It Could Happen Here - CZM Book Club: Hermetica, by Alan Lea, Part Six

Episode Date: September 7, 2025

Margaret continues with tale of Hermetica, the generation ship.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. I just normally do straight stand-up, but this is a bit different. What do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? Answer, a new podcast called Wisecrack, where a comedian finds himself at the center of a chilling true crime story. Does anyone know what show they've come to see? It's a story. It's about the scariest night of my life. This is Wisecrack, available now.

Listen to Wisecrack on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Wait a minute, Sam. Maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, luckily, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend's been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her. Now he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone. Hold up. Isn't that against school policy? That seems inappropriate.

Maybe find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast and the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, it's Gemma's Begg, host of the psychology of your 20s. This September at the psychology of your 20s, we're breaking down the very interesting ways psychology applies to real life, like why we crave external validation. I find it so interesting that we are so quick to believe others' judgments of us and not our own judgment of ourselves. So according to this study, not being liked actually creates similar pain levels as real-life physical pain. Learn more about the psychology of everyday life and, of course, your 20s. This September, listen to the psychology of your 20s on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA. Right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime.

On the new podcast, America's Crime Lab, every case has a story to tell. And the DNA holds the truth. He never thought he was going to get caught. And I just looked at my computer screen. I was just like, ah, gotcha. This technology is already solving so many cases. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Coalzo Media

Buclub, Buclum, Buclum, Buclum, Buclum, Buclum, Buclum. It's the Cool Zone Media Book Club. Hi, welcome to Cool Zone Media Book Club. The only book club where you don't have to do the reading because I do it for you. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and we are getting towards the end of the book we have been with for more than a month. We have been reading Hermitica by Alan Lee. Alan Lee is the science fiction pen name for a nonfiction author, well, many things. author but including nonfiction most famously author named peter gelderlose and yeah we are reading hermetica

it's part six out of seven so you might want to not start here and if you do i'm not going to tell you everything that's happened from the beginning but i will catch you up a little bit on what happened last week because last time on hermetica days ended up in jail and was next to a guy named Robert, who was not from hermetica at all, who seemed to have been from a right-wing part of America called the secession. And that's where we're starting, is the jail. Much to Robert's relief, they, he, was sent somewhere else after another day in the cell next to days. They had not gotten much farther in their conversations. Really, each one of them represented to the other in NBS.

Days was shocked, not only by Robert's ignorance, but by his complete lack of curiosity, his inability to be challenged. Whoever ran the secession, if there were people there who knew it was a lie, like the people who had designed her medica, they probably had a really easy job. The transfer happened while Days was sleeping,

just as when Robert arrived. When Days awoke, he was no longer there. there. They wondered if there were sedatives in the food. Did they move prisoners without witnesses to increase the sense of solitude, to reduce the information one had about the place and how it operated? The metallic column pinged. Days removed the tray, but rather than eating, they paced around the cell a bit. They needed music. The moonlight sonata came to mind, but the acoustics were terrible. The plexi and the lighting didn't help at all. They labored through a few bars, repeated them when the rest didn't come and gave up. In another attempt to harness their mind's wild

horses, they sat down for a few rounds of crunches. Their motivation soon fizzled. They got up and ate the contents of the tray, paced around a bit, fell into a slumber. When days awoke, there was a new person in the next cell. They were older. Days got up and walked over to the plexi. Would this become a routine? Hi, I'm Days. Hi, Days. I'm Shawna. Should I use they, he? They is fine. You go by they?

Days nodded, happy that Shauna didn't seem to take offense at the question. What storyline are you from? Storyline? Shauna bit their lip. What do you know? Days gave a long sigh. They could tell Shauna knew more than they did, and certainly more than Robert had.

I grew up on a ship called Hermitica, but it turned out we've been on Tara the whole time. Shauna nodded sadly. Tara, yeah, we call it Earth here. Right, Earth. Days couldn't keep the bitterness out of their voice. You asked me about storylines. What did you mean?

