Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media book Club book Club, book Club, book Club,
Speaker 1: book Club. It's the Cool Zone Media book Club. Hi,
Speaker 1: welcome Nicols 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: we are getting towards the end of the book. We
Speaker 1: have been with for more than a month. We have
Speaker 1: been reading her Medica by Alan Lee. Allen Lee is
Speaker 1: the science fiction pen name for a nonfiction author, well
Speaker 1: many things author, but including nonfiction, most famously author named
Speaker 1: Peter Delderlos. And yeah, we are reading her Medica. It's
Speaker 1: part six out of seven, so you might want to
Speaker 1: not start here, And if you do, I'm not can
Speaker 1: I tell you everything that's happened from the beginning, But
Speaker 1: I will catch you up a little bit on what
Speaker 1: happened last week because last time on her Medica, days
Speaker 1: ended up in jail and was next to a guy
Speaker 1: named Robert who was not from her Medica at all,
Speaker 1: who seemed to have been from a right wing part
Speaker 1: of America called the Secession. And that's where we're starting,
Speaker 1: is the jail. Much to Robert's relief, they he was
Speaker 1: sent somewhere else. After another day in the cell next
Speaker 1: to Days, they had not gotten much farther in their conversations. Really,
Speaker 1: each one of them represented to the other an NBS.
Speaker 1: Days was shocked not only by Robert's ignorance, but by
Speaker 1: his complete lack of curiosity, his inability to be challenged.
Speaker 1: Whoever ran the secession, If there were people there who
Speaker 1: knew it was a lie, Like the people who had
Speaker 1: designed her Medica, they probably had a really easy job.
Speaker 1: The transfer happened while Days was sleeping, just as when
Speaker 1: Robert arrived. When Days awoke, he was no longer there.
Speaker 1: They wondered if there were sedatives in the food. Did
Speaker 1: they move prisoners without witnesses to increase the sense of solitude,
Speaker 1: to reduce the information one had about the place and
Speaker 1: how it operated. The metallic column pinged. Days removed the tray,
Speaker 1: but rather than eating, they paced around the cell a bit.
Speaker 1: They needed music. The Moonlight Sonata came to mind, but
Speaker 1: the acoustics were terrible. The plexi and the lighting didn't
Speaker 1: help at all. They labored through a few bars, repeated
Speaker 1: them when the rest didn't come, and gave up in
Speaker 1: another attempt to harness their minds. Wild horses. They sat
Speaker 1: down for a few rounds of crunches. Their motivation soon fizzled.
Speaker 1: They god opinate the contents of the tray, paced around
Speaker 1: a bit, fell into a slumber. When Days there was
Speaker 1: a new person in the next cell. They were older.
Speaker 1: Days got up and walked over to the plexi. Would
Speaker 1: this become a routine? Hi? I'm Days, Hi, Days, I'm Shauna.
Speaker 1: Should I use they? He? They is fine? You go by? They?
Speaker 1: Days nodded, happy that Shawna didn't seem to take offense
Speaker 1: at the question, what storyline are you from? Storyline? Shauna
Speaker 1: bit their lip. What do you know? Days gave a
Speaker 1: long sigh. They could tell Shawna knew more than they did,
Speaker 1: and certainly more than Robert had. I grew up on
Speaker 1: a ship called her Metica. But it turned out we've
Speaker 1: been on Tara the whole time. Shawna nodded sadly. Tara, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we call it Earth here right Earth. Days couldn't keep
Speaker 1: the bitterness out of their voice. You asked me about storylines?
Speaker 1: What did you mean? Shauna looked around slowly and leaned
Speaker 1: in hand against the plexi. A few decades ago, actually,
Speaker 1: it would have been right around the time you were born,
Speaker 1: things were really bad. Society was falling apart. The program
Speaker 1: was so dysfunctional even those who benefited the most couldn't
Speaker 1: ignore it. Systems collapse at every level overheating, starvation. Then
Speaker 1: there was a pandemic, massive deadly, then a coup, attempt,
Speaker 1: a lot of fighting, so they initialized the compartmentalization. They
Speaker 1: at a certain point the government signed on took over,
Speaker 1: but in the beginning it was the ones who owned
Speaker 1: the technology. The idea was to separate people as much
Speaker 1: as possible, diffuse the conflict. Actually, they'd already been doing
Speaker 1: it for a long time. I guess it started out
Speaker 1: as just another marketing scheme, but it got out of control,
Speaker 1: and in the end the only solution they found was
Speaker 1: to make it total. Make what total? What are they doing?
