Speaker 1: Whole Zone Media.
Speaker 2: This episode gets a content warning. This episode it deals
Speaker 2: with some themes that might be not what you're trying
Speaker 2: to listen to and in which case catch us next week.
Speaker 2: I believe that the author handles these themes respectfully. However,
Speaker 2: this episode does describe sexual assault and self harm. Book
Speaker 2: Club Club Club is back. Book Club is back. Everyone,
Speaker 2: thanks for allowing me and unannounced three weeks I didn't
Speaker 2: do book club or two weeks, I don't remember how
Speaker 2: long it was, but book Club is back. I'm your USB,
Speaker 2: Margaret Kilroy, and with me is Sharen Hi.
Speaker 3: Seren Hi. You you're purposely going out of sync for
Speaker 3: that chant in the beginning. You you set us up
Speaker 3: for failure.
Speaker 2: I did. I did set us up for folks, We're
Speaker 2: really I set you up for failure. Oh yes, yeah,
Speaker 2: you knew what you were doing. Yeah yeah, yeah. The
Speaker 2: book club is your science fiction and fantasy and probably
Speaker 2: non those things, your fiction thing that happens once a
Speaker 2: week in your ears on two different podcast feeds, on
Speaker 2: Sharen's podcast feed and on my podcast feed. It could
Speaker 2: happen here and cool people who do cool stuff. It's
Speaker 2: a story. I'm going to read it to Sharen and
Speaker 2: you can you can listen to listener. Y's the advantage
Speaker 2: of podcasting as a format. This week, I have a
Speaker 2: story I'm really excited about. This is a story that
Speaker 2: has been on my mind since it was written probably
Speaker 2: about five years ago or so.
Speaker 3: It's quite a compliment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it's it's a it's a neat. It's an
Speaker 2: interesting idea and I'm excited to talk to you about
Speaker 2: it at the end. It is a story that reimagines
Speaker 2: prison and an anarchist society. Beautiful okay, And it was
Speaker 2: written for us, well, it wasn't written for us, but
Speaker 2: it was written by Lori Penny. Lori Penny is a journalist,
Speaker 2: author and screenwriter. They can be found on Twitter at
Speaker 2: Penny Read, Instagram at Lori Penny, and substack at Lori Penny.
Speaker 2: This story is called The House of Surrender and it
Speaker 2: was first published by a German magazine. Actually in German
Speaker 2: was published in translation before I was published in English
Speaker 2: by dear Freytag, which I don't know anything about. I
Speaker 2: don't even know what that means.
Speaker 3: Sounds badass though, just by nature, sounding like having the
Speaker 3: word die.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it's dr it's yeah. I don't even know
Speaker 2: the difference between die and der I. And if you
Speaker 2: do know the difference, don't write me up.
Speaker 3: Tell us.
Speaker 2: I could look it up if I wanted to know.
Speaker 2: But the story is really good. The House of Surrender
Speaker 2: by Lori Penny. Not far from here and many lifetimes
Speaker 2: journey away, there is a place called Sanctuary, where they
Speaker 2: grow almonds and avocados, and the weather is a perpetual
Speaker 2: late spring. The town and its hundred thousand happy folk
Speaker 2: are watered by a wide, gray, treacherous river. And in
Speaker 2: that river is an island where no trees grow. And
Speaker 2: on that island is a house unlike any other. It
Speaker 2: has many names, but the people of Sanctuary have forgotten them.
Speaker 2: They call it the House of Surrender. To get to
Speaker 2: the House of Surrender, you must cross the gray River,
Speaker 2: although there are few boat captains brave enough to make
Speaker 2: the crossing, not for all the gold and silver in
Speaker 2: your purse. The river is full of hidden currents and
Speaker 2: sudden whirlpools that appear to suck down on seasoned swimmers
Speaker 2: and sailors to an icy grave in the grimy water.
Speaker 2: And besides, nobody has to used money in Sanctuary for
Speaker 2: a century and more the people of this town take
Speaker 2: what they need and give what they can, and answer
Speaker 2: to no ruler but the common good. So there is
Speaker 2: no law to compel any sailor to take you to
Speaker 2: the island in the river where no trees grow. If
Speaker 2: one of them takes pity, you may pay your passage
Speaker 2: with a promise, a gift, or a secret, although those
Speaker 2: who travel to the House of Surrender have too many
Speaker 2: of those, and precious few worth sharing. Pull yourself up
Speaker 2: to the jetty and climb the steps into the cliffs.
Speaker 2: Walk half a mile over the rocks, and you'll find
Speaker 2: the house. Its walls are thick stone. Whether that's to
Speaker 2: protect those inside from the outside world or whether it
Speaker 2: might be the other way round is a question nobody
Speaker 2: here cares to answer. The heavy doors are not locked.
Speaker 2: Walk the halls. Nobody's going to stop you. Here you
Speaker 2: will find the worst and the weirdest of men and women,
Speaker 2: strange and dangerous creatures who cannot live among their fellow humans,
Speaker 2: or else their fellow humans will not have them. This
Speaker 2: one is a rapist. That one poisoned her husband and
Speaker 2: infants in a fit of madness after the twins were born.
