Speaker 1: Call Zone Media book Club, book Club, book Club, book Club. Hello,
Speaker 1: Welcome nichols On Media book Club, the only book club
Speaker 1: where you don't have to do the reading, because I
Speaker 1: do it for you. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and
Speaker 1: every week I bring you stories, and this week I
Speaker 1: bring you the conclusion of her Medica by Alan Lee.
Speaker 1: In the past six weeks, you've been listening to me
Speaker 1: read you her Medica, unless you're binging it all at once,
Speaker 1: in which case it wasn't the last six weeks, it
Speaker 1: was the last I don't know, four hours. Or you
Speaker 1: might actually be listening to just part seven and not
Speaker 1: the rest of it because you just want to know
Speaker 1: how it ends, in which case, congratulations, you're going to
Speaker 1: learn how it ends anyway. Alan Lee is a pen
Speaker 1: name for Peter Gelderlops, who's a nonfiction author, but Allen
Speaker 1: Lee is the name that he writes science fiction under.
Speaker 1: And last time on her Medica Days met a person
Speaker 1: named Shauna, an author who worked on the storylines. After
Speaker 1: the slow collapse caused by climate change, pandemics and eroding
Speaker 1: faith in the current systems, the government had turned to compartmentalization,
Speaker 1: whereby people were warehoused and essentially prisons and fed lies
Speaker 1: about the nature of their world to keep them confined, complacent,
Speaker 1: and productive. Her Medica was one of these compartments a
Speaker 1: storyline that produced scientific progress. Residents like Zimp who were
Speaker 1: doing research on the starship were actually running very small
Speaker 1: and specific parts of other scientific inquiries, and the rest
Speaker 1: of everyone, like Days, kept the whole thing going. Nobody
Speaker 1: has ever given enough information to pick apart the whole.
Speaker 1: Truth and compliance and non questioning attitude is prized. After
Speaker 1: Shawna has taken away, Days woke up to a screen
Speaker 1: with eight buttons. Two deactivated indicated that they wouldn't be
Speaker 1: able to choose to return to Hermetica or the Secession,
Speaker 1: which is also a storyline designed to keep violent fascist
Speaker 1: self contained. And there are six possible worlds to choose from,
Speaker 1: and just as a head's up, this final part of
Speaker 1: the story deals with intense topics, including starvation and suicide,
Speaker 1: and so listen to it at a pace that works
Speaker 1: for you if you feel like Days awoke their head hurt,
Speaker 1: the cell was immaculate, there was no sign of their outburst.
Speaker 1: The column pinged. Days found a cup of water within.
Speaker 1: They drank it down. They went back to sleep. Days
Speaker 1: had been half awake for a long time before they
Speaker 1: finally forced their eyes all the way opened and rolled
Speaker 1: out of the cot. They drank some water and crossed
Speaker 1: to the other corner to piss, Finally letting out a
Speaker 1: long sigh, They went back to the screen with a
Speaker 1: bitter obedience. They put a finger to the fourth square.
Speaker 1: The image was of a beautiful white building on a
Speaker 1: cliff with a majestic staircase winding down to a sandy
Speaker 1: beach on an azure sea. People arrived in resplendent vehicles,
Speaker 1: people evincing confidence, charm, and power. The video, however, focused
Speaker 1: on those attending them, bringing them to their rooms, cooking
Speaker 1: and serving their food, massaging them. Days was surprised to
Speaker 1: see them use their hands directly and not any machines
Speaker 1: fitting them into scoop gear on the back of a
Speaker 1: small boat. The attendants were also elegant, always smiling, always
Speaker 1: right on time, in the perfect place in a carefully
Speaker 1: choreographed dance. The guests seemed very appreciative. One even shared
Speaker 1: a bottle of wine with an attendant on the edge
Speaker 1: of a hot tub. Days looked back at the cell,
Speaker 1: raising an eyebrow. Being tracked was always insult, they realized,
Speaker 1: thinking back to the aptitudes. But when the system read
Speaker 1: you so wrong, the insult seemed even worse. Then again,
Speaker 1: they had no way of knowing if the option had
Speaker 1: not been placed on the screen to elicit exactly that reaction,
Speaker 1: to push them to another choice, or at least to
Speaker 1: inflate the feeling of how many choices were available? Could
Speaker 1: one even speak of choice? Surely the system had already
Speaker 1: calculated the probability of every choice on the whole menu.
