Stay Mad, Sweetheart

by Heleen Kist

  ‘No. Emily used to try to set me up,’ I said. ‘It was always a disaster. The guys seemed more interested in her, which was perfectly understandable. Who wants a data science, book-loving nerd who never goes out?’

  ‘Well, you’re out today.’ By magic, another Siam Mary appeared.

  The starters followed, and I marvelled at the effort made in the decoration of the dishes. Carrots carved into floral shapes balanced on leaf-shaped cucumber slices. Was I meant to eat them?

  ‘I know you and Justin met at Edinburgh University, but what’s the story?’ Suki asked, chewing her food.

  ‘We studied computer science together. We were paired for an assignment and I told him about the project I was working on for my master’s thesis. He got very excited. He’d been taking some classes on entrepreneurship, venture capital, that sort of thing.’ The spicy pickled cucumber brought a flood of saliva into my mouth. I coughed. ‘I thought it might be a bit of a rebound project. He’d tried to sell a multi-player war game idea to a few companies in Dundee but failed.’ I shrugged. ‘Something with armies and a new type of commands. I can’t really remember.’ I stirred a spring roll into a light green sauce. ‘Anyway, he liked my model and ran with it. Pitched the business at a competition and got us our first twenty thousand pounds.’

  ‘So it was your idea, but he took the lead?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, we made a good team. I didn’t want to be the face of the company and deal with business matters. That became his role. I only wanted to do the product development. We would each get fifty percent of the company. It’s worked well.’

  The second courses came and took over the entire table with their side plates and dipping bowls containing mysterious liquids. Suki instructed me on which bit went where and with what.

  As I devoured one delectable dish after the other, I noticed the smile on Suki’s mother had shrunk. Perhaps Suki had told the truth in their last exchange? My suspicion was confirmed when she replaced my empty cocktail with a Singha beer.

  Suki drank, chatted and laughed freely. I felt lightheaded already, but her interest in me awakened an alien desire to be liked. To have a friend. A new friend.

  ‘How did you get the idea for the software?’ she asked.

  ‘I did an internship at an online retailer in the north of England that was growing its data science department. The executives were keen to extract value from the enormous amount of data they held on their customers. You know, like automated product recommendations.’ I put on a robotic voice. ‘You bought this blue dress, so you might like these blue shoes. People like you bought this barbecue.’

  ‘If you like these unicorn slippers, you’ll want to furnish your entire house in pink.’ Suki guffawed.

  I snickered. ‘Indeed. Despite being high-tech when it came to the customer’s experience, they were using a simple questionnaire internally to gauge employee satisfaction. I just thought of a way to make that smarter. People lie on questionnaires, but not in everyday emails.’

  ‘And here we are, one hundred million dollars later,’ she said. ‘All from your mind. Wow.’

  I averted my gaze and buried myself in dessert, a satisfying combination of cold and sticky. The accompanying white drink caressed my throat with sweetness.

  Suki doled out a few tales of deluded friends at Stanford who bet everything on ridiculous products nobody needed. I laughed as she told me about a programmable dog collar and how she’d seen the demise of that particular innovation a mile away.

  She beamed. ‘Did you know there are people who actually bought pouches of chopped-up fruit and vegetables for a four-hundred-dollar machine to squash into juice?’ she said. ‘And the stupid machine couldn’t even squeeze it better than a human!’

  Maybe it was the alcohol talking, but this was fun. Thoughts of Emily kept slipping through, but I sent them to the back of my mind. Emily would understand I didn’t want to put a dampener on my night. She’d be delighted for me, wouldn’t she?

  It was time to leave. I almost pulled the tablecloth with me as I got up. Despite not being a future daughter-in-law candidate, I still received a generous send off from Suki’s mum. Maybe she’d seen us have too much of a good time for this to just be work?

  As we stepped outside, it was still raining. Suki and I simultaneously opened our umbrellas. They got entangled and made us laugh.