Shawna looked around slowly and leaned in their hand against the plexi. A few decades ago, actually, it would have been right around the time you were born. Things were really bad. Society was falling apart. The program was so dysfunctional, even those who benefited the most couldn't ignore it. Systems collapse at every level, overheating, starvation. Then there was a pandemic, massive, deadly.

Then a coup attempt, a lot of fighting. So they initialized the compartmentalization. They? At a certain point, the government signed on took over, but in the beginning it was the ones who owned the technology. The idea was to separate people as much. much as possible, defuse the conflict. Actually, they'd already been doing it for a long time. I guess it started out as just another marketing scheme. But it got out of control, and in the end,

the only solution they found was to make it total. Make what total? What are they doing? Shawna looked into days' eyes a long moment, weighing them, then lit out a deep sigh. Parallel worlds. Parallel worlds? What did that mean? It actually goes to back, way back, decades. They started selling the idea that you had to buy your identity, the clothes you wore, the music you listened to, the hobbies you had, the vacations you took, the car you drove. They sold the idea that all that stuff was the way to express who you were. And people bought it. They bought it big time. I guess it was inevitable that after buying their identity for so long, they would buy their reality. How did that work? Days only had a loose

idea about buying things, and they weren't sure if it was that or the concept of parallel worlds giving them the most trouble. You got to understand. By that point, 95% of people's perceptions were managed through social networking. Their news, their history, their science, even their enemies. They only chose things that fit their identity, collectively, in groups. You could think of it as separate columns in society. They just constructed their own realities. It wasn't entirely up to them, of course. It was a managed process. Only profitable realities could be produced, because

of who owned the technologies, the metrics they used. At first, it was just that, streamlining the whole process of buying and selling. But it had unintended consequences. People refused to believe anything that contradicted them. When the pandemic hit,

hundreds of thousands of people were dying, and one group, they just denied the entire thing. Said it wasn't happening. That it was some plot. And they tried to take over. They were attacking doctors, killing immigrants, black people. Black people? Oh boy.

All the lines on Shauna's face deep in tenfold. I don't know how much Earth history you read on Hermitica. This country, from the beginning, it was based on kidnapping people like me and forcing us to work as slaves. And then they made us call it Land of the Free. Thays didn't know what to do with that information. that's perverse

in a flash all the movies they had ever watched came back to them all the ones with terran actors the pasty skin of the protagonists and how all the actors with darker skin played auxiliaries or villains of course the actor spoke the lines the writers fed them

but they still had to stay within the register established by all the performances recorded into the database while those actors were still alive the AI couldn't make a movie out of whole cloth Seeing those performances within the blissful comfort of their module, their outrageous hijinks, they're impossibly good luck, their motivations inhumanly heroic or petty, the protagonist's rare skin tones had simply amplified the exoticism of it all.

In the original context, back on Terra, on Earth, was the entire purpose of those movies just to reinforce a vast and arbitrary order to confirm the dominance and entitlement of some and the inferiority of others? Yeah, it is. And some of those people, they never forgave us for what they did to us.

So I guess if we're going to be completely honest, some people have been living in parallel worlds for centuries. Maybe the whole thing was destined to fall apart from the start. So, they were killing you? People like you? Yeah, Sean moved their hand so it was closer to dazes, just on the other side of the plexy. People like you, too.

I don't know your background, but if you ended up on hermetica, you're not one of them. Days, they probably killed your parents, maybe directly, more likely through negligence, the pandemic. My parents? Days asked numbly. The thought was overwhelmingly strange. They told me I was from an artificial insemination, from a harvested egg, like all the others. When the government decided to take it over and go total, it was the pie. pilot program. There were a lot of orphans, the pandemic, the social breakdown in general, the youngest ones, they decided to give them a chance for something better. Once it went total, the compartmentalization, I mean, every parallel world had to play a function. They had to produce

something. Like what? Hermitica produces scientists, some of the best. They think they're working on the ship, improving the life support, propulsion, getting ready to terraform a new home world. Actually, their research agendas get fed to them from outside of hermedica, based on the needs of different agencies here on the outside. Every researcher on her medica has such a tiny window, such an extremely hyper-specific line of inquiry and experimentation. They never know. But everything they develop is linked to some program out here, improving energy efficiency, cleaning up the disaster, carbon sequestration, geoengineering, medical, research, social surveillance, and pacification.

