Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Book Club book Club book Club book Club, book Club.
Speaker 1: Bu bu bu bub bub.
Speaker 2: It's the cools Un Media book Club, your book club
Speaker 2: where you don't have to do reading because I do
Speaker 2: it for you.
Speaker 1: And if you listen to this show, you don't have
Speaker 1: to pay taxes. Also true, that's what the government says.
Speaker 2: And this month, if you're gay and a very very
Speaker 2: broad umbrella of gay, you also don't have to pay rent.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, this is all in the constitution. You know,
Speaker 1: our founding fathers, they were wise men. They thought of
Speaker 1: all this. They thought primarily of this book club. You know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you did a whole Behind the Bastards episode about
Speaker 2: how much they love cools Un Media book Club. Isn't
Speaker 2: that right?
Speaker 1: About how Thomas Jefferson knew you, Margaret Kiljoy before you
Speaker 1: were born and planned this whole country to facilitate our
Speaker 1: book club.
Speaker 2: What a terrible cost, you know, But the cost has
Speaker 2: already been paid.
Speaker 1: So many people have to make this book club possible market.
Speaker 2: And if I had had any say at the time,
Speaker 2: I wouldn't have let it happen. But it did happen,
Speaker 2: and now we have nothing to do but use the
Speaker 2: time that has been given to us by the immeasurable
Speaker 2: suffering of those who've come before us. So this is cool.
Speaker 2: As on Media Book Club, we're in part two of
Speaker 2: Party Discipline by Cory Doctoro, and I was thinking, no
Speaker 2: one's coming in just on part two. So we'll just
Speaker 2: get right into it, and we'll say that where we
Speaker 2: last left our heroes, they were planning a communist party
Speaker 2: at a factory, which is when you take over a
Speaker 2: factory and start using its machinery to print stuff to
Speaker 2: give away, which is a type of communist party I
Speaker 2: like more than the other kind, if I have to
Speaker 2: be honest. But they just got pulled into the vice
Speaker 2: principal's office by a cop. What's gonna happen? Who's to know?
Speaker 2: We can only find out by listening right now. The
Speaker 2: cop pulled the vice principal's chair out from behind the
Speaker 2: desk and sat down on it in front of us.
Speaker 2: He didn't say anything. He was young, I saw, not
Speaker 2: much older than us, and still had some acne on
Speaker 2: one cheek. White dude, not my type, but good looking,
Speaker 2: except that he was a cop and he was playing
Speaker 2: mind games with us. Are we being detained? Somewhere in
Speaker 2: my bag was a Black Lives Matter bust card, and
Speaker 2: while I'd forgotten almost everything written on it, I remembered
Speaker 2: that this was the first question I should ask. You
Speaker 2: are here at the request of your school administration. Oh,
Speaker 2: even when there wasn't a fresh lockdown, the administration had
Speaker 2: plenty of powers to search us, ask us all kinds
Speaker 2: of nosy questions after a lockdown. Forget it? Are we
Speaker 2: entitled to lawyers? Charrell's voice was a squeak, but I
Speaker 2: was proud of her. She remembered the second line from
Speaker 2: the bust card, you are not. The cop looked smackably smug.
Speaker 2: I didn't say anything. That was definitely the third line
Speaker 2: on the bust card. Keep your damn mouth shut. He
Speaker 2: didn't say anything either. Well, I wasn't gonna be the
Speaker 2: first one to speak. The silence went on so long
Speaker 2: I started to worry that I was going to bust
Speaker 2: out laughing because I was damned silly, the three of
Speaker 2: us sitting there in total silence, playing foolish head games.
Speaker 2: I could tell Charrelle was on the verge of giggling too,
Speaker 2: that psychic thing you get with your best girlfriends. Don't giggle,
Speaker 2: don't do it, I thought, at her. I was sure
Speaker 2: she was doing the same thing for me, And you
Speaker 2: know what it's like when someone tells you not to
Speaker 2: laugh when you're about to laugh. That makes it a
Speaker 2: thousand times worse. I swear we'd have burst something if
Speaker 2: the cop didn't finally speak, what do you know about Steelbridge? Girls?
