It Could Happen Here - CZM Book Club: "Confession to a Dead Man" by Margaret Killjoy

Episode Date: February 25, 2024

Margaret reads Gare one of her stories, set in the world of Penumbra City.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, five-year-old Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez was found off the coast of Florida. And the question was, should the boy go back to his father in Cuba? Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home, and he wanted to take his son with him. Or stay with his relatives in Miami? Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jacqueline Thomas,

the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while running errands or at the end of a busy day. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Listen to Black Lit on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. AT&T, connecting changes everything. Hey, I'm Gianna Pertenti.

And I'm Jamee Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. If you're early in your career, you probably have a lot of money questions. So we're talking to finance expert Vivian Tu, a.ian Tu, aka Your Rich BFF, to break it down. Looking at the numbers is one of the most honest reflections of what your financial picture actually is. The numbers won't lie to you. Listen to this week's episode of Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Cool Zone Media.

Book club, book club, book club. I totally forgot. I totally forgot. Book club, book club. Book club, book club. It's been way too long. Yeah, no, it's fine. Welcome to Cool Zone Media Book Club, the only book club where you don't get to read the book ahead of time because of the way that the podcast world works.

I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and my guest today is Gare. Hi, Gare. Hello. Cool Zone Media Book Club is where every Sunday I read you a story. That's really kind of the whole of it. I read you a story. That's really kind of the whole of it. But this week,

we have a story by perhaps the best storyteller of our generation. A once-in-a-millennia talent. This woman is a humble woman. She is a podcaster and an author by the name of Margaret Kiljoy. Okay, all right. I was really wondering

who you're going to pull out there and be like, who does Margaret think is the best storyteller of this generation? Oh, okay, all right. Yeah, no, I don't know who I would actually say for this generation. If it was the last generation, I'd just assume I would be talking about Butler or Le Guin. Sure.

No, I'm going to read you one of my stories. All right. Because I've got a new tabletop role-playing game out called Penumbra City and this story is called Confession to a Dead Man and I wrote it because I wanted to write in that world. The whole world actually of Penumbra City started off me writing fiction before I later turned it into RPG stuff.

Nice. But I can't remember. Do you play RPGs much? Yeah. Yeah. I play an RPG now and then. Were you? We played in South Island. Yeah. Okay. That's what I thought't remember. Do you play RPGs much? Yeah, yeah. I play an RPG now and then. We played in South Island. Yeah, okay.

That's what I thought. Yeah, I played a really obnoxious wizard. Oh, yeah. I don't even remember what podcast feed that's on to send people to. It's probably the Strangers Untangled. Strangers ones, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you want to hear me and Gare and Robert and someone else do a James,

James, maybe. Ooh, I don't know. I don't want to, I totally forget. It's been way too long, but it could be James.

It might've been James. Yeah. If you want to hear us play escape from Insel Island, you can somehow find that on the podcast feed, but this game is a different game. It's called Penumbra city, but this isn't the game. This is a story

and if you don't like RPGs, dear listener, don't worry because the Kickstarter did really well so I'm on the hook to write a whole novella in this world but that doesn't come out yet. The story, however, has.

What type of world is this that we're going to be delving into it is a roughly diesel punk with magic alternate world where god kings rule over the world and use people like pawns and people are running around with swords and armor as well as bolt action weapons and there's occultists and radio coexisting occultists and radio yeah isn't that just what we're doing right now well yeah podcasting is not really radio but yeah no but this isn't the furthest thing from that yeah okay okay that, okay. That's true. No, see, you've got it all wrong, Electi said,

laughing a little even though rainwater dripped down on her through the leaky carriage roof, even though she couldn't reach the drops to wipe them off because of her handcuffs, even though the cheap lawman's carriage hit yet another pothole and her face cracked against the wood of the door. I didn't kill that guy. He was dead when I got there. No? Yeah, I mean, I would have killed him. Tried to, even. Just missed my chance. The man sitting on the bench opposite of her just stared, waiting for her to say more.

He was wiry. So was his beard. He was nearly enveloped by his thick wool overcoat, but a hint of his pale gold uniform stuck out near his collar. Electi could just make out the insignia on his lapel, a sword crossed with a shepherd's crook. It's a cute name, Electi said. I'll give you that. What? The King's Boys and Girls Club. It's a cute name. Like you're just a bunch of bootlicking, murderous cops.

