It Could Happen Here - CZM Book Club: The Flair by Nick Mamatas

Episode Date: December 17, 2023

Margaret reads Mia a sci-fi story about what people will do for free power and war. And about hacker clowns.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and

expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. The 2025 iHeart Podcast Awards are coming. This is the chance to nominate your podcast for the industry's biggest award. Submit your podcast for nomination now at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. But hurry, submissions close on December 8th. Hey, you've been doing all that talking.

It's time to get rewarded for it. Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. Cool Zone Media. Book club. Book club. Book club. Book club. It's the Cool Zone Media book club book club book club book club

it's the cool zone media book club that's the jingle it's the same every time I don't know what you're talking about it doesn't change welcome to cool zone media book club I'm your host Margaret Giljoy

with me as my guest is Mia Wong hi Mia hello we're book club chanting I'm your host, Margaret Giljoy With me as my guest is Mia Wong Hi Mia Hello! We're book club chanting We are booking, we're clubbing It's a good time Yeah, that's right Two weapons, books and clubs

Books are weapons In a pen is mightier than the sword way But also, if you put one in a big sock Like ideally a hardcover And a big sock, that's also a reasonable weapon. That's not what today's story is about in the slightest. Cool Zone Media Book Club is your weekly reminder that fiction is fun, where I read someone a story. And today, I'm reading Mia's story. I'm reading Mia's story by someone named Nick Mamatoss.

You ever heard of Nick Mamatoss by any random chance? No. Nick Mamatoss is awesome. Nick Mamatoss is a very hardworking fiction writer who writes just a ton of stuff, especially short fiction, but not exclusively. I guess I could just read you their bio, or his bio, rather. stuff, especially short fiction, but not exclusively. I guess I could just read you their bio or his bio rather. Nick Mamatas is the author of several novels, including The Second Shooter and I Am Providence. His short fiction has appeared in McSweeney's, Best American Mystery Stories, Tor.com, Weird Tales, Asimov's Science Fiction, and many other venues. Nick is also an anthologist. His most recent title is Wonder and Glory glory forever all inspiring lovecraftian fiction

nick's fiction and editorial work have been variously nominated for the hugo bram stoker shirley jackson locus and world fantasy awards but the story is about clowns it's not really about clowns but there's a clown in it and so that's why i'm reading it that's not why i'm reading you this story but i think this is a story about space lasers and clowns getting clowned on yeah yeah didn't give you enough of a warning about what you're signing up for this story is called the flare the light brigade has a flare for the dramatic or at least the absurd what i can tell you is that they're located somewhere in the western end of the The Light Brigade has a flair for the dramatic, or at least the absurd. What I can tell you is that they're located somewhere in the western end of the Great Basin in California,

and that I drove to meet them in a car I rented at what's left of the Reno-Tahoe International Airport. Ten flights daily, and on Sundays, eleven, that one being a quick hop to Vancouver just to hang on to the name International. Do not recommend. I traveled north in the early evening when the temperature was bearable, but not so cold I'd need to heat the car and waste precious juice. There were no charging stations once I passed Pyramid Lake, but the brigade promised that they already had power sufficient to recharge my Model T. They also promised that I would instantly know where to pull off the highway

and pick up my liaison. And they were right. Desert roads are always lonely, and when the sun finished its descent, the only light came from a failing Beakland TM low-orbit billboard. And my ride's headlamps. There were not even any animals prowling the bush near the highway, no quick flashes of glowing eyes, no glints of tracker collars in the shadows. Nothing suddenly

there and then gone in a blink, both literal and figurative. Just brush and a low sky like black slate. There was, however, on the shoulder of the road, a circus clown, complete with red nose, great flipper shoes, and a comically oversized hitchhiker's thumb. She wore a pair of reflective yellow genie pants, a floofy-sleeved crop top just as vibrant, and a single red rose upon her left breast. The clown's hair was pale blue and pink and pointed straight up, a bit like the flame from a gas burner turned all the way up. Going my way? I asked.

She docked and entered the car headfirst, like an animal, or at least someone unused to being a passenger in anything smaller than a bus. I almost ate a mouthful of her cotton candy-colored hair. It was stiff, coated in dried glue. Quit clowning around, funny face. Honk honk, she said as she squeezed her funny nose. It was half broken and sounded like a wounded animal, but she did her best to compensate. Broken animals, but trying our best. That's what life has been for the past 15 years.

