Sockpuppet: Book One in the Martingale Cycle

by Matthew Blakstad

  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 i
s 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?

  ‘Some of the students – male students – rugby types, you know?’

  A little duck of the head. Good, good.

  ‘They took a dislike to the Group. To the fact there even was a Women’s Group. Things were worse back then. Even worse than now.’

  Another ducking nod.

  ‘They decided to attack because that’s who they were – what they were – but they didn’t take us all on. They picked me. The way they chose to make their empty, violent point was to turn my life into hell on earth. And so they did that.’

  Two brown-black pupils dilated slowly, absorbing her. Bethany Lehrer could always make a story bite.

  ‘This was before the Internet, you know. Ha! Actually before the Internet.’

  ‘How old are you?’

  Well, well. The girl spoke. Her voice had an interrogator’s bite.

  ‘I’m forty-six, Dani.’

  Literally old enough to be her mother.

  ‘And you were what, nineteen? So it wasn’t before the Internet. It was before the web.’

  That pretty much set the bar for literal-mindedness. Bethany had to bite her tongue – actually bite it – to stave off laughter.

  ‘I stand corrected, Danielle. But these boors didn’t need technology to spread their hate. Campus was a small, small world. What they used, the thing they dug out and stuck on noticeboards, on the door of my room, what they strung in a giant blow-up over the door of my building, was a picture of me, which they decorated with a slogan I won’t repeat. In the picture I was with a man – a man who taught me. Not a lecturer: a post-grad who gave classes in political theory. The photo was awful and I don’t know why I let him take it. He liked to take pictures of us together and I doubt I was the first or last. I try not to think how those lads got the picture off him: he wasn’t a good man.’

  She worked to control her breathing. This was harder than any stump speech she’d ever made.

  ‘It was taken on timer – no selfie sticks then. He was sitting on his bed and I was on his lap. I was – my breasts were out and he was – touching me.’

  Dani was staring right into her now, with total concentration. Bethany hadn’t planned to say any of that. She didn’t need to for the story to land. What had happened to her internal censor?

  ‘So I thank God this was before the net.’ Danielle moved to speak. ‘Before the web. Before social media. Because if those things had been around, that image would still be out there. Every day I wonder if someone will find one of those disgusting flyers in a box in their attic, remember that evil summer and post it. Because then I’ve had it – because we’re still that uptight. A woman can’t have an image like that associated with her, and stay in power. I’d have had it, for no reason at all.’

  As might already have been the case.

  ‘I thought I was done for before I’d even started. All I wanted was to step down and run. Leave uni, even – not just Women’s Group. That was how bad it got.

  ‘And you know? My friends were all full of advice; but the only person I wanted to speak to was my grandmother, who lived in South West London. I knew she’d be – the only sane person for this. So I got on a bus and – you’ll know about her?’

  Bafflement. Really, girl, you don’t even know this? Bethany was used to being surrounded by people who knew an unfeasible amount about everything. There was something affecting in Dani’s transparent ignorance.

  ‘But you’ve heard of Elyse Martingale?’ A kilowatt shook the girl’s spine. ‘OK, you have. She was my Gramma, Dani.’

  This is a clusterfuck of too much information.

  Dani stares at the lady minister, at her hair and lippy in disarray. Her stomach knots and unknots. Apart from that one time she punched Joey Dukakis at work she’s never hurt anyone who didn’t beg her for it in play: and always with a safeword out. Here there’s nothing. Jonquil always says at her, What’s your exit strategy, Danielle? And it’s the right question. Dani never has an exit strategy. She doesn’t have one now.

  She looks at the fucked-over lady minister and now it’s obvious. She’s the spit of that poster of Elyse – the one in Sam’s whitewashed meeting room. The same long horsey face. The level unforgiving eyes.

  ‘I thought you knew. I thought that’s why you plastered her slogans on the screen just now. To rub my face in it.’

  ‘Not my slogans. I’m not with them.’

  ‘No? All right.’

  Dani has spent the last twenty-four hours thinking how this woman is nothing but lies and control and she’s nurtured her anger until it was big and hard enough to do this thing. And it’s true she’s swapped slogans with identikid – slogans coined by Elyse, that icon of hacker-girl power and the anti-state, who’d always seemed more a concept than someone’s actual gran. Bethany Lehrer and Elyse Martingale were meant to be opposites. The new information won’t resolve.

  Then she realises. This is why identikid is using Elyse’s slogans: because. Not in spite of Elyse being the minister’s gran: because. This is when she starts feeling sorry for the battered woman on the chair.

  ‘I was right to go to her, that time.’ The minister, still telling her story. ‘Would you like to know what she said to me?’

  Dani does want to know.

  ‘She said, I’ve had all varieties of filth thrown at me by men who would stand in my way but are too much the coward to face me on level terms. I’m paraphrasing a bit but this is exactly how she spoke.’

  Dani nods again. This is from the source. She sees the lines and sagging flesh around the minister’s eyes. The woman always looks taut and packaged in photos but close up she just looks tired. It makes Dani almost believe her.

  ‘And after every attempt I’ve made to fight them on their own terms; and after every time I’ve turned tail and fled; I’ve learned that neither is the answer. There are just two words you require to keep to your course at such a time: though you must never speak them out loud. Repeat them silently inside your head and stand your ground.’

  Dani nods yet again, though the minister hasn’t asked her anything.

  ‘What were the words?’ she asks.

  The minister smiles.

  ‘They were Fuck you.’

  A laugh bursts out of Dani. She covers her mouth because she’s supposed to be furious.

  ‘Whenever you feel the assault is too powerful, the degradation too great, you must repeat these two words silently within your mind; and keep repeating them until you rediscover your resolve. Fuck you. Fuck you. Gramma beat the kitchen table in time with the words. Fuck you, fuck you.’

  The minister, too, smacks her thigh to mark out time.

  ‘I have found they endow me with the most unexpected resilience.’

&nbs
p; The minister sits forward in her chair. Dani shuffles back on the slippery layer of dead-tree brochures.

  ‘And look. Hah. See what I’m still holding.’

  The minister raises the object that’s been clutched to her stomach since Dani dumped her in the chair. A book. Ragged cover with a pale geometric design. Old, old media.

  ‘Look,’ says the minister. ‘Read the dedication in the front.’

  She hands Dani the book. Oh, it’s The Electronic Radical. Dani pulls back the brittle cover with care and sees, written in an agitated hand, in ink the colour of a faded bruise:

  If you remember none of these words, remember just two.

  – Gramma.

  Holy. Fucking. Shit.

  ‘And she was right. I went back to uni and I held our next meeting and I silently said fuck you in the face of every bully. And I went on to say it a hundred times. A thousand. I stuck it out, and we beat them, and here I am. And here’s something you really, really mustn’t tell; but I use the words today. Quite often, when things get tough.’

  It’s at this point Dani’s anger totally malfunctions.

  ‘The thing is, Dani, all I’m trying to do is what Gramma told me was right, thirty-odd years ago. Too much to consummate in her lifetime. Sometimes I wonder: was hers the last generation to think anything new? Are we just recycling?’

  There’s this big pause, like the mouse pointer has gone hourglass. Dani turns the cloth-bound talisman over in her hands.

  ‘Anyway.’ The minister brushes her skirt flat. ‘That is why I would never – never – put another woman through a fraction of what those faceless men did to me. That isn’t who I am.’

  She stops speaking and looks at Dani with this smile that’s half question and half consolation. Dani tries to think but that doesn’t seem to be something she can do. This isn’t information, it’s words. It seems true but it’s only sentences, one coming after another.