Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media book Club book Club book Club Club.
Speaker 1: It's the Cool Zone Media book Club, the only podcast
Speaker 1: started by chanting that is never in sync. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Margaret Kiljoy, and my guest today is Daniel Hi.
Speaker 2: First time, long time.
Speaker 1: Daniel's often known as the person who does the editing
Speaker 1: behind the scenes.
Speaker 2: Yes, it is I, the occasional angelic voice interrupting the podcast.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I really like that effect. That's like one of
Speaker 1: my favorite effects.
Speaker 2: Okay, good, Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Cool Zone Media book Club is every Sunday we
Speaker 1: bring you fiction. And this week I'm recovering from oral surgery,
Speaker 1: so instead of finding a different story, I'm going to
Speaker 1: read one of my stories, yay. And because it's not
Speaker 1: a short story, it's a medium short story, it's I
Speaker 1: think technically a novelette. I think I'm like right on
Speaker 1: the novelette line. You ever spend your time thinking about
Speaker 1: the word counts that distinguish different lengths of fiction.
Speaker 2: Only all the time?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like, I don't know if I've been to a
Speaker 1: dinner where people aren't talking about the difference between flash fiction,
Speaker 1: short story, novelette, novella, novel, and how they're just it's
Speaker 1: just so much there's social constructs just like gender and yeah, truly,
Speaker 1: yeah truly, which I actually kind of did once. I
Speaker 1: wrote this book called The Country It Goes once and
Speaker 1: I was like, it's my first novel because it's about
Speaker 1: fifty two thousand words long, okay, And then I quickly
Speaker 1: learned that it is like far better for my career
Speaker 1: if I was like, it's my it's a novella. Really yeah, interesting, yeah,
Speaker 1: because a debut novel is like a specific thing, and
Speaker 1: fifty thousand words is like it's on the line. It's okay,
Speaker 1: you could call it either way. Okay, interesting, interesting, it's
Speaker 1: a novella, gotcha, gotcha? This one you could call either
Speaker 1: a short story or nottat, which is obviously interesting to
Speaker 1: anyone who isn't a writer. No one cares about these lengths.
Speaker 1: But this story was first published by the magazine's Strange
Speaker 1: Horizons in twenty eighteen, and it is a story of
Speaker 1: AI and murder ooh fun and justifiable homicide.
Speaker 2: Maybe topical.
Speaker 1: I know. It's called the Fortunate Death of Jonathan sandalson
Speaker 1: Solid Name. Thanks. I straight up didn't think I was
Speaker 1: gonna saw this story. I was like, I have clearly
Speaker 1: written to extreme of a story. No one is going
Speaker 1: to buy this, and I sold it to the first
Speaker 1: magazine I sent it to Boom.
Speaker 2: There you go, rules.
Speaker 1: Thanks. I was just trying to box troll that asshole
Speaker 1: in the quitting like I'd gotten the two guys before
Speaker 1: him to do. I swear I wasn't trying to get
Speaker 1: him all dead and shit. It wasn't my box that
Speaker 1: did it, but I guess all drone related crimes fall
Speaker 1: under federal jurisdiction. And when a SEVI octocopter box put
Speaker 1: a bullet in Jonathan Sandalson's front left tire and sent
Speaker 1: him careening into the ocean and the afterlife, the Feds
Speaker 1: assumed it was me. Well, they assumed it was my handle.
Speaker 1: Hey Hey, Cameron. They probably hadn't made the connection between
Speaker 1: heyy and real world and me Jay Diana Diaz, not yet.
Speaker 1: I watched the whole thing happen on a live feed.
Speaker 1: Oh that's funny. I just realized, whenever you set a
Speaker 1: story in the future, most magazines are like, don't put
Speaker 1: a date in it. Oh interesting, And the reason that
Speaker 1: they do that is why I'm about to read this
Speaker 1: At four thirty am on September eighth, twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: mister Sandalson pulled out of his garage and his vintage beamer.
Speaker 1: He drove a dumb, dumb car, probably because he was
Speaker 1: afraid I'd hack anything else, which was true. I'd hacked
Speaker 1: his neighbor secure cameras. Two years earlier, an Amazon delivery
Speaker 1: bot had been out of cell service during an automated
Speaker 1: firmware update. It drifted too close to one of the
Speaker 1: nodes in my box net, and my AI owned it.
Speaker 1: Then it just went about its job, a sleeper agent,
Speaker 1: patiently waiting for its chance to troll my enemies. My
Speaker 1: Amazon was in the area and it got a call
Speaker 1: from my AI at four thirty one am. By four
Speaker 1: point thirty two, it was tailing, mister Sanderson. I don't
Speaker 1: go for manual control. That's a nubs game, too slow
Speaker 1: and it lacks art. I trust my code to make
Speaker 1: its own decisions about how to ruin people's lives. Hacking
Speaker 1: billboards on his route, party boxes outside his windows at night,
Speaker 1: armies of toy dolls following him through the mall announcing
Speaker 1: his various crimes. That kind of thing. I set hard limits,
Speaker 1: not just the standard no injury or anything that might
Speaker 1: cause injury stuff. I also told my AI not to
Speaker 1: harass civies. No targeting relatives, no targeting low or medium
Speaker 1: level employees of Herculean Solutions Group, only Sandalson and the
Speaker 1: board of directors. Oh and Sandalson's therapists. That might not
Speaker 1: be fair, but it was fun to watch those fuckers
Speaker 1: quit so fast. That morning, September eighth, the protocol was
Speaker 1: set to hover right outside of personal EMP reach, just
Speaker 1: to remind him that I was there, that I was
Speaker 1: watching that morning, I even was a couple thousand miles away.
