Speaker 1: Colson Media book Club, book Club, book Club, book Club,
Speaker 1: book Club, book Club. I wonder how long I can
Speaker 1: do that for book Club book Club. No, I should
Speaker 1: probably stop do the rest of the introduction. Hello, and
Speaker 1: welcome to Cools in the Media. Book Club, the only
Speaker 1: book club where you don't have to do the reading
Speaker 1: because I do it for you. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy.
Speaker 1: And this week and today, this very day, the reading
Speaker 1: that I'm doing is also writing that I did. This
Speaker 1: is the second half of a story that I wrote
Speaker 1: in twenty fifteen called Everything That Isn't Winter And if
Speaker 1: you didn't listen to part one well with so much love?
Speaker 1: What the fuck are you doing here? How does your
Speaker 1: brain work? How do you tune into the second half
Speaker 1: of a short story and think this is where I'm
Speaker 1: going to come in on? I just don't understand you.
Speaker 1: More power to you. This is that weird week between
Speaker 1: Christmas in New Year's that feels like the last lap
Speaker 1: in Mario, like not the third and final lap, but
Speaker 1: the one that you drive afterward on autopilot while your
Speaker 1: race stats play in the foreground, Or at least that's
Speaker 1: sort of how it always feels here. It's a bizarre time.
Speaker 1: But we're continuing the cozy energy of early winter with
Speaker 1: a quote and I'm quoting Hazel here a surprisingly cozy
Speaker 1: for how much gunfire is in it end quote story.
Speaker 1: So hopefully this hits your post holiday malaise with a
Speaker 1: fresh burst of energy, the kind of energy that will
Speaker 1: make you shoot people. And to wait, I don't want
Speaker 1: to spoil anything. Where we left off, we had our
Speaker 1: main character, Aiden, who runs point on tactical for a
Speaker 1: tea growing commune called The in Between during a belltaine celebration,
Speaker 1: and yes, we know that that's Mayda, but stick with
Speaker 1: us for the holiday theming, some of the collective's tea
Speaker 1: fields are torched by raiders, and we follow Aiden and Bartley,
Speaker 1: a fellow tracker and a tactical point, as they hunt
Speaker 1: down and kill a speck. Aiden returns to a strained
Speaker 1: relationship with their boyfriend, and we got some devastating dialogue
Speaker 1: about the cracks that exist between the two of them.
Speaker 1: Now we pick back up with Everything That Isn't Winter
Speaker 1: by Margaret Kildren. There's a certain kind of peace on
Speaker 1: a farm, and the tea leaves were emeralds in the moonlight,
Speaker 1: the night birds sang in the forest. The trees stood
Speaker 1: like crows on the horizon. There's a certain kind of
Speaker 1: peace and holding a rifle as well. It shares the
Speaker 1: same simplicity, the same honesty with that rifle. In those fields,
Speaker 1: my intentions were bare. We worked the earth, We defended
Speaker 1: the fruits of our labor. I walked our eastern perimeter
Speaker 1: through rows of tea and through the burned scar where
Speaker 1: so much of our tea had been ahead at the gatehouse,
Speaker 1: electric lights spit out a flood of across the tracks
Speaker 1: and into the hills. We used red to save our
Speaker 1: night vision. We used lights at all because they made
Speaker 1: a good distraction, made any potential attacker believe that our
Speaker 1: attention was focused on the railroad. I'd learned every bit
Speaker 1: I knew about tactics a hard way. There were more
Speaker 1: bodies buried in our fields than there were people living
Speaker 1: in the lodge. But that night, while I clutched a
Speaker 1: radio in one hand and waited to hear from Bartley,
Speaker 1: they didn't come for us from the trees. They didn't
Speaker 1: come for us from the tracks, or over the Green River,
Speaker 1: or from the mountains or the roads. They came for
Speaker 1: us with artillery It took three seconds for two shots
Speaker 1: to destroy the lodge. I saw them, those meteors as
Speaker 1: they arked through the sky on a low trajectory and
Speaker 1: reduced my home to rubble. They were tracer shells marked
Speaker 1: to help their gun or aim, and they burned phosphorus
Speaker 1: through the sky. They'd come from the east. They'd come
Speaker 1: from Stampede Pass. I'd leveled trees older than my grandparents
Speaker 1: to help build the lodge. I'd pedaled rebar eighty kilometers
Speaker 1: up the tracks from the ruins of Tacoma to reinforce
Speaker 1: the stone and mortar construction. And I'd killed two people,
Speaker 1: a woman and a man who tried to rob me
Speaker 1: on the way. I like to think I knew the
Speaker 1: difference between the evil and the desperate, and those two
Speaker 1: had just been desperate. I'd left their bones in the forest.