Speaker 1: Shawna looked into Days's eyes a long, long moment, weighing them,
Speaker 1: then let out a deep sigh. Parallel worlds, parallel worlds?
Speaker 1: What did that mean? It actually goes back way back decades.
Speaker 1: They started selling the idea that you had to buy
Speaker 1: your identity, the clothes you wore, the music you listened to,
Speaker 1: the hobbies you had, the vacations you took the car
Speaker 1: you drove. They sold the idea that all that stuff
Speaker 1: was the way to express who you were, and people
Speaker 1: bought it. They bought it big time. I guess it
Speaker 1: was inevitable that after buying their identity for so long,
Speaker 1: they would buy their reality. How did that work? Days
Speaker 1: only had a loose idea about buying things, and they
Speaker 1: weren't sure if it was that or the concept of
Speaker 1: parallel worlds giving them the most trouble. You got to
Speaker 1: understand by that point, ninety five percent of people's perceptions
Speaker 1: were managed through social networking, their news, their history, their science,
Speaker 1: even their enemies. They only chose things that fit their
Speaker 1: identity collectively in groups. You could think of it as
Speaker 1: separate columns in society. They just constructed their own realities.
Speaker 1: It wasn't entirely up to them, of course, it was
Speaker 1: a managed process. Only profitable realities could be produced because
Speaker 1: of who owned the technologies, the metrics they used. At first,
Speaker 1: it was just that streamlining the whole process of buying
Speaker 1: and selling, but it had unintended consequences. People refused to
Speaker 1: believe anything that contradicted them. When the pandemic hit, hundreds
Speaker 1: of thousands of people were dying, and one group they
Speaker 1: just denied the entire thing, said it wasn't happening, that
Speaker 1: it was some plot, and they tried to take over.
Speaker 1: They were attacking doctors, killing immigrants, black people, black people.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, all the lines on Shawna's face deep in tenfold.
Speaker 1: I don't know how much Earth history you read on
Speaker 1: her Medica. This country from the beginning, it was based
Speaker 1: on kidnapping people like me and forcing us to work
Speaker 1: as slaves, and then they made us call it the
Speaker 1: land of the Free days. Didn't know what to do
Speaker 1: with that information. That's perverse. In a flash, all the
Speaker 1: movies they had ever watched came back to them, all
Speaker 1: the ones with terran actors, the pasty skin of the protagonists,
Speaker 1: and how all the actors of darker skin played auxiliaries
Speaker 1: or villains. Of course, the actor spoke the lines the
Speaker 1: writers fed them, but they still had to stay within
Speaker 1: the register established by all the performances recorded into the database.
Speaker 1: While those actors were still alive. The AI couldn't make
Speaker 1: a movie out of whole cloth seeing those performances within
Speaker 1: the blissful comfort of their module. Their outrageous high jinks,
Speaker 1: their impossibly good luck. Their motivations inhumanly heroic or petty.
Speaker 1: The protagonist's rare skin tones had simply amplified the exoticism
Speaker 1: of it all. In the original context back on Terra
Speaker 1: on Earth was the entire purpose of those movies to
Speaker 1: reinforce a vast and arbitrary order to confirm the dominance
Speaker 1: and entitlement of some and the inferiority of others. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is, and some of those people they never forgave
Speaker 1: us for what they did to us. So I guess,
Speaker 1: if we're going to be completely honest, some people have
Speaker 1: been living in parallel worlds for centuries. Maybe the whole
Speaker 1: thing was destined to fall apart from the start. So
Speaker 1: they were killing you people like you. Yeah, Sewn moved
Speaker 1: their hands so it was closer to days is just
Speaker 1: on the other side of the PLEXI people like you too.
Speaker 1: I don't know your background, but if you ended up
Speaker 1: on her Metica, you're not one of them. Days. They
Speaker 1: probably killed your parents, maybe directly, more likely through negligence
Speaker 1: the pandemic my parents days asked numbally. The thought was
Speaker 1: overwhelmingly strange. They told me I was from an artificial
Speaker 1: insemination from a harvest today like all the others. When
Speaker 1: the government decided to take it over and go total,
Speaker 1: it was the pilot program. There were a lot of orphans,
Speaker 1: the pandemic, the social breakdown in general, the youngest ones.