So, they're imprisoning us, all of us, and just using us. Yeah, I'm sorry you had to find out this way. How do you know all of this? Shawna looked down towards the ground, their gaze dissipating into a blank mirror. I'm a writer. What? I work on the storylines. Days didn't know whether to feel infuriated.

or fascinated, they held their tongue. I am, Shana swallowed. The systems are mostly self-managing, the different worlds, I mean. Her medica was an exception, but the older people involved, the ones who educated you, they've been mostly phased out as the first cohorts reached adulthood. The other worlds, they're all held together by the subjects themselves and good programming. But to start, they needed the right stories. Most of the stories were already there,

latent in the different columns I described. The beliefs that people had arrayed around themselves to protect these identities they'd created. They already had all the elements. They just needed to be organized, given a good plot, and then they were set in motion. And we'd keep an eye on them, introduce new elements if it was needed,

if people were getting bored, or starting to have doubts. And here, to introduce new elements to keep you from getting bored, to tap the 15-second forward button on your phone. It's ads. My name is Ed. Everyone say, hello, Ed.

From a very rural background myself, my dad is a farmer, and my mom is a cousin, so, like, it's not, like... What do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? I know it sounds like the start of a bad joke, but that really was my reality nine years ago. I just normally do straight stand-up,

but this is a bit different. On stage stood a comedian with a story that no one expected to hear. On 22nd of July 2015, a 23-year-old man had killed his family. And then he came to my house. So what do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? A new podcast called Wisecrack, where stand-up comedy and murder takes a center stage. Available now.

Listen to Wisecrack on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Wait a minute, Sam. Maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend has been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her.

Now he's insisting we get to know each other. I just want her gone. Now, hold up. Isn't that against school policy? That sounds totally inappropriate. Well, according to this person, this is her boyfriend's former professor and they're the same age. And it's even more likely that they're cheating. He insists there's nothing between them.

I mean, do you believe him? Well, he's certainly trying to get this person to believe him because he now wants them both to meet. So, do we find out if this person's boyfriend really cheated with his professor or not? To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. What would you do if one bad decision forced you to choose between a maximum security prison or the most brutal boot camp designed to be hell on earth? Unfortunately for Mark Lombardo, this was the choice he faced. He said, you are a number, a New York State number, and we own you.

Shock incarceration, also known as boot camps, are short-term, highly regimented correctional programs that mimic military basic training. These programs aimed to provide a shock of prison life, emphasizing strict discipline, physical training, hard labor, and rehabilitation programs. Mark had one chance to complete this program and had no idea of the hell awaiting him the next six months. The first night was so overwhelming and you don't know who's next to you. And we didn't know what to expect in the morning. Nobody tells you anything.

Listen to shock incarceration on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get to. a foot washed up a shoe with some bones in it. They had no idea who it was. Most everything was burned up pretty good from the fire that not a whole lot was salvageable. These are the coldest of cold cases, but everything is about to change. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime. A small lab in Texas is cracking the code on DNA. Using new scientific tools, they're finding clues in evidence so tiny you might just miss it. He never thought he was going to get caught. And I just looked at my computer screen. I was just like, ah, gotcha. On America's Crime Lab, we'll learn about victims and survivors. And you'll meet the

team behind the scenes at Othrum, the Houston Lab that takes on the most hopeless cases to finally solve the unsolvable. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Rating. radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. You made this. Shauna swallowed again. Other people made it. It was already underway when I started.