  ‘Here, share mine,’ Suki said. She pulled me close and wrapped an arm around my waist. I told myself it was to steady herself as she set her high heels on the uneven street, but the closeness, and the smell of Suki’s hair caused confusion to stir inside me.

  Were we having a moment? How was I meant to respond? What if I didn’t? Would Suki still like me?

  I let myself be swept back to the station. A drove of festival-goers rushing to catch the last train home pried us apart. Over the heads of a gaggle of young women, I shouted, ‘I’m going this way,’ and pointed in the direction of my home.

  Suki waved and yelled — in the most casual and ever so slightly disappointing of ways — ‘See you tomorrow.’

  27

  ME

  The letters on my monitor jumped around. I closed one eye and tried to make sense of them. My head throbbed and my mouth was dry. I licked my parched lips with my swollen tongue.

  No alcohol, ever again.

  The model Sally asked me to review kept getting stuck in the same place. I tried a few tricks but I was probably doing more harm than good in this state.

  I saved what I’d done and put the model in the queue to be run on the company’s servers. While there, I noticed that my new code, Network Impact, had completed its run on the Twitter data.

  I tisked. About time. If this was going to be a valuable new product, I’d need to make it work more quickly. I clicked through.

  The interface wasn’t pretty; a boring grey background and a font only data nerds would find appealing. It would be the design team’s job to fix that before we marketed it. I didn’t do slick, I did functional — and as I read the screen, the functional looked good.

  Clusters of tweets by the same account cast off red lines that scattered to other nodes and onward again. These highlighted accounts were the ones who were influencing and amplifying the negativity in the other people. A few obvious hotspots had taken shape.

  With my mouse, I dragged the giant 3D web-like structure in different directions, zooming in and out to explore these red blobs. But where was the green? I frowned then realised it made sense: the data was a representation of a global outpouring of hatred and anger. It would look very different if I ran the model on a company’s internal communications, where there would be positive influencers and happier emotions, too. In a corporate setting, the dissatisfaction would never be as extreme as I was seeing here, but at least this proved the principle worked.

  I made a note of the accounts that were showing the biggest influence and compared them to the list I compiled manually before, of those that had directed the clearest threats and abuse to Emily. I also cross-checked the names that Emily wanted to publicly shame in the tweets that never went out.

  Nothing matched.

  My heart sank. My model was rubbish. But as I continued checking through the big red hotspots, I grew more confident. I found the strong agitators who indirectly influenced the actions in other people. I leaned back in my chair, my hands on my head as I realised I’d been right. Those at the forefront — the ones whose opinions we saw the most — were only unwitting puppets of a few in the background, urging them on.

  Excitement bubbled in my stomach. I chuckled. Suki’s eyes would be lighting up with pound signs if she saw this.

  I searched for the account of the secret photographer. Surely he’d be a big red node? But as I followed the lines emanating from him, it was clear that releasing Emily’s image did nothing to increase the wave of hysteria directed at her. It was merely a new weapon picked up by the already frenzied warriors. If anything, the release of the photo had made some people
abandon their tirades, now they could see she was a real person.

  The person who named Emily, as guilty as I still believed him to be, had also only fed an unstoppable mob. It frightened me to see how quickly a small grumble, a little hint of heat, could infect others, building up the temperature, until the whole thing reached boiling point. It was no wonder it exploded into the real world, them looking for her at work... at home.

  Hampered by the size of the data and unwieldiness of this early prototype visualisation, it took a good few hours to scan the network of clusters and line. But then I found him, the deepest red, the master inciter.

  The profile name was Chosen One, with a Twitter handle of @chosenone2. I snorted. Trust there to be at least two chosen ones.

  I scoured his tweets. He might be talented at picking the words with which to agitate others, but grammar was not his strong point. I wondered, out of professional curiosity, whether misspellings actually increased the sense of camaraderie among the uneducated. Maybe bad grammar made these Incel loser guys more readily adopt you into their clan?

  It had the absolute opposite effect on me. I winced at some of the writing on display —word salad, frankly. People needed to read more. I pursed my lips when I twice saw him bastardise the word ‘insolence’ into ‘insolance’. It made me wonder about him. Such a rarely used word. Even misspelled, it perfectly captured the sense of superiority in its author, the warped view that women had no right disobeying — or denying — men.

  Despite two degrees in computer science, with plenty of tricks up my sleeve, I was, as before, unable to trace the account owner. The IP address jumped from the UK to the USA to New Zealand in a pattern any hacker would recognise as being someone who used a Virtual Private Network; a simple way to pretend you were in another country, set to randomly select locations.

  I sank into my chair. Here he was — and it was most definitely a male calling for the bitches to burn — and there was nothing I could do. There was no point bringing any of this to the police; I’d get shown the door again. What were they meant to do with this mysterious inciter?

  Inciter.

  The word stuck in my head. Wasn’t inciting hate a crime? I perked up at the prospect of having found a possible rebuttal to DI Reddy’s anticipated objections. A quick Google search revealed that being female was, however, not one of the minority categories covered by anti-hate speech legislation.

  I did learn that it was a crime to incite others to commit a violent or illegal act. If the police didn’t even have the resources to go after those who actually made the threats, I could just imagine Reddy’s response at my arguing — scientifically sound though it was — this person in the background was to blame. Never mind that someone sneaked into Emily’s tenement to deliver a package meant to harass her; I could prove that they would not have done that were it not for this Inciter building up the frenzy that propelled them into action.

  I buried my head in my hands. It was pointless.

  The police might be interested in my work if I were looking for terrorists, jihadists who influenced others to convert to Islam and wreak havoc on the infidels, but not for this. Not for the hateful bullying of a young woman whose only offence was to try to heal publicly after an upsetting encounter.

  No, there was nothing more I could do for Emily.

  Life was unfair. And it broke my heart.

  28

  SUKI

  Who did Justin think he was? Suki picked up the yellow coffee cup Liv had handed her twenty minutes earlier. It wasn’t very nice then and it was cold and horribly bitter now.

  ‘Will he be much longer?’ She asked Liv for the second time.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’ll check on him again. He knows you’re waiting.’ Liv straightened her cardigan and turned towards the long corridor in her soundless ballerina flats.

  Suki crossed her legs and dangled her shoe from her toes, patting it to her heel in tempo with the song she couldn’t get out of her mind: I will wait. She reached for her phone, but there weren’t even any urgent emails left to process.

  On the wall, the TV news covered the closure of the Woke Poke blog, describing it as a short-lived attempt to woo the millennials. Everybody was chasing that generation — the advertisers demanded it.

  Suki paid special attention in case there was anything new to share with Laura. Woke Poke was the blog that hosted Emily’s story and Laura spent a lot of time trying to make sense of her friend’s death. From their conversations, Laura seemed to have a slightly unhealthy obsession with some of the folk on Twitter — surprising, as she’d disavowed any knowledge of social media when they first met.

  One of the analysts on screen said the owners were closing down Woke Poke to protect their share price. The blog had been lambasted for posting an ill-advised, graphic piece of click-bait dressed up as a thought-piece to invite debate about feminism and sexual assault. Suki couldn’t disagree with that assessment.

  Liv returned with an apologetic smile. ‘Justin is ready for you in the boardroom. More coffee?’

  ‘No thanks.’ Suki grabbed her stuff and made her way through.

  She found him on his phone, his feet on the table, chuckling to himself. Yoda socks peeked from under his trousers.

  ‘Having fun?’ she said.

  He raised one finger. ‘Wait a second. This is a good one.’ He tapped the screen in a typing frenzy, then put the phone down. ‘Okay, I’m done.’