Speaker 1: They decided to give them a chance for something better
Speaker 1: once it went total. The compartmentalization, I mean, every parallel
Speaker 1: world had to play a function. They had to produce
Speaker 1: something like what her Medica produces. Scientists, some of the best.
Speaker 1: They think they're working on the ship, improving the life support, propulsion,
Speaker 1: getting ready to terraform a new homeworld. Actually, their research
Speaker 1: agendas get fed to them from outside of her Medica
Speaker 1: based on the needs of different agencies here on the outside.
Speaker 1: Every researcher on her Medica has such a tiny window,
Speaker 1: such an extremely hyper specific line of inquiry and experimentation.
Speaker 1: They never know, but everything they develop is linked to
Speaker 1: some program out here, improving an efficiency, cleaning up the disaster,
Speaker 1: carbon sequestration, geoengineering, medical research, social surveillance, and pacification. So
Speaker 1: they're imprisoning us, all of us, and just using us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry you had to find out this way. How
Speaker 1: do you know all of this? Shauna looked down towards
Speaker 1: the ground. They're gaze dissipating into a blank mirror. I'm
Speaker 1: a writer, what I work on the storylines. Days didn't
Speaker 1: know whether to feel infuriated or fascinated. They held their tongue.
Speaker 1: I am Shauna swallowed. The systems are mostly self managing
Speaker 1: the different worlds. I mean her Medica was an exception,
Speaker 1: but the older people involved, the ones who educated you,
Speaker 1: they've been mostly phased out as the first cohorts reached adulthood.
Speaker 1: The other worlds, they're all held together by the subjec
Speaker 1: themselves in good programming. But to start, they needed the
Speaker 1: right stories. Most of the stories were already there, latent
Speaker 1: in the different columns. I described the beliefs that people
Speaker 1: had a raid around themselves to protect these identities they created.
Speaker 1: They already had all the elements. They just needed to
Speaker 1: be organized, given a good plot, and then they were
Speaker 1: set in motion, and we'd keep an eye on them,
Speaker 1: introduce new elements if it was needed, if people were
Speaker 1: getting bored or starting to have doubts, and here to
Speaker 1: introduce new elements to keep you from getting bored. To
Speaker 1: tap the fifteen second four button on your phone. It's
Speaker 1: ads and we're back. You made this, Shawnas swallowed again.
Speaker 1: Other people made it. It was already underway when I started.
Speaker 1: You helped make it. You kept it functioning. You just
Speaker 1: said so yourself. I wish I'd had other choices, but
Speaker 1: I needed to make a living. Did you write my storyline?
Speaker 1: Did you write her medica? No? I got recruited for
Speaker 1: another storyline. What does that mean? You were recruited? I
Speaker 1: didn't fit into any of the columns. There were a
Speaker 1: lot of us who were problematic for the compartmentalization. Some
Speaker 1: of them are still out in the streets in one
Speaker 1: of the dead zones, trying to stay alive. Most of
Speaker 1: them are gone already. Others we got recruited. What did
Speaker 1: they give you? Days reached out for the archaic word
Speaker 1: they knew from their novels. What did they pay you
Speaker 1: to do this to us? Shawnasplayed their hands in tired resignation.
Speaker 1: You don't have to offer much when the alternative is
Speaker 1: going hungry. Days nodded. They didn't know what hunger was
Speaker 1: not personally. Mathematically, X is greater than why or why
Speaker 1: equaled Shawna's integrity an X the price they'd offered with
Speaker 1: no way of ascertaining the value of leaving behind hunger
Speaker 1: and uncertainty. They had to admit they had no information
Speaker 1: concerning the value of why they let it go. How'd
Speaker 1: you end up here? Sabotage? Days raised an eyebrow. I
Speaker 1: started putting some clues in the storyline. I was overseen
Speaker 1: some open ended plot elements. I wanted them to have
Speaker 1: a chance. Days went and sat back down on the cot.
Speaker 1: Now they felt bad for getting angry. Days had gotten
Speaker 1: locked up here for trying to free themselves. It seemed
Speaker 1: Shawna had gotten locked up and had possibly lost a
Speaker 1: good life for trying to help others get free. Do
Speaker 1: you hate me? I don't know you. I know you
Speaker 1: don't want to hear this, But when has it ever
Speaker 1: been any better? People see what they want to see.
