Too many reflective surfaces on the way in reminded her that she was still showing up in cyberspace as a half-assed attempt at a steampunk Lego figure. Dragon, lying on a kind of couch thing in her living area, was an idealised version of herself – everything tweaked subtly so she looked taller, thinner, sharper bones and dramatic. Skin, pretty unconcerned with her image at the best of times, left things as they were and moved towards Dragon, who barely looked up at her approach.
“Dragon,” said Skin and Dragon looked up and shifted to make room for her to sit. “Yeah, yeah, I know – not good to be online too long and all, but actually, you need to see this,” said Dragon. “What?” said Skin. “The news’ll be offline soon enough, it’s smeared all over the net and the web like Marmite. You know how everybody shat themselves about online data identity theft howevermany years ago … and then they locked up their data or erased it here altogether and then most people went anonymous and IP security started to cost money and then …” “Yeah, thanks for the history lesson,” said Skin, rolling her eyes, have you forgotten that I am descended from paranoid hackers?” It was true – Skin’s mother was Nina, sister of the more famous artist, hacker and sellout surrendermonkey, Blue.
“Alright,” said Dragon, “perhaps it’s just a pity you inherited the ripped jeans instead of the DNA genes, if you know what I mean. Just look!” and she pointed to the opposite wall, which was almost pulsing and heaving with a swirl of shifting data that made less than no sense to Skin at first. Dragon pointed to the top left quadrant of the grid, “That there,” she said, “is the Waste – the data desert, where unclaimed data goes to die.” “But it’s full!” exclaimed Skin, “It’s never, ever been full. It’s never even been populated much – what’s going down?” “Well, with everyone being so anonymous online, somehow the world forgot that even assumed names are identities. Check it out, there’s me.” And there she was; a little moving group of boxes – her District ID and history, all of her musical stuff, pretty much everything. “So we’re right back to square one?” asked Skin, “Identity theft and paranoia all over again?” “Nope,” answered Dragon, “It’s like … everyone’s just out there so much in plain sight that nobody gives a fuck about having their name stolen – either you’re strongly enough linked to it that any impostors get flamed right off the net, or you just move on and get a new nick. All you gotta hide, really, is your bank account.”
“It’s still not a good idea to live online, Dragon.” said Skin.
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