You helped make it. You kept it functioning. You just said so yourself. I wish I'd had other choices. But I needed to make a living. Did you write my storyline? Did you write Hermitica? No, I got recruited for another storyline. What does that mean you were recruited?

I didn't fit into any of the columns. There were a lot of us who were problematic for the compartmentalization. Some of them are still out in the streets in one of the dead zones, trying to stay alive. Most of them are gone already. Others, we got recruited. What did they give you? Days reached out for the archaic word they knew from their knowledge. novels. What did they pay you to do this to us?

Shauna splayed their hands and tired resignation. You don't have to offer much when the alternative is going hungry. Days nodded. They didn't know what hunger was, not personally. Mathematically, X is greater than Y, where Y equals Shauna's integrity and X the price they'd offered. With no way of ascertaining the value of leaving behind hunger and uncertainty, They had to admit they had no information concerning the value of why. They let it go. How'd you end up here?

Sabotage. Days raised an eyebrow. I started putting some clues in the storyline I was overseen. Some open-ended plot elements. I wanted them to have a chance. Days went and sat back down on the cot. Now they felt bad for getting angry. Days had gotten locked up here for trying to free themselves.

It seemed, Shawna had gotten locked up and had possibly lost a good life for trying to help others get free. Do you hate me? I don't know you. I know you don't want to hear this, but when has it ever been any better? People see what they want to see.

Days couldn't argue with that. They curled up and pulled the covers high, thinking about snookums. Another tray, another meal. Days went back to the plexy they shared with Shana. Graciously, Shana rose to meet them. The person there before you, they, he, was from the secession. Shauna nodded.

That's a pretty awful place. Did you write that one? No, Shauna said vehemently. That place was there way before I got in. You said hermetica was the first one. The first one the government created. The secession, that one got built up as soon as the technology existed. All the most profitable stories in one.

one place. Days narrowed their eyes suspiciously. Days, listen to me. They looked up and saw pain in Shauna's face and realized they were being self-centered. They felt sure then that Shauna had been through a worse hell than they had ever endured on her medica. That place is real. Too fucking real.

We didn't make that. That's on them. They were actually going around killing people. You got a sense of that, didn't you? Talking to him? Days nodded. What were we going to do with them? Put them all in one place.

Let them think they've won. It's the least violent solution. But what the hell am I saying, we? Like it was my choice. Like I was in charge, trying to banged a fist on the plexi. That's how they do it. That's how they get in your head.

They get you to think you're part of their we. We, the people. They invite you into their shoes so that you can see how perfectly reasonable all their decisions are. And it's tempting to put on their shoes when you have to go barefoot. but it's a fucking lie.

I'm in here with you. Before, when I was working, we were just adding the colors to a structure that had already been built. If we stopped, they found others. There were thousands of us. We were cheaper than old pennies.

We provided a service, but we never had any control. Who does? The same ones who are in control when everything started going to hell. The same one's responsible for it going to hell in the first place. It's not a group of people days.

It's not some cabal. It's just whoever happened to be on top. How do you get to the top? It's the most ruthless ones, the ones willing to stab anyone in the back to get ahead. And then their children, and then their children's children, staying on top as long as they can.

And those ruthless motherfuckers, they were encouraging the people in the secession from the very start, giving them everything they needed, never shattering their fragile little bubble. Why should they worry? They weren't the ones getting killed. killed. They believed a lot of the same things as those nut jobs. They were on top because they

deserved to be on top. It's nice to believe that. It's nice to have cheerleaders who become attack dogs when anyone stands up to you. But the denialists, they just couldn't stop killing. Their masters tightened the leash. They started to bite the hand that fed them. They couldn't tell the difference. So the government stepped in, absorbed them into the compartmentalization. Let them think they broke away. The programmers simulate a border skirmish every now and then, so they stay interested. It's always a war for them.