Speaker 1: Three seconds, two shots, and all our work was gone.
Speaker 1: With adrenaline in me, I don't consciously process sound or
Speaker 1: scent or touch. Everything is visual, Everything is slow motion.
Speaker 1: I ran through the green fields towards the shattered lodge
Speaker 1: as people streamed out. People were shouting. I might have
Speaker 1: been shouting. I saw Khalil walk across the road carrying
Speaker 1: someone toward the bomb shelter. That man existed to help people,
Speaker 1: to carry people to nurse. Green shoots up out of
Speaker 1: the soil and into the light. I existed for other purposes.
Speaker 1: I gave up on returning to the lodge. They could
Speaker 1: rebuild without me, and Khalil was alive, and what good
Speaker 1: would I do? And I was their guard, and I'd failed,
Speaker 1: and I couldn't face Khalil, and I ran for the gate.
Speaker 1: I set a rail cart onto the tracks, settled into
Speaker 1: the saddle, put my feet on the pedals, then gave
Speaker 1: a last look the lodge. Khalil was watching me, hands
Speaker 1: on his hips, his chest heaved, He turned his head,
Speaker 1: and he walked away. His gait told me more than
Speaker 1: any words ever had. It was the gait of a
Speaker 1: man who'd given up. I peddled east with my rifle
Speaker 1: held out cross my lap. I pedaled until the adrenaline
Speaker 1: cleared and the evening's fog grows thicker and thicker, and
Speaker 1: I had the chance to realize what a mess I'd
Speaker 1: just thrown myself into. A loone which was better than
Speaker 1: acknowledging the mess from which I just fled. It didn't
Speaker 1: make sense to destroy the lodge. It didn't make sense
Speaker 1: to destroy the fields. It made sense to capture our holdings.
Speaker 1: Whomever I was running off to try to shoot, I
Speaker 1: didn't understand them. If you know your enemy, and you
Speaker 1: know yourself, you need not fear one hundred battles. If
Speaker 1: you know yourself and not your enemy, you will lose
Speaker 1: as often as you win. If you know neither yourself
Speaker 1: nor your enemy, you will never know victory. I'd pedaled
Speaker 1: those tracks hundreds of times. The Cascade Range was my home.
Speaker 1: I had grown up in its shadow. But fear creeps
Speaker 1: into your system and renders the familiar into something alien.
Speaker 1: The fog was milk thick, as thick as it had
Speaker 1: ever been. My eyes tracked movement. I knew better than
Speaker 1: to register the shifting of moonlight through wind blown branches,
Speaker 1: the glint of light on the steel of the rails.
Speaker 1: I passed a rusted junction box, still painted with pre
Speaker 1: collapse graffiti, which meant the tunnel was only a few
Speaker 1: hundred meters out. I stopped peddling, set the brakes of
Speaker 1: the cart wouldn't roll back downhill, then dismounted as quietly
Speaker 1: as I could. It's hard to disguise. The sounds of
Speaker 1: heels on gravel. I heard my own, but there was
Speaker 1: another footfall fainter right behind me. A hand clamped down
Speaker 1: on my shoulder. I whirled, went for the knife on
Speaker 1: my belt. Bartley she had one finger to her lips,
Speaker 1: her eyes betraying sleepless exhaustion. We scrambled up the embankment,
Speaker 1: pausing where we could just see the tracks at the
Speaker 1: edge of our vision. My hands were on the bark
Speaker 1: of a poplar. Its scent was in my head, and
Speaker 1: I was grounded there in the tunnel. She said, she
Speaker 1: was murmuring low into my ear. They've got military ordinance,
Speaker 1: two big guns on two railcars, plus a whole train
Speaker 1: of weaponry stretching into the tunnel. Who are they, don't know?