Speaker 2: This one beat his wife until the heith flew from
Speaker 2: her head. That one cheated as neighbors of all their harvest,
Speaker 2: until the children sickened and starved. Had they stayed in
Speaker 2: the sanctuary, these people would have had to face their
Speaker 2: neighbor's justice. Instead, they come to the house of surrender,
Speaker 2: where nobody will harm them, and they can reflect on
Speaker 2: their transgressions and all the safety stone walls can offer,
Speaker 2: which is less than you'd think, as most of them
Speaker 2: bring the terror with them across the Gray River. In
Speaker 2: my two score years as warden of this place, I
Speaker 2: have known them all, the wicked and the warped, the
Speaker 2: tortured and the repentitant, and those too far beyond the
Speaker 2: sphere of decency to contemplate redemption. But none were as
Speaker 2: strange as Robert Schmidt. And you know what else is strange, Charen.
Speaker 3: It's strange that we have to beg for money.
Speaker 2: That's what's strange. It is. Yeah, but don't worry. We're
Speaker 2: not begging for your money unless you want to subscribe
Speaker 2: to Cooler Zone Media. That flstead is brilliant. We're begging
Speaker 2: for the money for the following advertisers, which you can
Speaker 2: press forward a bunch of times to get to the
Speaker 2: rest of the story, and we're back. He arrived one
Speaker 2: cold June morning, courtesy of a boatswain who had been
Speaker 2: too shocked at his appearance and obvious distress to consider
Speaker 2: turning him down when he begged passage. The coins he
Speaker 2: offered her, which he also tried to press upon me,
Speaker 2: were as strange as he was, different shapes and shades
Speaker 2: of corrosive metal, all emblazoned with the faces of stern men,
Speaker 2: great buildings and motifs of war and conquest that were
Speaker 2: chilling to look at, though I did not look away.
Speaker 2: I took one as a gift, a silver that he
Speaker 2: said was called a quarter. Although its shape was perfectly round.
Speaker 2: He was a thin, frayed string of a man, this Schmidt.
Speaker 2: His skin pale as boiled fish, so much that anyone
Speaker 2: who saw him knew that he had come from far away.
Speaker 2: That was all we knew at first, as he would
Speaker 2: not speak to us beyond demanding to be released, and
Speaker 2: no records could be found of his birth or previous life,
Speaker 2: only of the report we had received from the assembly
Speaker 2: of the village that sent him here. We took him
Speaker 2: to Room fourteen, where he yelled for three hours. First
Speaker 2: he yelled to be released, Then he yelled in his
Speaker 2: strange foreign accent for his mother. Then he just yelled.
Speaker 2: I could hear the screaming from down the corridor as
Speaker 2: I went over the morning's reports. I gritted my teeth
Speaker 2: at the dumb beast noise and decided to do something
Speaker 2: about it. The corridors of the main asylum were light
Speaker 2: and airy, even on a cold winter morning, with the
Speaker 2: sun floundering in an ash gray sky below the wide
Speaker 2: wooden walkways. Some of the other wardens were setting out
Speaker 2: bowls and spoons in the muno area, ready for breakfast.
Speaker 2: The murderer in Room thirteen put his head up to
Speaker 2: the grill of his cell as I passed, Can you
Speaker 2: ask him to stop? He whispered. I'll try, I promised.
Speaker 2: Do you want music? The murderer, who had strangled his
Speaker 2: own brother in a rage twenty years ago, nodded hard, Yes,
Speaker 2: he did want music. I fingered my tablet. A few
Speaker 2: seconds later, a gentle rhythmic tune started spooling from the
Speaker 2: speaker in the corner of his cell. He smiled and
Speaker 2: closed his eyes and started to rock gently back and
Speaker 2: forth on his sleeping pallet. I took a deep breath
Speaker 2: in front of the door to Room fourteen. Then I
Speaker 2: pounded on the grill. That's enough, I yelled. You're upsetting
Speaker 2: your block mates. If you don't control yourself, there will
Speaker 2: be consequences. The screaming stopped, two blissful seconds of quiet,
Speaker 2: heavy breathing. Let me the fuck out of here, Schmidt said,
Speaker 2: You people have no idea the mistake you're made. I'm
Speaker 2: sure there's been no mistake, I said, but if you've
Speaker 2: got an issue to raise, why don't you talk to
Speaker 2: me or one of the other wardens about it instead
Speaker 2: of screaming. I heard a shuffling noise as Schmidt dragged
Speaker 2: himself up to the speaking hatch. Then his face appeared.
Speaker 2: I stepped back, alarm fisting through my guts. I had
Speaker 2: forgotten quite how strange looking this Schmidt truly was, with
Speaker 2: his wild beard and ice blue eyes. I don't know
Speaker 2: why I'm being kept here, he said, in his languid,
Speaker 2: long ago accent. But when someone works out who I am,
Speaker 2: you're going to be in a world of trouble. So
Speaker 2: I suggest you open this door right now. If you
Speaker 2: value your job, I can't open the door I said,
Speaker 2: on whose authority am I kept here? It was truly confused.