Speaker 1: There were probably only two days might feasibly choose. Maybe
Speaker 1: even that calculation was optimistic. Perhaps the modeling was so
Speaker 1: exact that everything from the mood and the lighting and
Speaker 1: the promos to the order of the options were presented
Speaker 1: in were all designed to produce a single outcome. Which scenario,
Speaker 1: had the system determined days could fit into best. They
Speaker 1: moved their finger, if only to stop the parade of
Speaker 1: luxury in its servile attendance. The next image was quite
Speaker 1: the contrast. A forest ancient trees. Three people trekked through.
Speaker 1: They were tired, dirty, but there was strength in their eyes.
Speaker 1: They seemed like friends. One of them stopped, excited, They
Speaker 1: had seen something. The others gathered around. It was a
Speaker 1: moss growing at the base of a tree. They knelt
Speaker 1: down reverently, and one carefully scooped a sample into a
Speaker 1: small self ceiling bag. Later they were at a small station.
Speaker 1: It seemed to be in the middle of the same forest.
Speaker 1: They were running tests, and one of them seemed to
Speaker 1: be giving first day to a small amphibian, a variety
Speaker 1: Days had never seen before. The animal seemed to have
Speaker 1: some transparent oily substance on its skin. It was suffering,
Speaker 1: but the person tended it lovingly, cleaning it off, giving
Speaker 1: it an injection with a tiny needle. Later they were
Speaker 1: gathered around a pond, releasing the amphibian. Now healthy, it
Speaker 1: swam out into the water, joining others like it. The
Speaker 1: final square showed an angry crowd in a street, perhaps
Speaker 1: a protest. Days did not tap on the image. They
Speaker 1: let their hand drop to their side as a deep
Speaker 1: sigh escaped their lungs. They turned and sat down on
Speaker 1: the cot. Six options, six possible futures. One they had
Speaker 1: not yet seen, another they definitely did not want. Two
Speaker 1: of them were appealing, but they only seemed tenable for
Speaker 1: those times when they were on the up, and when
Speaker 1: would they be possibly feeling that way again, after all
Speaker 1: they had been through, after what they had to do.
Speaker 1: Now the other two they might work. They could imagine
Speaker 1: choosing a life like that, But no, they realized angrily,
Speaker 1: it wasn't their choice. None of these lives would ever
Speaker 1: be their choice. And then they realized why had They
Speaker 1: had never been allowed to see anyone who worked in
Speaker 1: this pre not even a simple robot. With no one
Speaker 1: else here, no one who held authority over them. The
Speaker 1: place was merely a circumstance, a fork in the road,
Speaker 1: and not a prison, not a box someone had decided
Speaker 1: to lock them up inside. All of it reinforced the
Speaker 1: illusion of choice, as though they were in dialogue with
Speaker 1: those six options on the screen, as though they were
Speaker 1: about to choose their future life. But those worlds and
Speaker 1: all the worlds, were like the prison itself, totally designed
Speaker 1: by those who had control, completely inoculated against any choices
Speaker 1: they might make. The fact that they were invisible, the
Speaker 1: illusion that Days could control how they lived, only augmented
Speaker 1: the architect's power. Looking back at the PLEXI, Days thought
Speaker 1: about the button that had portrayed her medica. It had
Speaker 1: initially been presented as inactivated and then removed entirely. At
Speaker 1: first that made perfect sense. Why should they want to
Speaker 1: return to Medica where they had been so unhappy? Everything
Speaker 1: about it was a lie? But then they reconsidered that
Speaker 1: was their home, the place they had grown up, everyone
Speaker 1: they knew was there still, What right did those in
Speaker 1: charge have to remove Days? With a wave of disgust
Speaker 1: that hit like nausea, they realized the arrogance of it all,
Speaker 1: the compartmentalization, the pretension of designing a world for them
Speaker 1: to live in, circumscribing their futures, but always in the
Speaker 1: guise of offering them choices. If humans could go uninvited
Speaker 1: to another star system, why couldn't they go anywhere they
Speaker 1: pleased on their own planet? And who had the authority
Speaker 1: to keep Days from going home? They had no idea
Speaker 1: who the architects were, but they certainly didn't live on
Speaker 1: Days's block. And to whom did a block belong if
Speaker 1: not to those who lived on it. Did they just
Speaker 1: think they owned everything? No, Suddenly it was clear what
Speaker 1: they wanted. Days banged on the PLEXI her Metica, I
Speaker 1: want you to send me back to her her Medica.