Was the irony intentional when you came up with the name? I don't know, the man said. It was before my time. Maybe. That's not what matters. What matters? Electi asked. Blood was starting to trickle down from her right nostril. It tickled. What happened tonight is what matters, the man said. If you didn't kill the reverend who did tell us what you know we'll let you walk oh honey electy said i don't like when you lie to me who says i'm lying the man asked if you didn't kill him we'll just hold you at hazard long enough to get everything sorted let you go the only thing we agree on, Electi said, licking the blood off of her upper lip, is that you're going to let me go. The road sounds changed from mud to gravel to cobble,

and Electi looked out the tiny window. She couldn't make anything out through the rain and grime, but she knew they must have made it to Penumbra North. At this snail's pace, it was another 30 or 40 minutes before they reached Hazard Penitentiary. Electi and her friends didn't spend much time in Penumbra North. Where the streets are made out of street and the people are made out of misplaced loyalty, she said aloud. What? Nothing. Tell me what happened, the cop said again.

Yeah, fine, she said. No reason not to. Besides, she'd missed her therapy appointment that week because her therapist Joan had been on a bender with a squatter from the South Docks, the dog girl. What was his name? Dog girls all had stupid names like wrench or carburetor or petunia or whatever. Petunia, that was it. Had a nice bike. Didn't even explode very often, so he claimed. He was cute. Couldn't blame Joan for missing the session. Yeah, fine, I'll tell you what happened, but only because I'm gonna kill you. So it started like every good evening does, at a party thrown by the anarchists. The fun anarchists, of course. The Irene, not the boring anarchists, the Corsorians. Of course,

the don't-call-us anarchist anarchists from the North Docks who are even more boring, the industrial workers of Harrow, not them. It started at a party. It was a good party, mostly on a rooftop, one of those weird theaters in the shadow of Triumph Tower. So you've got the sunset coming pretty through the ash haze over the factories, and you've got the stupid glow from the stupid silver church, which I do not like admitting is pretty.

Some of the clackers were up for their warrens, trying out those bulbs you run electric through and they glow all handsome and light the evening up and most of them don't even explode. There was a troop over from the dead quarter doing a pantomime, plus half an orchestra from the Alps with their heirloom cellos and shit.

So I'm having a good time because I love all that shit. I love the shitty mushroom beer that's all we get to drink because you're God's dumb war as all the farm farms blown up and A, forbid he bother importing some barley. I love the potluck snacks everyone brings.

Who knew you could fry a rat in so much oil that it tasted good? Who knew you could grow hot peppers on the top of Triumph Tower where a little bit more sun peaks in? You know what I love the most about all these parties, though? I love that we fucking have fun, despite how hard you and your immortal bag of dicks of a boss god try to make us suffer. I love that we still have music, even if we barely have food. I love when you fail to take things like that away from us. I know what you're going to say to that. You're not trying to make us suffer.

You're trying to, like, what, bring us back into his grace so we can win the war, rebuild the farms, and go back to living boring lives of quiet mediocrity like we supposedly had 70 years ago, right? Get people trusting that money will feed us instead of us feeding each other however we can. Return the flock to the fold. Well, you got to get a new metaphor because there's no more flocks of sheep anywhere anymore because they all got slaughtered for food 10 years ago, and all of their fields have been bombed to shit for half my life. But anyway, the party. Party good. That's not the part you want to hear about, I guess. Who am I to deny you your last wishes? You want to hear about the Reverend Lemon Hend the 14th. You want to hear about who it was who

decided his ear would look better with an itty-bitty teeny-tiny spike stuck into it until it hit the brain. I mean, let's be honest, lots of us would have decided that. But you want to hear about the guy who actually pulled it off, who wasn't me. So I'm at the party. I'm there with my friends. Malice, she was a Marine before she went AWOL, kept her armor and her trauma pretty

useful in a fight which is good because she gets us into a lot of them sani the rat king god they're weird most people who use they them pronouns use them singularly right sani uses them plural see a has the royal we since he's a god king he says we do not approve of you lot having fun in the one and only life you have on this planet. We are not amused by your mockery. And all of that, right? Sani uses the, uh, the vermin we? When you talk about Sani, you're talking about the human kid buried under all those rats.