Speaker 1: I've seen about twenty of them. Most of them are
Speaker 1: camped inside the tunnel alongside the ordinance. Looks like they've
Speaker 1: been there a few days. Uniforms, I asked, Nope, motive,
Speaker 1: no idea. Bartley said they fired a couple artillery shells.
Speaker 1: What they hit, They took out the lodge. I'd never
Speaker 1: known Bartley to wear her heart on her sleeve, but
Speaker 1: she took a breath at that, then another casualties. She asked,
Speaker 1: I didn't stop to count. We should kill them all.
Speaker 1: She wasn't judging their character, she was addressing a strategic concern.
Speaker 1: How I mind the tunnel a couple years back? What
Speaker 1: I asked that loud, switching for a moment into whisper
Speaker 1: instead of murmur. I didn't tell anyone because I thought
Speaker 1: people might get mad, and I figured our general Assembly
Speaker 1: wouldn't go for it. How close do you have to
Speaker 1: get to set it off? I asked? Close? Bartley said,
Speaker 1: real close? Ten feet inside the front of the tunnel
Speaker 1: against the south side wall. There's a rotted hunk of
Speaker 1: plywood behind it, a cheap old breaker box. I put in,
Speaker 1: switch the first three in the last three breakers and
Speaker 1: then we've got two minutes to get clear. Well, that's
Speaker 1: set off the ordinance on the train. Probably not. How
Speaker 1: do we get there? I've got an idea. I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna like it, am I, I asked, nope? But do
Speaker 1: you know what you will like? You will like the
Speaker 1: six savings on these products and services? What a deal?
Speaker 1: What a deal? And reback? I'm here to negotiate our surrender.
Speaker 1: The words were foreign in my throat and hung strangely
Speaker 1: in the air. They weren't my words. They weren't words
Speaker 1: I really knew how to say. But I said them
Speaker 1: loud and attracted the ire of a number of armed
Speaker 1: women and men, Women and men I hoped wouldn't object
Speaker 1: too immediately and too violently to the rifle I still
Speaker 1: slung across my back. The fog was thinner at the
Speaker 1: base of the tunnel, and it calmed me down to
Speaker 1: see the silhouette spires of the trees and the faint
Speaker 1: glow of stars above me. Two flatbed railcars extended out
Speaker 1: from the tunnel, each with an old world gun, larger
Speaker 1: than some houses. Inside the tunnel, a string of box
Speaker 1: cars stretched farther than I could see. A half dozen
Speaker 1: people approached me, no older than the kid I'd shot
Speaker 1: on the cliff side. I like to think I knew
Speaker 1: the difference between the evil and the desperate, And these
Speaker 1: people weren't desperate, not on the face of things. Each
Speaker 1: had a rifle trained on me, Each watched me with
Speaker 1: some mixture of indifference and malice. Evil isn't something we
Speaker 1: do to one another. It's the way in which we
Speaker 1: do it. It's why we do it. There were two
Speaker 1: clear authorities, a man about ten years my senior with
Speaker 1: gray flecked into his red hair, and a woman with
Speaker 1: at least twenty years on him. The two conversed briefly,
Speaker 1: and the man approached General Samuel john He said he
Speaker 1: didn't offer his hand, Aden Jackson. I said, I didn't
Speaker 1: offer my hand. Our terms are simple, the general said.
Speaker 1: Anyone who leaves between now and noon tomorrow will not
Speaker 1: be hunted down and shot. Who are you, I asked,
Speaker 1: General of what army? The new Republic of Washington? He said,
Speaker 1: another warlord. What's your claim on our land? I asked.
Speaker 1: I knew his answer before he said it. I grew
Speaker 1: more confident that I knew him, that I could outwit
Speaker 1: or outshoot him. Small holdings like yours and the rest
Speaker 1: of the New World are a relic of an era
Speaker 1: we aim to put behind us. He said on script,
Speaker 1: Washington has suffered too long without central authority. Mind, people,
Speaker 1: is fun. It's kind of dangerous, how fun it is.