Speaker 1: They yelled at the cell with growing conviction. Her Medica
Speaker 1: was hell and that was why Days had to go back. Zimp, milty,
Speaker 1: even Axa. They were all trapped there, trapped in the line.
Speaker 1: None of them deserved that, and Days didn't deserve to
Speaker 1: be torn away from them, even though they had spent
Speaker 1: so much of their lives in solitude. But even the
Speaker 1: shrubs and flowers on the green had been their companions,
Speaker 1: and the sky. They banged again on the PLEXI, let
Speaker 1: me go back to her Metica. With Snookum still there,
Speaker 1: it didn't seem like the cat would be able to
Speaker 1: find Days here. They started banging louder. They would go back.
Speaker 1: They would find their old friends. It wouldn't be perfect,
Speaker 1: the loneliness, the old anxieties. They would be waiting for
Speaker 1: them too, but they would tell them, and together they
Speaker 1: would change things. Could it be possible? Would the system
Speaker 1: let them go back? Shawna had said the system was
Speaker 1: set up for everyone to be productive in some way,
Speaker 1: and the purpose of Hermetica was to produce scientists. Surely
Speaker 1: the passengers would still be productive even if they knew
Speaker 1: the truth. Days couldn't imagine that Zimp would ever give
Speaker 1: up teaching quantum mechanics. The others too would continue with
Speaker 1: their pursuits, only they would do it on their own terms.
Speaker 1: They would get to decide what was useful or necessary,
Speaker 1: once they were actually allowed to know the world they
Speaker 1: lived in. Could the system countenance such a modification? Would
Speaker 1: it deign to engage in dialogue with its subjects? But
Speaker 1: you know who will always engage in dialogue with their subjects.
Speaker 1: Its products and services are benevolent overlords. And we're back.
Speaker 1: Of course, Days knew that all cybernets entailed dialogue, and
Speaker 1: machine learning itself was based on seeking out maximum inputs.
Speaker 1: But there was another factor that had always been there,
Speaker 1: beneath the endless circuits of conversation, the socials, the peer reviews,
Speaker 1: the near infinite data that circulated on her Medica. Even now,
Speaker 1: the entire system was seated just across the plexi from Days.
Speaker 1: The cell itself constituted a dialogue, one that Days had
Speaker 1: no role in shaping. They had been taught that science
Speaker 1: was freedom, the freedom to explore, to advance any argument,
Speaker 1: tied with a responsibility to test those arguments and consider
Speaker 1: any criticism. The examples of Terran Litt. They had been
Speaker 1: given to read in primary school often centered protagonists who
Speaker 1: burned with a desire to say what they really believed.
Speaker 1: Basic history from Terra was full of the same theme,
Speaker 1: like the heroic contests between Socrates and the city or
Speaker 1: between Galileo and the Church. In a flash, Days realized
Speaker 1: the inputs they had been given as children steered them
Speaker 1: all towards a pre selected conclusion. Just as the Church
Speaker 1: had lulled its followers into a new prison by warning
Speaker 1: them of the dangers of idols and god kings, Hermetica
Speaker 1: had frightened them with tales of irrationality or excess and
Speaker 1: given them blinder so they could move more efficiently along
Speaker 1: the one dimensional path they had been assured was the
Speaker 1: best one. The social technologies that had linked freedom with
Speaker 1: expression had become obsolete a century ago, if indeed they
Speaker 1: were ever real Thinking furiously, Days contrasted what they knew
Speaker 1: of the old world, the world of Edna and Galileo,
Speaker 1: with what they knew of cybernetics. The true test to
Speaker 1: distinguished between a free system and a totalitarian system, they realized,
Speaker 1: had nothing to do with expression. On the contrary, totalitarian
Speaker 1: systems were now based on free expression as much as possible.
