Three
Dani wakes on a pillow of her own discarded jacket. Second night in a row she didn’t make it to bed. The sofa feels like it’s stuffed with gravel. Her head feels like it’s stuffed with razor blades. Her phone, when she fishes it from her pocket, insists it’s after nine thirty. Her phone is full of shit. She screens out the sixty-plus missed calls it’s had overnight and tucks it in her jeans, then unfolds herself from the rumpled sofa cushions.
She makes the street in a hung-over trance. Zags of light jab at her between the buildings. City boys in turbo cars make Grand Theft Auto moves; pedestrians loom like a first-person shooter. She isn’t surprised by the curious, suggestive looks all down the street. That’s her paranoia, grinding her forehead and churning her empty stomach.
She buys a morning-after Coke from the corner shop. It’s the older Khan lad behind the counter. He gives a leer and looks about to speak, but doesn’t, just passes the change like it’s some kind of award. The air is thick with sick hot spice; she needs some air. The old white guy at the exit nods and gives her the up-and-down like he’s sizing up a stripper. Has she got a boob out? As she pushes her way out she checks her front with her hand, even though she has a T-shirt on. No: all in order. She sips the frosted Coke and lets it slap her cerebellum into shape. She has things to do and needs to shake this queasy anxiety. But still these blank and greedy looks from every man she passes. By the time she gets to the bus stop she’s genuinely freaked.
Men always look at Dani; at her purple swash of hair and at her tits, but it’s usually covert. She scares them, probably; she hopes she does. Her slipshod ferocity is some kind of provocation. They check her out, but from the edges of her vision, fearing and hoping she might look back at them, which she never does; but this morning it’s blatant, like someone’s been handing out licences to troll.
She returns the stare of one young black guy passing the bus stop. He looks back at her with this possessive half-a-smile. She casts her eyes to the ground – where she sees the trodden free-sheet on the pavement. A front page splash.
Time stops. The angry hum of the Kingsland Road condenses into a vanishing point. A tunnel forms between her eyes and the newspaper. She reaches down for it as though it’s primed to explode.
Dani’s always hated photos of herself. She especially hates drunk-shots; but it’s hard to take her picture when she’s anything less than paralytic. So she’s usually captured in some shade of gawping and/or shambolic eroticism. In spite of all the images she posts of exposed unknown young men and women, she never shares selfies – except, OK, the occasional private sext; but even then only when she’s absolutely shit-faced. Still, she can’t stop people taking photos and tagging her. So these ugly snatches of her persist here, there and Christ knows where; and links and connections build around them.
She’s switched off alerts and never ego-googles, so she passes weeks without seeing a single picture of herself: apart from the cropped publicity shot they dragged her into doing for work. She sees that every morning, blown up on metre-high foam mount in Parley’s main reception, under the caption Celebrating our key talent. Her birthmark is a garish presence in the picture, staining the bottom of the frame like something spilled. She’s come to like that image.
But seeing herself now, flash-lit in lace and leather on the front page, draped across a tatty chaise, straddled by some man who’s pouring liquid at her mouth from a giant test-tube, is a gut-blow. The paragraphs slide in and out of each other but she doesn’t need to read the words to understand. Malicious geek, they say. Sex-freak. Spoiler. They’re saying she hacked the Digital Citizen. That she’s the one proffering under sic_girl’s handle.
She looks around for some out, some explanation. She marches back to Khan’s and this time scans the shelf at the foot of the magazine display, its irregular stacks of papers. Five minutes ago she walked past them like a zombie but now she sees: every one of these papers has a picture of her. Wayward images, sampled from God knows where. She doesn’t recognise half of them, but they’re her. It’s a dream of appearing in a TV show called This Is Your Drunk Whore Life.