Speaker 1: You're right, I said. We will drive this train to
Speaker 1: the end of the line, laying waste to everything in
Speaker 1: our path, and raise forth our savior from the coastal waters.
Speaker 1: That was a pretty different script. We'll raise new cities,
Speaker 1: the general said, his eyes rolled back. He held his
Speaker 1: palms face up in front of him, pure cities built
Speaker 1: of light and manna. And we will live in his
Speaker 1: grace until the zombies. The older woman added, until the
Speaker 1: zombies come and devour those of us who remain in
Speaker 1: the cities. I looked around from bandit to band and
Speaker 1: grins were painted on every face. You're screwing with me.
Speaker 1: Of course, we're screwing with you, the general said. We're
Speaker 1: not on some moral or religious quest. We've got artillery
Speaker 1: and we want the pass so we can tax caravans,
Speaker 1: and if you try to stop us, we'll kill you.
Speaker 1: That's the world, now, that's always been the world. It's
Speaker 1: a good world for people like me and mine, and
Speaker 1: that's the only metric i'd judge by. We are going
Speaker 1: to just tax you, you know, the woman said. A
Speaker 1: little bit of fire, a little show of force, and
Speaker 1: then we tax you. But I heard you shoot my grandson.
Speaker 1: All eyes and guns were on me, which I wanted.
Speaker 1: With a certain, very limited understanding of the word want,
Speaker 1: I'd lwered them away from the mouth of the tunnel
Speaker 1: behind the trumped up highwaymen. In the thin fog, Bartley
Speaker 1: Lizard crawled toward the breaker box. I didn't feel like
Speaker 1: lying anymore. You'll get yours, I said. There have always
Speaker 1: been people who want power over others. There have always
Speaker 1: been people who don't. The whole of our history is
Speaker 1: the history of people like you killing people like me,
Speaker 1: of people like me killing people like you. You'll live
Speaker 1: a miserable shit life, distrustful and afraid, and you'll get yours.
Speaker 1: I'll get mine in the end, the same as you.
Speaker 1: But I'll have lived a life in a society of equals,
Speaker 1: among people I love. I'll have loved them. Hey. One
Speaker 1: of the bandits, a young man, turned in time to
Speaker 1: see Bartley crawling into the tunnel. He raised his rifle
Speaker 1: and fired at my friend. I turned and ran uphill,
Speaker 1: perpendicular to the mouth of the tunnel. Always run uphill.
Speaker 1: People don't like chasing uphill. I made it behind a
Speaker 1: fixed stump twenty meters up the embankment, and bullets lodged
Speaker 1: into the decades dead tree flesh. I unslung and unsafetied
Speaker 1: my rifle, returning fire. Bartley made it to cover herself
Speaker 1: on the far side of the train from the bandits.
Speaker 1: They could keep me pinned down and outflank me. Put
Speaker 1: a bullet than me, then turned their attention to Bartley.
Speaker 1: I had two spare magazines, one friend, and no hope
Speaker 1: for backup. I had no hope at all. I shouldn't
Speaker 1: have been cruel to Khalil. That man had left his family,
Speaker 1: left the safety and stability of Bainbridge Island to follow
Speaker 1: me into the mountains and to the edge of the
Speaker 1: new world. He'd followed his dreams. We'd met in the
Speaker 1: winter every winter since the first one. We'd walked out
Speaker 1: along the Green River to its source. We made a
Speaker 1: week of it, sixty kilometers round trip, and we'd held
Speaker 1: hands and stared at the breath of the sky, and
Speaker 1: camped in the snow and walked out along the ice.
Speaker 1: We'd never get the chance again. He worried about me.
Speaker 1: He was right to worry about me. I was about
Speaker 1: to die. Bartley caught my attention, then started banging on
Speaker 1: the steel of the car with the butt of a rifle.