The Light Brigade had invited me out to their secret headquarters to witness and write about the launch of their homebrew laser satellite. Just two years ago, the brigade had created and uploaded open-source plans for the improvement of your backyard photovoltaic receivers to convert solar-powered laser energy into good old DC electricity. It was a provocative move by this assemblage of hackers, engineers, and, from the looks of the clown, underemployed performance artists. engineers, and, from the looks of the clown, underemployed performance artists.

Especially provocative, since there was, and there is, nothing for photovoltaic receivers to collect that isn't just coming from the sun already. Solar power satellites have been on the drawing boards in some of the most hopeful PowerPoint slide presentations ever created for almost 70 years. Indeed, there are a handful of microwave transmitting satellites in low orbit right now, but they're not pointed toward the Earth. Instead, they are oriented towards the four Longwang weapons platforms located 35,000 kilometers overhead to keep them powered up and ever ready for war. But that, the Light Brigade wants you to know, is going to change. We didn't travel much more than a mile before the clown, whose name was Electra,

told me to pull over and get out of the car. She pointed her novelty thumb at me, then dug it into my ribs as if it were a pistol, and she a mobster. It was fine, all part of our agreement. The night was frigid, but it's the kind of cold that's a relief, like walking by the open door of the store you could never afford to enter on a freelance journalist's salary. She kept me waiting outside where I took nips now and again from my flask while she programmed a new route into the car's navigation system, then stepped back out and said, Want to sniff my flower?

Before I could even say yes, it squirted and something sticky that smells of lavender hit me full on the face. I woke up, blindfolded, still in the passenger seat of my car, but definitely off-road. A hard jostle sent my head up to the roof. I nearly lost consciousness a second time. Easy, said Electra. We're close to the Shanzai. I was intrigued to hear that bit of Mandarin. Easy, said Electra. We're close to the Shanzai. I was intrigued to

hear that bit of Mandarin. It meant she trusted me. Shanzai, distant strongholds beyond the reach of the Emperor in ancient times. Shanzai, bandit bands resisting centralized power in the merely pre-modern era. Shanzai, underground non-hierarchical factories for knockoff cell phones with extra features, and Spider-Man action figures in turquoise and purple instead of red and blue, in the recent past. And today, Shanzai meant all those things and something more. I had a million questions, but I wasn't going to ask them while blindfolded. It was another 30 minutes, perhaps, before we pulled up to the Shanzai. Stay in the car for one minute, please, the clown said.

She stepped out and closed the door. I could hear other people milling around, and they made me wait for much longer than a minute. But finally the passenger door opened, and a man's hand pressed against my chest and told me, One sec. He took off my blindfold, then stepped back and said, Get out.

There were six of them, including my chauffeur. They introduced themselves, a couple shared their pronouns, and won a brief list of headmates. Only the clown and a woman with whom she was now holding hands said, welcome to the light brigade, we launch at dawn. They spoke in an eerie, practiced harmony, like creepy twins in a movie, then broke into laughter. And you know what else is like creepy twins in a movie, then broke into laughter. And you know what else is like creepy twins in a movie?

Man. You know, I thought you were going to go for the launching at dawn one, but that one's funnier. Oh yeah, no, launching at dawn. Oh, I could have. No, I feel bad. I feel like that should have been the, that should have been the ad pivot.

Well, you know, there's no going back. It's a forward only medium. That's what they say classically about pre-recorded audio. It's just like radio in that it's... Here's ads. Listen to them or press the forward 15 seconds button a couple times, maybe six times. Whatever, until you hear the jingle music again.

Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast Post Run High is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. You know that rush of endorphins you feel after a great workout? Well, that's when the real magic happens. So if you love hearing real, inspiring stories from the people you know, follow, and admire, join me every week for Post Run High. It's where we take the conversation beyond the run and get into the heart of it all. It's lighthearted, pretty crazy, and very fun.

Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now, and I cannot decide if I like him or not.

Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend, and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house.