Speaker 1: I was up early and still tipsy enough that my
Speaker 1: hangover hadn't kicked in yet. The Texas sun wasn't going
Speaker 1: to be up for an hour or so yet, and
Speaker 1: McGonagall was curled up next to me in a fuzzy
Speaker 1: ball of cat on my sleeping bag on the couch.
Speaker 1: Two of my housemates had just gone to sleep after
Speaker 1: a long night of work driving around the city for
Speaker 1: whatever the latest uber but for drugs app. Was my
Speaker 1: third roommate, the one I actually liked, had just run
Speaker 1: off in his ill fitting polo shirt to sit at
Speaker 1: an IT desk. Poor Marcel, I think the reason we
Speaker 1: don't call our boxes drones much anymore is because it
Speaker 1: would be a shame to compare something as cool as
Speaker 1: a semi autonomous robot to human drones at office jobs.
Speaker 1: I turned on the TV set it to watch my
Speaker 1: mark idle curiosity. I usually checked in a couple times
Speaker 1: a week when I couldn't sleep. I saw my marks
Speaker 1: BMW hit the coastal roads, and maybe he was driving
Speaker 1: extra fast because he saw that Amazon box on his tail.
Speaker 1: Maybe that part is my fault. Maybe you don't get
Speaker 1: to harass a man for a year and feel innocent
Speaker 1: in his death. I don't know. The city Octo came
Speaker 1: out of a live oak on the hillside, no running lights.
Speaker 1: It wouldn't have been seen if it weren't for my
Speaker 1: Amazon scouring the thing's defenses. My AI was pretty sure
Speaker 1: we could own this one in a matter of seconds,
Speaker 1: indicated by a blue rectangle overlay on the feed that
Speaker 1: started to turn green. That blue rectangle streaked out from
Speaker 1: the branches, fired one shot, then kept going out over
Speaker 1: the ocean. The box self destructed before I gained full control,
Speaker 1: but not before I had an IP address. The whole
Speaker 1: thing happened so fast I had to rewind and watch
Speaker 1: in slow motion bullet to the tire time to drive
Speaker 1: him over the cliff. The city was a custom job.
Speaker 1: Someone had handbuilt that fucking thing just to kill Jonathan sandalson.
Speaker 1: My AI was smart enough not to drop my box
Speaker 1: down over the cliff and look for signs of life. Instead,
Speaker 1: it went into crisis mode, self destructed the Amazon over
Speaker 1: the ocean and locked down the whole box net to
Speaker 1: keep me from getting popped. For all the good it did,
Speaker 1: my hands shook made tapping out commands on my tablet
Speaker 1: all the harder. The IP address led to a VPN,
Speaker 1: a shitty one with known vulnerabilities and a tendency to
Speaker 1: take at least a day to wipe their logs, no
Speaker 1: matter what they claim in their ads. That gave me
Speaker 1: another IP address, that gave me a name. I set
Speaker 1: my search AI to docks the man while I looked
Speaker 1: for recent attacks by custom octocopters. I'm not the best
Speaker 1: of finding people and what they've done. I've got nothing
Speaker 1: on Marcel, but even still it didn't take long. Three
Speaker 1: weeks ago, someone box killed a judge in San Diego.
Speaker 1: There was video I clicked. I wish I hadn't Box
Speaker 1: killers are the enemy. Box trolling, at least leftist box
Speaker 1: trolling is a proud political tradition that goes back years. Okay,
Speaker 1: like maybe three or four years. Still, we don't kill people,
Speaker 1: don't risk killing people with autonomous or semi autonomous drones.
Speaker 1: That's the golden rule of box trolling. The other two
Speaker 1: rules don't snitch on your fellow box trollers and don't
Speaker 1: boxtroll people who aren't in the process of wrecking the world.
Speaker 1: Those were important too, but it ain't got nothing on
Speaker 1: the golden rule. We have a reputation to maintain, much
Speaker 1: like the reputation of these fine products and services that
Speaker 1: support this podcast. You're muted.
Speaker 2: I love as an audio engineer when I miss that
Speaker 2: very simple thing, Oh you're muted. I hope that these
Speaker 2: products and services are eventually dropped by Box to you
Speaker 2: and or me and or the listener.