Speaker 1: Days couldn't argue with that. They curled up and pulled
Speaker 1: the covers high, thinking of it, snook another tray another meal.
Speaker 1: Days went back to the plexi they shared with Shauna. Graciously,
Speaker 1: Shauna rose to meet them. The person there before you
Speaker 1: they he was from the secession. Shawna nodded, that's a
Speaker 1: pretty awful place. Did you write that one? No, Shawna said, vehemently.
Speaker 1: That place was there way before I got in. You said,
Speaker 1: her Medica was the first one, the first one the
Speaker 1: government created, the secession. That one got built up as
Speaker 1: soon as the technology existed, all the most profitable stories
Speaker 1: in one place. Days narrowed their eyes suspiciously. Days listened
Speaker 1: to me. They looked up and saw pain in Shawna's
Speaker 1: face and realized they were being self centered. They felt
Speaker 1: sure then that Shawna had been throwing worse hell than
Speaker 1: they had ever endured on her Medica. That place is real,
Speaker 1: too fucking real. We didn't make that. That's on them.
Speaker 1: They were actually going around killing people. You've got a
Speaker 1: sense of that, didn't you. Talking to him, Days nodded,
Speaker 1: What were we going to do with them? Put them
Speaker 1: all in one place, Let them think they've won. It's
Speaker 1: the least violent solution. Both the hell am I saying
Speaker 1: we like it was my choice, like I was in charge.
Speaker 1: Sean A banged to fist on the PLEXI. That's how
Speaker 1: they do it. That's how they get in your head.
Speaker 1: They get you to think you're part of their wi
Speaker 1: we the people. They invite you into their shoes so
Speaker 1: that you can see how perfectly reasonable. All their decisions
Speaker 1: are and it's tempting to put on their shoes when
Speaker 1: you have to go barefoot. But it's a fucking lie.
Speaker 1: I'm in here with you. Before when I was working,
Speaker 1: we were just adding the colors to a structure that
Speaker 1: had already been built. If we stopped, they found others.
Speaker 1: There were thousands of us. We were cheaper than old pennies.
Speaker 1: We provided a service, but we never had any control.
Speaker 1: Who does the same ones who are in control when
Speaker 1: everything's going to hell, the same ones responsible for going
Speaker 1: to hell in the first place. It's not a group
Speaker 1: of people days, it's not some cabal. It's just whoever
Speaker 1: happened to be on top? How do you get to
Speaker 1: the top. It's the most ruthless ones, the ones willing
Speaker 1: to stab anyone in the back to get ahead, and
Speaker 1: then their children and then their children's children, staying on
Speaker 1: top as long as they can. And those ruthless motherfuckers.
Speaker 1: They were encouraging the people in the succession from the
Speaker 1: very start, giving them everything they needed, never shattering their
Speaker 1: fragile little bubble. Why should they worry? They weren't the
Speaker 1: ones getting killed. They believed a lot of the same
Speaker 1: things as those nutjobs. They were on top because they
Speaker 1: deserve to be on top. It's nice to believe that.
Speaker 1: It's nice to have cheerleaders who become attack dogs when
Speaker 1: anyone stands up to you. But the denihialists, they just
Speaker 1: couldn't stop killing their masters tightened the leash. They started
Speaker 1: to bite the hand that fed them. They couldn't tell
Speaker 1: the difference, So the government stepped in, absorbed them into
Speaker 1: the compartmentalization. Let them think they broke away. The programmers
Speaker 1: simulate a border skirmish every now and then, so they
Speaker 1: stay interested. It's always a war for them. In fact,
Speaker 1: the government's original plan was for the secession to produce mercenaries,
Speaker 1: but nowadays all that stuff has done with drones and bots,
Speaker 1: so they don't need them. They do food production. Now
Speaker 1: you mentioned a farm. Yeah, they have a simulated money economy.
Speaker 1: The modelers found out they need a simple rewards system,
Speaker 1: like training dogs. They don't seem to understand math. You
Speaker 1: have them driving tractors around all day. They bring in
Speaker 1: one hundred kilos of produce. You know how much they
Speaker 1: keep half a kilo in money value, But they know
Speaker 1: the exchange rate and they do it anyway. You know
Speaker 1: what keeps them in line, besides doing night watch and
Speaker 1: going on border patrol. What the system is rigged so
Speaker 1: that every now and then one of them gets an
Speaker 1: insane amount of money. It's presented to them as a
Speaker 1: lottery or some insurance windfall, and that person buys a
Speaker 1: huge house, more cars than they can drive, and a
Speaker 1: swimming pool. And you know what, the others stay happy.