So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it. And we're back. The brigade's rules were simple. No photos, no extensive physical descriptions. They let me know that none of the communicative tech I might have, including my watch, would work out wherever they were. I could only talk to the clown, her girlfriend, and one fellow who agreed to answer questions if I addressed them just to him and if they were sensible. There had been a vote about my presence here and it was a tie,

so everybody won. According to half the Shanzhai, I wasn't there. a tie, so everybody won. According to half the Shanzhai, I wasn't there. So, why a clown suit, I asked over a meal of grilled grow meats and pine nut soup. We were sitting outside atop military surplus sleeping bags on the iced-over floor of the desert. I wasn't allowed inside any of the structures, but I am allowed to say that they appeared to be hoop houses with opaque plastic canvases stretched over the frames. We needed helium, said Electra the Clown. She casually confessed to a series of crimes involving an illicit helium smuggling ring that caters to the more nostalgic members of the ultra rich for their children's birthday parties, her infiltration of the same, and a sudden and perhaps violent hijacking of a truck of canisters. Her girlfriend rubbed her back as she spoke of brandishing a firearm, how she convinced the truck driver that helium was as flammable as hydrogen through sheer force of will,

and what a challenge it was unloading the truck in a safe house and then slowly transporting the canisters in ones and twos to this location. I kept the suit because I knew you'd stop for it, she finished. Who could resist? Nobody can resist, said the clown's girlfriend. Electra had told me much about the plans of the Light Brigade, just from sharing that one anecdote. The brigade would not be launching a microwave-transmitting satellite. These six people were likely the whole of the organization.

There was no broad movement, no multinational organization stealing and smuggling, borrowing and building to create the means to provide free power to the masses. May I see your raccoon? I asked. Yes, said the girlfriend. You can call me, um, Robin, by the way. Tracy, said Electra, who finally took off her large wig, then plucked off her nose and tossed it into the wig's cap. The other person who agreed to speak to me, only if I asked sensible questions, identified himself as Lee. Though, as Lee was the one with the headmates,

I knew that agreement might be altered at any moment. It was like that. Raccoon is a portmanteau of rocket and balloon, a 20th century technology obsolete for a full century. A balloon hoists the rocket up into the upper atmosphere, then the engine ignites and the rocket, usually a solid fuel number, can get even higher without needing all that much fuel. In the 1940s, raccoons were used for atmospheric and meteorological study, but were quickly superseded by liquid fuels and rockets capable of reaching orbit from the ground. Raccoons were still technically useful, but the missile is synecdochic of war.

Even when there was no possible worry that an upper atmosphere mission would be targeted by an enemy, the very fact that Raccoon seemed easy to shoot down was enough to mothball the inexpensive, flexible technology. Tracy and Robin were happy to show off the disused Minuteman silo. The moon was new, and for obvious reasons, the light brigade kept its work areas dark. We're not worried about the police, per se, Robin explained as we picked our way through the bush, led by nothing but the lights of our wristwatches. My little ball of light found a scorpion on the desert floor. It didn't scuttle away or flex its tail, and I too found myself frozen, both terrified and feeling the cold of the night air for the first time. Tracy knocked the arachnid away with

her oversized shoe. Be careful, she said, but she wasn't talking about the scorpion. Not a minute later, both women grabbed my forearms and kept me from taking a fatal step down the concrete tunnel they were leading me to. The silo wasn't capped, and the rocket, San's nose cone, was much smaller than the Minuteman for which it was originally designed. There was a low concrete building on the far side of the lip of the silo, which it was originally designed. There was a low concrete building on the far side of the lip of the silo, but it was dark enough, and I'd been focused enough on where I'd been stepping, but I hadn't noticed it at all. They wouldn't talk about the missile very much, except to say that it was a solid propellant rocket, and that its fuel was environmentally

friendly hexanitrohexaaziso-wertzitane, a word that danced on their tongues even through their giggles, but that utterly confused my transcription software. More importantly, and why this fuel was used during the Strait conflict, is that hexanitrohexaaziazoewertzitane, burning rockets, don't leave much of a visible trail. Thanks, Nick, for including that word twice in the story so that I had to read it. Thanks. Good looking out. I realized the ladies could toss me into the hole.

They both had strong grips on my arms. This wouldn't be the first bunch of hackers or makers or burners or post-rats or socialists or whatever the light brigade was hoping to become out here in the Great Basin to simply devolve into madness. It's a good one, I said idiotically, not that I've seen too many up close. The balloon? The satellite? My clever idea was to give them a reason to lead me away from the silo rather than chuck me down into it for whatever blood baptism they thought would help the mission.