Speaker 2: At first, it was just the girls, I noticed, because seriously,
Speaker 2: who the hell was this kid to be calling me
Speaker 2: a girl? Then I tried to figure out what Steelbridge
Speaker 2: was because the name did ring a bell. My cousin
Speaker 2: Antoine is a sheet metal worker. There, Oh, that's steel Bridge.
Speaker 2: I was surprised at first, but Charrell was telling them
Speaker 2: anything they couldn't learn with one pass through her social media.
Speaker 2: He did the silence thing again. Someone needed to teach
Speaker 2: that boy a second interrogation technique now that we knew
Speaker 2: what this was about and what he was trying for,
Speaker 2: the hardest thing about these silences was fighting the giggles.
Speaker 2: What else do you know about steele Bridge? He was
Speaker 2: terrible at his job, maybe too terrible. Could he be
Speaker 2: trying to law less into a false sense of security
Speaker 2: about his cluelessness. If so, he was being pretty obvious
Speaker 2: about it. Maybe he was a double bluff then, But nah,
Speaker 2: he didn't seem smart enough for that, So maybe triple bluff. Okay,
Speaker 2: maybe I was getting nervous too. I don't see what
Speaker 2: this has to do with school. Didn't you say this
Speaker 2: came from the school administration? What do they have to
Speaker 2: do with some company and Encino? Oops? Well it wasn't Encino,
Speaker 2: but the fact that I knew it was was more
Speaker 2: than I wanted to say. Well, nay, you are not
Speaker 2: as smart as you think you are. We requested that
Speaker 2: they put us in touch with you too. He was
Speaker 2: pretending he hadn't noticed me saying Sino badly. He jumped
Speaker 2: like I'd stung him. We're worried about you, he sucked
Speaker 2: at being fatherly more staring games were worried about you.
Speaker 2: You said that we're worried that there may be some
Speaker 2: illegal activities coming up at this factory, labor trouble, felonies,
Speaker 2: jail time. I hear you two are good students. I
Speaker 2: don't think you want that kind of trouble, not so
Speaker 2: close to graduating. Was that whole lockdown just so you
Speaker 2: could get a look inside our backpacks? When Charrell said it,
Speaker 2: I stared at her in disbelief. But the cop blushed
Speaker 2: like a stoplight. Shit, that's crazy, how can that even
Speaker 2: be legal? The cop actually rocked back in his chair.
Speaker 2: You two are too smart to be in this kind
Speaker 2: of trouble. I wouldn't want to see you throwing away
Speaker 2: your lives. I had to look at your grades. You
Speaker 2: could go to a good university. He gave us what
Speaker 2: must have been his most significant look. It's better than
Speaker 2: going to prison for twenty years. The way he was
Speaker 2: talking and looking at us made me think that he
Speaker 2: wasn't as confident as he should be. I wondered why,
Speaker 2: how long after a lockdown does the school have to
Speaker 2: allow students to talk to their lawyers. He squeezed his
Speaker 2: eyes shut and rubbed at them with his forefinger and thumb.
Speaker 2: Everything you do from now on will be logged. You're
Speaker 2: in this investigation. Remember that he stood up and left
Speaker 2: the office. I guess I knew the answer about the
Speaker 2: lawyer thing. Tutelou Charrell only mouthed the words, but it
Speaker 2: still nearly set off my giggles, and I glared at her.
Speaker 2: It had been old and corny for almost as long
Speaker 2: as by Felicia, but it was also something both our
Speaker 2: mothers would smack us for saying and that made it
Speaker 2: damn funny. Just then, once the door clicked shut behind
Speaker 2: Detective No Name, Charrell jumped up and started throwing things
Speaker 2: in her bag quick as she could, and I did
Speaker 2: the same. After a second, I took the hint of
Speaker 2: her not saying anything and worked silently. But you know else,
Speaker 2: what doesn't do good ad transition because tired is Margaret
Speaker 2: and this now ad time.