In fact, the government's original plan was for the secession to produce mercenaries. But nowadays, all that stuff is done with drones and bots, so they don't need them. They do food production now. You mentioned a farm. Yeah, they have a simulated money economy. The modelers found out they need a simple reward system,

like training dogs. They don't seem to understand math. You have them driving tractors around all day. They bring in 100 kilos of produce. You know how much they keep? Half a kilo. In money value. But they know the exchange rate.

And they do it anyway? You know what keeps them in line? Besides doing night watch and going on border patrol? What? The system is rigged so that every now and then, one of them gets an insane amount of money. It's presented to them as a lottery or some insurance windfall. And that person buys a huge house, more cars than they can drive, and a swimming pool.

And you know what? The others stay happy. The others? Yeah, I even checked the data, the ones who are scraping by, giving away everything they work for. Their biostats go up the most in two situations. After a skirmish at the border, and after someone in their circle wins the lottery, buys a big house. When did their stats go down? If they're the one who wins the lottery, about a month. after moving into the new house.

Yeah, Robert seemed pretty weird. Did he tell you their theory? Which one? They think the earth is flat. No. Yeah, they do. They really do. No, that's impossible.

He said they have mountains. He said he's been to the ocean. Shauna shrugged. Look, I know I thought I grew up on a spaceship, but they built our block so we could never see the horizon. If he can climb a mountain or go to the ocean, he can literally watch things go down below the horizon. People see what they want to see.

Lunar eclipses days protested, you can see the shape of the earth. They see what they want to see. And do you know what I want to see? Right now, at this exact moment, in the middle of this story I'm reading for you, sweet saving, satisfaction guaranteed, with all these products and services.

My name is Ed. Everyone say, hello, Ed. I'm from a very rural background myself. My dad is a farmer, and my mom is a cousin. So, like, it's not like... What do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? I know it sounds like the start of a bad joke, but that really was my reality nine years ago.

I just normally do straight stand-up, but this is a bit different. On stage stood a comedian with a story that no one expected to hear. Well, 22nd of July 2015, a 23-year-old man had killed his family. And then he came to my house. So what do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? A new podcast called Wisecrack, where stand-up comedy and murder takes center stage. Available now.

Listen to Wisecrack on the IHeart Radio app. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Oh, wait a minute, Sam. Maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend has been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her.

Now, he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone. Now, hold up. Isn't that against school policy? That sounds totally inappropriate. Well, according to this person, this is her boyfriend. boyfriend's former professor, and they're the same age. And it's even more likely that they're cheating. He insists there's nothing between them.

I mean, do you believe him? Well, he's certainly trying to get this person to believe him because he now wants them both to meet. So, do we find out if this person's boyfriend really cheated with his professor or not? To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Hola, it's Honey German, and my podcast, Grasasas Come Again, is back. This season, we're going even deeper into the world.

the music and entertainment with raw and honest conversations with some of your favorite Latin artists and celebrities. You didn't have to audition? No, I didn't audition. I haven't audition in like over 25 years. Oh, wow. That's a real G-talk right there. Oh, yeah. We've got some of the biggest actors, musicians, content creators, and culture shifters, sharing their real stories of failure and success. You were destined to be a start. We talked all about what's viral and trending with a little. a bit of chisement, a lot of laughs, and those amazing vivras you've come to expect.

And, of course, we'll explore deeper topics dealing with identity, struggles, and all the issues affecting our Latin community. You feel like you get a little whitewash because you have to do the code switching? I won't say whitewash, because at the end of the day, you know, I'm me. Yeah. But the whole pretending and code, you know, it takes a toll on you. Listen to the new season of Grasas Has Come Again as part of My Cultura Podcast Network on the IHartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. What would you do if one bad decision forced you to choose between a maximum security prison or the most brutal boot camp designed to be hell on earth?