We'll show you everything, except that which cannot be shown, Tracy said. Robin giggled at that. None of this was helping. Except for the small cement pillbox by the silo, there didn't seem to be any other buildings around. Their grips didn't lighten up as they led me off into the night, like two prison guards bringing a drunk to a holding cell.

I was a little tipsy. Robin began making an unusual clicking noise with her tongue and cheeks. I opened my mouth to say something, but Tracy put a gloved finger to my lips. They stepped lightly, and I aped their tentative shuffling, thanks only partially to the hold they had on my arms. The beam of watch light passed over something and vanished into it then robin disappeared for a moment only to come back holding the night in her hands and directing my attention to a flight of cement steps going

underground hyper black i said you were echo locating drones Drones are everywhere, and satellites too, said Tracy as she nudged me onto the top step. Satellites are everywhere. There's one in the subterranean warehouse into which I was walked alone at Tracy and Robin's urging. It was not quite as dark as the hyper-black tarp's topside, but it was pretty dim. Lee, the third member of the Shenzai who deigned to speak to me,

sparked an old-fashioned cigarette lighter perhaps ten yards away. Everything from his eyeglasses to the size of the room was bigger than I imagined it could possibly be, except for the satellite itself. He wouldn't show me the whole thing at once, but casually walked a tight circle around an object roughly the size and shape of a very nice propane gas grill, of the sort your parents might have once owned. It's the kind of thing you might look at and be compelled to say, what a beaut, and then offer a pull from a flask.

But I resisted. I should not have. This is just the laser, Lee explained. His eyes were obscured by the triple refraction of the firelight in the lenses of his spectacles. A few more watts and he'd be the one shooting lasers. Diode pump, alkali, we get potash from the desert. How do you know it works, I asked. How do you know any of it works, the laser, the satellite, the raccoon? Why are you asking me, Lee said, because you think I'm a man? Examine your biases, madame. He extinguished the lighter with the top of his thumb. Somewhere behind and above me, a clown nose honked. For a second after that, I didn't hear the echolocational clicking behind me.

Journalists say, or they used to say, don't bury the lead. But I have done just that. I simply wasn't expecting the story I ended up living through. Here's the lead. But I have done just that. I simply wasn't expecting the story I ended up living through. Here's the lead. Fifteen years ago, third-party transnational belligerents used laser satellites in low-Earth orbit to attack both Chinese and NATO positions

along the Taiwan Strait during the Second Battle of the Davis Line. And now, the nut graph. The satellites existed in multiple sweet spots. Their orbits were too high for anti-aircraft fire or drones to take out, but too low for the orbital platforms to target without possibly striking their own forces on the ground. They were big enough to pump out lasers capable of melting flight decks and combusting individual sailors unfortunate enough to be standing in the wrong place. Too small to be spotted amidst all the other war junk in the skies

until they warmed up and started firing. Deadly enough that both sides scored propaganda victories by blaming the other for violations of the laws of war. Insufficiently destructive to be anything more than a political anomaly after the fact. Ten fatalities, dozens of casualties, mostly blindness and other vision impairments, some second and third degree burns.

A single human pictogram in the infographic detailing the carnage of the battle, made special by the asterisk explaining what had happened. The simple collapse of the world petroleum supply brought both sides to the negotiating table soon enough, and with the Treaty of Taipei, a significant population exchange, and the launch of Long Wang, the peace of pure exhaustion settled upon the world. But not here in the California Great Basin. I asked Lee one further question. Could this be weaponized?

And then I got a whiff of Tracy's clown flower and fell down. Then woke up, this time just before dawn, in my car and not where I'd left it parked on the grounds of the light brigade. The car's controls had been locked and my hands cuffed behind my back. I didn't think they'd knock me out, stuff me into my ride, and programmed it to make a sharp right turn into a desert so that I could be cooked like a potato and die. I thought I was going back to the airport.