She picks one up. It’s fat and rough-edged. The print is surreally sharp and colourful. She never reads papers, has never seen the point of them. They’re hours out of date and they don’t tell you what anyone thinks about anything: just page after page of stone-dead information. But suddenly they’re immense and powerful. She thinks how many hundreds of thousands of these dumb identical things are spattered across the nation. Then she thinks of their online editions, how they’ll have multiplied and spewed ten thousand proffers, links and threads and likes. She drops the paper back on the pile and pulls out her phone to catch the expanding bubble of news. She sees the notifications still on the screen and then it hits her: why all these calls and mails and whispers? Because she’s some trash celebrity overnight. Some fat slut anti-government nutjob. Here are the thousands of people who suddenly want a piece of Dani. Her finger hovers over the Unlock swipe for a fraction of a second before unleashing what’s under the surface of the screen.
Makes sense a fat ugly whore like you would want to hide her identity. I wouldn’t fuck you if you had a bag tied over your head. Unless it was a plastic bag and you were dying of suffocation. Let me know when you catch aids and die so I can fuck your corpse and laugh in your dead bitch face. Don’t worry, I’ll wear a condom, lol.
She offs the phone and pushes it back in her jeans. She wavers in the passing rush of trucks and buses from the road outside; thinks for a moment she might pass out.
Then her scrambled brain kicks in. She knows who’s done this to her, who’s to blame; and the knowledge unfreezes her. Asshole. Shitting shitting asshole. It’s less than ten minutes from here to the address on the card, which is stuffed somewhere in her courier bag – but she doesn’t need to dig it out. She’s turned it over in her hand so many times the address is burned into her eyeballs. She leaves the shop smooth and mechanical as the Terminator, remorseless and programmed to destroy.
Except really? She feels like shit. She’s pretty sure the Terminator was never this hung over.
¶bottomhalfofthepage
My granny always said you eat what you sow. I think people who live in glass social networks shouldn’t throw accusations at popular public figures.
¶riotbaby
You go sister! Stick one to the Man. And the lady minister.
¶xxbabesxx
I don’t care what yous all say I think she is pretty hot for a fat chick.
¶tvjoe
Woot! Peoples! We’s on telly!!! Dani Farr for the win!
¶9th&sunset
Do you believe this sick fat whore above an elected politician? If you do you’re just as filthy crazy as that bitch in the pictures.
¶lolcatz
Me no geddit. Me iz Dani Farr, too?
¶TurdoftheDay
Spattergun. The force of a car backfiring.
I don’t know what to do. Help me.
Four
Identikid does a trial login to the botnet server. It’s still there. He scrolls the list of captive IPs. Total count today is over thirty thousand. Just under twenty-three thou active at this very moment. Way more than he needs to DDoS the lights out of those pigs at Mondan, come Saturday.
Leo just walked onto thousands of unprotected PCs, dotted about the world. The bot launches from off a virus scam, so he’s only spoofing net virgins dumb enough to open a dot-exe in the first place. All these citizens alive right now, doing their Amazon, downloading their porn and emailing their grans.
A familiar voice slides out of the portable speakers on the bar. His pianist fingers pause over the laptop keys. Shuffle has thrown up an unfamiliar nerd-lounge track that’s wrapping its beats around something very known to Leo. Through rolling crackles and interrupted jets of synth runs a sample – schoolmistress tones laid with viral energy:
WHAT THEY WOULD HAVE US BELIEVE
WHAT THEY WOULD HAVE US BELIEVE
WHAT THEY WOULD HAVE US BELIEVE
Then a break, then:
LET THEIR WALLS TUMBLE DOWN
It’s a sampled archive recording of Lady Electric herself, the great Elyse Martingale. Leo checks his phone display. Tumbledown (Tunny mix) by Martingale. This has got to be a sign, this week of all weeks – when something’s at last been given to Leo. He doesn’t want to question.
He checks the permissions on the botnet server: all in order. He drops the telnet session and kills the window.