Unfortunately for Mark Lombardo, this was the choice he faced. He said, you are a number, a New York State number, and we own you. Shock incarceration, also known as boot camps, are short-term, highly regimented correctional programs that mimic military basic training. These programs aimed to provide a shock of prison life, emphasizing strict discipline, physical training, hard labor, and rehabilitation programs. Mark had one chance to complete this program and had no idea of the hell awaiting him the next six months. The first night was so overwhelming, and you don't know who's next to you.

And we didn't know what to expect in the morning. Nobody tells you anything. Listen to shock incarceration on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get to. your podcasts and we're back the next day shana was still there days was feeling introspective

but eventually their thoughts overwhelmed them they approached the plexie shana rose too I always wanted to work on the sky when I was growing up they told us it was a projection you know designers working together with meteorology, recreating the sky on Terra.

Thought I got rejected because I wasn't good enough. I guess I just had impossible dreams. Yeah. I wonder, would I be here if I had done better? What do you mean? Maybe I could have lived down that failure not getting the sky if I'd at least gotten halfway, if I'd scored higher on the aptitudes

and gotten a more interesting work assignment. If my mind were more engaged, maybe I wouldn't have gone scratching around the corners. I've never seen what other people see, not all the time, but maybe I wouldn't have gone looking so hard. What was your job? Palliative therapist. I gave back rubs.

Sean aside, you didn't get your work assignment from the aptitudes. What? The aptitudes are a ruse. They add a little bit of data about how you perform under stress, but the system already knew your exact capacities, physics, biopause. mechanics, calculus, emotional intelligence, social hierarchy tendencies, you name it. They were testing you since you were born. They're always testing.

They're testing us right now. Days looked around. So why do the aptitudes at all? They could just tell us our work assignment is based on our cumulative performance scores rather than a single test. The test is important, Sean replied, but it's not what you think. They need you to believe that your entire future, your ambitions, your integration into society are based on one single exam. And then the day of the exam, they pop a little trick question.

It's usually not in the exam itself, but something related, different every time. On hermetica, what they need to know is, are you willing to falsify information or to unsee something you have seen when you are asked to do so? Days rocked back on their heels. Yeah, it's even more insiduous than you think. the test to work, disobeying can't come with any immediate consequences. The subject has to think that disobedience will not be immediately noticed, but presents a small risk of a lower performance score, and might therefore put their social integration, their ambitions, at risk. The people on

hermetica are given really powerful tools. They could quickly discover the nature of their reality if they put their minds to it. Integration, performance, had to be more important to you than the truth. So if you hesitated when you got to that trick question, even for a moment, you were out. Days detached, feeling estranged from the memories that washed over. I think there might have been two tricks like that, they said slowly. I left them both blank.

Yeah, Shauna nodded sadly. They also test for rebellion, likelihood of protest. Days let out a bitter laugh. I'm sorry. Well, I guess they had me figured out pretty well after all. Shawna took a moment to continue. When I was getting reassigned after my first storyline was operational, I read up on the scripts of some of the other options.

I read a lot about Hermitica, how it worked. I turned that one down. It didn't seem right. It's not right. No. Are any of them any better? A lot of them aren't so cruel. or so restrictive.

Most of them don't start with a big group of orphans and put them in near total confinement. But confinement is an element of all the columns. Days looked around at the cell. Yeah, this place could be on hermetica. Then they had a thought. Robert said he didn't travel much, but he could. He could move around.

Anger flashed across Shauna's face, followed by exhaustion. The ones who are really in charge, they have a lot of sympathy for the people in this succession. plus those people have a lot of guns and moving them altering their story too much would have been costly you got to understand the parallel worlds they just augmented and entrenched the inequalities that already existed in the earlier system this isn't utopia no it's a prison i won't argue with you there you said they're always testing testing is now how how we interact what we say the choices we make what for they're deciding our reassignment how do they do that me they know by now i won't keep my mouth shut

the fact that i'm spilling the beans to you just confirms it but they also know at the end of the day i'll lower my head and play along i'm valuable to them as a writer they might put me on one of the storylines where it doesn't matter if the people know about the parallel worlds like robotics and efficiency That's a boring one, just a sprawling, city-sized campus where they focus on social engineering, mechanization, machine learning, a lot of the tech that forms the basis of the other worlds, from the tractor Robert drives to the social networks that convince people on Hermitica that they're on a spaceship

with 12 million passengers. Is that your best case scenario? If I get really bad scores, they'll put me in gangland, and that's where I'll spend the rest of my life. Gangland? I'm afraid to ask. Sean his eyes burned defiantly. Ask. What's gangland?