The cuffs, I guessed, were the typical police issue that any security guard with a universal key could unlock for me after I rolled up to the parking lot attendant's little box. Probably, and as a bonus, I was going to need to pee before the car got me to my destination, though. J School 101. Start with softball questions, as the source might wig out or just end the interview if you begin with provocations. But I was thinking of this article as a puff piece more than anything else. Check out the product and personalities, throw in a charming anecdote or two, and post. The fact is that there's never been a decent

business case for peaceful laser transmitting solar-powered satellites. Historically, they don't collect enough extra solar radiation to make it profitable to build, launch, and maintain them No matter how dark the black one paints their solar panels No matter how much helium one steals from the children of billionaires In our post-oil, 19 degree Celsius era When a cloudy day is practically an economical holiday And cheap and shiny photovoltaic collectors fill the parking lots of most defunct strip malls, there's just no profit to be had. The only laser-transmitting satellites that have ever been commercially deployed were used for space-to-space communication

or wide-scale high-detail mapping. Those and the Davis Line direct energy weapons 15 years ago. line direct energy weapons 15 years ago you know what else promises to be commercially for one thing but feeds into a culture of war is it the space lasers you can buy from our advertisers yes go buy a space laser because that's a thing that you can do and would be moral and there's nothing complicated about that. Here's some ads. Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a

chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. You know that rush of endorphins you feel after a great workout? Well, that's when the real magic happens. So if you love hearing real, inspiring stories from the people you know, Love hearing real, inspiring stories from the people you know, follow, and admire? Join me every week for Post Run High. It's where we take the conversation beyond the run and get into the heart of it all. It's lighthearted, pretty crazy, and very fun.

Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating.

I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now, and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect

my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it. Welcome back. Unless you have cooler zone media,

in which case, well, it's still welcome back, but it's just welcome back from me talking about ads to me talking about coming back from ads. Aren't you so glad that you pay a small amount every month in order to not hear ads,

but instead to hear Margaret toss to ads and then come back. Because really, tossing to ads is the high point of her day. Because it's where I can make absurd jokes. Anyway, here's the story. The sun begins to bubble up on the horizon. In my rearview mirror, I see a black ball dragging a gray arrow up into the sky and tell the mirror to start recording. If I'm a war reporter now, I might as well get some good visuals. From the Model T's tiny hatch, I hear a voice say, oh good, you're awake. Tracy kicks out the armrest between the rear seats and unfolds

herself, legs first, out of the trunk, then slithers into the front passenger seat. Sorry, there was a coup. She glances down at my wrists. Ah, handcuffs. Also, they're after us by now, probably. You, uh, I start. I am a legitimate master of the circus arts, Tracy says. Who is after us, I say? There's a lot to know now.

Who, what, when? Journalism is inscribed upon my nervous system. Robin? The investors, Tracy says. Not all of them, of course. We raised funds to buy the silo via the blockchain, so most of the people funding the project know little more about it than solar-ready real estate guaranteed 20% return. And no, not Robin. They, our three on-site investor ombuds folks, tied us both up and went to get you. Robin and I have built up a tolerance to the spray. They knocked Lee out with it, though. There's not much to do in the desert, so Robin taught one of the investors how to echolocate. Sorry. Also, I talk a lot when I'm with a new person. Sorry about that, too. Also, I talk a lot when I'm with a new person.

Sorry about that, too. Where? Why? How? I should have been clearer, but I'm too confused to make my question specific. How did you escape is answered wordlessly as Tracy picks the lock on my cuffs with a paperclip. Where were she and Robin locked up? Hardly matters. Tracy probably just shimmied out of whatever they'd bound her with. Why is a bigger question. Light Brigade really isn't a weapons project, I promise.

It's just, you know, Tracy says before trailing off. Her face is as red as the desert twilight. We're going all the way to the airport unless you can pick the ignition or the door locks, I say. So just start from the beginning. How do you prove to people that your laser-transmitting solar-powered satellite actually works if all it does is give randomly placed receptors

a third more juice now and then? It's proof of concept. We need dozens of them in sun-synchronous orbits. So, blow something up just once for some venture capital funding? Lair for the dramatic? Well... Ah, no.

I realize the truth of the business model. Blow something up whenever one of the investors wants something blown up. Pollution-free, energy-efficient 95% of the time to pay fixed costs. And a profit center in privatized war. Not dramatic. Absurd. And why me? In the rearview mirror, the rocket ignited and took off, a star in a quickly faded, star-filled sky.