Speaker 2: Where did this man come from to ask such a thing?
Speaker 2: And nobody's authority? I said, nobody has the authority to
Speaker 2: keep you here against your will. You chose to come
Speaker 2: here for your own safety and others. Then why am
Speaker 2: I locked in? You aren't locked in. I can't open
Speaker 2: the door because it locks from the inside. If you
Speaker 2: want to get out, you have to unlock it yourself.
Speaker 2: You're lying. There's a bolt underneath the door and another
Speaker 2: one up top. They're a little stiff sometimes, but I
Speaker 2: promise you you're free to leave. I must warn you, though,
Speaker 2: I said a little louder, that if you try to
Speaker 2: harm me or anyone else in this building, I'm going
Speaker 2: to have to use my shock stick on you, and
Speaker 2: I don't want to do that. Silence. Then the slow,
Speaker 2: resentful funk of two bolts drawing back. Can I come in?
Speaker 2: I said, Silence. My name is Gorman Rain, I said,
Speaker 2: I'd like to come in and talk with you, but
Speaker 2: I need to know you're not going to attack me,
Speaker 2: because I don't want to have to hurt you. It
Speaker 2: has been a pleasant morning so far, and I don't
Speaker 2: want to end it with your vital fluids on my shoes.
Speaker 2: Come in if you want. I came in and sucked
Speaker 2: in a breath through my teeth. The man in the
Speaker 2: room fourteen had overturned all his furniture and thrown his
Speaker 2: food tray across the room. There were dabs of blood
Speaker 2: on the wall where he'd been pounding. He sat, curled
Speaker 2: like a question mark in one bare corner. Is there
Speaker 2: any way I can help? I asked. I need you
Speaker 2: to tell them. He said that I haven't done anything wrong.
Speaker 2: If there's been a misunderstanding, I'm sure you can explain yourself,
Speaker 2: I said, but there's rarely misunderstanding in cases like yours.
Speaker 2: What reason, after all, would the girl have had to lie?
Speaker 2: I could see that Schmidt was going to be difficult
Speaker 2: to reach. Do you even know who I am? Only
Speaker 2: what you told us and what you told the people
Speaker 2: of the village you came from. Your name is Robert Schmidt.
Speaker 2: You say you are a scientist, but there are no
Speaker 2: records of where you practiced or where you were born.
Speaker 2: I'm from here, Schmidt said, I'm from here three hundred
Speaker 2: and thirty years ago. I took a deep breath so
Speaker 2: how did you come to be here now, I asked
Speaker 2: in a time machine. I am a scientist, well, a researcher.
Speaker 2: It's one of the first multi century journeys. My lab
Speaker 2: is made, and I need to be allowed back to
Speaker 2: the place I came through why, so I can tell
Speaker 2: them it worked. I asked a junior warden to keep
Speaker 2: a subtle eye on Schmidt for the next few days,
Speaker 2: to check that he wasn't hurting himself. Inside, I was
Speaker 2: cursing my own foolishness. I clearly made a mistake in
Speaker 2: my initial diagnosis. I had assumed that Schmidt was merely
Speaker 2: uneducated and lacking an empathy. He appeared instead to be
Speaker 2: quite mad. I wanted to help him, this young man.
Speaker 2: I wanted to know the ghosts that haunted him, so
Speaker 2: that together we might banish them and find him some
Speaker 2: measure of peace. I am old, and in forty years
Speaker 2: I attended to so many lost creatures on this substemious rock,
Speaker 2: and most I have been able to stretch out a
Speaker 2: hand to. Though not all come here hoping for peace.
Speaker 2: MY place is not to judge them, but to help them,
Speaker 2: to protect them whatever harm they have done in the
Speaker 2: lives they left behind. This is my work, has been
Speaker 2: the work of my life, since I came here on
Speaker 2: my own rickety midnight boat so long ago, to reach
Speaker 2: the unreached with soft words and offer them a bridge
Speaker 2: back to the world. I felt certain that, however, Schmidt
Speaker 2: had transgressed, however mangled his mind by suffering. I could
Speaker 2: not guess at I could help him. Perhaps I was arrogant,
Speaker 2: I see that now, But there was more. What I
Speaker 2: did not could not admit to myself was that Schmidt
Speaker 2: frightened me. And the most frightening prospect was the idea
Speaker 2: remote but impossible not to consider when you looked at
Speaker 2: that strange white face, heard that odd high voice, that
Speaker 2: he might be telling the truth. The next day I
Speaker 2: returned to speak to Schmidt. I brought fresh rolls and coffee,
Speaker 2: and we took breakfast together. He had restored order to
Speaker 2: his room during the night, and perhaps it was in
Speaker 2: repentance for his previous rudeness that he answered almost immediately
Speaker 2: when I asked if he was feeling better, I'm not crazy,
Speaker 2: he said. You must see that it's not my place
Speaker 2: to pass judgment on how you see the world. I said,
Speaker 2: which was quite true. I'm merely anxious that you caused
Speaker 2: no further harm to yourself, for or any other citizen.