But you're talking about the rats, too. Love, Sani. And Losa was there, of course. Honestly, I'm not sure about Losa. Are we even friends anymore? We hang out together, sure, do crimes, but we haven't talked in ages. Not like really talked. God, you know, it really feels good to just get to open up about all this stuff. Say all the stuff that usually just lives inside my head.

I really appreciate that. I appreciate you. I just want you to know that. You're going to be inside kind of a living nightmare soon enough, which you deserve because you're trying to lock me into a cage. But I just want you to know that you're appreciated as a person, even if not as a cop. Lose is a patch worker. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking back alley surgeon who flays corpses and mixes up fungal paste and sews the skin of dead people onto living people

in order to heal wounds. You're thinking a scary bitch with a scalpel who doesn't think a thing about ripping the bones out of living people. You're thinking right. Losa's a scary bitch who does all those things. Also a hell of a dice player, a good cook, and would you believe it, an honest-to-a the vegetarian?

And we really did used to be close. I was at all three of her weddings and the four result in funerals. But after that time in the basement of the club fighting all those giant centipedes, it just hasn't been the same. Plus, I think she's jealous of how close I've gotten with Malice. Or maybe it's the other way around. Right, so the four of us are at this party, and I'm just trying to have a good time. But Malice is all, we need a mission, let's do a mission. And Losa is kissing up to her about it, so she's like, yes, look at me, I'm Losa. I will temporarily pretend I share your ethical framework and worldview in order to get closer to you and drive a wedge between you and Electi.

Or at least that's what I assume she said, because suddenly she wants a mission too. Guys, can't the mission sometimes just be get drunk and maybe high and maybe just Abe forbid get laid? No, no, no. It's time to do crimes for the good of humanity or whatever. I look at Sani, but they're just feeding bits of mushroom to those rats and their eyes start spinning and they whispered, whatever happens, we're in. Just like you can be in on these sweet, sweet deals of capitalism that interrupts this podcast. Here we go. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search,

better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible don't get me wrong though i love technology i just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people i swear to god things can change if we're loud enough so join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could

be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. Hola mi gente, it's Honey German and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again. The podcast where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture, musica, peliculas, and entertainment with some of the biggest names in the game. If you love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities, artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you.

We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral.

Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez.

Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home

and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back.

And we're back. So that's how I knew I wasn't going to get laid at the party, because every single one of those bitches would have died a thousand times over if it weren't for my spookiest saving them with a well-timed curse or a jaunt into the ether. We find a guy with the Arani who knows everyone. I guess that's repetitive, all the Arani know everyone. We find a guy. He's cute. But I'm not allowed to see if he's down to fuck, because we've got work to do for some dumb reason.

And he says there's this elbow guard. I know you know what I'm talking about. I know you care more about that fucking thing than you do about the life of poor dear Reverend Lamin Hend the 950th of his name or whatever. I know that's why you followed us. Anyway, the cute guy, he tells us and everyone else at the party besides about this elbow guard. Holy to the outsiders, ancient, made out of granite and quartz in the ceremonial style. Let's see if I get this chain of events right. Lamin had this tenant, an old outsider lady who'd gotten tired of sleeping in a crypt in the dead quarter and had tried to do things proper and get a room in North Penumbra. Only now there's no money

and everything is favors and reputation and shit. Mr. Hend doesn't really like un-prestigious guests. So he got it into his head that she owed him something. So he marches into her house and picks up the most valuable thing he sees,

like the prick that he is. The elbow guard. He takes it to the esteem to see what it's worth. Only I think a skip saw that go down and now the whole city knows. They especially know that there's an inscription in the damn thing, and half of it is written in the language outside,

and half of it is written in whatever fuck weird language related dole penumbra that no one can read that's scrawled across the whole undercity. So it's valuable to lots of people. So first, yeah, the idea is that we're going to steal the damn thing. Get it back to the outsiders where it belongs. It's just the right thing to do. And sure, none of us would mind that they'd be grateful and maybe let us use their gunsmithies sometimes. Then Losa though, see, she grew up on the streets mostly because her mom was from Penumbra North, like she's fourth generation patchworker. You see where I'm going with this? You remember when your little king's boys and girls club rounded up the