Speaker 1: This drew all eyes, and they were out from cover,
Speaker 1: moving to flank me. I squatted up, aimed, and picked
Speaker 1: off the general with a round through his cheek, his
Speaker 1: head spun, his neck snapped, and his legs gave out.
Speaker 1: The bandits turned away from Bartley, and she stood and
Speaker 1: shot the older woman, the second in command perhaps or
Speaker 1: maybe just the general's mother. Either way, she collapsed to
Speaker 1: the hole in her sternum. A bullet grazed me, then
Speaker 1: it burned across my shoulder. Blood welled up. Stay and
Speaker 1: guard the train, one of the remaining women shouted into
Speaker 1: the tunnel. The four remaining gunners were turned to cover.
Speaker 1: Crouching by the wheels of the train, Bartley ran past
Speaker 1: the train and forore the trees. She drew fire, but
Speaker 1: not from every rifle. I took two quick, deep breaths,
Speaker 1: let the oxygen fill me up, then rolled from cover.
Speaker 1: I learned long ago not to let myself listen for
Speaker 1: individual shots once I was committed. Fear is the antithesis
Speaker 1: of action. I heard a scream, a woman's scream, and
Speaker 1: I ran down the embankment into the dark of the tunnel.
Speaker 1: There was the plywood behind it, the breaker box. It
Speaker 1: was too dark to see, but I found the breakers
Speaker 1: by touch and tried not to focus on the muzzle
Speaker 1: flashes coming from outside and inside the tunnel. Alike. Bullets
Speaker 1: are dangerous. I know that intimately, But most bullets aren't aimed,
Speaker 1: not really, and unaimed bullets are like lightning in a field.
Speaker 1: If you stay low, you'll survive more likely than not.
Speaker 1: I hit the six breakers. Two of the gunners from
Speaker 1: outside had crossed the tracks, and I saw their boots
Speaker 1: as they worked their way down the other side of
Speaker 1: the train. I'd be flanked. I rolled under the train
Speaker 1: and took shots at the boots. Hit one was rewarded
Speaker 1: with a man falling prone, and I shot him in
Speaker 1: the temple. I crawled my forearms on the ties and gravel.
Speaker 1: The wound in my shoulder was beginning to protest. I
Speaker 1: shot another woman in the foot, and the two remaining
Speaker 1: bandits outside fell without me firing. Bartley was alive. I
Speaker 1: was almost to the mouth of the tunnel when the
Speaker 1: charges blew, and only the behemoth of steel above me
Speaker 1: saved me from the cascade of rock that followed. It
Speaker 1: was no good to think about the lives that were
Speaker 1: about to end. Suffocating in the darkness behind me, it
Speaker 1: was no good to question whether or not I was evil.
Speaker 1: In the dust and fog, I crawled forward toward the
Speaker 1: faint moonlight. And do you know what else crawls towards
Speaker 1: you through the firefight. It's the sonorous sounds of these
Speaker 1: products and services at your whimsy, in your telephone on demand.
Speaker 1: Here's the ads. Her back, Bartley had a hole in
Speaker 1: her leg where muscle and fat and skin should have been,
Speaker 1: and I got her onto the rail cart with a
Speaker 1: tourniquet on her thigh. People say you can't use a
Speaker 1: tourniquet for more than a few minutes, but I'd learned
Speaker 1: the bloody way that you could get away with one
Speaker 1: for longer if you needed. Hey, do me a favor,
Speaker 1: she said, as I started to pedal. What's that? Don't
Speaker 1: let me die? She said, that's all I asked, that's all,
Speaker 1: don't let me die. You're not dying. Okay, I've got
Speaker 1: another favor. What's that, Don't let me die? I really
Speaker 1: don't want to die. I pedaled harder. It was downhill,
Speaker 1: easy going, and we went in and out of fog banks,
Speaker 1: and Bartley went in and out of being in a
Speaker 1: mood to talk when in and out of looking like
Speaker 1: she was going to make it. All I could think
Speaker 1: about was Khalil, about how sure I'd been. I was
Speaker 1: going to die about how sure i'd been. I'd never
Speaker 1: see him again. It was a long half hour before
Speaker 1: he reached the ruins of the in between. Three people
Speaker 1: met us at the gate, including the woman who'd come
Speaker 1: for the harvest, the one who danced with Khalil. She
Speaker 1: helped me carry Bartlett to the makeshift infirmary set up
Speaker 1: on the road. Any awkwardness between us lost to more
Speaker 1: pressing matters. Doc told Bartley that she'd live. I gave
Speaker 1: a quick report, and that report spread quickly. Khalil wasn't around,
Speaker 1: and a fear came over me, a fear worse than firefights.