Speaker 2: I'm not like the lunatics in here, he said. I
Speaker 2: didn't even hurt that girl. It was a misunderstanding. They
Speaker 2: say you violated her autonomy. I said, they sent a report.
Speaker 2: It wasn't like that, he said. He was looking away
Speaker 2: from me and eviscerating his role with his hands. Besides,
Speaker 2: it seems so primitive here, I assumed. I don't know
Speaker 2: what I assumed. He started in on a second roll.
Speaker 2: I suppose I was excited to be in a new place.
Speaker 2: That night, I reread the report that had arrived as
Speaker 2: Schmidt on the solar tablet I reserved for official communications.
Speaker 2: It was long enough that the village assembly had clearly
Speaker 2: thought it important to inform the house of the full facts.
Speaker 2: He came to us in the last week of May.
Speaker 2: It ran. He appeared at the door of a farmstead,
Speaker 2: badly bleeding and disoriented. The people of the house, after
Speaker 2: they tended his wounds, brought him to the town square,
Speaker 2: where he explained that he was a traveler from another time.
Speaker 2: We have heard news of such things happening, but we
Speaker 2: would not have given them credit if it were not
Speaker 2: for the strangeness of his behavior. Schmidt was from the
Speaker 2: start rude and unsocial, which was put down at first
Speaker 2: to his evident foreignness. He insisted on being brought to
Speaker 2: the head of our community, and it took some time
Speaker 2: to explain to him that no such position exists. He
Speaker 2: thinks in an extremely hierarchical manner, and though he claims
Speaker 2: to be a scientist, he cannot seem to credit the
Speaker 2: evidence of his own senses. For this reason, many of
Speaker 2: our young people remained convinced that he was playing a
Speaker 2: practical joke on us. Schmidt spent a great deal of
Speaker 2: time in the tavern, and also in the library as
Speaker 2: his strength returned, taking notes on parchment, which he used
Speaker 2: freely from the central stocks, apparently unaware of its great expense.
Speaker 2: He was from the start dismissive and unsocial towards the
Speaker 2: female and non binary among us, seemingly unable to hold
Speaker 2: true conversation with them. One of our young men offered
Speaker 2: to have intercourse with him, at which point he became
Speaker 2: angry and violent. The young man was injured and Schmidt
Speaker 2: had to be restrained. One young woman in our research
Speaker 2: team took an interest in Schmid's work, gifting him freely
Speaker 2: with her time and attention to help further his studies.
Speaker 2: She reported to us that he woke to find a
Speaker 2: drunken Schmidt attempting to have intercourse with her. She communicated
Speaker 2: clearly that she did not want to be part of
Speaker 2: intercourse with him, but he did not appear to understand.
Speaker 2: In his culture, signal of interest by a woman permits
Speaker 2: the man to use her body to relieve himself of
Speaker 2: his need at any time thereafter, and this is what
Speaker 2: Schmidt proceeded to do, using his strength to force her submission. Thereafter,
Speaker 2: I clicked the tablet shut. I had read enough. Schmidt
Speaker 2: had clearly fooled this rural assembly into accepting his wild
Speaker 2: story of time travel to avoid taking responsibility for his
Speaker 2: own empathetic defects. He would not fool me. I would
Speaker 2: reach him, even if I was determined not to be reached.
Speaker 2: After reading that, I don't really want to make a
Speaker 2: snarky ad pivot, so I'll make a regular ad pivot
Speaker 2: and we're back. It was autumn and high harvest, the
Speaker 2: time when everyone with the strength and skill to farm
Speaker 2: lends themselves to the almond groves. A fresh breeze trembled
Speaker 2: from the plantations, and I longed to be among them,
Speaker 2: to drink hot cider and taste roasted almonds at the
Speaker 2: evening celebrations after the gathering inn. But I have not
Speaker 2: joined the harvest. Since I came here to work at
Speaker 2: the House of Surrender. No one could compel me to
Speaker 2: stay away, just as no one could force people of
Speaker 2: the town to bring in the fruit before it rots
Speaker 2: on the trees. There is an awkwardness, though, among those
Speaker 2: who know my duties. Sanctuary is not a large community,
Speaker 2: and after a while, everyone's business is the subject of
Speaker 2: common gossip. Instead, I walked about the grounds of Schmidt,
Speaker 2: sometimes talking, more often in silence. We had come to
Speaker 2: an agreement for the time being. He would stop demanding
Speaker 2: to be released and complaining that he did not belong here,
Speaker 2: and in return I would behave as if I believed
Speaker 2: his time travel story. In truth, I was not sure
Speaker 2: whether he believed it himself. Still, I allowed him to
Speaker 2: question me, as if you were truly from a long
Speaker 2: ago world with laws and customs ailing to our own,
Speaker 2: Why do you do this? He asked me once, Why
Speaker 2: do you work here if you don't have to work
Speaker 2: at all. Most people work if they can, I said.
Speaker 2: We do the work we feel we're best suited to.
Speaker 2: There can't be a lot of applications for this place,
Speaker 2: said Schmidt, Not too many, I admitted. It takes a
Speaker 2: certain mindset. Most people worry about being around antisocial, violent
Speaker 2: individuals all day, don't you. I closed my eyes looked
Speaker 2: down at my broad, blunt hands, so much like my father's,
Speaker 2: though I have kept myself from using them to hurt
Speaker 2: another human being, of course, I said, But even more,
Speaker 2: I believe that those who can't live with others need
Speaker 2: a place to go. Rehabilitation if it's possible, asylum if
Speaker 2: it isn't. What about justice? What about it for the
Speaker 2: real monsters here? Not like me? The murderers. They're victims,
Speaker 2: and their families won't They want to see them punished, perhaps,
Speaker 2: but would that bring their loved ones back? That's not
Speaker 2: the point, then, What is the point? Sometimes the families
Speaker 2: will demand men. Sometimes, when the inmates return to their communities,
Speaker 2: they work the lands of those they have wronged, or
Speaker 2: find some other way to prove themselves reformed. And if
Speaker 2: they don't, then they lead very lonely lives, or they
Speaker 2: come back here and you think that's acceptable. Most people
Speaker 2: think being shut out of the community is punishment enough. Otherwise,
Speaker 2: we're no better than me, I held as eyes. Then
Speaker 2: the world you're from, yes, Schmidt was certainly from another world,
Speaker 2: if only in spirit. You think you're better than me, No,
Speaker 2: I said, I think you can be better than you are.
Speaker 2: What if I don't want to be? Visitors, especially official ones,
Speaker 2: are an unusual event on the island. So when a
Speaker 2: science history councilor from Sanctuary itself arrived by a barge
Speaker 2: along with not one but two assistants, I knew that
Speaker 2: the matter was of the utmost importance. I'm here about Schmidt,
Speaker 2: said the councilor, whose name was Sophia. She wore well
Speaker 2: cut overalls and could not have been more than thirty five,
Speaker 2: but she wore her hair in the half shaved style
Speaker 2: traditionally adopted by those who have already rotated through their
Speaker 2: senior levels of the science councils and have the authority
Speaker 2: of learning. Thank you for coming all this way, I said,
Speaker 2: pouring coffee for us both not at all. Robert Schmidt
Speaker 2: is of great interest to the Science Council. I have
Speaker 2: been hoping to make a personal visit. Is he settling
Speaker 2: in Well, we had some problems at first, I said.
Speaker 2: He claims that he is no foreigner, but is in
Speaker 2: fact from here many centuries ago. He does not seem delusional,
Speaker 2: merely troubled. It's perfectly true, said the councilor. It's been
Speaker 2: happening more and more, these people arriving from the first
Speaker 2: era of time jump technology, back when there were no guidelines.
Speaker 2: I felt a bubble of excitement expanding beneath my rib
Speaker 2: cage and buried my face and my coffee mug to
Speaker 2: contain it. Schmidt is the first from his time to
Speaker 2: appear on the West coast. However, said Sophia. We were
Speaker 2: dismayed to learn that he has been obliged to surrender.
Speaker 2: Sophia continued, dismayed, but not surprised. The time from which
Speaker 2: he comes, well, there was a great deal of savagery.
Speaker 2: It does not seem like a savage man, I said.
Speaker 2: After he learned he was free to leave, I found
Speaker 2: him courteous, if a little strange. Have you begun his therapy? Yes,
Speaker 2: I said, He's very receptive, although still in deep denial
Speaker 2: of why I had to come here. That's to be expected,
Speaker 2: said Sophia. The moral codes of his culture were very
Speaker 2: different from ours. She pursed her lips over the coffee cup.
Speaker 2: As a young man, I might have desired her greatly,
Speaker 2: a woman of such wit and elegance. I reprimanded myself
Speaker 2: for thinking such coarse thoughts about someone who was, however
Speaker 2: briefly my superior a decade in society. She went on,
Speaker 2: her bright black eyes, holding my own a violent, authoritarian
Speaker 2: world of class, racial and sex hierarchies, a culture that
Speaker 2: drove itself to destruction and pursuit of profit for the
Speaker 2: very few. We can't just understand it through the lens
Speaker 2: of our own society. I nodded. Now that I had
Speaker 2: been given permission to believe Schmidt, it all made sense that,
Speaker 2: in fact, is the substance of our visit, said Sophia.
Speaker 2: Schmidt could help us a great deal in understanding the
Speaker 2: culture and technology of his time. But for his safety,
Speaker 2: we feel, the Council feels that would be better for
Speaker 2: all concerned if Schmidt were to remain here in the
Speaker 2: House of Sprender on a permanent basis. Are you saying
Speaker 2: that Schmidt is in danger? I'm saying that Schmidt is dangerous,
Speaker 2: and there are people who would, if it came to it,
Speaker 2: judge him too dangerous to live as part of this
Speaker 2: society because of what he did, because of what he is,
Speaker 2: said Sophia, Through no fault of his own, he happens
Speaker 2: to come from the most frightening place imaginable. What place
Speaker 2: is that? The past? I was silent. You must insure,
Speaker 2: she said, that Schmidt does not come to any harm.
Speaker 2: Break the news to him gently. Can he not be
Speaker 2: returned to his time? I asked. Impossible, said Sophia. We
Speaker 2: cannot return a time traveler to a culture without any
Speaker 2: sense of the common good. His leader set the future
Speaker 2: on fire before the first leap engine was even in use.
Speaker 2: Who's to say he wouldn't do the same. He needs
Speaker 2: to be kept somewhere out of the way, or who
Speaker 2: knows what he'll do, or I thought what he might
Speaker 2: do to himself. When I told Schmidt that he would
Speaker 2: not be allowed to return to his own time, he
Speaker 2: said nothing. He did not rage or argue as I
Speaker 2: would have expected. Instead, he locked his door and did
Speaker 2: not emerge for three days. Eventually I had the guards
Speaker 2: break down the door. There was blood everywhere. He had
Speaker 2: tried to open his wrists with a broken spoon and failed.
Speaker 2: He cannot bring himself to end his life, not alone.
Speaker 2: I understand now he kept saying. That was all he said,
Speaker 2: poor soul. There could never be peace for him here.
Speaker 2: I wrote to the Science History Council, but received no reply.
Speaker 2: So I have made my decision. To night, I will
Speaker 2: go to Room fourteen and bring Schmidt his supper in person.
Speaker 2: We will eat together and talk together. In the course
Speaker 2: of our conversation, I will mention casually the small cove
Speaker 2: hidden between the rocks on the north side of the
Speaker 2: Bear Island, where I keep my own boat, the boat
Speaker 2: that took me here forty years ago, when I came
Speaker 2: to this place to surrender, after I woke in the
Speaker 2: night to find my hands, the thick, blunt hands I
Speaker 2: had for my father, closing around my lover's neck. I
Speaker 2: had planned to return one day when I could be
Speaker 2: sure that I was old and frail enough to be
Speaker 2: of no more danger to any one I cherished. Now
Speaker 2: I know that I will never leave this place. Schmidt, though,
Speaker 2: will choose what he will choose. Perhaps he will go
Speaker 2: down to the cove and take the boat out of
Speaker 2: the Gray River and cast out on its treacherous waters,
Speaker 2: all alone towards the land, and perhaps the currents will
Speaker 2: not pull him down, and perhaps the people of Sanctuary
Speaker 2: will spare him. Or perhaps they will give him when
Speaker 2: he could not give himself, not forgiveness, redemption. They will know,
Speaker 2: of course, and they will want to come for me,
Speaker 2: But what can they do. I will take my bunch
Speaker 2: of keys and find a door to lock behind me.
Speaker 2: There are always more rooms in the House of Surrender.
Speaker 2: That's the story. It's done now.
Speaker 3: Well, I almost didn't want it to end. I feel
Speaker 3: like that's such a rich world to pun but no,
Speaker 3: I mean, it's such a interesting world I would have
Speaker 3: liked to have been in for a little longer.
Speaker 2: I know. I hope Lori writes more in this world.
Speaker 3: I mean, what incredible writing. I can't stop thinking about
Speaker 3: skin described as boiled fish, Like that is just so good?
Speaker 2: Right, Wow?
Speaker 3: No, I really I really like that. I I mean
Speaker 3: I love sci fi and I love like subtle sci fi,
Speaker 3: if that makes sense. It's not like off the top,
Speaker 3: it's more just like, oh, this kind of sounds like
Speaker 3: it can happen. Yeah, yeah, I really I really like that.
Speaker 3: A good twist at the end with the main character
Speaker 3: having like also gone him taken himself to the House
Speaker 3: of surrender.
Speaker 2: I thought that was totally a good way to close.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I mean, like the story has been on
Speaker 2: my mind, like off and on for so long, just
Speaker 2: because the central concept this idea of like the prism
Speaker 2: with the locks on the inside. Yeah, as like like
Speaker 2: I don't I'm not advocating this, but I'm not not
Speaker 2: advocating this. It's just a really interesting concept of, like, well,
Speaker 2: what do you do with people who people very justly
Speaker 2: want to hurt if they choose to, they can choose
Speaker 2: to be safe and away from those people who want
Speaker 2: to hurt them, you know, in this like sort of
Speaker 2: exile place. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I I'll be honest. When when that I
Speaker 3: first heard the line of like the locks are in
Speaker 3: the inside, I had had a feeling he was going
Speaker 3: to be this like mental thing, like an existential like
Speaker 3: a like a you know what I mean, Like I
Speaker 3: thought it was going to be more like I wan
Speaker 3: don't know what the word is, like the metaphorical or something,
Speaker 3: but it's literal and I and I think you make
Speaker 3: a good point because there is this huge question of
Speaker 3: like rehabilitation versus like being ostracized, and like what hope
Speaker 3: do we have if like people are unable to be
Speaker 3: rehabilitated back into society or if they're even Like it's
Speaker 3: just like there's so many questions when it comes to
Speaker 3: the proper way to execute whatever the hell justice is.
Speaker 3: But no, I'm glad it was like an actual literal
Speaker 3: way of it was like I thought that the prison
Speaker 3: of your mind, it's actually just like it's an actual, no,
Speaker 3: totally prison with locks on the inside.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is.
Speaker 3: It's it's it's a fascinating concept because I think as
Speaker 3: advanced as we think we are, we're extremely primitive in
Speaker 3: a lot of ways. Like when you think it's just
Speaker 3: like more shiny like we it's like we have like
Speaker 3: a fancier version of the guillotine, but it's still a guillotine,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. It's just like a I
Speaker 3: don't know, humans are really not as cover as I
Speaker 3: think they are.
Speaker 2: But and I really like that it's showing that like
Speaker 2: one of the things that has evolved in the future
Speaker 2: is specifically like social norms, right like hmm, Like you know,
Speaker 2: the time travel part of the story is necessary, it's
Speaker 2: like not a I mean, it's a time travel story,
Speaker 2: but it's not. It's also not a time travel story.
Speaker 2: It's a way to say, like, something that is normal
Speaker 2: in our society is sexual assault, and right, right, it
Speaker 2: is completely normalized. And so here's someone who's doing something
Speaker 2: that like he's not from a time where that's what
Speaker 2: he did was wrong.
Speaker 3: You know, he's probably done it a million times before. Yeah,
Speaker 3: gone about his life.
Speaker 2: And so like the ability to look at that from
Speaker 2: a you know, future perspective of being like, whoa, can
Speaker 2: you believe that this was normalized the way that like,
Speaker 2: m you know, there's lots of things in the past
Speaker 2: that were normalized that aren't good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And back then it was very normal to have
Speaker 3: like a slave even like anything that's like now it's
Speaker 3: just like we would never It's like what at a
Speaker 3: time people were not batting an eye.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I did.
Speaker 3: I did wonder about that gap the centuries in between
Speaker 3: Schmidt's time and with that his.
Speaker 2: Name, Schmidt, yeah, Schmidt.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was wondering about the gap between like the
Speaker 3: centuries between his time and the time he jumped to,
Speaker 3: like how society had to have changed and the processes
Speaker 3: had to have gone through or even the idea that
Speaker 3: like time travel was like disbelieved by a lot of people,
Speaker 3: so like maybe they stepped away from technology like all
Speaker 3: this stuff where it's just like what is the answer
Speaker 3: for our actual progress and actual progression as like a species.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's kind of like those like missing centuries
Speaker 2: in Star Trek, which they later go back and describe.
Speaker 2: But there's like the like Earth sucked and then we
Speaker 2: figured out space communism exactly, you know. Yeah. And then
Speaker 2: one of the other things that I really like about
Speaker 2: Lori's writing, I'll go out and there's a book that
Speaker 2: Louri wrote. The novella is published by tour dot Com,
Speaker 2: the same publisher who put out my novella that The
Speaker 2: Beginning a Book Club opened with, and it's called Everything
Speaker 2: Belongs to the Future, and it's another like anarchist sci
Speaker 2: fi novella that But one of the things that Laurie
Speaker 2: does that like really impresses me but sometimes also like
Speaker 2: drives me crazy as a reader is that they like
Speaker 2: protagonizing real problematic people. You know, like the protagonist of
Speaker 2: this story is a murderer, and the main character that
Speaker 2: they're talking about is a rapist, you know, and it's
Speaker 2: like I'm too nervous of a writer to like touch
Speaker 2: that shit as like, I mean, I'll write about characters
Speaker 2: who act like that, but it's like it's it's impressive
Speaker 2: to write from those perspectives, and especially to do it
Speaker 2: in ways that don't just do it in like shitty
Speaker 2: edge lord ways where it's like ha ha haa, my
Speaker 2: hero is a bad guy, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so yeah, that's a good point. It is a complex.
Speaker 3: Characters are always the most interesting, but that's like a
Speaker 3: different level of like, oh, this person actually did a
Speaker 3: terrible thing. Do you still root for them? Do you
Speaker 3: still think they're as interesting as they were ten pages ago?
Speaker 3: I don't know, but I mean, for this story, it
Speaker 3: feels like it works only because it's talking about this
Speaker 3: idea of rehabilitating yourself and like choosing to step away
Speaker 3: until you think you are ready to re enter anciety
Speaker 3: and if maybe that never happens. So yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 3: don't know. I mean, I feel like there are lines
Speaker 3: that are more egregious than others, at least in my mind.
Speaker 3: Like for whatever reason, I like, I like, a murder
Speaker 3: is more digestible than like like hurting a child or something,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. So I wonder the degrees
Speaker 3: of like what someone can accept a character to be
Speaker 3: for something like this, or just like in general, when
Speaker 3: you have a protagonist that's like really complicated. Yeahah, I
Speaker 3: don't know, so something to think about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, absolutely, Yeah, that's why I play it safe
Speaker 2: if not such, I mean, I don't always play it
Speaker 2: safe with my writing. But I don't know. It's just
Speaker 2: a piece that I mean, it's ballsy, it's really I mean,
Speaker 2: I want to use a different word for that.
Speaker 3: It's gutsy.
Speaker 2: Yeah it is.
Speaker 3: Yeah. No, I'm glad I was. I was the audience
Speaker 3: for this one.
Speaker 2: That was.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm gonna think about it for a long
Speaker 3: time now too. The prison of your mind.
Speaker 2: Well okay, but then, like I mean, one of the
Speaker 2: things that strikes me, by the way, when you're pointing
Speaker 2: that out, I'm under the impression I haven't done like
Speaker 2: a whole research episode about this yet, because the Quakers
Speaker 2: are often like the heroes of the episodes that I do,
Speaker 2: because there's some of the only white people in slavery
Speaker 2: era United States that would like die to free people
Speaker 2: right from slavery. They're also who brought us the modern
Speaker 2: prison system because the concept of the penitentiary. Penitentiary is
Speaker 2: a place to go be penitent, a place to go
Speaker 2: like go be by yourself and learn what you did
Speaker 2: is wrong. And so in a way, this is like
Speaker 2: recreating that. But it is a fundamental difference when you're
Speaker 2: saying which side of the door of the lock is
Speaker 2: on matters so much.
Speaker 3: It really does. It's like an adult time out that
Speaker 3: you're in charge of your time out. Yeah, but like
Speaker 3: it sounds like not everyone. I mean, he doesn't know
Speaker 3: because he's not from that time. But like what if
Speaker 3: a lot of people don't know that they're capable of
Speaker 3: unlocking it, you know what I mean? Like what if
Speaker 3: they're just like it's something they've forgotten or just like
Speaker 3: they've condemned themselves to just feel like, oh I can't
Speaker 3: get out or I don't I don't know. I don't
Speaker 3: know if that makes sense. I just think it's like, uh,
Speaker 3: how much of it is like self condemnation versus just
Speaker 3: kind of accepting yourself from being like on the outskirts
Speaker 3: of society. I don't know, I don't know, I don't
Speaker 3: know if that makes sense. I'm gonna be thinking about
Speaker 3: it for a long time. I will, I will, I
Speaker 3: will say that fair enough, But I think I think
Speaker 3: time travel is dangerous. Is a takeaway? Don't do it, folks,
Speaker 3: Yeah we should, we should advance to that point. I
Speaker 3: think we should step away when we come to a
Speaker 3: time machine.
Speaker 2: Just yeah, you wouldn't go back? Would you go forward
Speaker 2: or back in time?
Speaker 3: I would go forward. I'm so curious, not even just
Speaker 3: that I think it's gonna be worse if I'm being honest,
Speaker 3: but that's the pessimist of me. But I also I'm
Speaker 3: just so curious how it's gonna all turn out, and
Speaker 3: like what happens if we make it to space, and
Speaker 3: like what if there's other like aliens or whatever it is.
Speaker 3: I'm just so curious about the times that are gonna
Speaker 3: happen when I'm not here. It must be I don't know,
Speaker 3: Like centuries ago, no one would have guessed where we
Speaker 3: are now, Like they probably couldn't even dream up of
Speaker 3: this world. So I'm sure it's something like that where
Speaker 3: you can't even dream it up.
Speaker 2: I don't know. That's actually that kind of blows my
Speaker 2: mind because I'm like, oh, I could be like this
Speaker 2: could be like that and like, oh right, we're not
Speaker 2: capable of successfully imagining. You know, we're not gonna go
Speaker 2: forward and it's not just going to be magically Star
Speaker 2: Trek or Firefly or whatever. Yeah, but I don't know
Speaker 2: how to transition is to plugs anything, to plug.
Speaker 3: Yes, let's talk about where you can find me in
Speaker 3: the future. Sorry, that was my attempt.
Speaker 2: I appreciate it.
Speaker 3: I'm sure. Reena shiro Hero on Instagram is shiro Hero
Speaker 3: six sixty six on Twitter. I'm also one of the
Speaker 3: hosts of It Could Happen Here, also on cool Zone
Speaker 3: and Yeah listen to Cool People who Do Cool Stuff,
Speaker 3: which I also helped produce.
Speaker 2: Yeah, also a nice one. So if you're listening to
Speaker 2: this on one of the podcast feeds, go listen to
Speaker 2: what's on the other podcast feed. Mine is history and
Speaker 2: Shreen's is current events and history because it's everything. And
Speaker 2: we'll be back next Sunday with another book club episode.
Speaker 2: I almost said cool person who does coople stuff, but
Speaker 2: that's not what's happening. I'm just gonna hang up now,
Speaker 2: buy done, bank up.
Speaker 1: It Could Happen Here as a production of pool Zone Media.
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