Speaker 1: That's right, they will be if you insist. If you say,
Speaker 1: do not deliver this except by semi autonomous drone that
Speaker 1: it can then repurpose to harass CEOs. But in the
Speaker 1: like comments section, the like special part of the order,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, yeah, and we're back. I signed into
Speaker 1: work at Taco Dick's at seven fifty nine am. Jittery
Speaker 1: from caffeine intension. I get marked late if I'm not
Speaker 1: at least a minute early, and that pisses me off
Speaker 1: enough that I always sign in one minute early to
Speaker 1: the millisecond, whether or not I'm actually there. I usually am,
Speaker 1: though I'm too poor to risk getting fired. Working at
Speaker 1: an automated fast food joint is lonely, just me and
Speaker 1: the food robots and the customers. I prefer the food robots.
Speaker 1: I'd rather help a gualk box that's accidentally tracked itself
Speaker 1: into a corner than some hungover asshole who is upset
Speaker 1: because there are potatoes in his potato and rice burrito.
Speaker 1: Mostly people in boxes can figure that shit out themselves,
Speaker 1: and I'm extraneous, so at least half my day I
Speaker 1: sit around and listen to podcasts. That's what I was
Speaker 1: doing that morning, nine am, just listening to the history
Speaker 1: of the Maganestas in the Mexican Revolution, just trying to
Speaker 1: get through my day without thinking about the death of
Speaker 1: my mark when that voice of the state robot cut
Speaker 1: in on my headphones. While authorities have yet to issue
Speaker 1: an arrest warrant, they are asking for the public's help
Speaker 1: and identifying the hacker known as JJ Cameron. They pronounced
Speaker 1: he Hey wrong like JJ instead of he he simple
Speaker 1: as that, sudden as that I was a wanted girl. Fuck.
Speaker 1: When I first got into the whole hackedavist thing three
Speaker 1: years back, I'd started off small. Stealing four hundred thousand
Speaker 1: dollars wasn't nearly enough to bankrupt a for profit prison,
Speaker 1: let alone a holding company the size of Herculean Solutions
Speaker 1: Group with dozens of prisons and deportation and tournament camps
Speaker 1: to its name. When my friend Miguel got deported, and
Speaker 1: he'd spent all but the first two years of his
Speaker 1: twenty years living in the Land of the Free, the
Speaker 1: people who deported him took all of his cash. Is
Speaker 1: that legal? I'd asked him when he got online in
Speaker 1: Nogaulis and called me.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: They gave me a fucking bank card, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: work right and the balance is in half of what
Speaker 1: I had on me when they picked me up. Tell
Speaker 1: me about the bank card, like the details. That's how
Speaker 1: it had started four hundred thousand dollars, which was all
Speaker 1: I could grab easily filing a counterfeit request for middle
Speaker 1: management bonuses. I tried to give it all to Miguel,
Speaker 1: but he made me split it one hundred ways and
Speaker 1: give it to the next ninety nine deporties. He ran cross.
Speaker 1: I never heard from him again. I don't think he
Speaker 1: got caught. Marcel was good at keeping tabs on people
Speaker 1: and helped me write an AI to main a search
Speaker 1: for him in any new databasis of the dead or arrested.
Speaker 1: But I'm pretty sure he got spooked, went underground and
Speaker 1: stayed underground. It's funny how deep you can get buried
Speaker 1: without dying these days. Hey, what the hell am I
Speaker 1: gonna do? Maximum? Go to Mexico? Hey? If I'm in Mexico,
Speaker 1: when the Feds catch me, I don't know, they might
Speaker 1: just fucking box kill me. Maximum Iceland, heyy, I could
Speaker 1: definitely get to Iceland. They definitely still let American citizens
Speaker 1: in without a visa. Maximum, I'm just trying to help
Speaker 1: my favorite Forever House guest. Hey, I'm freaking the fuck out. Maximum.
Speaker 1: Use your AI. HEYY, it trolls people, I'd tell it
Speaker 1: to troll That's all it does. It's semi autonomous software,
Speaker 1: not a fucking oracle. Or something Star Trek shit, Maximum,
Speaker 1: cool because I didn't know that because I'm a total nube.
Speaker 1: Hey sorry, Maximum, you said you tracked down the person
Speaker 1: who did it. Hey, yeah, I'm about eighty percent. I
Speaker 1: got the guy. He's bad at OPSEC. Took me twenty minutes, ruthless, though.
Speaker 1: I don't think my life will get any better if
Speaker 1: he knows who I am. Maximum, What do you mean? Hey,
Speaker 1: here's a video content warning? Maximum? Did you know that
Speaker 1: dead men are more likely to float face down than
Speaker 1: dead women. It has to do with their center of
Speaker 1: gravity or something. They all sink at first, but later
Speaker 1: they float back up. Hey, Hey, you watch a video
Speaker 1: of a guy bleeding out in a swimming pool shot
Speaker 1: by a drone at Sunday barbecue and that's what you
Speaker 1: respond with? Maximum? Okay, yeah, the box Killer guys fucked up.
Speaker 1: He killed some dude in front of his screaming kids
Speaker 1: and shit. It's just that I wrote a paper on
Speaker 1: dead bodies floating when I was in college, and I
Speaker 1: thought it was kind of cool. Hey, why are we friends? Maximum?
Speaker 1: For you, I think it's because you need somewhere to live.