patchworkers, called them unholy, drove them out of your territory? What was that, 10 years ago? When, you know, Losa was 10? Well, guess who her mom's landlord had been? Guess who had told you all about Losa's mom in the first place. Lemon fucking Hind the 14th. Sorry, Reverend Lemon Hind the fucking 14th. He ain't so revered as his title implies, not by most of the city. Losa says her bit about what happened to her, and what do you know, half the party has stories about this guy. Hired some thugs, not you, other thugs, to blow up a pie shop run by the Lords of the New Order that was competing with the one he had interest in. Ain't too good to the people

he hires, either. It was one of those thugs he'd hired who was at the party. Turns out Hand had tossed him to the Lords as soon as it was convenient. His friends rescued him. Funny thing about friends. It's nice to have friends. Anyway. More and more

people saying this shit. He's a bad landlord, a shitty boss, awful to the people he fucks. He's just, this is not a redeeming bone in that man's body. So pretty quick, we go from let's rob the guy to let's kill the guy. You know how that goes. And a couple of dog girls are around with their bikes and one of them even has a sidecar and they figure, what the hell? Why not go for a joyride, or I guess a kill ride up to Penumbra North? Find this guy's house, swap out his insides for his outsides, grab the stolen elbow guard, wham, bam, thank you, ma'am. All in a good night's work.

Nope. You fucks are on the prowl. Good thing the dog girls are smarter than you lot. The Voyager patrols like six times. We stop in an alley by the canal, hop up onto the second floor balcony. The door was wide open. How the hell Malice climbs up in all that powered armor, dragging a goddamn boiler,

the world will never know. I swear to A, I've never seen her strength fail her. And here's where it gets good, right? Here's where you start to care. The damn man is already dead. Like he's sleeping, except there's blood on the pillow. I know a thing or two about a thing or two, and while everyone else is just like,

what the fuck happened here? I can tell them that like... Okay, bear with me. You know that the world is made up of three worlds, right? I know Aeth tries to keep you in the dark on basic cosmology, but there's three worlds, form a triangle. We live on the material. Then there's the ether, which is, I guess, where you could call the angels, that's where they live.

Then there's the rot with, you know, demons, right? We touch both other planes, and each of those other planes touches ours and the other one. It's a triangle, not your dumb hell-earth-heaven linear hierarchy you've been lied to. So us humans live on the material, right? But we're made out of stuff that transfers from one to the other. What you call your higher soul and your lower soul, which are dumb words for it, by the way. I say it's a gape and thelema. And maybe those are dumb words for it too, who knows. When you die, your stuff moves on. A gape goes in the circle clockwise, heads over to the ether, till it heads over the rot, till it heads on back to the material.

Thelema goes counterclockwise, over to the rot, then the ether, then back to here. You get the idea. What has this got to do with ear spikes? See, back before your fucking god kings ascended, people here knew a thing or two about the planes, and more people than just us weirdos could communicate across those borders. And those people, whose name is lost to us probably forever, in my society, the hermetic order of nothing, we call them the forgotten people,

which is not super original, but it is descriptive. Those people, the forgotten people, they used to kill people by jamming spikes into their ear. That's my point. It's kind of classy. And not much mess. Didn't even wake the guy up. You should try it some... No, actually, well, not you. You shouldn't try it. You're a cop. You actually shouldn't kill people or exist. I'd say quit your job and find new friends, but it's too late for that. So there we are, and I'm trying to explain Agape and Thelema to everyone, and they're kind of ignoring me because everyone does when I talk about that stuff.

And Malice is looking through the guy's bedroom and there's like a dumb goddamn museum in there, complete with stolen artifacts behind glass and plaques. There's an old rusty saber from Kirik and a Hrothian prayer book and oh wait, get this. There's a human skull labeled as having belonged to a chieftain of Sor. Can you believe it? You're just staring at me. You don't get it. Sor doesn't have chieftains.

It never did. The whole country is built on a plateau no one was able to reach until the god king Sor lifted his people up with his mighty magic or whatever. Come on. Their whole religion is based on that. How do you not know that? Sor is even friends with Aeth right now. You should know that. And there's a with Aeth right now. You should know

that. And there's a glass case where the elbow guard should be, but of course it's empty because someone stole it, probably whoever ear-spiked our good friend, and because of course the plaque is just a handwritten piece of paper because there hadn't been enough time to find an engraver. It says, elbow guard. Probably important. We're all having a laugh about the chieftain's skull until a rat runs in, looks up at Sani, and Sani looks down at the rat, and they turn to us and tell us that people are on their way. A lot of people. That's the good thing about having a swarm of rats at your command. What kind of people? Losa asked.