Speaker 1: He was okay. I'd seen him escape the lodge. I
Speaker 1: knew he was okay, but he wasn't okay with me.
Speaker 1: I first met him when we'd both been visiting Tacoma
Speaker 1: during the death days, when neither of us thought we'd
Speaker 1: live to see twenty I'd loved him half my life,
Speaker 1: the half that mattered. I went down the concrete steps
Speaker 1: into the bomb shelter. It was full of people, and
Speaker 1: they were hurt and scared, and they wanted to talk
Speaker 1: to me. But they all had the distinct disadvantage of
Speaker 1: not being Khalil. I went to the lodge, what remained
Speaker 1: of the hall we'd built. There were people who weren't Khalil,
Speaker 1: picking through the smoking rubble, shoring up the surviving walls,
Speaker 1: digging for survivors and corpses. I went to the remnants
Speaker 1: of the bridge that at once in the old world
Speaker 1: crossed the Green River. But there was no one there
Speaker 1: to kiss me in the shadows of the ruins. No
Speaker 1: one waiting in the river with his hand on the
Speaker 1: small of my back, no one singing in sweet low tones.
Speaker 1: I thought about walking into the river anyway, until the
Speaker 1: water took me. The river in spring is as cold
Speaker 1: as snow. I went to the fields, and I found
Speaker 1: him in the northeast corner, the corner we'd seen from
Speaker 1: our poster bed. His hands swept across the leaves. He
Speaker 1: sang wordless serenades to the tea. Khalil. He heard me
Speaker 1: because his body tensed, and he paused his song. But
Speaker 1: he didn't turn around. Khalil, I'm sorry for what. He
Speaker 1: was far enough away that I could scarcely hear his voice.
Speaker 1: For a lot of things. You do what you do.
Speaker 1: A breeze came across the fields, from the river, whispering
Speaker 1: against the tears of my cheeks. And I fought harder
Speaker 1: to keep my voice level than I'd fought to stay
Speaker 1: alive an hour prior. I don't want to just do
Speaker 1: what I do, I said. He turned towards me, and
Speaker 1: he was crying harder than I was. He always cried
Speaker 1: harder than I did. It's okay if you worry about me.
Speaker 1: I said. You ran away tonight, he said. He didn't
Speaker 1: try to disguise the pain in his voice. You went alone.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's too much for me that you're not here
Speaker 1: when I need you, That you're never safe, that you
Speaker 1: take stupid risks. I had the distance between us and
Speaker 1: he was just out of arm's reach. I was going
Speaker 1: to die tonight, I said. I sat down, hugged my knees.
Speaker 1: I was going to die, and I was never going
Speaker 1: to see you again. And now I've survived. But what
Speaker 1: if I never get to be with you again. He
Speaker 1: sat down across from me, mirrored my pose. You never
Speaker 1: talked to me, he said, I know. Why don't you
Speaker 1: talk to me? I'm afraid, I said, But I said
Speaker 1: it too quiet. What I'm afraid? I said louder I'm afraid.
Speaker 1: I'm afraid of you, and I'm afraid of us, and
Speaker 1: I'm afraid of this new world we've built that one
Speaker 1: day soon it'll be no place for me and everything
Speaker 1: I've done and everything I am. I'm afraid of everything
Speaker 1: that isn't winter, and I'm afraid of everything but dying.
Speaker 1: My eyes were closed, and I couldn't see him, and
Speaker 1: I couldn't hear him, and all I heard was my
Speaker 1: heart beating out of sink. For a minute, at least,
Speaker 1: it was all I heard. I didn't see him move,
Speaker 1: but his arms wrapped all the way around me, my
Speaker 1: knees and my back. He held me. I let myself go.
Speaker 1: He kissed the top of my head, and I nuzzled
Speaker 1: into his neck. You do what you do, he said,
Speaker 1: and I love you for it. You love me, all stupid,
Speaker 1: all covered in blood. I love you, he said. His
Speaker 1: hand went into my hair, and he held me like
Speaker 1: he used to, He held me like he wanted me.
Speaker 1: I took him by the beard and pulled his face
Speaker 1: against mine, felt his lips against mine, open mouthed, his
Speaker 1: hands went to my hips. My fingers dug into his chest.
Speaker 1: Smoke drifted up from the ruins of our home, and
Speaker 1: love was something in my gut and it made me
Speaker 1: want to live the end. That's the end of the story. Okay,
Speaker 1: Hazel says, quote Hazel is a sap who just wants
Speaker 1: to let go and find love at the end of
Speaker 1: the world. It's very important that the listener know this
Speaker 1: is written in all caps. That's what Hazel has to
Speaker 1: say about it. And yeah, what do I have to
Speaker 1: say about it. It's funny because a lot of the
Speaker 1: stuff I want to say about it is structural. But
Speaker 1: that's not like the vibe, right, Like the point of
Speaker 1: the story isn't the structure of the story, you know,
Speaker 1: no more than a the point of a home isn't
Speaker 1: the fact that it's like built with two by four,
Speaker 1: you know. But to talk about the two y fours
Speaker 1: that built this house anyway, I guess I would say that. Okay.
Speaker 1: So there's this thing called the trifail sequence and story writing.
Speaker 1: If anyone wants a crash course on writing short stories
Speaker 1: in the Western tradition, here you go the absolute bare
Speaker 1: bones of a traditional Western story. It's not the three
Speaker 1: acts structure, it's not the hero's journey. It is the
Speaker 1: trifail sequence. A character has a problem, they try to
Speaker 1: solve that problem as intelligently as they can, and they
Speaker 1: fail and they make things worse. So then they try
Speaker 1: to solve that problem again, and they fail and they
Speaker 1: make the worse, and then they try again and then
Speaker 1: they succeed. That is like the bare Bones story, right,
Speaker 1: And if you want to get a little bit more
Speaker 1: complicated and a little better, they have an external problem
Speaker 1: and the reason that they're failing at solving their external
Speaker 1: problem is because they haven't addressed their internal problem. And
Speaker 1: it's only by solving their internal problem they're able to
Speaker 1: solve their external problem. And that's the trifil sequence. And
Speaker 1: the thing that I really wanted to do with this
Speaker 1: story was have two interlocking trifail sequences where Aiden, our protagonist,
Speaker 1: has two problems. There's the attack on the lodge and
Speaker 1: the relationship with Khalil, And in a certain sense, you
Speaker 1: could say it's the internal versus the external problem, but
Speaker 1: actually in this case it's inverted Aiden, who doesn't have
Speaker 1: a gender marker. There's no pronoun for them anywhere in
Speaker 1: the story. That was another technical thing that I worked
Speaker 1: really hard to do. They're not even avay them. They
Speaker 1: just don't have a gender marker. But their internal problem,
Speaker 1: this relationship can't be solved until they deal with the
Speaker 1: external problem. And that was like the fun thing to do,
Speaker 1: right they as a as a writer. But it was
Speaker 1: also like, you know, that's not what the story is about.
Speaker 1: The story is well love and how who we can
Speaker 1: be and how we're more than just this like simple
Speaker 1: part of ourselves and these things that we do. Yeah, anyway,
Speaker 1: I'm murder kiljoy. The world is ending in the stark
Speaker 1: all the time. But spend time with people you love
Speaker 1: and eat nourishing food. Rest up, We've got a good
Speaker 1: fight ahead of us, and see you in the new
Speaker 1: year and love you all. Bye. It could Happen here
Speaker 1: as a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zonemedia dot
Speaker 1: com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources
Speaker 1: where it Could Happen here, updated monthly at cool zone
Speaker 1: Media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening,