Free Sockpuppet: Book One in the Martingale Cycle by Matthew Blakstad

feels like double refried shit. Her back is a single knot of pain and her carpals ache with repeated beating of the keys. Her irises are stretched to bursting. She tabs out of the game to check the system clock: it’s two a.m.
    She’s been at the screen since she woke on the sofa at eleven, the fossil of a hairgrip embedded in her cheek. She staggered towards the green beacon of her PC’s LED; and for the last few hours she’s kept reality at bay by moosing about online, thirty tabs open, spinning from app to site to chat, her rhythm broken only by the occasional re-up of beer or, when she could hold out no longer, an extended piss. At one point she launched Eternal Warfare. An hour blasting war-clones has left her washed out but settled. Sleep is ridiculous.
    )) caffeine pixel ((
    She flicks up Parley to zoom back a few hours and explore the contours of the conversation. Everyone in her continuity has spent the day dancing round the sic_girl proffers and now the thing is massive. A proffer by greebday turns out to be a veiled cite of a proffer by spagbol who in turn was linking to a blog post by act1v – all of them attacking dCitz. Dani froggers from post to post. This looks to be one of those two-day flurries that get stirred in the waters of Parley.
    But there’s a hard core, too. People who flare up at any attempt to stem their digital freedom. Normally they merry-hell about Terasoft or Google or whichever company’s taken the latest bite out of their digital privacy. This week apparently it’s the government’s turn. Something Dani hadn’t realised: everyone – including her – is going to have to give up their personal details to this thing when it goes national later this year; or they’ll essentially drop off the grid. That’s some harsh decision: either say I love Big Brother , or lose your housing benefit?
    Following the conversation, Dani keeps looping back to one of the Personas – riotbaby. Not her favourite character. He’s this aggregate blowhard conspiracy-bot, but popular in this network. He’s been citing hard-core data nerds with increasing frequency. One name in particular, unknown to Dani – identikid.
    Dani hadn’t noticed the anger building on the wires – online protest is more Gray’s kind of thing – but it makes her less sure she wants to help this Bethany Lehrer. Why is Parley going all guns to help her out of her mess? Especially if Sam’s right, and the government people are dissing Parley to the media. And why is Dani on the hook for it?
    For the hundredth time today, that prickle of unease takes a tour along her spine. There’s something Sam said when he met her earlier. About the police invasion at Parley. He said they were armed because of a credible threat – and it’s true. Those guys weren’t just there on account of some social wasp, tickling at the reputation of government. Six of them came, armed and certain that someone called sic_girl was in the building and was a threat. Why? Straight away they accused Dani of being sic, searched her; still suspect her as far as she knows. This shit is real and somehow Dani has to set it straight – but right now she can’t even see its edges.
    She rotates her clogged shoulders. Queries and jibes have been pouring into her whispers tab all day. As Jonquil’s prime trouble-shooter and sic_girl’s creator, everyone expects her to know what’s what. As if. She proffers a group response to all her questioners.
     
    ¶Nightshade
for the elimination of doubt i have no fucking idea what is going on
and neither do you
fml
     
    The second she proffers, she’s reconnected. It sparks a waking system-dream that flares across her optic nerve. She often gets these visions in the night, when she’s run herself raw on too much screentime and too many pills. They’re difficult to describe. The only person she ever tried to explain them to was Gray, and he didn’t get it. She told him they were data turning into light, with