Speaker 1: The real test was not communication, but action and influence,
Speaker 1: Grasping for some way to make sense of it all.
Speaker 1: A model that might interpret these disparate data. Days thought
Speaker 1: back to programming classes from before. The aptitudes and programmatic
Speaker 1: terms are all elements enabled to rewrite code that could
Speaker 1: be the mark of a free system. Days supposed when
Speaker 1: you write a program to scan for content in the library,
Speaker 1: or to tell the block when to water the flowers
Speaker 1: on the garden, you're assuming that the books don't have
Speaker 1: their own lines. They would rather share that you know
Speaker 1: better than the flowers how much water they need. Scale
Speaker 1: up to a system full of people, a system like Hermetica,
Speaker 1: and now programmers are scanning people for specific content, deciding
Speaker 1: how to feed and water them, as though the programmers
Speaker 1: and not the objects of their program. No Best Days
Speaker 1: got a visit from a safety investigator because some of
Speaker 1: their behaviors tripped a security program. Days was not even
Speaker 1: aware of Modules. Recommendations for Days regarding medication, diet, entertainment,
Speaker 1: and all the rest were based on other programs. Days
Speaker 1: that had no hand in crafting Days might be invited
Speaker 1: to evaluate the program, to rate it, and in fact,
Speaker 1: Module constantly sought out feedback from Days in the form
Speaker 1: of biostats and cognitive indicators, but they never had authorship
Speaker 1: over it. While the program's parameters surely aimed to ensure
Speaker 1: Days's health, it was clear that a more fundamental parameter
Speaker 1: was the security of the overall system, the continued operation
Speaker 1: of central programming. If they were free, According to this
Speaker 1: rudimentary definition, if they could reprogram the program they were
Speaker 1: caught up in the elements on Hermetica, the people would
Speaker 1: mostly want to continue their research. Days was sure of it.
Speaker 1: After all. One of the things that had set them
Speaker 1: apart was, unlike the rest of their cohort they did
Speaker 1: not feel fulfilled by their work. Nearly everyone else did,
Speaker 1: and if they could, the others would want to redesign
Speaker 1: the work, modify its objectives and parameters. If instead of
Speaker 1: being trapped in a line, they were allowed to dialogue
Speaker 1: with the other elements of the Earth system, formulating their
Speaker 1: own needs and requests pertaining to scientific research, they might
Speaker 1: arrive at shared sets of objectives and parameters. That's what
Speaker 1: a free system looked like. It didn't mean you were
Speaker 1: free of consequences or free of the need to compromise,
Speaker 1: but that every step of the way, you had a
Speaker 1: hand in shaping outcomes, and you could refuse a collaboration
Speaker 1: that was contrary to your interests. Surely that was a
Speaker 1: viable parameter. Days felt breathless, wondered if Galileo had had
Speaker 1: a moment like this one. Their mind raced ahead. How
Speaker 1: does this thing, this free system as they were venturing
Speaker 1: to call it, compare to its other Perhaps the question
Speaker 1: posed was an overly binary lens, but it was a
Speaker 1: useful one for now. So if her Medica or the
Speaker 1: whole world, as seemed to be the case, were not
Speaker 1: a free system but a tutalitarian system, what defined it
Speaker 1: as such? A totalitarian system? Days felt confident in their hunch,
Speaker 1: would encourage input from all elements. But where would those
Speaker 1: inputs go? Not to the elements themselves? Need to know
Speaker 1: the new safety trust the experts remember the wiki as
Speaker 1: well as the parallel world Shawna had described. All these
Speaker 1: data seemed to point to the same fact. Only those
Speaker 1: with an exclusive administrative access would be able to analyze
Speaker 1: the inputs and decide how to act on them. Of
Speaker 1: the system's total code, a large proportion would be fundamental
Speaker 1: protocols that the vast majority of elements would have no
Speaker 1: ability to alter. Again, alterations would be the prerogative of admin. Sure,
Speaker 1: some portion of the code could be modified by everyday
Speaker 1: elements with something like a guest or user level access,
Speaker 1: but the changes would be largely cosmetic, and the parameters
Speaker 1: for those changes would be limited in advance by In
Speaker 1: the end, it didn't even matter who got to be
Speaker 1: admined so long as most people were just guests in
Speaker 1: their own system. So if Days were allowed to go back,
Speaker 1: if the people on her Medica could get free, it
Speaker 1: wouldn't mean the end of existence for whomever was in control.
Speaker 1: It simply meant that they would have to shift from
Speaker 1: elations of command to relations of reciprocity. Were they up
Speaker 1: for the change? What could Days do but insist they
Speaker 1: went back to banging. Their fist was bruising. Finally, Cell
Speaker 1: recognized that ignoring Days was no longer the best option,
Speaker 1: which metric had been tripped to change its stance physical
Speaker 1: damage to Day's body damage to the cell. Were there
Speaker 1: other people farther down the corridor who might hear before
Speaker 1: Days could consider what options for action. These different possibilities
Speaker 1: might present a damage prone PLEXI A cell coded to
Speaker 1: protect their bodily integrity other prisoners with whom they might communicate.
Speaker 1: The plexi phased back into a screen. This time only
Speaker 1: one item appeared, though it was huge and took up
Speaker 1: half the wall a little unsubtle. It was the icon
Speaker 1: for the Hermitica button, an inactivated gray scale situated inside
Speaker 1: a red circle with a diagonal red line crossing it
Speaker 1: out for good measure. Her Medica is not an option.
Speaker 1: You have a zero percent chance of being reassigned to Hermetica.
Speaker 1: You have six options and must choose one of them
Speaker 1: before moving on to the next stage of your rehabilitation.
Speaker 1: This is your last warning to cease attempted destructive activity
Speaker 1: of the structures of this cell. Nowadays slammed both fists
Speaker 1: into the plexi again and again, followed by a series
Speaker 1: of frontal kicks. You motherfuckers, they screamed, taking the insult
Speaker 1: shawnahad to use. You kidnapping motherfuckers. Send me home. Fuck
Speaker 1: your six choices, Send me home. They were crying. Now
Speaker 1: that's my family, Give me my family back, you motherfucker's.
Speaker 1: A hissing sound came from the duckted above days awoke
Speaker 1: their head hurt. The PLEXI was intact. Six squares glowed
Speaker 1: softly in its center. There would be no dialogue. Whatever
Speaker 1: Days might want or need was completely irrelevant. They were
Speaker 1: a machine to be programmed. They stayed a long time
Speaker 1: in bed. Your wants and needs are never irrelevant to
Speaker 1: the products and services who support this show. I'm sorry
Speaker 1: the content keeps getting heavier and heavier and throwing too
Speaker 1: ads feels. I don't know whatever your's ads to keep
Speaker 1: us paid. You could make your own choices about if
Speaker 1: you listen to them or not. I guess, and we're back.
Speaker 1: What would Shauna do, they wondered, crawling out of a
Speaker 1: sordid dream. If they were a writer, Days could think
Speaker 1: of a fantastical ending to this story. They would choose
Speaker 1: one of the options Cell offered them. They would explore
Speaker 1: their new world, make friends together. They would find a
Speaker 1: crack in the system, escape out into the real world,
Speaker 1: and live happily ever after. Or at least the story
Speaker 1: would end ambiguously, with all the possibilities of the new
Speaker 1: world left unexplored, Readers encouraged to hope for the best.
Speaker 1: Another closed system, bounded by the complicity of spectators who
Speaker 1: violated the first law of thermodynamics, creating something out of nothing,
Speaker 1: summoning hope and possibility out of a history that offered neither.
Speaker 1: They were in an eternal present. Days realized there were
Speaker 1: no cracks, There was no outside the system. There was
Speaker 1: no real world apart from this one, the unseen. What
Speaker 1: they could not know from their present vantage, that terra
Speaker 1: incognita in which they safely stashed their neurosis about a
Speaker 1: better world. It wasn't an outside, and it certainly wasn't
Speaker 1: a whole world. The only shadows of possibility lay behind
Speaker 1: another enclosure. It was the darkness within a closed box,
Speaker 1: bounded and contained, and inside nothing but Schrodinger's cat. Within
Speaker 1: that darkness, that uncertainty. Days might imagine a whole world
Speaker 1: of possibilities, but really there were only two. The cat
Speaker 1: was either dead or trapped within the box. Death or imprisonment.
Speaker 1: There were no other possibilities. Days would not tell themselves lies.
Speaker 1: Days drifted in and out of sleep. The column pinged,
Speaker 1: There were pings in their dreams. How many times they
Speaker 1: did not get up. They stayed in bed until their
Speaker 1: body ached, stayed until it was past aching, stayed until
Speaker 1: their dreams went on strike, and sleep refused to rescue them.
Speaker 1: They got up, went to the toilet. The pain in
Speaker 1: their midsection began to subside. They drank some water from
Speaker 1: the column. The pain in their throat began to subside.
Speaker 1: They paced back and forth a few times, felt their
Speaker 1: blood flow. Their mind come awake. Something whispered back there.
Speaker 1: It was like a pressure, a little package begging to
Speaker 1: be opened. The column pinged again, and the thought was lost.
Speaker 1: It was clear now they would keep them in here
Speaker 1: until they chose. There were six options, and that was
Speaker 1: all they were prepared to feed them, to keep them
Speaker 1: alive indefinitely, a sort of suspended animation, until they agreed
Speaker 1: to one of those six futures, and that consent would
Speaker 1: be their first form of participation. From then on, all
Speaker 1: their actions would be modulated to improve their life within
Speaker 1: the bounds the architects had set. When would an opportunity
Speaker 1: ever arise for something different? When could they possibly hope
Speaker 1: to be in a situation where they had more leverage
Speaker 1: than those in charge? A simple thought popped into their mind,
Speaker 1: If not now? When the whisper at the back of
Speaker 1: their mind returned, and they repeated the question, if not now?
Speaker 1: When the pressure grew the shape revealed itself, and as
Speaker 1: Days led it unfold, they came through with a sudden
Speaker 1: force of violins and crescendo. It was a song, the
Speaker 1: song they had been trying to summon for the last
Speaker 1: few days. It was Vivaldi's can Scare though number two
Speaker 1: in G minor lestette presto, and it thundered from their
Speaker 1: mind and throughout their very being, out their fingertips and
Speaker 1: from their feet into the floor. The walls of the
Speaker 1: cell shook with the song. Cell was not entirely immune
Speaker 1: to life either, and Days remembered another storm, and the
Speaker 1: most important lesson of all, There are always other choices.
Speaker 1: There was always another way out. And then they saw
Speaker 1: the opportunity. They saw the exact point where they had
Speaker 1: more leverage than those great and invisible who built entire worlds.
Speaker 1: Knowing Cell was watching, knowing their gesture mattered whether it
Speaker 1: had an audience or not, because it was an action
Speaker 1: that struck at the very nexus where all the system's
Speaker 1: powers came to a focus. Days got up. They walked
Speaker 1: to the column and opened it. They took out the
Speaker 1: tray of food. There it was the next meal, the
Speaker 1: bland mash of calories and vitamins that would keep them
Speaker 1: in this state of suspended animation until they made a choice.
Speaker 1: One of the choices the system offered another world identical
Speaker 1: to this one in all but appearance. Would they have
Speaker 1: the chance to make this choice their own choice. They trembled,
Speaker 1: frozen to the spot they doubted. Then they turned one
Speaker 1: foot in front of the other. They crossed the toilet.
Speaker 1: Days didn't know they would have the strength to follow
Speaker 1: their plan to the bitter. They didn't know what their
Speaker 1: jailers would do to try to stop them. They were
Speaker 1: in uncharted territory, and that meant they were free already.
Speaker 1: Days up ended the tray, dumping all the food into
Speaker 1: the shallow bowl of the toilet. Still trembling, they returned
Speaker 1: the tray to the column, closed the little door, and
Speaker 1: sat back down on the cop There would be no
Speaker 1: suspended animation, no slowly wearing them down until they chose
Speaker 1: a world immune to their touch. Over this their own self.
Speaker 1: They had more leverage than the architects. Ever, could they
Speaker 1: had made their move, they would refuse every one of
Speaker 1: their offered choices. They were breaking out. The storm thundered
Speaker 1: and crashed all around, but within days was tranquil, calm,
Speaker 1: ready for what might come. Days lay on the cot,
Speaker 1: hugging their knees to their chest. The pangs had left
Speaker 1: them some time ago. Now their body felt warm and light.
Speaker 1: They were on their way. The cell came and went.
Speaker 1: They had seen simp Milty had called out to them,
Speaker 1: but their friends couldn't hear. Not yet Snookums had visited,
Speaker 1: though Days couldn't remember if that had been in the
Speaker 1: cell or back on her medica. It was a joyful reunion.
Speaker 1: They'll be coming for me soon, Days thought to themselves.
Speaker 1: They had supposed from the start they wouldn't be allowed
Speaker 1: to just waste away. The jailers, whoever they were, could
Speaker 1: resort to force feeding, but at least then they would
Speaker 1: have to appear to abandon their conceit that this was
Speaker 1: a circumstance and not a prison, one that they built
Speaker 1: and maintained. Days could count that as a victory, and
Speaker 1: no small one. A shudder passed through their body. It
Speaker 1: came with the force of catastrophe, like the whole world
Speaker 1: were shaking. Days found themselves panting as a subsided. They
Speaker 1: let out a long, trembling sigh, but still their heart raced.
Speaker 1: They were stretched out now, They rubbed their arms, embracing themselves.
Speaker 1: You did all right. If they didn't give themselves love,
Speaker 1: who would. It had been a hard life, not the
Speaker 1: one they'd wanted so little to look back on. But
Speaker 1: as the light trembled and sputtered, malnourished, disbelieved, Days felt
Speaker 1: another life ready to open like a flower and draw
Speaker 1: them in. They imagined trumpets blowing and towers falling, and
Speaker 1: they smiled at the thought, you did all right, barely
Speaker 1: a whisper. Everything was warmth. No one would remember them,
Speaker 1: but it was okay. Days had never wanted recognition. They
Speaker 1: would never be a hero. The neighbors from their block
Speaker 1: practical people, They would disparage Days's sacrifice if they knew,
Speaker 1: or at least try to dissuade them. Their world could
Speaker 1: not hold itself up If Days were right, Their labyrinths
Speaker 1: were long longer to run. But it didn't matter. There
Speaker 1: were no winners here. Footsteps seemed to echo in the corridor.
Speaker 1: It didn't matter. Days doubted anyone could overcome their simple decision.
Speaker 1: They smiled, Let them try. None of it mattered. Everything
Speaker 1: was warmth. Days could hear it now, not the chorridor,
Speaker 1: not the cell, the music behind the music. They'd felt
Speaker 1: it there their entire life, and now it sounded clearly,
Speaker 1: the colors, the sounds everywhere in everything. Days smiled, days cried,
Speaker 1: They were on their way the end. I'm not going
Speaker 1: to discuss the story too much today because we're going
Speaker 1: to do a discussion with the author in the near future.
Speaker 1: But yeah, thanks to listening to her Metica by Alan Lee.
Speaker 1: And if you want to read more by the author,
Speaker 1: you can look him up under the other name he
Speaker 1: writes under Peter Gelderlos, which is g E L D
Speaker 1: E R l o O S. And he has a
Speaker 1: substack you can subscribe to to hear his takes on
Speaker 1: all the stuff going on in the world. And wherever
Speaker 1: you are listening to this, I hope you're taking care
Speaker 1: of yourself and yeah, you.
Speaker 2: Well, it could happen here as a production of cool
Speaker 2: Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit
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Speaker 2: to podcasts. You can find sources where it could happen here,
Speaker 2: updated monthly at cool zonemedia dot com. Slash sources. Thanks
Speaker 2: for listening,