Sockpuppet: Book One in the Martingale Cycle Read Online Free PDF Page A

and narrow your focus to find a different path back to the place where you began. It’s a giddy sensation that can leave you reeling when you land back in the now. Parley’s users spend almost as much time in the past as they do in the present. Nostalgia’s popular: even for a week ago.
    Dani spins the clock to sixteen minutes past midnight.
    ‘OK,’ she says, slipping into demo mode for the benefit of the neanderthals. ‘I’ve landed at that time. Now I’m tightening the aperture – see this slider? It’s like focusing my view on sic_girl alone. Shutting out other voices.’
    The drag of her mouse erases Personas and people alike, until only sic_girl remains in view – plus the handful of human users she was taking to at midnight. Dani reads and scrolls.
     
    ¶sic_girl:
Meds time, hooray. Needed. Argh day today, insomnia fans. Pain, rain and a double shot of lows. Poor me, yes?
So. Let’s talk. I’m gonna start with Bethany Lehrer. The minister-lady? With the hair? Yoosh.
     >>cite ¶mardyboy: She’s ok i think shes kinda hot tho’
Really, mardy? REALLY? Ek. She creepy.
>>cite ¶womble-gone-bad: Hi sic. She’s sort of cool. She didn’t fiddle her expenses.
Hi woms. You look cute. May I girl-crush? But listen. Bethany L? Fergeddaboudit. She’s the cover-up queen.
You know the Giggly Pigglies?
     >>cite ¶worldofmeow: I the Giggly Pigglies!
WHO DOES NOT? But newsflash, my lovelies. Those ickle pickle pigs are made of spam not ham. Didja see this story on HUMBOX?
The day every website turned into pigs hum.bx/f80du7
Can ya IMAGINE? Ev’ry website you ever visit automagically turned into a Giggly Piggly home screen!?
     >>cite ¶worldofmeow: THAT SOUND AMAZE!
     
    There’s a silence. Dani turns to Racist.
    ‘So?’ she says. ‘Pigs and cartoons and whatever. This is normal for sic_girl. Or what passes for it.’
    Dani has a special love for her first-made artificial girl. But she’s the first to admit that sic talks a load of mimsy crap.
    ‘Fans proffer this stuff at sic,’ she says, ‘and it’s like I showed you: the algorithm stitches relevant-seeming sentences out of the word-soup in the bucket. That’s all this is.’
    ‘Really?’ says Racist.
    ‘Yes, fucking really.’
    ‘Watch your mouth,’ says Acne.
    Racist quiets him with a hand.
    ‘In that case,’ he says to Dani. ‘I suggest you read forward.’
    She sighs and scrolls.
    ‘There,’ says Racist, pointing.
    Dani stops the clock.
     
    ¶sic_girl:
Ask yerselves, sweeties. Howcum ten thousand peoples who all HAPPEN to live in Teesside, get their PCs taken over by cartoon pigs ON THE SELFSAME DAY? I’ll tell ya. That piggy spam only hit the muggles who signed up for DigiCitz. Count ’em, biatches.
 
Here’s the news: two weeks ago someone walked onto the Digital Shitizen servers and swiped their oh-so-private data. Unhackable? HAH! And you know the worst of it? Bethany L knew all about it. Yuppety. She knew she knew she knew.
Don’t believe me? Ask her about this internal memo from MinTech last Tuesday. Seems somebody there knew all about this thing she sa she kno nuffink about.
 
There. Sigh. So the sainted Bethany’s a lying lying liar. Pigglies ain’t so frolicsome when they workin’ for the big bad data wolf AM I RIGHT???
 
Also. Sorry. Still on about it.
 
But.
     
    Dani bunches her forehead at the screen. There’s something off about this. It’s normal for sic to proffer about Hello Kitty or Spongebob or whatever, but apparently the Giggly Pigglies are suddenly meat for some political story.
    Digital Citizen is the new so-called ‘online ID card’ – which is actually not a ‘card’ but a public-key token so it’s dumb that people refer to it that way. Security is supposedly tighter than Jonquil’s butt. If it’s been hacked, that’s proper news. Which puts it totally out of whack with sic_girl’s usual burbles on antidepressants and puppy videos – the stuff that’s programmed into her.
    And this, right