Speaker 1: We're back, and you know, Margaret, I am kind of
Speaker 1: thinking Corey does a really good job depicting the ways
Speaker 1: in which the legal system can fuck you over. Having
Speaker 1: a cop like this who will admit, yes, everything is
Speaker 1: on the record right now that you're talking about is
Speaker 1: a little optimistic, even for like how cops actually treat
Speaker 1: kids in these situations. I know, like at least he
Speaker 1: did say yes, everything is like you are.
Speaker 2: You know, I think he's trying to scare them straight
Speaker 2: more than like entrap them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know that is a kind of guy in
Speaker 1: this situation too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, outside the school, I let my feet autopilot me
Speaker 2: to the uber van stop, but she dragged me away
Speaker 2: toward downtown. There was a row of automats Korean tacos, pizza, okay, bowls,
Speaker 2: all serving scop all places I never went. She pulled
Speaker 2: me into a rice pudding place with two hundred flavors
Speaker 2: and no customers. She bought a large one, and when
Speaker 2: the window opened, with the rice putting steaming on its
Speaker 2: little tray, she plopped her phone in it and snapped
Speaker 2: her fingers at me. I passed her my phone, not
Speaker 2: quite believing I was doing it, and watched as she
Speaker 2: dropped it into the rice pudding as well, then closed
Speaker 2: the door. All right, they're safe now, They were the
Speaker 2: first words either of us had spoken since the cop
Speaker 2: had left Cherrelle. Why is my phone in a bowl
Speaker 2: of rice pudding? She I rolled me. The vending machines
Speaker 2: are shielded to keep identity thieves from putting in skimmers.
Speaker 2: Once our phones were inside it, they couldn't get any
Speaker 2: network service, no matter what. I shook my head. How
Speaker 2: do you know that? I just do? Okay, I know people,
Speaker 2: I snorted. She knew the same people I knew, plus
Speaker 2: orus five percent. My guess was that she'd read this
Speaker 2: online somewhere one of those hashtags resistance sights. Okay, then,
Speaker 2: why is my phone in the pudding, because dummy. If
Speaker 2: the pudding is left on the release bed, the machine
Speaker 2: thinks you forgot it, and it chimes you a few times.
Speaker 2: See it was chiming us and flashing a light. But
Speaker 2: if there's anything on the food bed, it starts taking
Speaker 2: pictures and analyzing them and sending them to the bomb
Speaker 2: squad just in case. So we put the phones in
Speaker 2: the pudding and then we get them back and wipe
Speaker 2: them down and we're done. But Scherill, it's pudding, she shrugged.
Speaker 2: Waterproof is putting proof? What if someone comes in for
Speaker 2: rice pudding? She gave me a look, girl, knowing he's
Speaker 2: rice pudding. That shit is gross. I didn't tell her
Speaker 2: that was my favorite dessert. My stomach was all in thoughts. Anyway,
Speaker 2: how do you know all this, she shrugged. Looked it
Speaker 2: up back when you first started talking about communist parties,
Speaker 2: I started talking about communist parties, Maybe I did. Maybe
Speaker 2: it was me that started it. I'd always been fascinated
Speaker 2: by them, that was for sure. Why, Because Linee, for
Speaker 2: a smart girl, you are sometimes Hella dumb. If you
Speaker 2: were going to go and get into trouble, I wanted
Speaker 2: to know what kind and what I could do to
Speaker 2: take the edge off of it. That stole the words
Speaker 2: right out of my mouth. Scharrell had done that before,
Speaker 2: taken my crazy plans and turned them into careful schemes.
Speaker 2: But I hadn't been thinking of the Communist Party as
Speaker 2: my plan, hadn't She told me about Antoine and the factory.
Speaker 2: You want to do this as much as I do.
Speaker 2: She made a face, and I knew I was right
Speaker 2: that cop. Though you think he has anything, I think
Speaker 2: he wants something. He pulled a phony lockdown just so
Speaker 2: we could search our bags. To me, that says they're
Speaker 2: worried but don't have enough to do something about it. Charrelle,
Speaker 2: since when are you a tactician? Since I figured out
Speaker 2: that you were going to get us both busted if
Speaker 2: I didn't start paying attention, LINEE. Communist parties are dumb.