This Distributed Denial of Service set-up is the first of three gifts to land this week. The code and URLs arrived online one crazy Flamingo night. The second gift came the morning after in an unmarked Nissan Cabstar. Special delivery from the man who isn’t there. Leo glances to the corner of the lounge, where he’s stacked the four reinforced metal cases. Four cases is too many for him to carry alone. He’d need Winter to help him shlep that much kit to 404 City. She’s totally up for it obvs but Leo’s disruptive spirit means it always needs to be him and none other who does the deed. Him to see the opportunity; him to gizmo the warez to do the deed. It’ll be an hour – max – of screwdriver time to wizard the kit into just two cases. Then he can go it alone. He likes to always customise his shit, in any how.
The third gift is closest. He keeps it in the plaid breast pocket of his shirt, where he can feel its flatness and lightness. It’s a magic key. A secure swipe card that can get him exactly where he needs to be, come Friday night.
Everything is running in one direction, identikid’s way. Imagine the devotees he’ll have by Saturday. Imagine the cites. Imagine the proffers.
To Danieele Farr the slut of Parley. We represnt the real Parley and this is to tell you we dont like dirty cunts like you.
So get off Parley. We see you are still here on Parley. Well we are warning you now to get off here.
Be warned! You have been hacked little miss cunt. We are inside your computer and all your phones. We are inside your home and we can see you right now. We can see the filthy things you are doing and will post it all over the net. How do you liek that?
We will get you count on it. Have a nice day cuntface from all of us.
Five
‘Yes you fucking did! Shit, who else would do this?’
‘I don’t—’
‘No!’
‘Can I just—’
‘No, shut up, Sam. Just shut up. I get to talk now.’
But she’s run out of anything to say.
They’re both breathless. The sound of their shouting hangs in the white air of the meeting room. She’s only now taking it in. A big wood table and mismatched chairs. A wood floor coated in chipped white paint. Arty pictures displayed around the walls.
‘I don’t know how to get past this,’ says Sam. ‘This anger.’
‘Yes sure I’m cunting angry,’ she says. ‘So what?’
‘It’s awful to see what’s happened today. I was hoping to talk to you, to say I can help.’
She snorts.
‘Bit fucking late for that. Really, really fuck you too late. Since you decided to do revenge porn on me.’
‘Jesus Christ, shut up! Just shut up and think!’
He shocks them both into silence. He touches her arm but she flinches it away.
‘Don’t.’
She can’t find her edge, her anger. All her strong emotions have been sheared away. She walks away to put the table between them. Hunts for the fury.
‘All right,’ he says. ‘But Dani, Dani, listen: why would I do anything like this to you?’
‘Well I sure as shit don’t know anyone else who could, could turn the whole fucking media and Internet against me overnight.’
‘But why would I?’
She stares back at him. He’s serious. He can’t be serious.
‘I mean –’ she says.
She doesn’t want to be the one to mention it, but he’s so openly baffled.
‘– that email?’ she says.
He draws a long deep breath.
‘All right. God. I’m sorry I didn’t reply to your mail yet. It was—’
‘Yet! Like you were going to.’
‘I would have done but it was – well, come on, that was quite an email.’
Is he blushing? Does it change a thing if he is?
‘I didn’t know what to say to you,’ he says. ‘I don’t know now.’
‘Makes a shitting change.’
They look into each other’s eyes from across the room. They’ve known each other so long.
‘Mister always-knows-what-to-fucking-say.’
He makes an abrupt laugh.
‘Well, so I’m fallible,’ he says. ‘But really, I would never take anything out on you like this, or want to.’ He sits at the vintage table; she stays by the wall. ‘Listen. I do have a thought.’
‘Also makes a change.’
He ignores her.
‘I told you before about Bethany Lehrer’s office. How it would be in her interest to make Parley look bad? How she’d do anything to discredit the source of these leaks?’
Dani stares at him.
‘Fuck, what? Seriously, Sam? For real?’
Sam shrugs.
‘The government did this to me?’
‘Sic_girl’s allegations are getting very embarrassing,’ he says. ‘All of a sudden this. They’re capable of it.’
There’s a long silence. Dani lets out all her breath and does a kind of half-fall back against the wall. Her shoulder jars on something sharp and solid.