They don't know. They're fucking rats, Sani says. Only Sani probably doesn't curse when they said it. We should get the fuck out of here. Again, probably get the fuck out of here. Again, probably without the fuck. It's hard not to cuss when I'm in your shitty fucking carriage. Do you people not know how to fix a roof? You keep it shitty just so your guests

have it worse, but you have it worse too, you asshole. You're just making the fucking world worse. God, I can't wait to get out of here and kill you. My nose is fucking bleeding and I can can't see shit, and my hands are cramping. Anyway, so we fuck off, right? Back out the window. The dog girls who drove us there, they're gone.

I guess they saw which way the wind was blowing, and those bikers like some of us alright, but not enough to fight off the cops and risk getting killed or sent to hazard. That's how we figure, whoever's coming, it's probably you all. Malice wants to stay and shoot you all with her bolt thrower, which sounds like a reasonable plan to me. But Sani and Losa don't like it, so we break into the empty house next door and lay low. Sure enough, it's you and your buds who show up.

You probably remember this part. You go in, search the house, find the body. Me, what I do, is I make sure my friends are keeping watch, and I pull out the candles and the incense and the chalk and the charcoal, and I get myself a circle drawn up on the wood floor in the empty house, and I tie a silk rope around my waist, and I project myself into the ether. Or, to be more accurate, some portion of my agape crosses over while my body stays put, and I'm walking around like a ghost through walls and shit tethered to my body by that rope.

I pop over next door and guess whose essence is still lingering, not dissolved yet into the ether proper. Reverend Lemon Hen the fucking 14th. That's whose. It's funny, because that's how I know you were one of the kingsmen who showed up because I was in the room with you while you were investigating. Good eye catching that feather on the ground, by the way. We'd miss that. Lamin is standing there, looking all angelic and blissed out like every other dead prick, and he seems surprised that I can see him.

Asks if I'm an angel sent to help usher him into heaven for his lifetime of good deeds. So I look at him, and I've never claimed to be an honest girl. Well, I mean, I've claimed it, but it's never been true. I look at him and I say, yep, that's me. Seraphic as hell. Just need to tie up some loose ends, get everything sorted with your paperwork. Tell me, in your own words, how you died. He tells me his story, which wasn't too long.

He went to bed, same as normal, then woke up feeling something weird, flicked his eyes open, saw a man, gaunt in age, leaning over him. Pale skin, like the lamprey men. Then he caught just a moment's glance, just like the, saw some horror the likes of which he'd never dreamed. Some kind of taxidermy bird gone wrong six feet tall feathered beaked eyes everywhere across his body what was it he asked like i had all the answers i did this time though and i wanted to be a dick to him and make

something up but i thought you know what this guy's like soul or whatever he's about to disintegrate into the ether and he's never going to experience anything ever again. And it looks like I've got a soft spot for folks who are already dead, or like in your case, basically already dead. So I tell him, and this is where I cut to ads, but I think we're going to run our don't talk to cops ad because this is a whole story about someone who talks to cops. You shouldn't do this. This is bad. So here's an ad about not talking to cops And then if any other ads Run it was a terrible mistake

The Washington State Highway Patrol Yeah totally Just all sides of the picture You know We believe in Something We believe in something Yeah not sure what These. We believe in something. Yeah.

Not sure what. These things. We believe in these sponsors. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how Tech's Elite

has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field,

and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge, and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough, so join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry, and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com.

Hola, mi gente. It's Honey German, and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again, the podcast where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture, musica, peliculas, and entertainment with some of the biggest names in the game. If you love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities, artists and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you we're talking real conversations with

our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators sharing their stories, struggles and successes you know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love each week we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries.

Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean.

He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian.

Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation.

Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, the Elian Gonzalez story as part of the My Cultura podcast network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back.

And this is what you want to know too. You and Lemon have got a lot in common, actually. I tell him that he's describing a demon. Sort of. I'm telling him he saw a getasist above him. You think us occultists are rare and scary, those of us who fuck with the ether? Oh, you're going to love the getasists.