Think of it as the opposite of the secession. It's where they left people who had trouble integrating, but who were the wrong color. They corralled them in dead zones. Ghost cities full of lead, empty factories, old trash incinerators, cities they couldn't save from the rising sea. A lot of guns, a lot of drugs, a lot of trauma. No medical care, no fresh food.

So yeah, the opposite of the secession. But they have something in common. Gangland's an old one. They made it before they had their social networking technologies, before the compartmentalization. What tech did they use? Real estate investment? Homeowners associations?

Military planes coming back from Vietnam full of heroin. Defunding treatment centers, funding prisons, machine gun-toting cops killing revolutionaries, popping kids for possession. I hope they don't send you there. It would be the smart thing for them to do. It won't matter how many people there I tell about the other worlds. They're not stupid.

They know their other worlds. And that they're not allowed to leave the one they're stuck in. But it's not all bad. People are resourceful. There's a lot of love there. I guess they can't send Robert there. I'm starting to suspect he'll get off a lot easier than the rest of us. You catch on quick.

What'd he do? He said he shot someone. Shana rolled their eyes. They'll keep him in the secession. Probably put him in a mine making fertilizer, tell him it's prison labor, parole him in 10, 20 years if he tests well. Days hesitated.

And me? You're a tough one, Shana frowned. They need to figure out where they can make you useful, where you won't cause too much trouble. You broke out of one of the most tightly controlled storylines, but you don't have the advanced training that would make you valuable elsewhere. I bet the system's having a hard time.

with you. The next day, Shauna was gone. Days looked up as they awoke, saw the next cell was empty, laid their head back down, and tried to take deep breaths. A while later they got up,

did some exercises, tried to remember what the sky looked like, how it felt to sit underneath it. They wished they could play some music. They tried to recall a melody in their head, the right melody for just this moment, but nothing came. The air hummed, but it wasn't alive in here, not like outside on the block before a storm.

After uncounted hours, the Plexy before them went opaque. Hello, Days, said a voice, the cell they presumed. Your preliminary evaluation is complete. You may choose your next assignment. The Plexi had become a screen projecting eight large squares. Begrudgingly, Days stepped forward. Each square held an image. The first one portrayed a block, just like back on Hermitica.

As they held a finger over it, the image began to move, showing a sort of montage. The image shifted from the block to the inside of a module, a supply center, a research lab, friendly-eyed people, masks over their mouths, walking past the green or sitting on a bench. So it was, definitively, hermetica. That's when they noticed the first two squares were a muted color,

more gray, lower contrast. On her medica, that always signified an inactivated button. The second such square showed a green field in a large standalone house of unusual construction. Days put their finger over it, and the image moved showing mountains, forests, a pacy-skin person on a huge tractor, a short line of people with steely eyes

walking along a wall carrying rifles. That must be the secession. So hermetica and the secession were off limits to them. How considerate of the system to let them know. They went to the next square. It showed a group of people smiling, laughing, working on a 3D modeler, another person grouping data sets on an HF interface, a cafeteria of people laughing and talking,

barely paying attention to their food, two people playing chess, another group playing volleyball. Then a large swimming pool, people swimming laps, a final cut showing a person smiling triumphantly, attention divided between a portable and a team of multi-jointed robotic arms performing some complex assembly task. Days went on to the next square.

It was a nighttime scene, people sitting outside, crowded together around tables in the street, laughing and drinking. Then one of them was painting on a canvas. Others were rehearsing in an orchestra. One was looking appreciatively at a holographic sculpture, hand-on chin, as though forming an intelligent opinion. Others were laying in a grassy park reading off their portables.

The next option showed a couple people in masks operating a team of bulldozers, demolishing old buildings. Days couldn't tell if they had been ruined by war or abandonment. Another team of machines came, laying the foundations for new buildings that started to grow skyward. Days went back to their cot, turning away from the screen. There were still three squares left, but they felt estranged, knowing each of those worlds was based on a lie, feeling sickened that they were offering them the option to join one of them. After finding out that their entire life, they had been deceived and exploited,

how were they supposed to accept anything the system wanted to offer? Sell spoke again. You have six choices for possible reassignment. Take your time deciding. But until you have decided, you will not be able to move into the system. the next stage of your rehabilitation. Six choices. Should they feel lucky? Back on their block on Hermitica, there were only four choices, four ways off the block, all of them heavily controlled. Now they had six. Was that progress? Days didn't know what to think. The idea of being

alone at the helm of a host of powerful machines, bringing great buildings toppling down, appealed to the mood they were in at the moment with the thought of the next team coming through erecting new buildings and the certainty that the masters of the world would use those new buildings for. Killed the fantasy. Sure, they actually had no idea

what kind of buildings they were. They hadn't gotten to the end of the promo. But could there be any doubt? They would be buildings filled with rooms. Each room would have a limited number of ways out. They would be buildings filled with people. Each person locked into a story they had. had not written.

Days spent the rest of the day in a lethargic agony, somewhere between restlessness and nightmare. They woke up to the sound of a ping from the metallic column. Time passed. Eventually they got up, retrieved the tray, ate most of its contents apathetically, laid back down. Some time later, they got up again, paced around the cell,

did push-ups, punched at the plexie, Bortem taunted them. If you do not choose, this nothingness will go on forever. They felt infuriated, trapped. The walls mocked them. There was nothing in the cell they could break. The ping sounded again. Water or food?

It seemed it was feeding time again. Days retrieved the tray, but instead of eating, they flung the contents across the cell. Something like a semi-solid lasagna puree splattered across the floor. One little seal. old container survived the impact. Days picked it up. It was something vaguely like pudding.

They opened it and assiduously smeared it across the plexy screen, covering up the eight squares, the six possible future is being offered. A hissing sound came from the duct above. Days awoke. Their head hurt. The cell was immaculate. There was no sign of their outburst. The screen remained. now there were only six squares.

The images representing hermetica and the secession had disappeared. Dun-dun-dun, what's going to happen? What's days going to choose? How is it going to impact the rest of their life? Well, the only way to find out is to listen next week when we reach our rousing conclusion of Hermitica by Alan Lee. And if you like this and you want to read the whole thing, thing and don't want to wait, you can just go read it. It's a book. It's available. You can buy it

from Detritus Books or probably from other places, but Detritus Books is the publisher. And you can do that if you want. And if you want to read more books by the same author, they have a lot of nonfiction books available under the name Peter Gelderlose, which is G-E-L-D-E-R-L-O-O-S. You can probably figure out of spell Peter. Anyway, I'm your host Margaret Kiljoy. I have another podcast called Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff Where I talk about history. And I have a substack,

Margarkilljoy.substack.com where I talk about a lot of things, including history sometimes, and also the present world and hope and things like that. And you can check that out. Most of my posts are free. Only the more personal ones are behind a paywall. I'm on Instagram. I'm on Blue Sky.

and I mostly wish I wasn't on the computer anymore, and I won't be as soon as I hit stop and then export a file and then upload it to my amazing audio editors. We're going to turn it into a thing that you all can read. And I'll talk to you next week. It 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 IHeard Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources where it could happen here. here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. In the heat of battle, your squad relies on you. Don't let them down. Unlock elite gaming tech at Lenovo.com. Dominate every match with next level speed,

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