‘Shit it!’
She turns to find the offending object. A wooden frame, surrounding a rectangle of splashy graffiti. FUCK YOU SHITCAKE it says in ragged blue and yellow lines.
‘Sorry,’ says Sam. ‘It’s an artwork.’
She rubs her shoulder and gives him a look.
‘We rebooted the offices last year,’ he says, ‘and all the staff chose a work by a local artist.’
‘This?’
There’s a typed-up label beside the frame: shitcake (oil and acrylic on cornflake box, 2004).
‘That one’s a bit Hoxton,’ says Sam.
‘It’s a piece of shit,’ she says.
He’s offended. Good.
‘Maybe this one’s more up your street?’
He turns his chair and points at the large print on the side wall. It knocks the wind from her. She hadn’t seen it in the noise. It draws her close. She’s seen the image before. Gray had it on the wall of his flat and it’s gone viral in the last few months – but this copy has a handmade feel so she guesses it’s original. A huge Obama-ed version of the classic photo of Elyse Martingale, posterised to clashing patches of green, orange, purple. Below Elyse’s face in typewriter font, the iconic words . . . or we shall step around it . . . A hacker’s mantra.
‘That one was my choice,’ Sam says from right beside her.
She turns loose-jawed and he smiles at her surprise.
‘I’m fascinated with how she’s become this icon to slacktivists and free data campaigners, with her dated twentieth-century slogans. Her uncompromising truthfulness gets to them. To me, too.’
‘Huh. Sure.’
His eyes tighten.
‘Don’t you think even a slimy PR guy is capable of kicking against the system? But through – other channels?’
He taps the glass of the Martingale print. Dani looks around with a new awareness. She was totally out of control when she blazed in here earlier: even by her standards. Screamed at the receptionist till Sam appeared. Hurled him into this meeting room. Actually beat his chest with her fists out of fury and frustration. She must have looked insane.
‘It’s OK,’ he says. ‘It really is.’
He steps towards her, puts one hand on her shoulder, then the other. This time she lets him. She looks up at his lovely face. He squeezes just slightly.
‘Listen, Dani. Can you leave this with me? I’m going to chase it wit
h Bethany’s office. My way.’
‘You mean with no mentalist screaming and hitting people?’
‘I do mean that, yes. Will you let me?’
She looks away, pushing hair out of her eye, and shrugs him off. He steps back, studying her.
‘Sam.’
‘Yeah?’
‘You definitely didn’t do this?’
His turn to give her the look. There’s more silence. The two of them occupy space in a plain white room in a simulation of life, of how people act in the world.
‘I don’t know whether to believe you,’ she says. ‘Sorry. I don’t think I do.’
He nods slowly.
‘OK. But you’ll let me do this? Prove it to you?’
After the slightest of pauses she nods, too.
¶saulgood
If Dani Farr is proffering this stuff she’s a hero. If not she is still a hot nerd chick. What’s not to like?
¶TheyWalkAmongUs
This: ¶cite saulgood: If Dani Farr is proffering this stuff she’s a hero. If not she is still a hot nerd chick. What’s not to like?
¶thebiggercheese
Tru dat. cite ¶TheyWalkAmongUs: This: cite ¶saulgood: If Dani Farr is proffering this stuff she’s a hero. If not she is still a hot nerd chick. What’s not to like?
¶98redballoons
lols! cite ¶thebiggercheese: Tru dat. cite ¶TheyWalkAmongUs: This: cite ¶saulgood: If Dani Farr is proffering this stuff she’s a hero. If not she is still a hot nerd chick. What’s not to like?
¶yourpalmike
haha! cite ¶98redballoons: lols! cite ¶thebiggercheese: Tru dat. cite ¶TheyWalkAmongUs: This: cite ¶saulgood: If Dani Farr is proffering this stuff she’s a hero. If not she is still a hot nerd chick. What’s not to like?
Sockpuppet: Book One in the Martingale Cycle Page 15