from a sand-caked paperback. Ratty gulls looped in the air above her, the only aggravation in the still of the beach. Rough scrub began at the edge of the shingle, rising quickly to a woody cliff that circled the little bay, its cracked jetty, the sun bearing directly down. It was Dani and a handful of others. In the little wind there was, loose cables slapped on flag posts, and a distant bell sounded an intermittent note of warning. Nobody moved, nothing was there. She lifted herself slightly from her lounger, leaving a Turin Shroud of sweat: and there stood Sam, impossibly lank, hip bones pushing over loose red shorts, feet planted on the edge of a crumbling harbour wall as he saluted a sky of utter blue. Out in front of him, flashbulbs of reflected light exploded randomly over the black surface of the water, as though for a lap of honour in a stadium at night. Sam stretched his chest and arms, bathing in the silent roar of an astonished crowd. He was beautiful, and he didn’t care who was or wasn’t looking at him.

  She knew him right away. He had a showy leanness about him that was unmistakable. When she hailed him, and he turned, a look of transparent pleasure filled his face, and at once she was his. He could have taken her there, pulled up her little singlet, grabbed at the flesh around and under her bikini bottoms, torn into her. She would have opened herself to him. For a moment, she even thought he might, and he said Dani with a lilt that was wonderful: wonderful he even knew her name. Then Gray came pooling up beside her asking edgy questions and the moment was over. Sam rubbed the stubble on his head with a hurried motion and looked sheepish and cocksure all at once, and from there it was hopeless, and Gray was spiky, and the whole thing went awry; and life carried on without Sam in it. Just the potential of him.

  ‘Sam Corrigan. Moneyshot PR.’

  Dani h
as retreated to the Moot – Parley’s great glass meeting space – to wait for Sam. The draw-on walls are doodled over with innovations and flowcharts in erasable markers of many colours. After ten minutes of shifting in her chair and pretending to check data on her laptop, Mary eventually showed Sam up. And here he is, haloed by glare from the floor-to-ceiling windows.

  ‘I’m – hi, Sam,’ she says. ‘It’s me. Dani.’

  She’s half out of her seat, bent against the table edge. His suit is narrow and his face is blank. She takes the yellow-and-purple card he’s holding out. It says, Sam Corrigan. Senior Associate. MoneyShot PR. When she looks back up he’s jump-cut to the former Sam, with a beautiful grin and arms out wide.

  ‘I know that,’ he says. ‘Come here, you.’

  And she’s in his arms, chair bumping the backs of her knees. He’s so alive. His muscles make eddies under the fabric. He smells of warm raisins.

  He pulls away, rubbing the newborn fluff on his head, appraising her. Those wolf eyes: he’d known her all along.

  Except suppose he hadn’t? At the moment she might have seen him catching on she’d been looking down at his card. She flips it against her hand. The cheek of his grin.

  This is what she remembers first about Sam: when he steps out of line, nobody’s looking.

  ¶therealnobody

  How do we know these people’s data was even really hacked? All we know is they’re getting spammed by messages from some bullshit kid’s programme toy range.

  *strokes beard*

  Hmm. I wonder how that could ever happen?

  Come on, d’uh. They’ve sold our data to some marketing firm. This ‘hack’ is totally a cover-up.

 

  ¶JustTheFacts

  Some big company’s making money tracking me and pumping ads my way? I say monetize my ass. Long as I get free content.

  ¶clickbait

  Six hamsters that look like Bethany Lehrer

  fub.ar/h33b89

  Seven

  ¶Nightshade

  i am in a meeting with a spin doctor

  is this what they mean by ‘sit and spin’?

  ‘No.’

  Dani looks up from her phone. It sounded like Sam was replying to her proffer, but he was just talking.

  )) plastic irritant ((

  She puts the phone down. Sam looks at it then back at her. Has she done something to irritate him? She’s answered his pointless questions, tried to please him; then got distracted and checked her phone. Probably a bad.

  ‘No,’ he says again. ‘It doesn’t matter whether the leak is true.’

  She doesn’t recognise his taut voice. What happened to Mr Too Cool For Sixth Form College?

  ‘It doesn’t matter if Bethany Lehrer lied,’ he says. ‘What matters is if people believe Parley’s to blame for what sic_girl’s saying. Or that you’re to blame. Personally, I mean. This is a grade one media storm and I’m trying to move you out of its eye.’

  ‘I thought the eye was the safe part?’ she says.

  His monobrow darkens further.

  ‘But Sam, it must matter whether it’s true. I mean, mustn’t it?’

  ‘Not to the media. Not yet.’ He remembers who he’s talking to and settles back in his chair. ‘Look, sure, all the facts will come out at some point – but by then it’ll be too late. People will have made up their minds.’

  ‘But, see,’ she says, ‘the point I’m making is things appear on Parley for a reason. It picks up what people are already talking about. Nothing comes to the surface unless people are saying it already. If this thing was on Parley, it’s kind of already true.’

  She stops for breath. Jonquil’s always saying at her, Space. It. Out. Danielle. But when she has something important to say she forgets.

  Sam looks at her, flicking the button of his chrome pen on and off.

  ‘So that’s your definition of what’s true?’ he says. ‘Something enough people are saying?’

  The pen rotates around his fingers, hypnotising her.

  ‘No, obviously not. But people listen to the Parley Personas and talk to them and it helps them know what’s going on.’

  Who cares what some guy thinks? Opinions are bullshit. Dani trusts only in pattern – a mass of people who overlap in their choices and likes.

  Sam sits forward. His skin is transparent.

  ‘Look,’ he says, ‘my job is to insulate Parley. And you, of course.’

  Dani frowns at him.

  ‘Make your mind up,’ she says.

  ‘Both. And the Party’s going to try to move the blame onto you, to take the heat off Bethany. They’ll make like we’ve lied or stirred up hysterics. That’s what I’d do. We need to nip that in the bud. I need something solid on Parley.’

  ‘But the government people are on our side – that guy Pemberton?’

  ‘Our side? If they can blame us they’ll blame us. But if we insulate ourselves they’ll feed somewhere else. Then we can go in hard on police heavy-handedness and make that our story. It’s a gift, the way those plods behaved this morning but we can’t use it until the sniff of guilt is off us. Or people will think: no smoke without.’

  Dani tries to stare him out, but her eyelids are heavy and itchy.

  ‘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 T
HIS 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.’