  Suki approached the table he’d at least given her the courtesy of taking his feet off. ‘While you’re playing games, I’ve been ploughing through the draft acquisition agreements. They seem to be getting longer by the day and I need to make sure we’re not being taken for a ride.’

  ‘Speaking of rides,’ he said, picking up his mobile again. ‘Look at this beauty.’ His eyes shone with excitement. ‘I’ve put my name on the waiting list.’ Justin turned his phone towards her to display the image of a very red, very large, expensive-looking motorcycle.

  ‘That’s some crotch-rocket,’ she said. Her eyebrows shot up as she saw the price. ‘Did you have to put down a deposit?’

  ‘Peanuts, in the grand scheme of things.’

  She gave him a fake smile. ‘Well if I can have your attention, I might be able to help you not lose it.’

  Justin put the phone down and asked, ‘What do you need?’

  ‘We need to talk about Schedule Four—’

  Justin’s device pinged and he rushed to pick it up. ‘Hold on.’ He chortled and moved his fingers across the screen.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Suki asked in her most glacial tone.

  ‘Gimme a second. I’m having a bit of fun,’ he said. ‘The rumour mill has gone crazy about the acquisition. I’m just teasing my followers a little.’

  Suki reached forward and pressed his phone onto the table, face down. ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea, Justin. PeopleForce are trying to keep things confidential. It could affect their share price’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, waving her away, ‘the PeopleForce guys love me. I can’t wait to join them in California.’

  ‘What’s this?’

  Justin grinned from ear to ear and held his arms out. ‘You’re looking at the new Global Director of Digital Labs. They want me to come head up the group from Silicon Valley.’

  ‘I hope they know what they’re getting,’ Suki muttered under her breath.

  ‘What did you say?’

  Nerves pricked in the back of her neck. She’d started; she may as well continue. ‘Well, I hope they’re not expecting you to be the technology wizard. We both know that’s Laura. You wouldn’t have this business, if it wasn’t for her.’

  Justin seemed taken aback. ‘I’m the one who made it a success. She chose to stay in the shadows. Somebody had to be the face.’ He re-emphasised his trademark dashing smile by waving his hands underneath his chin.

  Suki tasted bitterness in her mouth. ‘As I understand it, you also agreed to go fifty-fifty. But you didn’t, did
you? You’ve got growth options she doesn’t have.’

  ‘And?’ Justin’s face clouded over. ‘There was nothing in the small print about getting something extra for pulling that last investment through.’

  ‘I think you should tell Laura before she finds out... She’s going to have to sign a whole stack of documents and it’s going to be there, in black and white. Not hidden away in the minutes of some board meeting, this time.’

  ‘It was never hidden away, Suki. I don’t know why you’re bringing this up now. These growth options were awarded years ago. Compared to the amount of money we’ll be raking in when the sale goes through, it’s nothing. I don’t remember asking your opinion about our past. Your job is to look to our future. You would do well to remember who you work for.’

  She squeezed her fists.

  Justin grabbed his files and started flipping pages to Schedule Four. ‘Now, what seems to be the problem?’

  29

  CLAIRE

  ‘Claire, a minute please.’ Darren half-leaned out his office door, his expression serious. It wasn’t their normal catch-up time. A series of knots formed in Claire’s stomach. Had she done something wrong?

  She put aside the proofs from the conference programme she’d been reviewing, smoothed her hair with her fingers, and walked over. Was it hot in here, or was that just her?

  When she entered his room, she braved a bright smile. The sun hit her through the window on the side causing dark spots to dance in her eyes. Framed motivational posters lined the walls, urging her to ‘Be the best’ and ‘Make it happen,’ and declaring that ‘Hard work pays off.’

  Darren was at his desk, fiddling with his mouse, a sleek silver unit with a blue LED stripe that looked tiny in his muscular hands He removed and replaced its battery and gave it increasingly agitated shakes. ‘Damn thing. Keeps skipping around the screen.’