Speaker 1: The others. Yeah, I even checked the data. The ones
Speaker 1: who were scraping by giving away everything they work for,
Speaker 1: their biostats go up the most in two situations, after
Speaker 1: a skirmish at the border and after someone in their
Speaker 1: circle wins the lottery buys a big house. When do
Speaker 1: their stats go down if they're the one who wins
Speaker 1: the lottery about a month after moving into the new house. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Roberts seemed pretty weird. Did he tell you their theory?
Speaker 1: Which one? They think the earth is flat? No? Yeah,
Speaker 1: they do, they really do. No, that's impossible. He said.
Speaker 1: They have mountains. He said he's been to the ocean.
Speaker 1: Shauna shrugged. Look, I know, I thought I grew up
Speaker 1: on a spaceship, but they built our blocks so we
Speaker 1: could never see the horizon. If he can climb a
Speaker 1: mountain or go to the ocean. He can literally watch
Speaker 1: things go down below the horizon. People see what they
Speaker 1: want to see, lunar eclipses, Days protested, you can see
Speaker 1: the shape of the earth. They see what they want
Speaker 1: to see. And you know what I want to see.
Speaker 1: Right now, at this exact moment, in the middle of
Speaker 1: this story, I'm reading for you sweet savings, satisfaction guaranteed
Speaker 1: with all these products and services, and we're back the
Speaker 1: next day. Shauna was still there. Days was feeling introspective,
Speaker 1: but eventually their thoughts overwhelmed them. They approached the PLEXI.
Speaker 1: Shauna rose too. I always wanted to work on the
Speaker 1: sky when I was growing up. They told us it
Speaker 1: was a projection, you know, designers working together with meteorology
Speaker 1: recreating the sky on terra thought. I got rejected because
Speaker 1: I wasn't good enough. I guess I just had impossible dreams. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wonder would I be here if I had done better?
Speaker 1: What do you mean? Maybe I could have lived down
Speaker 1: that failure not getting the sky, if I'd at least
Speaker 1: gotten halfway, if I'd scored higher on the aptitudes and
Speaker 1: gotten a more interesting work assignment. If my mind were
Speaker 1: more engaged. Maybe I wouldn't have gone scratching around the corners.
Speaker 1: I've never seen what other people see, not all the time,
Speaker 1: but maybe I wouldn't have gone looking so hard. What
Speaker 1: was your job, palliative therapist? I gave back rubs sewn aside.
Speaker 1: You didn't get your work assignment from the aptitudes. What
Speaker 1: the aptitudes are a ruse. They add a little bit
Speaker 1: of data about how you perform under stress, but the
Speaker 1: system already knew your exact capacities, physics, biology, mechanics, calculus,
Speaker 1: emotional intelligence, social hierarchy, tendencies, you name it. They were
Speaker 1: testing you since you were born. They're always testing. They're
Speaker 1: testing us right now. Days looked around, So why do
Speaker 1: the aptitudes at all? They could just tell us our
Speaker 1: work assignment is based on our cumulative performance scores rather
Speaker 1: than a single test. The test is important, Shanna replied,
Speaker 1: but it's not what you think. They need you to
Speaker 1: believe that your entire future, your ambitions, your integration into
Speaker 1: society are based on one single exam, and then the
Speaker 1: day of the exam they pop o a little trick question.
Speaker 1: It's usually not in the exam itself, but something related
Speaker 1: different every time. On her Medica, what they need to
Speaker 1: know is are you willing to falsify information or to
Speaker 1: unsee something you have seen when you are asked to
Speaker 1: do so. Days rocked back on their heels. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: even more insiduous than you think. For the test to work,
Speaker 1: disobeying can't come with any immediate consequences. The subject has
Speaker 1: to think that disobedience will not be immediately noticed, but
Speaker 1: presents a small risk of a lower performance score and
Speaker 1: might therefore put their social integration their ambitions at risk.
Speaker 1: The people on her Medica are given really powerful tools.