It's mostly the car, Tracy says, because it's easy to track. But you know, she waved a hand. Her fingers were very long and thin. People hate journalists, and, uh, ending one would make worldwide news. PR. I am Light Brigade's publicity person, but my idea was just to bring in a journalist, not to... People hate mimes, too, I found myself saying. I am a clown. And we're not going to... Her gaze flicks towards the rear view. It's rare to see a big old gas or car on the highways

anymore, since there were few operational gas stations, but a fast Ford 350 pickup is bearing down on us. Is that Nombud's person's car? It is, Tracy says. They probably figured out that I escaped with you. So how do we stop the car? Can you pick the ignition like the cuffs? Pick, says Tracy slowly. The ignition? No, of course not. You have to hack these things, and I can't. I came here to get you out the second the car stops in the airport lot. She shrugs, exaggerated, a stage performer who can't resist an audience. They want witnesses, maybe a terror angle to make sure you're on the news. It's up to me to stop the car. At least I have my hands now. Of course, there's the issue of the pickup truck on her tail. Circus arts are powerless, and I'm no techie.

What can journalists do except watch and write what they saw for pennies? Ah, watch. Ah, pennies. We drove far enough that my watch is in contact with the rest of the world again. I take it off. Put on your seatbelt, I tell Tracy as I put on mine. I hand Tracy my watch and tell her to log in under her own account and report the Model T we're in for drunk driving and drunk riding. Her fingers are nimble. She does it in a few seconds it takes me to dig my flask out of my pocket. The interior turns red and out of the steering wheel comes a breathalyzer tube and a sickly sweet female voice urges me to blow, just a little. I gulp, I swish and gargle and swallow, then blow.

The car stops, hard. A klaxon sounds inside, and the voice, now with a testy edge to it, warns me that this car is fully locked and will move no further until a retrieval truck arrives. Try to stay loose, I say, more to myself than Tracy, who can certainly manage that trick better than I can, booze aside. The Ford slams into the rear. I see nothing but a white explosion before me. I found out what happened immediately after the crash, only weeks later. I broke my nose and three ribs and really wrecked my back in those inexplicable ways that can never fully be healed. Stuff happened to my

literal spinal fluid, one of the few substances we can't just ladle out of a vat and pour into someone. Tracy was fine. She wriggled out over her airbag, kicked out the front windshield, and then skedaddled around to see the Ford. It had pushed us a good half mile up State Route 36, ate the back half of the Model T, and nudged up between my shoulder blades. The ombudsfolk were alive inside the wreck, unconscious and crushed between half a dozen airbags. We'd had a few seconds to prepare ourselves.

They'd been completely surprised. Tracy pulled me from the wreck and dragged me past the side of the road onto actual desert sands, a streak of blood and other liquids like a great stroke from the paintbrush making a trail behind me. It was good. She would be able to find me a few minutes later through all the smoke. Then she dashed down the road and found my watch. I came to fairly quickly. The thinnest sheet of ice lay over the sand. In ancient Egypt, servants were sent out each morning before dawn to ever so gently scrape

the millimeter of frost that would form upon the dunes overnight and collect it into a small cup so that the pharaoh might have a small cup of sherbet with his breakfast. I got two licks in before every molecule of H2O vaporized before my one good eye. I guessed that the satellite had just then passed overhead as both my rental and the Ford F-350 burst into flames. I felt the soles of my feet blister, the sense of having toes vanish as flesh flew off bones. It was good.

That meant my spinal cord was still functioning. When I woke up again, I was lying on the back of the cargo bed of the retrieval truck. I screamed at the sky for an hour as Tracy negotiated with my watch in an attempt to reroute the truck away from the airport vehicle's rental office and to a hospital. In her other hand, Tracy gripped a mostly melted license plate. I remember that she kept having to

take new pictures of it and upload them to a satellite link in order to be believed. When she and Robin visited me in the hospital a week later, she showed me a scar on her palm that was shaped like much of the letter W. Lee sent my watch a JP3G depicting a big-eyed owl holding flowers and wearing a sash reading get well soon. That was somehow worth four and a half million dollars to a softbee auction bot on the worldwide hive. Like all freelancers, I am uninsured, but that gift paid for all my medical expenses save painkillers. So I've had to find another way to get addicted to them. I live in a tiny house on the roof of an apartment building, the first story storefront of which is the sort of very much not Irish pub

that journalists enjoy drinking in. I get my pills from sympathetic colleagues and well-wishers. It took me a long time to file this story, but when it's posted, I'll have a few extra coins to buy some rounds for the gang. Other than the pub for pills, pints, and peanuts, I stay in bed, very much not healing. I can pay my rent and buy my Gromits thanks only to a peculiar fact. Somehow, the photovoltaic collector on the roof of the shipping container I call home consistently collects a third again of my energy needs at a rate 20% over its own listed capacity. I'm able to sell the extra electricity and my batteries back to the local utility. Every three months, the electric company sends me a check. The end.