Speaker 1: For me, I'm guessing it's because you put up with me. Maximum. Anyway,
Speaker 1: your box killer is scary af and there's no reason
Speaker 1: why you should take the fall for what someone else did.
Speaker 1: You could snitch, hey, Hey, No Maximum?
Speaker 2: Why not?
Speaker 1: Hey? Because I am not a bad person? Maximum? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I get it. The second rule of box troll club
Speaker 1: is no snitching. But the first rule of box troll
Speaker 1: club is no killing. Hey. First, if I read this
Speaker 1: guy out, hell, if I get caught snooping on him
Speaker 1: at all, you'll be telling your roommates some neat new
Speaker 1: fact about what dead bodies do. Hey. Second, I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know this judge, but I know my mark.
Speaker 1: I promise you that that box killer man has less
Speaker 1: blood on his hands than that fucking dead CEO did.
Speaker 1: I'm not really sad Sandalson is dead. And when I'm
Speaker 1: being thrown under a bus, I don't try to find
Speaker 1: someone else to be under the bus instead. Maximum. Someone's
Speaker 1: going to go down for this, and it shouldn't be you. Hey,
Speaker 1: that's an idea. Maximum? What is maximum? What's the idea? Maximum?
Speaker 1: God damn it, I'm coming into your work. Yea. How
Speaker 1: hard it is to read transcriptive chat.
Speaker 2: A text message conversation?
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, he nailed it though, Thank you, thank you,
Speaker 1: Marcel Maximus Monroe has a way of drawing every eye
Speaker 1: in the room every time. It's that he doesn't stand.
Speaker 1: He he leans everywhere he goes. He drapes himself against
Speaker 1: walls and doorways and chairs. He's the kind of guy
Speaker 1: who looks like he's smoking even when he's not. It's
Speaker 1: not his fault, any of it. It's just who he is.
Speaker 1: He also won't let me call him three M, which
Speaker 1: is fucked up. He should let me call him three M.
Speaker 1: So what's your plan, he asked as he propped himself
Speaker 1: up on the end of the counter, and Taco Dix.
Speaker 1: My plan is to not talk about it here, I said.
Speaker 1: There weren't any customers, but that sure shit didn't mean
Speaker 1: no one was listening. Then can I get a French
Speaker 1: fri burrito? He asked, No, I answered, but I put
Speaker 1: in the order anyway. He went to a booth to eat,
Speaker 1: and I ran my tablet through a couple VPNs. I
Speaker 1: had the Taco Dix network pretty well owned, but you
Speaker 1: can never be too careful. It didn't take too long
Speaker 1: to set up Jonas James Abrams as if he was
Speaker 1: a real person and probably the one responsible for all
Speaker 1: my box NetCrime, a couple of forum hacked to insert
Speaker 1: backdated posts on above ground boxer sites, a few purchase
Speaker 1: records for drone equipment, and an IT profile on jobber.
Speaker 1: Everyone assumes that every hacker who has ever lived has
Speaker 1: an above ground career in it. Some of us just
Speaker 1: sell burritos because some of us are women who, even
Speaker 1: though were more or less white, have LATINX last names
Speaker 1: and federal records for computer crime going back to middle school.
Speaker 1: I used one of my custom sock puppet tools to
Speaker 1: develop Abram's personality and Internet history. He was disgruntled. He
Speaker 1: wasn't an activist. He was an IT guy at the
Speaker 1: end of his proverbial rope who'd applied to Herculean Solutions
Speaker 1: group and had been turned down and maybe taking it personally.
Speaker 1: And the activist angle of the trolling was just to
Speaker 1: cover it only took me an hour would have been less,
Speaker 1: but halfway through the food mover box dropped a sack
Speaker 1: of potatoes and I had to get down on all
Speaker 1: fours and rescue a couple dozen spuds that rolled underneath
Speaker 1: the fryer. The best part was Jonas Abrams was a
Speaker 1: fall guy who didn't exist. He was already underground. They'd
Speaker 1: never catch him. Eventually they might figure out he wasn't real,
Speaker 1: but he should buy me some time and plausible deniability.
Speaker 1: After I finished setting up the puppet, I ordered myself
Speaker 1: rice and beans and went to go join Marcel in
Speaker 1: his booth. He took out his phone. I did the same.
Speaker 1: Encryption is safer than voice. Maximum, it work out. Whatever
Speaker 1: you did, Newbgirl zero one, I think so, yeah, Maximum,
Speaker 1: nice handle, New Girl zero one. Whatever, Maximum, you never
Speaker 1: let me or anyone help any more, New Girl zero one,
Speaker 1: the fuck would you want in now? For it's over?
Speaker 1: And also, remember how I almost just got caught Maximum
Speaker 1: just saying you're never on the channels or nothing anymore.
Speaker 1: I glared at him for a minute, but he didn't
Speaker 1: do me the kindness of looking up from his phone
Speaker 1: to catch it. Maximum, I'm misshelping, that's all. Doing white
Speaker 1: hat shit is murder boring, And besides, I'm good at
Speaker 1: making people get underground or stay underground. You have box trolling,
Speaker 1: I have doxing and counterdoxing. I can help New Girl
Speaker 1: zero one. Working with other people is how you get caught.