They fuck with the rot. I tell Lemon Hen that this guy built a mannequin out of dead animals and then ripped open a portal into the rot and let a little bit of that weird shit that lives over there into the material to animate his little death puppet. Which means he likely made some kind of deal. Like, you serve me for a week, then you're free to go do whatever you want in the material,

which means the city is actually in for some bad luck soon, because that fucking thing is still out there. And that's your fault. You know that? People you claim to protect are gonna die. Anyway, he tells me about the Gattasus and I tell him,

thanks buddy, you'll be whisked off soon enough. Don't worry about the slow disintegration of what's left in your mind. All part of the process. I don't tell him about the angels that are gonna be eating his soul, same as Magity the corpse. I just pop back over to my body. Losa and Malice are playing dice. Sani is talking to their rats.

I guess you could say talking to themselves. I tell them what's up and Sani's like, oh, weird dead bird creature? Rats can track that. Off we go. And you know where we went, because you tracked us. Ave only knows how. You bastards are good at tracking people, I'll give you that.

All the way through Penumbra South, around Triumph Plaza, down to the South Docks. The rain picked up and didn't help our mood and it took us half the night to get where we were going, to a little run-down shack up against a pier with someone muttering inside. So we're all set to kick in the door. I've got a bomb out and everything, cigarette lit and a holder in my mouth. When Malice says, you guys, I don't think this is how we should approach this situation. And if Malice doesn't think direct physical confrontation is the best solution, then it means it's really not the right solution because she solves almost everything with violence. Soon we scoot on over in the dark under the pier and back out comes the candles and the chalk and

the rope and I'm off to the ether for a second time that night. You know how tiring that is? Whatever. Hop on into the shack. There's this guy. There's the demon. They're talking. Demons talk weird. Imagine like eight people talking at once saying almost the same thing but not quite. But the core of it is pretty banal. The goddess is a spy for Hearn is going to sell them the elbow guard. That's it. Then the demon says, there's someone outside, and the two rush out the door, and I turn around to rush back into my body,

but I don't even make it through the wall before I black out. And guess where I wake up? Here, with you. Electi was silent for a while after telling her story, waiting for the lawman to say something or react in any way. He didn't. A fear came over her for the first time.

She was certain that, whatever else, her friends were out there in the city looking for her, tracking the carriage. They would call in some favors, and any minute now, a crew on dog's wheels were going to roll up, engines roaring, and Malice was going to use that big gun of hers to set her free. She just thought it would have happened by now. She hadn't figured she'd reached the end of this story. The cop must have been able to see her confidence drain away because a smile slowly worked its way across his face. She couldn't give up, not on her friends. Yeah, they'd let her get captured in the first place,

but they must have been busy dealing with the spy and his demon. Any minute now. She sighed, leaned her head against the window as rain dropped down on her cheek. Next time, she was going to go to the party alone, and the only call to adventure she was going to answer was the adventure of getting laid. Or maybe, and she knew she was getting real desperate and sad when her mind went into this, the darkest of corners, maybe she should ask Losa back out. Yeah, they hadn't been good for each other, but whoever was. Given up then, the lawman finally asked. She sat upright and glared. The carriage slowed to a halt. She sat upright and glared.

The carriage slowed to a halt. Looks like we're here, he said. Then, blessedly, a foot-long steel bolt shot through the sidewall of the carriage and impaled the man through the chest, pinning him to the far wall. Blood came to his mouth, dripping into his gray beard, and he looked down with surprise and horror. A scream broke through sudden and shocking silence. Electi had heard that scream before. That was the scream of a man covered in rats. Then the scream stopped, replaced with a gurgling.

That was the noise of a throat cut with a scalpel. The driver. You do love me, Electi said, as the door to the carriage was wrenched off its hinges. What? Malice asked, tossing the steel door aside. Losa and Sani peered in from behind her. I said, what took you so long? Electi lied. Oh, Malice said, looking genuinely contrite. The demon and the spy slowed us down. They got away too with the elbow guard. Losa stepped into the carriage, pulled out a scalpel, and picked the handcuffs open. Thank you, Electi whispered into Losa's ear, where, pulled out a scalpel, and picked the handcuffs open. Thank you, Electi whispered into Losa's ear, where the others couldn't hear it. Fuck, I was so scared.

Me too, Losa whispered. All I could think was that what if I never saw you again? I'm sorry we let them get you. They met eyes for half a moment, then drifted away. All right, you dumb bitches, Electi said, standing up, glancing over quickly at the still-dying cop on the bench across from her. Let's go steal back an artifact. That's the end of the story.

That was fun. Thanks. I picked you because I think you're the only person I know who will know if I pronounced Agape or Thelema right or wrong you did not pronounce thelema right but that's okay thelema is that thelema okay okay but uh all the characters do do sound like people i have known in my life yeah i'm like ah i see I see what Margaret's pulling from here. Yeah.

No, even just the way they talk. Like, oh, yeah, you're obviously copying someone's very specific speech patterns. Yeah. Totally. Yeah, absolutely. That was fun. The word flow was very nice to listen to. Thanks.

Yeah, it was fun to do the like... I tried writing. It's actually very hard to write D&D style campaign things like adventures, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, you know, it'll never... It's always sort of a compromise. It's just a different way of storytelling. And so I really like doing it in first person so a compromise. It's just a different way of storytelling. And so I really like doing it in first person so that I could be like a little bit more free form.

Also, Sophie has been asking me to do a love story with this show for a while. And I've been struggling to find a good love story. And so that's part of why I chose this one. Okay, okay. Sophie, this is the love story that you asked for. Oh, yeah. It was quite fun.

No, it really did sound like someone's like, a very specific person's conversational flow. Yeah. Either with them just talking to themselves or just going on a mini rant. They just like talking to themselves or just like going on like a mini rant they just like keep talking yeah totally it's like yeah that's that is kind of how someone sounds but they just like keep just like keep going well and in this case it's like she thinks that she's gonna get interrupted any second and then she's like yeah yeah fuck why am i still

going like yeah and probably like slowly becoming aware that talking to the cop might not have been the right move. Yeah. This was perhaps a mistake. Yeah. Yeah, that was quite fun. The rat person kind of terrifies me, but that's fine.

That's all right. If you want to hear Jamie Loftus play a Rat King character, Jamie Loftus is on, if you search Penumbra City on YouTube, you'll find an example play of an adventure where one of the other co-writers of the game, Inman, runs a game for us. And I actually don't even remember what my character is, but I remember that Jamie's character is a rat king. I do remember a while ago, Jamie getting really into the rat king. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. That's a solid Jamie character. Yeah. Malice is interesting to me as well. Malice is... I've used that name for characters before. I played an orc labor thug in a dungeons and dragons campaign where I like

ran around with a mall and tried to convince people to join industrial unionism much to the rest of no one else who was playing that campaign with me. It was trying to make it about industrial unionism. What the fuck are you doing? We're trying to play a game yeah i'm like why are you like this yeah it's more fun this way but uh um yeah all of all of the dog girl names were way way more pretty than most of the dog

girls i have met and it's's like, what was it? It was like Petunia or something? What was it? Well, Carburetor is the least... Carburetor makes sense. Yeah. Wrench, I think. Wrench is okay. The third one specifically was much... Petunia.

Petunia, much too pretty for a dog girl. In my experience. for a dog girl. Yeah. In my experience. That's fine. As a dog girl appreciator, that is mine. Okay, so dog girls are different than you're probably perceiving dog girls. It's not a furry thing. No, no, no, no.

Your version of dog girls is pretty spot on, actually. Okay, okay. In this case, they're squatter bikers yeah yeah nope yep yeah yeah all right you got it you got it all right all right most of the anarchist dog girls i have i have i have met um yes fair enough i don't even remember where that name comes from. Because some of these characters have existed as concepts for like 10 years before I started writing it as a role-playing game. And I was writing these different gangs in this city, and it was just going to be this novel I was plotting out.

And so it's funny because some of the styles of characters, I remember where they came from. Not all of them were by me. The world soon became a much more open thing with other designers. But Dog Girl was one of the original characters, and I just don't have no fucking clue where I came up with that name. I don't know. I've never heard of Diesel Punk before, but I like the idea.

Well, so I started writing this. My deepest, darkest secret is that I used to run a magazine called Steampunk Magazine. Oh, oh, oh. And when I first started writing this, it was kind of my like, fuck you to steampunk. It was my like, this could have been a beautiful, weird anti-colonial thing, like with fiction set during a really interesting time period where capitalism and industrialization were really doing their thing, you know? Instead of people with top hats and mice inside pulling gears and levers.

Yeah, exactly. It was like instead one of the most obnoxious. There's many, many wonderful people that I met through that subculture, but like it didn't go in ways that I found interesting. And so I actually started writing it as this kind of like steampunk world. And then this publisher reached out to me and was like, Hey, do you want to write a role-playing game world that I've been writing the mechanics for? And I was like, yeah, totally. And so he hired me to write this world. And he was like, I want to write a steampunk world. And I was like, can it be a fuck you to steampunk world? Can it be a, this is what it should have been world. And he was like, yeah, okay, fine. And so this was my like, fuck you, I quit a this is what it should have been world and he was like yeah okay fine um and so this was my like fuck you i quit this is what it should have been that i started in like

2012 or something like that okay and then uh and then that publisher just literally disappeared just um like they had a successful kickstarter for some other game and then never finished that game and then disappeared. Many such cases. Yeah. And so then I was just left with this orphan world without a role-playing game system. And then eventually I brought on some other people

or some of my friends offered to help me basically and started making this new thing. And then I was like, I have no allegiance to setting this in the equivalent of the early 19th century. And so now it has more of like the diesel punk vibe is more of like world war one vibe in a lot of ways i mean some of it also feels like a world that we could slide into yeah like it's not even just a past thing it's like what if our world goes through a sort of collapse but people still use diesel um but now diesel's like the like most other technology has now become not like functioning.

Yeah. But the diesel has remained. Like that is kind of also what it reminded me as. It's like, it's like we're like sliding back in time. Yeah. Although, but in this particular world,

they actually still use steam boilers and not diesel engines, but the vibe is more diesel punk. Okay. There's like radio and electricity, but they haven't figured out the diesel engine. Interesting. Because most places actually use magic more than technology anyway, because you can enslave angels in this world, you know?

Many such cases. Yeah. Yeah. They'll send you on a little treasure hunt. Yeah. That's a little John D. joke. Well, I did like the ether. That was fun.

Thanks. That was fun. The demon, I felt, was probably appropriately grotesque. Yeah, there's some... I can't remember the name of the word for that particular demon. A stolas, I think. The people who wrote up the demons had a lot of fun with them I bet

I bet well that does it for book club this week if you liked Penumbra City you can get it there's a print book and an e-book and we finally started mailing it out to the backers it's back from the printer

and it's off in the mail towards people. If you backed it last summer, thank you very much, and your book will be in the mail shortly if it is not already. And you can order it through Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness is a publishing collective that I'm part of, and eventually it will be available through other distributors and stuff. But we're used to printing and distributing books but every every creative field has entirely different distribution systems

and like like if you want to make a board game you're dealing with an entirely different world than if you make a tabletop role-playing game than if you make a legally distinct from choose your own adventure book than if you it's very annoying. Yeah, that sounds complicated. Yeah. But there's a novella on the way. There is. I have no idea what it's going to be about yet. I have some idea of what it's going to be about yet,

but not totally. It might be these characters. It might be other ones. I might write something that's just like weird, sad, 19th century nihilist literature, but set in this world without like much in the way of adventure at all. So, I mean, 19th century nihilist literature is very different than modern nihilist literature. Yes.

Okay. So like you mean actual like 19th century nihilist literature? Yeah. Yeah. Like Russian nihilist literature. Yeah. Yeah. Like basically social democrats.

Social democrats. Social democrats. With bombs. Yes. A fascinating politic. Yeah. The 1860s when boys with log hair wanted to overthrow society, much like the 1960s. Well, I certainly look forward to that. Yeah.

Oh, shit. Now I might be stuck with that well if you want to hear more of Gare you can hear Gare on It Could Happen Here which might be where you're listening to this anyway and if you want to hear more of me you can hear me on whatever my cool zone media show is called cool people who did cool stuff

which I talk about the nihilists from the 1860s and one of the first episodes you can go back and listen nice and we'll see you all next week and in the meantime i don't have a catchphrase to sign off with bye don't talk to cops watch out for the ether yeah it could happen Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com. Thanks for listening.

Thanks for listening. or stay with his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jacqueline Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audio books while running errands or at the end of a busy day. From thought provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Listen to Black Lit on the Black Effect podcast network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. AT&T, connecting changes everything. Hey, I'm Gianna Pertenti. And I'm Jamee Jackson-Gadsden.

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