Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Book Club book Club book Club. It's the Cool Zone
Speaker 2: Media book Club, the book club that has a different
Speaker 2: jingle every week. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and every
Speaker 2: week I read you a different story. It's the book
Speaker 2: club where you don't have to do the reading because
Speaker 2: I do it for you. The jingle changes, but the
Speaker 2: tagline stays roughly the same, even though I don't write
Speaker 2: it down, I already said I'm the host. Well that's it,
Speaker 2: because there's no guest. It's just me and you, dear listener,
Speaker 2: and story. This week, Uncle Zone Media book Club, I'm
Speaker 2: going to read you a story called Intentionalities by Amy Ogden.
Speaker 2: And this story has it all. I really like this story.
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 3: I say that about all the stories, but that's because
Speaker 3: I like them, or I wouldn't read them to you.
Speaker 3: This story has it all. It has emotions, it has
Speaker 3: precarious labor, it has the future, It has family, it
Speaker 3: has a labor organizing. Those are the only things that
Speaker 3: I'm aware of. I told you it was by Amy Ogden.
Speaker 3: But who's Amy Ogden, you might ask, Well.
Speaker 2: It's a good thing.
Speaker 3: I'm about to read you Amy's bio. Amy Ogden is
Speaker 3: an American Werewolf in the Netherlands. Her debut novella Son
Speaker 3: Daughter c Daughters, was a Nebula Ward finalist, and she
Speaker 3: has over one hundred short fiction publications that have appeared
Speaker 3: in places such as Strange Horizons, Light Speed and Best
Speaker 3: American Science Fiction and Fantasy twenty twenty two, and of course,
Speaker 3: Cool Zone Media Book Club. When Intentionalities came out, Hank
Speaker 3: Green tweeted at her that the story made him cry,
Speaker 3: which we'll have to count as Amy's fifteen minutes of
Speaker 3: Internet fame, even though she missed it at the time
Speaker 3: because she was cleaning the bathroom. You can find more
Speaker 3: about her work and her at Amyogdenwrights dot com. Amy
Speaker 3: is spelled AI m E and I'll just read the
Speaker 3: whole thing actually a I M E E og d
Speaker 3: E n w R I T E s dot com.
Speaker 3: But without further ado, because there's been some ado. Do
Speaker 3: you ever think about those words that only exist in
Speaker 3: very specific contexts, like we only say much ado or
Speaker 3: further ado. We never talk about a do on its own, like, oh,
Speaker 3: there was some ado. We don't say that because it
Speaker 3: sounds like poop, and we're afraid to talk about that.
Speaker 3: Intentionalities by Amy Ogden. This story was first published in
Speaker 3: January twenty twenty one in Clark's World magazine, which again
Speaker 3: is one of the best science fiction magazines and one
Speaker 3: of the only ones I never got into. I haven't
Speaker 3: been publishing short fiction in a little while. That's why
Speaker 3: I've never been in it. But you know, if you're
Speaker 3: writing short fiction, if Clark's Worlds currently open submission, you
Speaker 3: should always submit to them first, because they reject you
Speaker 3: so fast. It's like, really impressive how fast they reject you.
Speaker 3: And since you can only submit a short story to
Speaker 3: one magazine at a time, it's cool to like get
Speaker 3: the rejections racked up per story if you're writing short
Speaker 3: fiction and you get rejected, like these magazines have like
Speaker 3: a less than one percent acceptance rate, and even professional
Speaker 3: authors are rejected about as often as they're accepted, even
Speaker 3: once they've already got like a bunch of credits and
Speaker 3: things like that. So don't take it personally, just like
Speaker 3: I don't take it personally that Neil Clark has never
Speaker 3: published me in Clark's World. I don't take that personally
Speaker 3: at all. Intentionality is by Amy Ogden. Soorrel never intended
Speaker 3: to confer a child to the Braxos corporation. But Sorel
Speaker 3: had never intended a lot of things that managed to
Speaker 3: happen with or without her say so. She had scarcely
Speaker 3: marched across the auditorium diploma in hand. When Congress passed
Speaker 3: the Protecting America's Children Act, education was handed over to
Speaker 3: the private sector, mostly to prison corporations whose personnel already
Speaker 3: had certifications in sub lethal youth management. Sorel didn't have
Speaker 3: an SYM license nor the heart to teach with a
Speaker 3: taser on her rip. Instead, she found work serving as
Speaker 3: a custodian at Mission Health's main hospital, Camp. Mission belonged
Speaker 3: to the parent corp that owned her student loan debt
Speaker 3: and her father's end of life bills too. Having them
Speaker 3: deduct the payments straight from her paycheck cut her interest
Speaker 3: rate by a full half percent. The hospital had Braxos
Speaker 3: ads everywhere, of course, along with those for several other
Speaker 3: parent corp holdings. One Halavid played in the air over
Speaker 3: the middle of the cafeteria several times a day on
Speaker 3: a twenty minute loop. Braxos Our Future in Yours Hand
Speaker 3: in hand, a blurb about the future career training and
Speaker 3: Advocacy Act. All the ads became white noise to Sorrel
Speaker 3: sooner or later, but she caught herself sometimes humming that
Speaker 3: little jingle or the one for the new hyperloop line.
Speaker 3: So Sorrel made plans, the kind of plans that can
Speaker 3: only be made because believing they could come true was
Speaker 3: the only thing that could get a body out of
Speaker 3: bed in the morning she was making ends meet. She
Speaker 3: would find a cheaper apartment and save money there. She
Speaker 3: would skip breakfast a couple times a week, another couple
Speaker 3: of bucks to sock away. She would st stop going
Speaker 3: out to the matinee theater on her Tuesday mornings off,
Speaker 3: cancel her vidgas streaming service, skip the occasional beaters with
Speaker 3: friends who still lived nearby. The shell sparkled overhead, reflecting
Speaker 3: sunlight back into space, but Sorel's apartment sweltered in the
Speaker 3: hotter than ever summer's with the air conditioning off. In
Speaker 3: her head, the numbers added up, slowly but steadily, building
Speaker 3: sturdy mountains out of nickel and diime mole hills, but
Speaker 3: the balance in her checking account never fell in line
Speaker 3: the way its imaginary counterpart did. After two months of overdraft,
Speaker 3: fees her bank account transferred her account to a high
Speaker 3: risk financial management plan. When she sat down at the
Speaker 3: first required meeting with her assigned case manager, the man
Speaker 3: didn't even look at her as he typed her entire
Speaker 3: biography into a two hundred character field on his form.
Speaker 3: When he asked how she planned to develop her financial
Speaker 3: outlook to prevent reaching felony levels of debt, he called
Speaker 3: her Sarah. Her hands refused to warm to the temperature
Speaker 3: of the office. She clasped them on her lap so
Speaker 3: he wouldn't see them shake. Nothing she could say would
Speaker 3: be right. No secret money stashed away, no education and
Speaker 3: career development plant, no chance of an inheritance. Her head
Speaker 3: was an empty box and the only thing bouncing inside
Speaker 3: of it was that stupid Braxos jingle. I'm going to
Speaker 3: confer a child to Braxos, she said, and he looked
Speaker 3: up from his tablet. Sorrel meant to have a plan
Speaker 3: in place before the screening test arrived in the mail,
Speaker 3: another part time job under employment relief funds crowdfunding, but
Speaker 3: her biz pass resume only ever racked up a couple
Speaker 3: dozen hits and no leads, and her relief application bounds
Speaker 3: and or hit you up ended up in the red
Speaker 3: after she paid the fee to close it out. So
Speaker 3: when the screening test came, Sorel viciously swabbed the inside
Speaker 3: of her cheek and then dropped it back in the
Speaker 3: postal box, postage paid. By the time the response arrived,
Speaker 3: she'd convinced herself not to read it in detail. She
Speaker 3: would check to see if there was a contract, and
Speaker 3: if so, she could and send it back. If not,
Speaker 3: no harm, she would simply be back where she'd started.
Speaker 3: Knowing what small genetic accidents kept her from being a
Speaker 3: viable candidate wouldn't change things. She opened the envelope. The
Speaker 3: cover letter fell out. Behind it peaked another document on
Speaker 3: heavy paper. At the bottom, a hungry signature line waited.
Speaker 3: Her fingers brushed the letter, not hard enough to sweep
Speaker 3: it aside. Instead, they crawled word by word over the ink,
Speaker 3: collecting the scrabble tile names of celebrated genes. A novel
Speaker 3: mutation in the po LB gene was her crowning glory,
Speaker 3: promising a vastly increased rate of replication fidelity that would
Speaker 3: help her offspring to withstand the withering radiation of space.
Speaker 3: It would keep the baby's genes, hewing closely to the
Speaker 3: original versions that Sorrel would bestow upon it, in other words,
Speaker 3: a tie to bind them between worlds. Her hands seized
Speaker 3: and she crushed the cover letter. Her signature on the
Speaker 3: contracted more than usual, but still recognizable as her own.
Speaker 3: She put it into the envelope and dropped it into
Speaker 3: the mailbox downstairs before she changed her mind. It was
Speaker 3: only five years. Sorrel could make it through five years
Speaker 3: unscathed if it meant a light at the end of
Speaker 3: the interminable tunnel of debt she'd fallen into. Sorel got
Speaker 3: sucked into an argument with the crowd outside the clinic.
Speaker 3: She was supposed to keep her head down and follow
Speaker 3: the company liaison from the taxi to the door, but
Speaker 3: then some asshole hit her in the head with a
Speaker 3: sign declaring the Youth Occupational Success Act as slavery. It
Speaker 3: wasn't slavery. It was just ten years of service after
Speaker 3: their training, and after that the kids would be set
Speaker 3: up for any career they wanted. She tried to say
Speaker 3: that at least, but the protester shouted her down, calling
Speaker 3: her corporate broodmare and mother of the year and more.
Speaker 3: Succinctly bitch, and then the liaison was pulling her away
Speaker 3: through the bristling cardboard signs and grabbing hands and into
Speaker 3: the cool, clean lobby. While she waited for her appointment,
Speaker 3: Sorel considered asking about the sperm donor. It was doubtful
Speaker 3: that Braxos could tell her much, but even if she
Speaker 3: couldn't know who he was, she would have liked to
Speaker 3: hear what he was like, where he lived, why they
Speaker 3: wanted to knit her DNA to his. But when the
Speaker 3: technician called her name, he didn't look up from his tablet,
Speaker 3: only rattled off her identifying information.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 3: She stood up and fumbled for her purse or jacket,
Speaker 3: the outdated magazine where she'd been staring at a recipe
Speaker 3: she would never make. That's me, Follow me. He disappeared
Speaker 3: into the hallway behind the waiting room, and Sorrel trotted
Speaker 3: to keep up. The waiting room had been full. He
Speaker 3: must have had a lot of clients that day. Knowing
Speaker 3: it was true didn't make Sorrel feel better about it.
Speaker 3: In the patient room, a sheet and a green cotton
Speaker 3: gown had been folded neatly and left on the edge
Speaker 3: of the exam table. The technician excused himself, while Sorrel changed.
Speaker 3: Don't forget to take your underwear off off, he reminded her,
Speaker 3: before the door whispered shut. Sorols slipped into the gown
Speaker 3: and lay back on the table, Her skin prickled with
Speaker 3: cold where the sheet touched her legs. She wriggled, trying
Speaker 3: to find a comfortable position. Exactly how many people had
Speaker 3: lain here, expecting to get pregnant while still snugly encased
Speaker 3: in a pair of haines. A knock on the door
Speaker 3: pulled her fingers taut on the sheet. Come in, she called,
Speaker 3: and another technician, a different sandy haired white man, entered
Speaker 3: with a small cart. Sorrel Macintosh, she said, reading from
Speaker 3: a vile label on the cart, and compared it to
Speaker 3: the readout on his tablet. Thumb print here. She pressed
Speaker 3: the tablet where he indicated, and it chimed its approval.
Speaker 3: She was, in fact, who, she said to was no
Speaker 3: allergies he should be aware of, she averred, no new
Speaker 3: health condition since the mandatory complete physical last week. At
Speaker 3: his instruction, she fumbled her feet into the stirrups and
Speaker 3: stared up into the clean, white fluorescent light. Someone had
Speaker 3: hung a suncatcher from one inner section of the drop
Speaker 3: ceiling tiles. A cribmobile for adults suspended it twisted on
Speaker 3: its string from the draft from the HVAC vent, beaming
Speaker 3: faintly flower shaped patches onto the white wall while the
Speaker 3: cold speculum stretched Sorel open. This is the lydocane injection.
Speaker 3: The technician pulled up beside her on a rolling stool
Speaker 3: to show her a syringe. You might feel a little pinch.
Speaker 3: That little pinch darkened the edges of Sorel's world. When
Speaker 3: she swam nauseously up from the depths of her dizziness.
Speaker 3: The technician had stripped off his latex gloves and tossed
Speaker 3: them into the used kit on his cart. You did great,
Speaker 3: he said, entering data on the tablet. Sorrel craned her neck,
Speaker 3: but couldn't see what he wrote, nor guess what he'd
Speaker 3: need to. Please, remain in this position for ten minutes
Speaker 3: before you get up. There are tissues to clean yourself
Speaker 3: up if you need. Thank you for coming in today.
Speaker 3: Thank you, said Sorel foolishly. Awkwardly, he pushed the cart
Speaker 3: out with one foot and shut the door. Sorrel stared
Speaker 3: at the ceiling alone with the realization she'd forgotten to
Speaker 3: ask about the donor. Alone altogether. Now, five years wasn't forever.
Speaker 3: She could be alone for five years. But you won't
Speaker 3: be left alone without advertisements. Advertisements are always there. Whenever
Speaker 3: you're lonely, turn to advertisements. This show brought to you
Speaker 3: by advertisements. How was my ad for ads?
Speaker 4: How was it? Here's the other ads.
Speaker 3: Sorel wasn't supposed to be the first one to hold
Speaker 3: the baby. The pre delivery instructions had been clear that
Speaker 3: the Braxos technician would handle the infant before she did.
Speaker 3: First things. First, turn the newborn into a number, break
Speaker 3: her up from a person into a DNA word search puzzle.
Speaker 3: But the sea section had run long, and the technician
Speaker 3: had left the operating room for a bathroom break, and
Speaker 3: so this pink, wrinkled, cotton smelling thing had been pressed
Speaker 3: directly into Sorel's arms. Her whole body trembled, Convinced she
Speaker 3: was ice cold in the wake of an epidural. I'll
Speaker 3: drop her, she cried, as the little mouth pushed and
Speaker 3: puckered against her neck. You can do this, mamma, the
Speaker 3: nurse tutted and draped a warm felt blanket over her
Speaker 3: head and around her shoulders, anchoring it under the baby's
Speaker 3: tiny weight. Sorel didn't have the energy to explain it
Speaker 3: to her. If anything happened to the child, if she
Speaker 3: wasn't contractually perfect, then these nine months of worry and
Speaker 3: wellness checks had been for nothing. Then she was still
Speaker 3: in the same tunnel, digging ever downward. Two turned around
Speaker 3: to hope to surface again. No one's ever dropped a
Speaker 3: baby on my watch. But if you do, fumble her,
Speaker 3: the nurse went on, appending a wink, I'll catch her
Speaker 3: before she hits the ground. She clapsed the wave function
Speaker 3: of Sorel's violently oscillating knee by squeezing it.
Speaker 4: Through the sheets.
Speaker 3: Then the Braxos technicians stumbled back into the oar, scrubbing
Speaker 3: in and making his apologies. Concurrently, Sorel hadn't stopped shaking
Speaker 3: by the time he lifted the infant from her arms.
Speaker 3: No ordering the trip from the operating floor to the
Speaker 3: recovery ward. She was shaking still when her pre delivery
Speaker 3: clothes folded on the room's empty chair buzzed. The nurse
Speaker 3: brought her the phone wrapped in sorrels wadded up jeans,
Speaker 3: and Sorel fumbled her passcoat twice before it unlocked. There
Speaker 3: was a new message from her bank. The initial Braxos
Speaker 3: payment had been received. Every zero in the number looped
Speaker 3: her around and round inside it, dizzying her with relief.
Speaker 3: She shut the phone off and tossed it by her
Speaker 3: feet before the nausea overwhelmed her. Here we are now.
Speaker 3: The nurse appeared in the doorway with a swaddled infant
Speaker 3: in her arms. When Sorel didn't hold her arms out,
Speaker 3: she nestled the baby in the bed alongside her. She's
Speaker 3: been fed, according to your wishes, you two shuldt a
Speaker 3: court and get some rest, not necessarily in that order.
Speaker 3: Her smile had ossified since earlier. Maybe she was at
Speaker 3: the end of a long shift. Maybe she'd remembered that
Speaker 3: Sorel was a Braxos parent. If you're going to name
Speaker 3: her yourself, you can start thinking on that. Otherwise, we'll
Speaker 3: use the random generator tomorrow for the official certificate. In
Speaker 3: the meantime, you just buzz the nursing station if you
Speaker 3: need anything, all right, dear, okay. The nurse dimmed the lights.
Speaker 3: Sorel frowned down at the infant beside her, scrying for
Speaker 3: her own reflection in the opaque, blue black eyes and
Speaker 3: petulant face. In the morning, she had the nurse enter
Speaker 3: the name Abigail onto the birth certificate. Abigail had been
Speaker 3: Sorel's mother's name. You can use the generator for a
Speaker 3: middle name, she said, aiming the little plastic bottle at
Speaker 3: Abigail's incompetently pursed mouth. The nurse's reading lenses jumped as
Speaker 3: she wrinkled her nose at the tablet. Abigail April doesn't
Speaker 3: make much sense for a little girl born in July.
Speaker 3: It's fine. Sorrel nudged Abigail's lips with the bottle nipple
Speaker 3: the way the nutritional consultant had showed her. This time,
Speaker 3: she latched on tiny bubbles rolled up to the top
Speaker 3: of the chalky liquid with each of her sluggish pulls.
Speaker 3: Just put in Abigail April. The nurse turned her back
Speaker 3: to tap on the tablet. Abigail's feeble gulps competed with
Speaker 3: the room silence they were absorbed into it. Sorrel re
Speaker 3: arranged to hold the baby in the bottle with the
Speaker 3: same arm and fumbled her phone out to watch the
Speaker 3: day's news. The top story detailed the construction project that
Speaker 3: would house the news Braxos Crush. She scrolled past it
Speaker 3: to a bit about a hyperlooped derailment outside Rio, then
Speaker 3: glazed over the coverage of the water ryots. Nothing new
Speaker 3: to see there. A loud slurping noise roused her from
Speaker 3: behind drooping eyelids. The baby had made it to the
Speaker 3: end of the bottle and failed to distinguish dry air
Speaker 3: from milk. Soorrel flicked the bottle onto the bedside table
Speaker 3: and hefted the baby toward her shoulder. The baby burped
Speaker 3: before she ever made it there, dribbling a mouthful of
Speaker 3: sour milk slabber down the front of Abigail's gown. God,
Speaker 3: damn it, Abigail April, she said, and the words rolled
Speaker 3: out too naturally out of her mouth. She snatched a
Speaker 3: tissue to wipe off her shirt, and the baby's pointed chin.
Speaker 3: Damn it, damn it, damn it, damn it. She knew
Speaker 3: from the outset the name was a mistake. Pretending it
Speaker 3: was the first such she'd made. That was only a
Speaker 3: concession to what was left of her pride. Sorel didn't
Speaker 3: mean for Abigail's second birthday party to be her first
Speaker 3: and only one. She made a cake yellow with chocolate frosting,
Speaker 3: invited the other three children around Abigail's age from the
Speaker 3: mission housing complex where they lived now. One of the
Speaker 3: kid's older siblings who tagged along, sang Happy Birthday with
Speaker 3: the adults, but the other little kids only shrieked and
Speaker 3: confused anticipation. When Sorrel stopped Abigail from grabbing for the
Speaker 3: cake with its still lit candles, no no hot, Abigail
Speaker 3: burst into frustrated tears. Sorel cried too, but only later
Speaker 3: when they were alone, while Abigail played with the presents
Speaker 3: that Braxos had paid for. They sent money every month
Speaker 3: for toys and games, as well as for child care
Speaker 3: and food and clothes and educational programming. They wanted well
Speaker 3: rounded humans, not neurotic labrats. Abigail was currently banging a
Speaker 3: plastic spaceship against various things in the apartment, examining the
Speaker 3: different sounds it made when bounced off the couch versus
Speaker 3: tapped on the wall. The week before, Sorel had started
Speaker 3: to fill out a dating profile on amoor dot com
Speaker 3: and till she got to the question about whether or
Speaker 3: not she had children, and froze, as she always did.
Speaker 3: This time she'd been saved by the paying of July's
Speaker 3: check arriving in her bank account. She closed the amor
Speaker 3: tab and studied the solid black numbers. Walls of zeros
Speaker 3: holding off all the awful things lying just out of sight,
Speaker 3: never out of memory, hunger and sickness and exhaustion. Walls
Speaker 3: full of holes, gaping wounds through which Sorel couldn't help
Speaker 3: but jopoggle all the painful possibilities to test how loose
Speaker 3: they'd grown. We could go on vacation, she said to Abigail,
Speaker 3: who was banging the spaceship against the toy bin. Now,
Speaker 3: she wiped her nose on her sleeve, a habit she'd
Speaker 3: been trying to break, Abigail of neither of us have
Speaker 3: ever had a vacation. Abigail put the nose cone of
Speaker 3: the ship in her mouth. Snack pease, she said, round
Speaker 3: her mouthful of Braxos fuselage. Sorrel picked her up and
Speaker 3: carried her into the kitchen to make peanut butter banana,
Speaker 3: which was too messy to eat on the carpet. She
Speaker 3: cut the banana into little discs, dabbed peanut butter on top,
Speaker 3: and placed a single cheerio halo in the middle of each.
Speaker 3: Abigail ate three slices and pulped the rest in her
Speaker 3: fists to paint an abstract master work on her high
Speaker 3: chair tray. Sorel hated it when dark phantasies flitted through
Speaker 3: her head. One day, while waiting to cross the street
Speaker 3: to do their grocery shopping, she caught herself dreaming about
Speaker 3: a car blowing through the intersection beneath a bloody red light.
Speaker 3: She imagined Abigail sailing through the air, imagined her legs
Speaker 3: shattering into the kind of shrapnel that would never again
Speaker 3: tolerate space travel. She could hear the sound of Abigail
Speaker 3: hitting the pavement, the screaming Abigail's her own intrusive thoughts,
Speaker 3: horrible thoughts that she held on the back of her
Speaker 3: tongue to save her and never quite swallow. Mommy owl.
Speaker 3: Abigail protested, wringing her hand halfway free of surels. But
Speaker 3: she didn't pull all the way clear, and she didn't
Speaker 3: fumble into traffic, and her perfect legs carried them all
Speaker 3: the way down the street to the Amazon market, where
Speaker 3: the animated Cereal mascot sang Doggerel verses to Abigail, begging
Speaker 3: her to convince her mother to choose their variety of
Speaker 3: technicolor breakfast starch. And if you want to live in
Speaker 3: a cyberpunk dystopia in which advertising shows up in the
Speaker 3: oddest of places, you can listen to this podcast or
Speaker 3: really a lot of things, because you do live in
Speaker 3: a cyberpunk dystopia. Congratulations, here's the advertisers. Sorrel meant for
Speaker 3: Abigail to get plenty of sleep, to be well adjusted
Speaker 3: and happy when she started her technical track pre kindergarten classes.
Speaker 3: Yet she woke her up three nights out of four,
Speaker 3: slipping into her big girl bed beneath the purple and
Speaker 3: green comforter, shuddering silently with tears that Abigail could not
Speaker 3: be allowed to hear, but which she certainly must have
Speaker 3: been able to feel. Go back to sleep, Baby, Sorrel
Speaker 3: begged every night, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. The nights that
Speaker 3: she didn't wake Abigail up were the ones that came
Speaker 3: at the end of the days when she met her
Speaker 3: developmental unit lead singly or in groups with her future cohort.
Speaker 3: It was important that she spend time with the unit lead,
Speaker 3: a smiling tie woman with a kindergartener teacher's affect and
Speaker 3: an outminer's rangy stature. Adjusting to other adults and to
Speaker 3: her peer group would ensure an orderly, non traumatic transition,
Speaker 3: the Braxos Parent Handbook informed Sorel. Together, the ohort played
Speaker 3: what looked to them like games, activities that taught them
Speaker 3: how to work in teams, how to trust their intuition
Speaker 3: and each other. The unit lead was generous with praise
Speaker 3: and rewards alike. Abigail would come home from these meetings
Speaker 3: with her sweater covered in colorful stickers and explain each
Speaker 3: one's providence to Sorel over dinner. On those nights, Sorel's
Speaker 3: body was too heavy to lift from her bed the
Speaker 3: rest of the time, though, when she fumbled her way,
Speaker 3: half awake, into Abigail's room and roused her from her
Speaker 3: well earned sleep, she wrapped herself around a single, hard
Speaker 3: edged solace, the knowledge that a good mother wouldn't put
Speaker 3: her own emotional needs above those of her small child,
Speaker 3: that she wouldn't wake a little girl and leave her
Speaker 3: sleepless and frightened. So a good mother was something Abigail
Speaker 3: could never have snatched away from her. Sorel knew she
Speaker 3: could never let the Braxis rep take Abigail away. She
Speaker 3: made spreadsheet after spreadsheet, trying to find a way to
Speaker 3: pay back what she'd been given. Not so much crunchy
Speaker 3: numbers as being crushed by them. She poured over the contract,
Speaker 3: asking on law advice forums, but she found no gap
Speaker 3: in the net of legalisms wide enough for even a
Speaker 3: bony five year old to slip through. She could never
Speaker 3: let it happen. She can never. She could not be
Speaker 3: standing on the apartment complex stairs on Abigail's cakeless unsung
Speaker 3: fifth birthday, watching the unit lead, the medical technician, and
Speaker 3: the legal representative load Abigail's things, load Abigail into the
Speaker 3: company driveless car. The unit lead came back last to
Speaker 3: shake Sorel's limp hand. Don't worry, she told Sorel, her
Speaker 3: voice as firm as her grip. She will be loved.
Speaker 3: She turned to look at Abigail, whose perplexed, nervous, excited
Speaker 3: face was just visible through the tinted window. We have
Speaker 3: a very dedicated training staff. Sorel didn't cry when the
Speaker 3: car drove off, and Abigail didn't look back. Soorrel wouldn't
Speaker 3: have driven all the way out to the Braxfast development
Speaker 3: complex outside Baltimore if she'd known the abbey M listed
Speaker 3: on the dark web registry she'd found was the wrong one.
Speaker 3: Or maybe she would have. After all, she had no
Speaker 3: other leads, no more ideas, nowhere else to go. Someone's
Speaker 3: abby M was better than no abby M whatsoever. Either way,
Speaker 3: When Sorel shook the facility fence outside Newark and screamed
Speaker 3: her name, no one answered except the company's private police.
Speaker 3: After letting her cool off overnight, they sent her home
Speaker 3: with a bill for an overnight security stay. Along with
Speaker 3: the bill, there were some QR codes key to suggestions
Speaker 3: on how she might cover the costs. One of those
Speaker 3: codes pulled up Braxos's star studded logo Braxos. The site said,
Speaker 3: its colors hideously familiar. Our future in yours hand in hand.
Speaker 3: She had enough of Braxos's money already. She never wanted
Speaker 3: to see another nickel. She paid the fine with what
Speaker 3: was left of her last payout and closed the associated account.
Speaker 3: Sorel went to the interview with a tidy CV printed
Speaker 3: expensively on real paper, armed with preloaded answers to questions,
Speaker 3: and an air of projected confidence for a field she'd
Speaker 3: never worked in before. Instead, she found herself spilling her
Speaker 3: every secret to the interviewer, a woman a little younger
Speaker 3: than herself, with an otherwise nice suit with an old
Speaker 3: coffee stain on one's sleeve. She knew she couldn't change
Speaker 3: what had happened, couldn't undo her signature on the contract,
Speaker 3: couldn't reclaim what had been surrendered. It had been legal,
Speaker 3: but it hadn't been right. The interview put a box
Speaker 3: of tissues on the desk between them. There are a
Speaker 3: lot of us with similar stories, she said. Sorel blew
Speaker 3: her nose, did you a nephew, said the interviewer. They
Speaker 3: sat together, kneeding the silence, making it elastic, making it strong,
Speaker 3: making something that would rise. Sorrel went after the future career,
Speaker 3: training an advocacy act with both hands, tearing at it
Speaker 3: with every weapon she could find, every fundraised dollar or
Speaker 3: agami bent in ao blades, every legal precedent, an obscure statute,
Speaker 3: fired like bullets into the belly of the behemoth in
Speaker 3: her her entire life, there had been so few things
Speaker 3: she'd really wanted, really striving for. It had never seemed
Speaker 3: worth reaching for things when they had all been set
Speaker 3: so far above her. A lifetime's worth of unspent aspiration
Speaker 3: and ardor now poured out of her and into her work.
Speaker 3: She wasn't fighting alone either. The organization she worked for
Speaker 3: had siblings all over the country, more people like her,
Speaker 3: or people who understood her, A chorus of voices shouting
Speaker 3: down the clarion call of this idea, thousands of people,
Speaker 3: millions of dollars a year of work, five a decade.
Speaker 3: It still wasn't enough. It still only scratched the surface.
Speaker 3: But a scratch can be big enough for the cold
Speaker 3: to get into and break the whole thing open. When
Speaker 3: the miners' union spokespeople made landfall on Earth to negotiate
Speaker 3: their terms for the release of Braxo's company property and
Speaker 3: their own emancipation, Sorrel was supposed to be on the
Speaker 3: other side of the planet filling out documentation for the
Speaker 3: class action lawsuit, But without her asking, her supervisor quietly
Speaker 3: swapped a few assignments, and so Sorel found herself as
Speaker 3: one of the nonprofits representatives at the introductory's summit, The
Speaker 3: miners stood out in the sea of black suits and skirts.
Speaker 3: They wore company work suits emerald green or sapphire blue,
Speaker 3: depending on which project they had been tagged to. The
Speaker 3: name Braxos defiantly blazoned down each sleeve between the clasps
Speaker 3: of their exoskeletons. Sorel avoided them for the most part,
Speaker 3: afraid to look too long into their hunger and hurt.
Speaker 3: Not all of them responded in kind. One young woman
Speaker 3: took up a low orbit around Sorrel, falling closer with
Speaker 3: each passing cycle. Sorel looked her over from the corners
Speaker 3: of her eyes, past the sides of her pocket as
Speaker 3: she nudged keynotes in legal references to the nonprofit's lead representative,
Speaker 3: seventeen or eighteen, the right age, black hair, shorn short,
Speaker 3: the right color, eyes like brown, bruises in her face,
Speaker 3: right and wrong, all at once. During a break, her
Speaker 3: orbital integrity collapsed entirely. She stopped in front of Sorel's
Speaker 3: seat on her way back from the coffee machine, a
Speaker 3: paper cup in either hand, was I yours? She asked
Speaker 3: a challenge a rebuke a wish. Maybe it was wishful
Speaker 3: thinking to recognize any of Abigail and the curl of
Speaker 3: close cropped hair behind one ear. Maybe it was self
Speaker 3: punishment to look into this stern, stubborn face and see
Speaker 3: a round cheeked little girl's smile. No, she said, and
Speaker 3: it was the truth either way. Maybe I gave birth
Speaker 3: to you. I don't know, but I don't have the
Speaker 3: right to call you mine either way. The young woman's
Speaker 3: bruised eyes did not soften. She did not reach for
Speaker 3: Sorel's hand. Her exoskeleton whined faintly as she set one
Speaker 3: of the coffee cups in front of Sorrel. She did
Speaker 3: not walk away. Steam rose from the surface and led
Speaker 3: away to nothing in the cool, dry meeting room air.
Speaker 3: Sorel took a deep breath and spoke slowly, stuttering but
Speaker 3: doling out every word carefully, to say exactly what she
Speaker 3: meant to say it all and leave nothing behind or
Speaker 3: forgotten or overlooked. And that's the story. Hey, I hope
Speaker 3: you liked it anywhere near as much as I do,
Speaker 3: because then you would have liked it a lot. I
Speaker 3: had to like a little bit pause near the end
Speaker 3: because I get choked up. I mean Abigail meets Sorrel
Speaker 3: or the maybe Abigail meets Sorel. You know I'm a
Speaker 3: sucker for it. What do you want? I asked Amy,
Speaker 3: the author about the story, and Amy told me to
Speaker 3: tell you at the outline stage. I intended for this
Speaker 3: to be a flash piece, but I figured out very
Speaker 3: quickly I couldn't unpack my feelings about motherhood, choices, and
Speaker 3: complicity into less than a thousand words. As a parent,
Speaker 3: and as someone who has and or had a strange
Speaker 3: relationships with both my own own parents, I think constantly
Speaker 3: about how every day that passes means a million decisions,
Speaker 3: most of them subconscious, most of which don't feel like
Speaker 3: decisions at all, because of the societal stew that we
Speaker 3: all marinate in daily that tries to leave us all
Speaker 3: more or less isotonic to what we're swimming in. This
Speaker 3: story grew out of that and the nagging fear that
Speaker 3: I'll embark on one of those egregiously wrong paths. It
Speaker 3: feels so obvious and safe and comfortable when I take
Speaker 3: my kids by the hand and lead them out into it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think that the fact that this was written by
Speaker 3: a mother is very clear, and I love, you know,
Speaker 3: there's this whole era of like really masculine science fiction
Speaker 3: that was like, you know, the only people who can
Speaker 3: talk about space and stuff are like men, and no
Speaker 3: one has emotions, and no one talks about family and shit,
Speaker 3: you know, and it's just like so completely untrue. And
Speaker 3: I love that this is a story about space and
Speaker 3: near future and it is about science and it is
Speaker 3: also about emotion and family and those aren't contradictory, right,
Speaker 3: Like you can talk about both because we're human and
Speaker 3: we can do that. We contain multitudes. That was my addendum.
Speaker 3: I think you'll figure that out. And I asked Amy
Speaker 3: what to plug. She said that her novella Emergent Properties
Speaker 3: came out last year, and although it's more upbeat, it
Speaker 3: does feature complicated parent child relationships, a sentiment of fuck capitalism,
Speaker 3: and in this case, body hopping robots. So check out
Speaker 3: Emergent Properties or anything else that Amy Ogden has written
Speaker 3: on a bunch of different magazines. And if you listen
Speaker 3: to this on it could happen here. You could check
Speaker 3: out my history podcast Go Cool People Did Cool Stuff.
Speaker 3: If you are checking us out on Cool People Did
Speaker 3: Cool stuff you could check out It could Happen here
Speaker 3: Because this is on both feeds, it's a podcast without
Speaker 3: its own feed. It sits upon other feeds as a symbiote,
Speaker 3: like Dax from Star Trek. Different gender. I don't know
Speaker 3: how the different genders of the podcast are. It gets
Speaker 3: to the metaphor fall apart. I'll talk to you next week.
Speaker 3: Bye everyone.
Speaker 1: It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
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