Speaker 1: Maximum No. Working with the wrong people. Is how you
Speaker 1: get caught Just a couple of roommates sitting across from
Speaker 1: one another texting instead of talking. A common enough scene
Speaker 1: still probably didn't look good to the two Feds and
Speaker 1: suits who walked in. People who wear suits don't eat
Speaker 1: at Taco Dicks. They weren't caricatures of Feds. One man,
Speaker 1: one woman, dressed like gender was a thing that mattered.
Speaker 1: The man was white, real white, red hair, and shit.
Speaker 1: The woman might have been white and might not have been.
Speaker 1: They walked right up to the counter. I thought about
Speaker 1: just putting my head down, pretending I didn't work there,
Speaker 1: than leaving. Then I remembered I had a Taco Dick's
Speaker 1: visor on also that more information is always better than
Speaker 1: less information. I locked my phone in my tablet and
Speaker 1: went to stand behind the counter. Can I help you
Speaker 1: navigate the ordering system? I asked on script Jay Diaz.
Speaker 1: The woman asked she was going to be good cop.
Speaker 1: I could hear it in her voice. I scoured the
Speaker 1: proverbial hard drive of my mind for everything I'd read
Speaker 1: about interacting with federal agents. Can I help you navigate
Speaker 1: the ordering system?
Speaker 2: I asked.
Speaker 1: That's not lying, and it's not admission. We'd like to
Speaker 1: ask you a few questions, Miss Diaz. That was the
Speaker 1: man bad cop, his voice full of rocks and threat
Speaker 1: if you provide me with your information, I said, not
Speaker 1: doing a particularly good job of making eye contact. I'll
Speaker 1: have my lawyer contact you. That's also off a script,
Speaker 1: a different script. I was scared. I wanted to just
Speaker 1: play along, play dumb, start denying things. But everything I'd read,
Speaker 1: both anecdotes and data said STFU was always the safer
Speaker 1: bet for the innocent and guilty alike. We're investigating the
Speaker 1: drone related death of Jonathan Sandalson. Bad Cops said, do
Speaker 1: you know anything about that? If you provide me with
Speaker 1: your information, I'll have my lawyer contact you. The thing is,
Speaker 1: we're trying down a hacker with the name of Hey
Speaker 1: Hey Cameron. We think he made use of this network
Speaker 1: to construct another alias. I don't have a good poker face,
Speaker 1: and I don't play cards. I don't play liars when
Speaker 1: I play RPGs because I suck at it. But I
Speaker 1: kept myself from gasping, and for that I deserve an oscar.
Speaker 1: It's possible that this location's network was just a stop
Speaker 1: along the way, but analysis indicates it likely originated here.
Speaker 1: If you have any information that might be of use
Speaker 1: to us, I recommend you tell us sooner than later.
Speaker 1: Miss Diaz. Yes, he slid a business card across the counter,
Speaker 1: Dale Carter FBI. With that, they left Bach And this
Speaker 1: is a good point to tell you about our perennial
Speaker 1: sponsor of the show. Don't talk to cops.
Speaker 2: Amen, something I've learned in the past and learned doubly
Speaker 2: from you.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Thanks, here's those ads, Hi, Margaret Kiljoy here, boy,
Speaker 1: the world sure is a mess right now? Huh. Seems
Speaker 1: like every day there are more and more reasons to
Speaker 1: get out into the streets and protest. That's why when
Speaker 1: I get arrested, there's only one strategy. I trust. I
Speaker 1: shut the fuck up. I say, I would like to
Speaker 1: remain silent, I would like to talk to my lawyer,
Speaker 1: and then I shut the fuck up. In the United
Speaker 1: States of America, it's constitutionally protected and recommended by the
Speaker 1: National Lawyers Guild.
Speaker 2: That's s h u t t f u c k up.
Speaker 1: Once again, that's sahu t thche f uc k up.
Speaker 1: Because you can't talk yourself out of custody, but you
Speaker 1: can talk yourself into a conviction.
Speaker 3: Providing identification to law enforcement required in some states and
Speaker 3: situations giving them an address expedient in most circumstances. Never
Speaker 3: discuss the events leading to arrest with anyone except your lawyer, doctor,
Speaker 3: or therapist. Posting pictures of protests and actions on social
Speaker 3: media may lead to complications. If you have already talked
Speaker 3: to cops or experienced confusion about talking to cops, call
Speaker 3: your attorney immediately, as these may be signs of more
Speaker 3: serious legal problems. The concept of not talking to cops
Speaker 3: does not provide legal advice, and the foregoing statements are
Speaker 3: for informational purposes only. If you have specific legal questions,
Speaker 3: consult an attorney.