Speaker 1: They could quickly discover the nature of their reality if
Speaker 1: they put their minds to it. Integration performance had to
Speaker 1: be more important to you than the truth. So if
Speaker 1: you hesitated when you got to that trick question, even
Speaker 1: for a moment, you were out days detached, feeling estranged
Speaker 1: from the memories that washed over. I think there might
Speaker 1: have been two tricks like that, they said, slowly. I
Speaker 1: left them both blank. Yeah, Shauna nodded sadly. They also
Speaker 1: test for rebellion likelihood of protest. Days let out a
Speaker 1: bitter laugh. I'm sorry. Well, I guess they had me
Speaker 1: figured out pretty well after all, Shanna took a moment
Speaker 1: to continue. When I was getting reassigned after my first
Speaker 1: storyline was operational, I read up on the scripts of
Speaker 1: some of the other options. I read a lot about
Speaker 1: her Medica, how it worked. I turned that one down.
Speaker 1: It didn't seem right. It's not right. No, are any
Speaker 1: of them any better? A lot of them aren't so
Speaker 1: cruel or so restrictive. Most of them don't start with
Speaker 1: a big group of orphans and put them in near
Speaker 1: total confinement. But confinement is an element of all the columns.
Speaker 1: Days looked around at the cell. Yeah, this place could
Speaker 1: be on Hermetica. Then they had a thought. Robert said
Speaker 1: he didn't travel much, but he could he can move around.
Speaker 1: Anger flashed across Shanna's face, followed by exhaustion. The ones
Speaker 1: who are really in charge, they have a lot of
Speaker 1: sympathy for the people in the secession. Plus those people
Speaker 1: have a lot of guns, and moving them, altering their
Speaker 1: story too much would have been costly. You got to
Speaker 1: understand the parallel worlds. They just augmented and entrenched the
Speaker 1: inequalities that already existed in the earlier system. This isn't utopia, No,
Speaker 1: it's a prison. I won't argue with you there. You said,
Speaker 1: they're always testing, testing us. Now, how how we interact?
Speaker 1: What we say, the choices we make, what for they're
Speaker 1: deciding our reassignment? How do they do that me? They
Speaker 1: know by now I won't keep my mouth shut. The
Speaker 1: fact that I'm spilling the beans to you just confirms it.
Speaker 1: But they also know at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: I'll lower my head and play along. I'm valuable to
Speaker 1: them as a writer. They might put me on one
Speaker 1: of the storylines where it doesn't matter if the people
Speaker 1: know about the parallel worlds like robotics and efficiency. That's
Speaker 1: a boring one, just a sprawling, city sized campus where
Speaker 1: they focus on social engineering, mechanization, machine learning, a lot
Speaker 1: of the tech that forms the basis of the other worlds.
Speaker 1: From the tractor Robert drives to the social networks that
Speaker 1: convince people on her Medica that they're on a spaceship
Speaker 1: with twelve million passengers? Is that your best case scenario?
Speaker 1: Forget really bad scores. They'll put me in Gangland, and
Speaker 1: that's where I'll spend the rest of my life. Gangland,
Speaker 1: I'm afraid to ask. Shawna's eyes burned defiantly ask what's Gangland?
Speaker 1: Think of it as the opposite of the secession. It's
Speaker 1: where they left people who had trouble integrating but who
Speaker 1: were the wrong color. They corralled them in dead zones,
Speaker 1: ghost cities full of lead, empty factories, old trash, incinerators,
Speaker 1: cities they couldn't save from the rising sea. A lot
Speaker 1: of guns, a lot of drugs, a lot of trauma,
Speaker 1: no medical care, no fresh food. So yeah, the opposite
Speaker 1: of the secession, but they have something in common. Gangland's
Speaker 1: an old one. They made it before they had their
Speaker 1: social networking technologies, before the compartmentalization. What tech did they use?
Speaker 1: Real estate investment, Holemooner's associations, military planes coming back from Vietnam,
Speaker 1: full of heroin, defunding treatment centers, funding prisons, machine gun
Speaker 1: toting cops, killing revolutionaries, popping kids for possession. I hope
Speaker 1: they don't send you there. It would be the smart
Speaker 1: thing for them to do. It won't matter how many
Speaker 1: people there. I tell about the other worlds. They're not stupid.
Speaker 1: They know they're other worlds and that they're not allowed
Speaker 1: to leave the one they're stuck in. But it's not
Speaker 1: all bad. People are resourceful. There's a lot of love there.
Speaker 1: I guess they can't send Robert there. I'm starting to
Speaker 1: suspect he'll get off a lot easier than the rest
Speaker 1: of us. You catch on quick. What'd he do? He
Speaker 1: said he shot someone. Shawna rolled their eyes. They'll keep
Speaker 1: him in the secession, probably put him in a mind
Speaker 1: making fertilizer. Tell him it's prison labor. Parole him in
Speaker 1: ten twenty years if he tests well. Days hesitated, and me,
Speaker 1: you're a tough one, Shawna frowned. They need to figure
Speaker 1: out where they can make you useful, where you won't
Speaker 1: cause too much trouble. You broke out of one of
Speaker 1: the most tightly controlled storylines, but you don't have the
Speaker 1: advanced training that would make you valuable elsewhere. I bet
Speaker 1: the systems having a hard time with you. The next day,
Speaker 1: Shauna was gone. Days looked up as they awoke, saw
Speaker 1: the next cell was empty, laid their head back down
Speaker 1: and tried to take deep breaths. A while later, they
Speaker 1: got up, did some exercises, tried to remember what the
Speaker 1: sky looked like, how it felt to sit underneath it.
Speaker 1: They wished they could play some music. They tried to
Speaker 1: recall a melody in their head, the right melody for
Speaker 1: just this moment, But nothing came. The air hummed, but
Speaker 1: it wasn't alive in here, not like outside on the
Speaker 1: block before a storm. After uncounted hours, the plexi before
Speaker 1: them went opaque. Hello, Days, said a voice the cell.
Speaker 1: They presumed, your preliminary evaluation is complete. You may choose
Speaker 1: your next assignment. The plexi had become a screen, projecting
Speaker 1: eight large squares. Begrudgingly, Days stepped forward. Each square held
Speaker 1: an image. The first one portrayed a block, just like
Speaker 1: back on her Medica. As they held a finger over it,
Speaker 1: the image began to move, showing a sort of montage.
Speaker 1: The image shifted from the block to the inside of
Speaker 1: a module, a supply center, a research lab, friendly eyed
Speaker 1: people masks over their mouths, walking past the green or
Speaker 1: sitting on a bench, so it was definitively her Metica.
Speaker 1: That's when they noticed. The first two squares were a
Speaker 1: muted color, more gray, lower contrast on her Medica that
Speaker 1: always signified an inactivated button. The second such square showed
Speaker 1: a green field and a large standalone house of unusual construction.
Speaker 1: Days put their finger over it, and the image moved
Speaker 1: showing mountains, forests, a pacy skin person on a huge tractor,
Speaker 1: A short line of people with steely eyes walking along
Speaker 1: a wall carrying rifles. That must be the secession. So
Speaker 1: Hermetica and the secession were off limits to them. How
Speaker 1: considerate of the system to let them know. They went
Speaker 1: to the next square. It showed a group of people smiling, laughing,
Speaker 1: working on a three D modeler, another person grouping data
Speaker 1: sets on an HF interface. A cafeteria of people laughing
Speaker 1: and talking, barely paying attention to their food. Two people
Speaker 1: playing chess, another group playing volleyball, Then a large swimming pool,
Speaker 1: people swimming laps. A final cut showing a person smiling
Speaker 1: triumphantly at tension, divided between a portable and a team
Speaker 1: of multi jointed robotic arms performing some complex assembly task.
Speaker 1: Days went on to the next square. It was a
Speaker 1: nighttime scene, people sitting outside, crowded together around tables in
Speaker 1: the street, laughing and drinking. Then one of them was
Speaker 1: painting on a canvas, others were rehearsing in an orchestra.
Speaker 1: One was looking appreciatively at a holographic sculpture hand on chin,
Speaker 1: as though forming an intelligent opinion. Others were laying in
Speaker 1: a grassy park, reading off their portables. The next option
Speaker 1: showed a couple people in masks operating a team of
Speaker 1: bulldozers demolishing old buildings. Days couldn't tell if they had
Speaker 1: been ruined by war or abandonment. Another team of machines
Speaker 1: came laying the foundations for new buildings that started to
Speaker 1: grow skyward. Days went back to their cot, turning away
Speaker 1: from the screen. There were still three squares left, but
Speaker 1: they felt estranged, knowing each of those worlds was based
Speaker 1: on a lie. Feeling sickened that they were offering them
Speaker 1: the option to join one of them after finding out
Speaker 1: that their entire they had been deceived and exploited, how
Speaker 1: were they supposed to accept anything the system wanted to offer?
Speaker 1: Cell spoke again, you have six choices for possible reassignment.