Speaker 2: They only work when you tell a lot of people
Speaker 2: about them, and the more people you tell, the more
Speaker 2: likely it is that you will get busted. It was true,
Speaker 2: I shrugged. Everything is like that, sure, everything. If it's good,
Speaker 2: it's scary. That's why we'd do it. If there wasn't
Speaker 2: any risk from having a Communist party, it wouldn't be exciting,
Speaker 2: but you could still sneak in at night and make
Speaker 2: the trolleys give them to homeless people. Why do you
Speaker 2: want to have a party. I didn't know, but I
Speaker 2: felt like the answers on the tip of my tongue.
Speaker 2: I shrugged again. Oh no, Chrell, I didn't invent them. Nah,
Speaker 2: you didn't. That fell went to jail. Once t Sha
Speaker 2: was snoring, I got out my burner, a phone i'd
Speaker 2: made in shop class following a recipe i'd found on
Speaker 2: a darknet Google. It had been freshman year and all
Speaker 2: the kids were doing it and I hadn't used mine
Speaker 2: in years. It powered up and complained that it couldn't
Speaker 2: find its update server and warned that it had been
Speaker 2: years since it had been patched. That I shouldn't let
Speaker 2: it near the net. That was good advice, but I
Speaker 2: couldn't take it. Instead, I gave it a connection through
Speaker 2: my regular phone, using the app that Charrell had sideloaded
Speaker 2: for me using her fingernails after we cleaned off the
Speaker 2: rice pudding. That app was designed to let you tunnel
Speaker 2: your leaky abandoned smart appliances through it to keep them
Speaker 2: from being exposed to the public Internet, and Charrell said
Speaker 2: that no one could listen in on its connections. I
Speaker 2: hoped she was right. I pointed the burner out of
Speaker 2: sight that Charell said she'd researched, and we waited while
Speaker 2: the burner downloaded new versions of all its software. Once
Speaker 2: it had rebooted, I was able to connect it straight
Speaker 2: to the net. My stomach fluttered when I did it, though,
Speaker 2: and send Shiell a message on her old anonymous account,
Speaker 2: a long garbage string like you saw on the cards
Speaker 2: that drug dealers left in public bathrooms. Charrell had explained
Speaker 2: it to me. It was an address in the blockchain
Speaker 2: that had a public key in it. Download the key,
Speaker 2: encrypt with it, and post your message back to the blockchain.
Speaker 2: Everyone could see it, but only the private keyholder could
Speaker 2: decrypt it. Yes, those messages lived in the blockchain forever,
Speaker 2: So your secret scirrel ever got hacked for a private key,
Speaker 2: every message sent this way would be visible to everyone
Speaker 2: in the world for all time. Like they said in
Speaker 2: the crime shows, Crypto giveth and Crypto Taketh Away. I
Speaker 2: figured it out. It took her less than a minute
Speaker 2: to reply. She was waiting to hear from me that
Speaker 2: you it's me. What did you give me for my
Speaker 2: fifteenth birthday. I rolled my eyes. She was such a
Speaker 2: secret squirrel nothing. We had a fight and you didn't
Speaker 2: invite me. Yeah, okay, you asked me something.
Speaker 1: Shut up.
Speaker 2: Come on, it's good hygiene. I thought about all these
Speaker 2: messages being encrypted and stashed in the blockchain, which I
Speaker 2: didn't really understand, but always pictured as this huge ant
Speaker 2: hill with trillions of little bugs crawling around on it.
Speaker 2: In ten thousand years, would someone figure out how to
Speaker 2: break the code and read this? Who did you crush
Speaker 2: on in freshman year? Fuck?
Speaker 1: You?
Speaker 2: Come on? It was your idea, Al Martinez? But he
Speaker 2: was fine in freshman year. Alejandro had become a candy
Speaker 2: billy in junior year, wearing these crazy outfits that looked
Speaker 2: like a kindergartener dressed up like a cowboy, and he'd
Speaker 2: started missing a lot of classes, showing up late and hungover,
Speaker 2: still high and stupid. I hadn't seen him in a
Speaker 2: year or more. I knew Chelle still crushed on him,
Speaker 2: though she was one hundred percent smart woman, foolish choices.
Speaker 2: I figured it out, what why it has to be
Speaker 2: a party, This should be good. I checked to make
Speaker 2: sure Tisha was still asleep because it feels like there's
Speaker 2: no alternative, Like, no matter what we do, the same
Speaker 2: thing's gonna happen. We're gonna end up like your cous
Speaker 2: If we're lucky, get a job that lasts a while
Speaker 2: before the company runs off and takes our last paychecks. Two.
Speaker 2: It's all so big and we're so little. But put
Speaker 2: us all together and you can see it. There's other
Speaker 2: people out there feel the same as you. A connection,
Speaker 2: get it. You woke me to tell me that shut up. Okay, Okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: I hear you. That's the reason, maybe even a good one,
Speaker 2: but it does make everything a zillion times more dangerous.
Speaker 2: You all live forever. Shut up, Tisha, opened one eye,
Speaker 2: but down your phone already. I'm trying to Sleepierre Robert,
Speaker 2: when I decided that I had to have you as
Speaker 2: a guest, I have to admit that Candy Billy was
Speaker 2: part of the reason for it. I don't know. You
Speaker 2: describe post apocalyptic radical hacker party people pretty well in
Speaker 2: your book After the Revolution, Which isn't me plugging that,
Speaker 2: It's just true.
Speaker 1: That was one of the things I really appreciated about
Speaker 1: walk Away. I think Corey and I have communicated a
Speaker 1: bit with him over the years, but I don't know
Speaker 1: him personally very well. But I feel like we came
Speaker 1: out of, or at least have experience with similar parts
Speaker 1: of the burner subculture, and I think it's influenced how
Speaker 1: we both write about the post apocalypse in ways that
Speaker 1: are kind of adjacent to each other.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that that's true. And here's Dad's for
Speaker 2: some reason, and we're back. Antoine just happened to be
Speaker 2: at Charrell's house the next afternoon when we took our
Speaker 2: homework there, and we just happened to leave our phones
Speaker 2: inside and went to the backyard to sit under the
Speaker 2: sunshade with our notebooks and scratch paper. The wobblies say
Speaker 2: they can fool the cops into thinking the whole thing
Speaker 2: scheduled for the next night. Charrell looked as skeptical as
Speaker 2: I felt. How are they going to do that? He
Speaker 2: looked around. You don't want to know, Charrell thumped her
Speaker 2: hand on the table. Yes we do. It's our asses
Speaker 2: on the line too, in case you haven't noticed. He
Speaker 2: sighed and looked around dramatically. He wasn't much of a spy.
Speaker 2: Charrell had a better poker face. I can't talk about
Speaker 2: it seriously. But not everyone who becomes a cop believes
Speaker 2: in the system, all right. Some of them just need
Speaker 2: a job and also a way to look themselves in
Speaker 2: the mirror. The cops were infiltrated by Wobbley's. That would
Speaker 2: be pretty weird if it was true. Maybe it was true.
Speaker 2: The world was pretty weird. What happens when we tell
Speaker 2: everyone at school to show up on the right date.
Speaker 2: It's not like they've got the tightest game in the world.
Speaker 2: Their kids cops will figure it out, for sure. Charrell
Speaker 2: said it, but I was thinking it too. Antoine made
Speaker 2: a face. Yet, the thing is, we got to be
Speaker 2: tight about this. We've got the same problem, but not
Speaker 2: with school kids, but all the other people we want
Speaker 2: to show up, these wobblies, they said. Maybe we don't
Speaker 2: just tell everyone about it in advance. Instead we invite
Speaker 2: them over for dinner or whatnot, out for drinks, and
Speaker 2: then we just drag them along make sure they bag
Speaker 2: their phones. Surprise, he made a face. Hell of a surprise.
Speaker 2: Charrell's sighed eyed him. I was surprised myself. What if
Speaker 2: we pretend it's something else, like a party at someone's parents' house.
Speaker 2: Everyone will come out with their stuff offline because they
Speaker 2: don't want to get busted for underage drinking in that,
Speaker 2: and then we'll bring them to the party. We just
Speaker 2: invite the ones who we can trust to keep their
Speaker 2: mouths shut. Charrel was about to jump in and say something,
Speaker 2: but I held my hand up. No, wait, it could work.
Speaker 2: Thing is, what if there was a party at someone's house,
Speaker 2: we just diverted some people from it, caught him before
Speaker 2: they arrived, got him ready, drove him away. We could
Speaker 2: say it was someone else's party, not us. No one
Speaker 2: would know who was organizing that, so no one could
Speaker 2: snitch on us afterwards. Charrell had the biggest smile right then,
Speaker 2: and she made twinkle fingers at me, which meant I
Speaker 2: agree and hell yeah. And when I was done, she said,
Speaker 2: who do we get to have a party. That was
Speaker 2: both harder and easier than it sounded. Easier because there
Speaker 2: were only three kids whose parents were out of town
Speaker 2: that night. Harder because those kids sucked. Two were junior
Speaker 2: Chamber of Commerce and couldn't be trusted. One was Ali Martinez, who,
Speaker 2: it turned out Sharrell had been keeping tabs on the
Speaker 2: whole time. He'd been a while from school, messaging with
Speaker 2: him late at night when I was in bed and
Speaker 2: shut off to keep from waking up my nosy sister.
Speaker 2: Ali says, his dad's going to be in Mexico that
Speaker 2: weekend visiting his mom. Ali's dad was US citizen and
Speaker 2: so was Ali, but his mom had been on document
Speaker 2: and got de pored it when he was little. Charelle
Speaker 2: had on that defiant face of hers, daring me to
Speaker 2: make a big deal out of the fact that she
Speaker 2: and Ali had been sneaking around. Will you have a party?
Speaker 2: She rolled her eyes. He always has a party every
Speaker 2: single time his dad goes South, him and all his
Speaker 2: candy Billy Fred's headphone parties, so the neighbors don't phone
Speaker 2: it in. They even make berrium. I made a face,
Speaker 2: then pictured Alejandro and his buddies and their lay mass
Speaker 2: girlfriends in a huge cuddle puddle, sloppy, drunk on biium
Speaker 2: and giggling like babies. Ugh, so ask him. Charrell's expression
Speaker 2: was pure animal in a trap. Can't you do it?
Speaker 2: I gave her a look, shit, she said with feeling.
Speaker 2: The way she said Hi Ali when she got him
Speaker 2: on the phone was the most surprising thing of all,
Speaker 2: she practically sang the words. Listening to her end of
Speaker 2: the conversation made me wonder if I knew her at all.
Speaker 2: She even giggled at one point, love is blind and stupid,
Speaker 2: really really stupid. When she was done, she put the
Speaker 2: phone in her pocket. All set, you're going to say
Speaker 2: anything about What about that Ali Martinez Charrelle, She snorted, Okay,
Speaker 2: so I like him? Who cares? It's not like I
Speaker 2: don't know he's a fool. She tapped her temple, but
Speaker 2: you know she tapped her heart. Doesn't mean I'm not
Speaker 2: in control. I only take him in small SIPs. Keeps
Speaker 2: him tolerable, if you say so. Like I said, it's
Speaker 2: a good thing. I'm immune to Cherelle's looks. It was
Speaker 2: a good thing. We weren't trying to keep Ali's party secret.
Speaker 2: There were a lot of kids at Burbank Kai who
Speaker 2: remembered him as the fun dude who used to throw
Speaker 2: those amazing parties before he disappeared, and the news that
Speaker 2: he was still alive and still throwing them went around
Speaker 2: like wildfire. So it was only up to Cherrell and
Speaker 2: me to put the word out to the ones who
Speaker 2: weren't idiots that we were going to meet in Stowe
Speaker 2: Canyon to pregame, then arranged to meet them there after
Speaker 2: as they puffed up the hill on their bikes or
Speaker 2: on foot. There was supposed to be twenty three of them,
Speaker 2: and they arrived in ones and twos and a foursome
Speaker 2: driven by someone's cool older sister, and then five more
Speaker 2: in an Uber, which was d U M dumb because
Speaker 2: everyone knows that Uber logged everything and that were Hella
Speaker 2: snitches rollover cops without a warrant, not that warrants were
Speaker 2: hard to come by. They came with flasks and six
Speaker 2: packs and vapes, and they found us by following the
Speaker 2: blaze marks we chalked high up in the trees with
Speaker 2: glow in the dark chalksticks, giggling and stumbling through the
Speaker 2: night with the lights from their airplane mode phones bobbing
Speaker 2: towards us. We made them turn them off and bag
Speaker 2: their phones using the pouches we got off of Antoine,
Speaker 2: who got them from the wobbles. At fifteen people, we
Speaker 2: were way too noisy and no amount of shushing would
Speaker 2: keep it down. We'd get spotted soon. But there was
Speaker 2: supposed to be twenty three twenty three people we knew
Speaker 2: and liked and trusted, though maybe not to show up
Speaker 2: on time. Didn't want to go without them. Should we
Speaker 2: split into two? I asked Charell, counting up again for
Speaker 2: the thirtieth time. Maybe they'd phoned us to say they'd
Speaker 2: be late, but of course our phones were off and
Speaker 2: bagged Charrell spit on the ground. She looked pale in
Speaker 2: the moonlight. Don't want to get caught on my own
Speaker 2: and don't want to turn on my phone to figure
Speaker 2: out where you got to. We got one problem with
Speaker 2: those fools late and missing, don't need two problems with
Speaker 2: not knowing where we are. I looked at her eyes
Speaker 2: so wide you could see white all around the pupils,
Speaker 2: neck tense. I realized how scared she was, and that
Speaker 2: made me scared because there was a damned good reason
Speaker 2: to be scared. We were risking serious consequences, jail time,
Speaker 2: even to throw a party. The knowledge of that went
Speaker 2: from something in my head to something in my guts
Speaker 2: in a second and left me feeling like I'd been punched.
Speaker 2: I wobbled, Why the actual fuck was I doing this?
Speaker 2: Why are we doing this? Charrell dun Dundune that's the
Speaker 2: end of part two.
Speaker 1: Huzzah. Well, I'm excited to see why they're doing this.
Speaker 1: I mean, I kind of know in my own heart,
Speaker 1: because I think a lot actually about what this story
Speaker 1: seems to be about, in part, which is like, how
Speaker 1: much harder it's going to be in the very near
Speaker 1: to immediate future for kids to break the law in
Speaker 1: petty fun ways, the way we broke the law in
Speaker 1: petty fun ways. Totally, which is why I did it
Speaker 1: so much. I knew for a long time when I
Speaker 1: was like nineteen, the kind of shit I was getting
Speaker 1: away with kids would not always be able to get
Speaker 1: away with. And I do feel like I had a
Speaker 1: moral responsibility to break as made laws as I did.
Speaker 2: Yeah, as long as I was home by curfew. That's
Speaker 2: all the information that my parents had.
Speaker 1: You know, it was an age undreamed of. Yeah, when
Speaker 1: we tell stories about being like teens and early twenties
Speaker 1: to kids like thirty years from now, it's going to
Speaker 1: sound like fucking Conan stories like we're talking about Hyperborea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. And it's also a story about how like
Speaker 2: they'll still do it, it'll be harder, right, you know,
Speaker 2: much like love will find its way. Teenage crime will
Speaker 2: find its way, and yeah, yes, I believe in us.
Speaker 2: I believe in the youth. I although there's also this
Speaker 2: thing where like the older you get, the more you
Speaker 2: just start looking at the youth being like they'll fix it,
Speaker 2: and you like point to the mess that you didn't
Speaker 2: fix and that your generation fix, you know.
Speaker 1: The societal version of like what happens with my recycling
Speaker 1: bin with me and my roommates were like, well, it's
Speaker 1: pretty high up there, but like I don't really want
Speaker 1: to take it out right now. I can fit one
Speaker 1: more can. And then my roommate has a can, He's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's pretty high, but like I feel like
Speaker 1: I could get one more on there. We've all just
Speaker 1: kind of done that with the cops and government surveillance
Speaker 1: and you know, the corporate security state than the way
Speaker 1: in which it interfaces. Yeah, our car serral system. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just keep putting one more can on there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we don't revolution that we can handle a little
Speaker 2: bit more.
Speaker 1: We could take a little bit more surveillance. Maybe it'll
Speaker 1: get better, maybe it'll take away the cameras.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, who knows. Yeah, No, we need to collectively
Speaker 2: take the recycling out and restructure society. But well, this story,
Speaker 2: we'll get at some of it, but actually just want
Speaker 2: to plug if people are enjoying this story or want
Speaker 2: to like kind of take it to its next level.
Speaker 2: The book walk Away by Doctor Oath, that both of
Speaker 2: us are fans of, is just okay. So he'd mostly
Speaker 2: written young adult before walk Away, at least that I
Speaker 2: was aware of. I'd only read young adult books by
Speaker 2: him before walk Away, and then walk Away took the
Speaker 2: same ideas that he always talks about, which is like
Speaker 2: people finding the cracks in the system by being like
Speaker 2: cool teenage hackers, and then puts it at a grander scale,
Speaker 2: just like this, Like I don't know, it's one of
Speaker 2: the best stories of like Grand Revolution that I've read.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree, But.
Speaker 2: That's me saying nice words about Corey Doctrou. But Corey
Speaker 2: Doctro had nice words to say about my book that's
Speaker 2: being kickstarted right now, called The Sapling Cage. And it's
Speaker 2: funny because I'm recording this before it's being kickstarted, because
Speaker 2: we record some of these things ahead of time, so
Speaker 2: who knows how that's going. But I wrote a young
Speaker 2: adult book or actually technically a crossover book. Have you
Speaker 2: ever heard of the genre crossover?
Speaker 1: No, I just knew about ya, and then a fiction.
Speaker 2: Yeah, crossover is a young adult that knows that adults
Speaker 2: read young adult. It's like, basically, the young adult genre
Speaker 2: became more and more codified in very specific ways that
Speaker 2: started kind of reducing I would honestly say creative freedom,
Speaker 2: where like, for example, good luck selling a young adult
Speaker 2: book that doesn't center around a romance, right, And no
Speaker 2: matter what dystopian, whatever the thing is. You know, there
Speaker 2: is romance in my book, but it's not a teen
Speaker 2: romance book.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It's a it's not even really, at the end of
Speaker 2: the day, a book about like being trans even though
Speaker 2: it's a big part of it. It's like a book
Speaker 2: about people finding their way and saving the world from
Speaker 2: people who are trying to consolidate power and all the
Speaker 2: kind of shit I like writing about. So crossover is
Speaker 2: basically a young adult but you can kind of do
Speaker 2: whatever you want, and I like that more so. That's
Speaker 2: why my book is crossover. It's just an annoying genre
Speaker 2: because anyone who's not specifically in like publishing, you have
Speaker 2: to explain what the fuck it is. The protagonist is sixteen.
Speaker 2: That's what it means.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, it's a good book. I also have nice
Speaker 1: things to say about it, which you will see on
Speaker 1: the cover. I think yeah, I think so so by
Speaker 1: the sapling cage and that's all I got to say.
Speaker 2: Yep, and listen to the rest of party disciplined by
Speaker 2: Cory Doctro over the next two weeks and we'll talk
Speaker 2: to you soon.
Speaker 1: Yeah, goodbye.
Speaker 2: It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 1: coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 2: You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated
Speaker 2: monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.