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

now, is what plants the clue in Dani’s head: something major is going down this morning, and these men are trying to pin it on her. She needs to tread careful.
    ‘OK,’ she says. ‘And?’
    ‘ And ,’says Racist, ‘you need to stop this.’
    He speaks like a dad addressing his six-year-old.
    ‘Well but why? Is it untrue, what sic’s saying?’
    ‘That is not your business. I don’t care if she’s a human or a robot, she’s posting confidential government information and you are going to contain this situation right now.’
    Contain the situation? How do you contain a software construct? This is impossible. A combined wave of fury and exhaustion comes over Dani. She can’t believe they won’t understand when she just showed them. They must breed these giant morons in a tank, like seamonkeys. She crushes fists into either side of her head. The two men stand in silence, flanking her chair. She drops her hands and looks from one police-y face to the other.
    ‘But look,’ she says, ‘even if sic is doing what you’re saying it’s not like I can just turn her off. She’s part of the wiring. You’re asking me to turn off the whole of Parley.’
    ‘All right,’ says Racist, ‘then I guess that’s what you’ll have to do.’
    Oh. He’s trying to stare her out but she can’t look him in the eye.
    ‘But I –’ she tries. ‘I don’t –’ Still nothing comes.
    She doesn’t have tools for anything approaching this situation.
    ‘I can’t just – turn off Parley,’ she says at last.
    ‘Well, find some fucker who can!’ Acne shouts, making Dani start.
    Racist touches his arm, gives him a dose of the pale eyes.
    ‘A word?’ he says to Acne, and leads him to the far side of the table.
    En route he turns back to Dani.
    ‘Come back to the present,’ he says, quiet but firm. ‘On the machine. Take a look at what’s happening on your system, right now. And think about how to stop it.’ He checks his ’90s-era Casio. ‘You have two minutes. Then you’re shutting this thing down.’
    He touches Acne’s arm and leads him into a huddle by the window.
    Robotically, Dani flicks the clock, spinning it back to the present. She drags the slider to widen her aperture, adding her full list of devotees back to the screen. She sees it right away: a Parleystorm, ballooning across the screen. Sic_girl’s proffers about Bethany Lehrer have stirred attention from the social media night watch – coders, insomniacs, journos – and now the morning crowd is up and catching on. Sic_girl has tapped a reflex point to do with trust, lies and politics. Dani follows daisy chains of chatter. As best she can parse it, last week thousands of people received an invasive software worm which makes the Giggly Pigglies pop up on every website they visit. Now, somehow, sic is putting it out that their data was hacked from the Digital Citizen servers – and that this is how they got spammed. And for some reason people give a major shit about this. Everyone finds the pig thing hilarious and they already hate the Digital Citizen – or dCitz, as it’s getting called – and this morning sic has made the two things collide and go boom.
    Dani chances a look at the policemen who are bickering almost silently about something. Acne gestures with his head at Dani, who ducks back behind the Mac’s screen. Somehow she needs to seize back control of this thing; but what can she even do? A so-called situation is tightening around her and she doesn’t understand thing one about it. Well, but what’s a hive mind for? By now most of her devotees are up and active on Parley. One of them will know what’s going on. She proffers, typing quietly so as not to attract the attention of the whispering cops.
     
    ¶Nightshade:
anyone understand what sic is saying
dummies mode pls
its for a thing
     
    While she waits for replies, she chances another look at Racist. His lips move on mute as he whispers at Acne. He slips his smartphone back in his