Speaker 1: Take your time deciding, but until you have decided, you
Speaker 1: will not be able to move into the next stage
Speaker 1: of your rehabilitation. Six choices should they feel lucky? Back
Speaker 1: on their block on her Metica, there were only four choices,
Speaker 1: four ways off the block, all of them heavily controlled.
Speaker 1: Now they had six was that progress? Days didn't know
Speaker 1: what to think. The idea of being alone at the
Speaker 1: helm of a host of powerful machines bringing great buildings
Speaker 1: toppling down appealed to the mood they were in at
Speaker 1: the moment, but the thought of the next team coming
Speaker 1: through erecting new buildings, and the certainty that the masters
Speaker 1: of the world would use those new buildings for killed
Speaker 1: the fantasy. Sure, they actually had no idea what kind
Speaker 1: of buildings they were. They hadn't gotten to the end
Speaker 1: of the prone, but could there be any doubt They
Speaker 1: would be buildings filled with rooms. Each room would have
Speaker 1: a limited number of ways out. They would be buildings
Speaker 1: filled with people, each person locked into a story they
Speaker 1: had not written. Days. Spent the rest of the day
Speaker 1: in a lethargic agony, somewhere between restlessness and nightmare. They
Speaker 1: woke up to the sound of a ping from the
Speaker 1: metallic column. Time passed. Eventually, they got up, retrieved the tray,
Speaker 1: ate most of its contents, apathetically laid back down. Some
Speaker 1: time later, they got up again, paced around the cell,
Speaker 1: did push ups, punched at the plexi. Boredom taunted them.
Speaker 1: If you do not choose this nothingness will go on forever.
Speaker 1: They felt infuriated, trapped. The walls mocked them. There was
Speaker 1: nothing in the cell they could break. The ping sounded again,
Speaker 1: water or food. It seemed it was feeding time again.
Speaker 1: Days retrieved the tray, but instead of eating, they flung
Speaker 1: the contents across the cell. Something like a semi solid
Speaker 1: lasagna puree splattered across the floor. One little sealed container
Speaker 1: survived the impact. Days picked it up. It was something
Speaker 1: vaguely like putting. They opened it and assiduously smeared it
Speaker 1: across the plexi screen, covering up the eight squares the
Speaker 1: six possible futures being offered. A hissing sound came from
Speaker 1: the duct above. Days awoke, their head hurt. The cell
Speaker 1: was immaculate. There was no sign of their outburst. The
Speaker 1: screen remained. Now there were only six squares. The images
Speaker 1: representing her Medica and the secession had disappeared. Dun, dun, dum.
Speaker 1: What's gonna happen? What's Days gonna choose? How is it
Speaker 1: going to impact the rest of their life? Well, the
Speaker 1: only way to find out is to listen next week
Speaker 1: when we reach our rousing conclusion of her Metica by
Speaker 1: Alan Lee. And if you like this and you want
Speaker 1: to read the whole thing and don't want to wait,
Speaker 1: you can just go read it. It's a book, it's available.
Speaker 1: You can buy it from to trit his books or
Speaker 1: probably from other places, but to try his books as
Speaker 1: the publisher, and you can do that if you want,
Speaker 1: and if you want to read more books by the
Speaker 1: same author. They have a lot of nonfiction books available
Speaker 1: under the name Peter Gelderlos, which is g E L
Speaker 1: D E r l S. You can probably figure us
Speaker 1: about Peter anyway. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy. I have
Speaker 1: another podcast called Cool People Did Cool Stuff where I
Speaker 1: talk about history, and I have a substack Marger Kiljoy
Speaker 1: do at substack dot com where I talk about a
Speaker 1: lot of things, including history sometimes and also the present
Speaker 1: world and hope and things like that, and you can
Speaker 1: check that out. Most of my posts are free, only
Speaker 1: the more personal ones are behind a paywall. I'm on Instagram,
Speaker 1: I'm on Blue Sky, and I mostly wish I wasn't
Speaker 1: on the computer anymore, and I won't be as soon
Speaker 1: as I hit stop and then export a file and
Speaker 1: then upload it to my amazing audio editors. We're going
Speaker 1: to turn it into a thing that you all can
Speaker 1: read and I'll talk to you next week. It could
Speaker 1: happen here as a production of cool Zone Media. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool
Speaker 1: zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the Iheard
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1: You can find sources where it could happen here, updated
Speaker 1: monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.