Speaker 1: And we're back when the Feds have a case, Marcel said,
Speaker 1: they now show up in uniform and shit. I was
Speaker 1: off shift and we sat in the park down by
Speaker 1: the South Congress Bridge. The bats would be out in
Speaker 1: a couple of hours, but it wasn't peak bat season,
Speaker 1: so the place wasn't mobbed with bat tourists. They don't
Speaker 1: even do it to get information out of people. They
Speaker 1: do it to stir people up, to scare people into
Speaker 1: coming forward or making some dumb move they don't need
Speaker 1: to scare confessions out of anyone. They've got a solid
Speaker 1: case against He was nervous, I realized, scared even Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was still leaning, even while sitting down. He was
Speaker 1: somehow leaning, but there was a tremor in his voice. Yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: I said, I mean he was right. I'd read about
Speaker 1: this shit. They're good at it scaring people. Hey, we're friends, right, sure,
Speaker 1: I said. It was hard to concentrate on anything but
Speaker 1: fear to be honest. You never do anything to hurt me, right,
Speaker 1: Marcel asked, Of course not. Then Marcel took a deep
Speaker 1: breath in. Maybe it'd be better if you found somewhere
Speaker 1: else to stay what. I'd been staying with Marcel in
Speaker 1: his roommates for a couple months, and it was generally
Speaker 1: agreed that as soon as a room opened up, I
Speaker 1: could move in. I paid my share of utilities earlier.
Speaker 1: You wanted to help. Now you're fucking kicking me out.
Speaker 1: My boyfriend's a coke dealer, for Christ's sake. We can't
Speaker 1: risk a police raid. I'll go to prison and a
Speaker 1: box killer. I don't know. I was making light of it,
Speaker 1: but I can't get that image out of my head.
Speaker 1: Whatever happened to them not having a case? I asked.
Speaker 1: I tried to keep my voice level because frankly, this
Speaker 1: was not a good conversation for us to be having
Speaker 1: in public. Them not having enough information, that's why they'd raid,
Speaker 1: he said. Fuck having emotions, Fuck having friends, Fuck everything.
Speaker 1: I'll leave, I said, but it's too late. You know that, right,
Speaker 1: You need to get everything sketchy out of the house.
Speaker 1: I stood up, grabbed my backpack. Hey Jay, Marcel said.
Speaker 1: He grabbed my leg. If you need anything, I don't know,
Speaker 1: money or something.
Speaker 2: Fuck you.
Speaker 1: I pulled my leg free and started out of the park.
Speaker 1: Eat a bag of rocks. You fucking cowered. Did you
Speaker 1: know that you can get fired by text? It turns
Speaker 1: out you can get fired by text. There was no
Speaker 1: proof of my misuse of the network, but hey, no union,
Speaker 1: I hear there's plenty of jobs in jail. There must
Speaker 1: have been a snitch net on top of the network
Speaker 1: at work. It's not standard Taco Dick's protocol, and I'd
Speaker 1: double and triple checked when I first started working there.
Speaker 1: The regional manager must have installed it after I'd convinced
Speaker 1: the gualk box to leave work and go join the
Speaker 1: Mayday Parade downtown and dispense free Guacamolean chips for demonstrators.
Speaker 1: I can't believe I hadn't checked again before making the alias.
Speaker 1: That's amateur shit. That's how they must have found me.
Speaker 1: Sure there was some plausible deniability. It could have been
Speaker 1: a customer, but I'd bet what little I owned that
Speaker 1: they were on to me. The whole he made use
Speaker 1: of the network thing was probably a faint designed to
Speaker 1: draw out a response, maybe to trick me into giving
Speaker 1: a little self assured smile. Killing a dude with a
Speaker 1: box is a life in prison thing, no parole, probably
Speaker 1: a communications management unit, to be honest, Even just my
Speaker 1: box trolling campaign was a life in prison thing. I'd
Speaker 1: driven one CEO into early retirement and another to move
Speaker 1: to the other side of the globe, and Herculean Solutions
Speaker 1: Group had roughly a third of the gross value it
Speaker 1: did three years ago. By my projections, they would have
Speaker 1: gone under if I'd gotten mister Sanderson to walk away.
Speaker 1: Destroying a major company through a campaign of harassment is
Speaker 1: definitely a life in prison thing. It's just politically motivated,
Speaker 1: premeditated murder. That's a for real terrorism thing. That's a
Speaker 1: whole different class of bad. That's a no matter how
Speaker 1: deep you go underground, they'll follow you to the ends
Speaker 1: of the earth thing. If they wanted to find me, though,
Speaker 1: I guess that would be easy. I pushed the dumpster
Speaker 1: up against the shitty cement facade, hopped up, and pulled
Speaker 1: myself onto the roof of Taco Dix. I had slept
Speaker 1: there before I met Marcel and the rest of his
Speaker 1: chicken shit friends. I'd sleep there again. Whenever I closed
Speaker 1: my eyes, I saw Sanderson drive off that cliff. I
Speaker 1: saw the blood in the pool and the screaming family.
Speaker 1: I saw it from drone operator's point of view. I'd
Speaker 1: be willing to bet my dreams would be worse if
Speaker 1: I'd had time to sleep and to dream. Plenty of
Speaker 1: time to sleep when I'm dead. Floating face up in
Speaker 1: the water, A handful of boxes buzzed overhead. Some of
Speaker 1: them had TSA running lights, which likely meant they were
Speaker 1: registered work boxes. Some of them didn't. Some of them
Speaker 1: had the amateur lights you're allowed to use under fifty
Speaker 1: feet altitude and in line of sight with the user.
Speaker 1: One of them ran dark when it went over I
Speaker 1: got chills. I'd always assumed that was a metaphor, but
Speaker 1: I shook down my spine. It was probably just kids.
Speaker 1: How many boxes had I run dark in middle school?
Speaker 1: How many boxes did I still run dark? It would
Speaker 1: be fine, I'd be fine living in fear as garbage.
Speaker 1: I got my tablet out and set down to work.
Speaker 1: Didn't use the Taco Dick's Wi Fi. I tethered to
Speaker 1: one of the burner cards. I kept around for my phone.
Speaker 1: Someone did this to me. It was time he and
Speaker 1: I talked. New Girl zero one. Damn you fucked me up?
Speaker 1: Something real, Neseramus Mill. I don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: New Girl zero one. Nicholas Sanchez, forty four years old,
Speaker 1: San Diego, resident of nineteen years, law abiding, tax pain productive,
Speaker 1: undocumented member of society, Low level office job volunteers at
Speaker 1: a community center called Noester Lugar, teaching English as a
Speaker 1: second language. Also pilot a handmaid not printed octocopter with
Speaker 1: an H and K G thirty six ce mounted to
Speaker 1: the bottom. Newgirl zero one? That enough? Or do you
Speaker 1: want me to send you a screencap of your driver's license?
Speaker 1: Neseramus Mill? How did you find me? New Girl zero one?
Speaker 1: Don't use VPNs with non vulnerabilities. Neaseramus Mill, what do
Speaker 1: you want? New Girl zero one? Fuck, that's a hard question.
Speaker 1: The Feds are up in my shit. They think I
Speaker 1: did it, and there's not an easy way to prove
Speaker 1: I didn't, Neseramus Mill. Besides ratting me out, New Girl
Speaker 1: zero one, I'm not fucking ratting anyone out. I just
Speaker 1: I just need help, your Helpnaseramus Mill, So you're blackmailing me,
Speaker 1: New Girl zero one. God damn it, I'm not ratting
Speaker 1: you out. I'm not blackmailing you. I'm not even fucking
Speaker 1: mad at you. I'm glad Sandalson is dead, which I
Speaker 1: thought i'd feel complicated about, but I don't. He was
Speaker 1: a monster and now he's dead and that's good, and
Speaker 1: I'm not sad. I'm just fucking scared. I'm scared of
Speaker 1: the Feds, and frankly, i'm kind of scared of Younaseramus Mill.
Speaker 1: You're the one tracking him, right, New Girl zero one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's called box trolling, Neseramus Mill. Does it work, New
Speaker 1: Girl zero one? Honestly it works better than killing people,
Speaker 1: because you kill someone, you make a martyr, break them down,
Speaker 1: and everyone just pities them. Or some shit, and everything
Speaker 1: they believe in loses credibility and power. I don't know
Speaker 1: that's the theory anyway. Naseramus Mill, I had to kill him.
Speaker 1: New Girl zero one, Whynaseramus Mill. He deported my son
Speaker 1: got a judge in his pocket who sends people his
Speaker 1: way for minor infractions, and any conviction at all was
Speaker 1: enough to get my kid deported. I told Sandalson. I
Speaker 1: left the message with the secretary that if my kid
Speaker 1: died on his way back home to the States, I
Speaker 1: would murder him. Border militia shot my son down in
Speaker 1: the desert, claimed he'd been working for the narcos, and
Speaker 1: they got away with it. New Girl zero one, fuck
Speaker 1: the guy in the pool that was the judge. I
Speaker 1: bet why the Sunday barbecue Maaseramus Mill dead is dead.
Speaker 1: His family will mourn him either way, New Girl zero one.
Speaker 1: This is why you don't fucking kill people. You break
Speaker 1: them or drive them into hiding, render them ineffective. It's
Speaker 1: not just an ethics thing, it's an efficacy thing. That
Speaker 1: dude's kids are going to fucking go to the end
Speaker 1: of the earth to haunt you, well me maybe, and
Speaker 1: or dedicate their lives to him, making other immigrants lives miserable.
Speaker 1: Cycle continues, Naseramus Mill. I cannot control his kids nor
Speaker 1: their reactions. I control only me. I knew Sandalson wouldn't
Speaker 1: believe me if my threat even reached his ears. But
Speaker 1: I said what I said, and I'm a man of
Speaker 1: my word. New Girl zero one, all right, Naseramus Mill.
Speaker 1: The border militia camp was harder. You can't get enough
Speaker 1: explosive onto a quad copter. I had to rig one
Speaker 1: of their own trucks to blow. How to do the
Speaker 1: work in person? Sanderson was the hardest, though, couldn't get
Speaker 1: near him with a drone. I guess thanks to you,
Speaker 1: New Girl zero one. Why are you telling me this?
Speaker 1: Weren't you worried I would blackmail you, Maseramus Mil. At
Speaker 1: this point it might be important to be understood than
Speaker 1: to live. New Girl zero one. What was his name,
Speaker 1: Messermus Mill? What New Girl zero one? Your kid? What
Speaker 1: was his name? Master Ramus Mill? Daniel, New Girl zero one?
Speaker 1: Thats fucking rough, nas Ramus Mill fedser after you? New
Speaker 1: Girls zero one? Yeah, they think I did it, Neseramus Mill.
Speaker 1: I'll turn myself in New girlszrera one. What no why
Speaker 1: I I'll be real. I was sort of hoping you'd
Speaker 1: say that when I talk to you, but but now, hey,
Speaker 1: don't do that, Naseramus Mill. It's fine if I go down.
Speaker 1: No one expects to survive a killing spray New Girls
Speaker 1: zero one. See, now that's a better idea, Neseramus Mill.
Speaker 1: It's better if I die New Girls zero one. No, no,
Speaker 1: just that people think you're dead, as long as we
Speaker 1: can do it without killing anyone else, Maseramus Mill. You
Speaker 1: know how to do that New Girls here one No,
Speaker 1: but I know someone who does, and that's where we're
Speaker 1: gonna leave it today.
Speaker 2: WHOA talk about chills down my spine when you get
Speaker 2: to what was his name? Daniel? Yeah, wow, that was gripping.
Speaker 1: Thanks.
Speaker 2: I really love your stories, Margaret. I think you know
Speaker 2: you are such a good writer. And also you write
Speaker 2: in this way that feels super approachable and real and
Speaker 2: just like immediately understandable, in a way that I feel
Speaker 2: like sci fi really requires in my experience. Yeah, sci
Speaker 2: fi often like requires a sci fi fan who's like
Speaker 2: ready to grabble on to something, who's ready to like
Speaker 2: take on a thousand terms and lore a thousand terms exactly.
Speaker 2: But everything was so just like natural and easily understandable
Speaker 2: and translatable and real. It was really really really great storytelling.
Speaker 1: Thank you. I really appreciate that. Course, I try very
Speaker 1: hard specifically with that issue. Actually when I write where
Speaker 1: I'm like, okay, I need a term for what they're
Speaker 1: doing total, you know, but like I'm going to do
Speaker 1: it as legibly as I can.
Speaker 2: I loved it. There was a bunch of terms that
Speaker 2: I wrote down and I just thought were perfect. First
Speaker 2: of all, dumb dumb car was great. It's just like,
Speaker 2: as you know, especially now when it's like, oh, we
Speaker 2: can't get used cars because we don't have enough micro
Speaker 2: trips for cars, and it's like, well, better to have
Speaker 2: a dumb dumb car. I guess, yeah, totally personal emp
Speaker 2: I loved. I was like, of course that is for
Speaker 2: sure right on the horizon. Yeah, Box for Drone is great.
Speaker 2: I love that. Especially the comparison to worker drones was great.
Speaker 1: Thanks.
Speaker 2: Also, I was getting a lot of the struggle that
Speaker 2: our main character is going through, or rather what they're
Speaker 2: you know, talking about in their goal of taking down
Speaker 2: sandalson gave me a lot of like cop city vibes
Speaker 2: right now and the whole box trolling gave me kind
Speaker 2: of real mud reaching vibes. It's like the idea of,
Speaker 2: you know, just wearing someone down until they're ineffective. I
Speaker 2: was like, that is the move. I think that is
Speaker 2: super effective and very well illustrated by you.
Speaker 1: Thank you. It's funny. I hadn't even thought of that,
Speaker 1: but I mean that's the strategy that like, you know,
Speaker 1: the forest offense stuff that I came up in is
Speaker 1: like you just you just make it not worth their time.
Speaker 1: You know, you're like, oh, you want to log this
Speaker 1: old growth for us? That's going to be such a
Speaker 1: pain in the ass, isn't it.
Speaker 2: That's going to be such a pain.
Speaker 1: We used to go to timber sales auctions where they
Speaker 1: would sell off public lands for cutting, and if it
Speaker 1: was an old growth sale, we would stand outside and
Speaker 1: if the name of the sale was like solo, let's
Speaker 1: say like you buy solo, you buy us? Is the chant,
Speaker 1: and it's just like, look, is it worth it? Like
Speaker 1: we're gonna make your life such a pain in the button.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're gonna make it miserable. All right.
Speaker 1: Well, if people want to hear part two, they're going
Speaker 1: to have to wait until next Sunday, unless it's the future,
Speaker 1: in which case you can just press next or whatever button.
Speaker 1: I used to know about how computers work back when
Speaker 1: I wrote this, I'm not sure I do anymore.
Speaker 2: Who knows how they're work anymore? Who knows they're double
Speaker 2: tapping on their AirPod to skip to the next whatever.
Speaker 1: See y'all next week.
Speaker 2: It could Happen here as a production of pool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 2: coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
Speaker 2: find sources for It could Happen Here, Updated monthly at
Speaker 2: coolzonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.