That's a fun story I feel like okay before I say anything further as the child of people who work with light I need to issue a warning about lasers which is that they are very dangerous they are very very bad for your eyes even looking at a laser just being like pointed at a wall

like the diffraction from that is enough to fuck up your eyes don't mess around with them. Uh, you will go blind. Okay. It may take a while. They're very bad for you. Okay.

Yeah. Now, now that I've issued the laser disclaimer. Yeah, no, I, I like this story. Um, okay. So I asked, I asked Nick, I'm going to start doing this thing where I asked the authors to, to give us, give us a little bit of uh i was like do you want to you know say anything about your story and nick said if dear listener you have the sense that the flare is informed by a deep skepticism of techies and burning man you are correct it's it's really it's a really interesting synthesis of a bunch of the worst ideas that

anyone had like the oh it's called the murder market there was this whole thing for a long time where there was supposed to be this scheme where that there was like an assassination market oh yeah effectively uh-huh where yeah you could like put the the theory was that you could just keep putting money into it and eventually like the price would be high enough that someone would do an assassination and kill the person. Yeah. And everyone I knew insisted it was run by the feds. I don't know if it was run by the feds. I think it was run by not very weird people on the dark web.

Yeah. But yeah, it does sound like the exact kind of idea that these people totally they're like oh we're gonna bring free energy to the world and the world's like we're actually doing good on energy everything else sucks and they're like well free energy it's totally not murder laser definitely not no and i like that like you have the the people who are genuinely excited and trying to do the good thing and then like but the way in which they're funded causes them to do bad things yeah i totally don't have any sympathy for that i totally don't know what that's like at all don't get in bed with the

crypto billionaires it's always a bad idea yeah yeah and i wonder i didn't I didn't ask exactly when this was written I wonder if it was before the NFT crash or if this is predicting its return but like it fits within the context of this world they're describing very well so yeah I don't know I like stories that are just still I like stories that just like

accept that the world is going to be very different very soon because of climate change but then like still have like relatable normal people within it so the world may burn but there will always be only semi-employable incredibly broke journalists totally and then the not really irish pub that they all hang out at. Well, that's Book Club. Mia, where can people find you? I mean, it's funny because most people probably are listening to this on the feed of your podcast,

but they might be listening to it on the feed of my podcast. That's true, yeah. I host the podcast, It Could Happen Here. You can find it where, presumably where you're listening to this will also have It Could Happen Here, assuming that it's not already It Could Happen Here. Yeah. Yeah, I guess you can...

You know what? No, I'm not going to plug my Twitter. Screw that. Don't go on there. I don't want to be responsible for any of the people listening to this being on Twitter. So, don't find me no twitter is in the process of doing what this story is making fun of it is in the process of becoming from tech utopianism to tech dystopianism very quickly um okay well you can find me on cool people did cool stuff which might be where you're listening to this or if it's not then that's where you can listen to me every monday and wednesday i

tell you about history and nick asked me to plug the uh the anthology he co-edited with Alan Datlow. It's called Haunted Legends. It's finally available as an e-book at all Electron stores. That's Nick's phrasing of it. After 13 years of being print-only, it's a good chance to bring back the spirit of ghost stories for Christmas. So go check out Haunted Legends. Nick has very good taste in stories as well as writing good stories. And I will also hopefully have good taste in stories because I'm going to keep reading them to you every Sunday from now until I'm not doing it anymore. Bye! Bye. 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 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. Hey, guys. I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. The 2025 iHeart Podcast Awards are coming. This is the chance to nominate your podcast for the industry's biggest award.

Submit your podcast for nomination now at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. But hurry, submissions close on December 8th. Hey, you've been doing all that talking. It's time to get rewarded for it. Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards.