It Could Happen Here - CZM Book Club: "The Fortunate Death of Jonathan Sandelson" by Margaret Killjoy, Part One

Episode Date: April 28, 2024

Margaret reads Danl a story about hackers using drones to disrupt for-profit incarceration.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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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. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've 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, brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral. We're talking música, los premios, el chisme, and all things trending in my cultura. I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world and some fun and impactful interviews with your favorite Latin artists, comedians, actors, and influencers. Each week, we get deep and raw life stories, combos on the issues that matter to us, and it's all packed with gems, fun, straight up comedia, and that's a song that only nuestra gente can sprinkle. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Cool Zone Media Book Club

Book Club Book Club Book Club It's the Cool Zone Media Book Club The only podcast started by chanting that is never in sync I'm your host, Margaret Killjoy

And my guest today is Danil Hi First time, long time. Danil's often known as the person who does the editing behind the scenes. Yes, it is I, the occasional angelic voice interrupting the podcast. Yeah, I really like that effect. That's like one of my favorite effects. Okay, good. Yeah. So, Cool Zone Media Book Club every sunday we bring you fiction and this week i'm recovering from oral surgery so instead of finding a different story i'm gonna read one of my stories yay and because it's not a short story it's a medium short story it's i think technically a

novelette i think i'm like right on the novelette line you ever spend your time thinking about the word counts that distinguish different lengths of fiction only all the time yeah like i don't know if i've been to a dinner where people aren't talking about the difference between flash fiction short story novelette novella and novel and how they're just um it's just so much they're social constructs just like gender and amen to that yeah truth yeah truly which i actually kind of did once i wrote this book called a country of ghosts once and i was like it's my first novel because it's about 52 000 words long okay and then i quickly learned that it is like far better for my career if i was like it's mine it's a novella really yeah interesting yeah because a debut novel is like a specific thing and 50,000

words is like it's on the line it okay you could call it either way okay interesting so it's a novella gotcha gotcha this one you could call either a short story or novelette great which is obviously interesting to anyone who isn't a writer. No one cares about these lengths. But this story was first published by the magazine Strange Horizons in 2018. And it is a story of AI and murder. Ooh, fun. And justifiable homicide maybe topical i know it's called the fortunate death of jonathan sandelson

solid name thanks i straight up didn't think i was gonna solve this story i was like i have clearly written too extreme of a story no No one is going to buy this. And I sold it to the first magazine I sent it to. Boom. There you go. That rules. Thanks. I was just trying to box troll that asshole into quitting,

like I'd gotten the two guys before him to do. I swear I wasn't trying to get them all dead and shit. It wasn't my box that did it. But I guess all drone-related crimes fall under federal jurisdiction, and when a civvy octocopter box put a bullet in Jonathan Sandelson's front left tire and sent him careening into the ocean and the afterlife, the feds assumed it was me. Well, they assumed it was my handle, HeyHeyCameron. They probably hadn't made the connection between HeyHey and real world me,

J. Diana Diaz. Not yet. I watched the whole thing happen on a live feed. Oh, that's funny. I just realized whenever you set a story in the future, most magazines are like, don't put a date in it. Oh, interesting. And the reason that they do that is why I'm about to read this.

At 4.30 a.m. on September 8th, 2024, Mr. Sandelson pulled out of his garage in his vintage Beamer. He drove a dum-dum car, probably because he was afraid I'd hack anything else. Which was true. I'd hacked his neighbor's security cameras. Two years earlier, an Amazon delivery bot had been out of cell service during an automated firmware update. It drifted too close to one of the nodes in my box net, and my AI owned it.

Then it just went about its job, a sleeper agent, patiently waiting for its chance to troll my enemies. My Amazon was in the area, and it got a call from my AI at 4.31am. By 4.32, it was tailing Mr. Sanderson. I don't go for manual control, that's a noob's game. Too slow, and it lacks art. I trust my code to make its own decisions about how to ruin people's lives. Hacking billboards on his route, party boxes outside his windows at night, armies of toy dolls following him through the mall announcing his various crimes. That kind of thing. I set hard limits. Not just the standard no injury or anything that might cause injury stuff.

I also told my AI not to harass civvies. No targeting relatives, no targeting low or medium level employees of Herculean Solutions Group. Only Sandelson and the board of directors. Oh, and Sandelson's therapists. That might not be fair, but it was fun to watch those fuckers quit so fast. That morning, September 8th, the protocol was set to hover right outside of personal EMP reach, just to remind him that I was there, that I was watching. That morning, I even was.

A couple thousand miles away, I was up early and still tipsy enough that my hangover hadn't kicked in yet. The Texas sun wasn't going to be up for an hour or so yet, and McGonagall was curled up next to me in a fuzzy ball of cat on my sleeping bag on the couch. Two of my housemates had just gone to sleep after a long night of work driving around the city for whatever the latest Uber but for drugs app was. My third roommate, the one I actually liked, had just run off in his ill-fitting polo shirt to sit at an IT desk. Poor Marcel. I think the reason we don't call our boxes drones much anymore is because it would be a shame to compare something as cool as a semi-autonomous robot to human drones at office jobs. I turned on the TV, set it to watch my Mark. Idle curiosity. I usually checked in a couple times a week when I couldn't sleep. I saw my Mark's BMW hit the coastal roads,

and maybe he was driving extra fast because he saw that Amazon box on his tail. and maybe he was driving extra fast because he saw that Amazon box on his tail. Maybe that part is my fault. Maybe you don't get to harass a man for a year and feel innocent in his death. I don't know. The Civvy Octo came out of a live oak on the hillside. No running lights. It wouldn't have been seen if it weren't for my Amazon scouring the thing's defenses.

My AI was pretty sure we could own this one in a matter of seconds, indicated by a blue rectangle overlay on the feed that started to turn green. That blue rectangle streaked out from the branches, fired one shot, then kept going out over the ocean. The box self-destructed before I gained full control. But not before I had an IP address. The whole thing happened so fast I had to rewind and watch in slow motion. Bullet to the tire, time to drive him over the cliff. The civvy was a custom job. Someone had hand built that fucking thing, just to kill Jonathan Sandelson. My AI was smart

enough not to drop my box down over the cliff and look for signs of life. Instead, it went into crisis mode, self-destructed the Amazon over the ocean, and locked down the whole box net to keep me from getting popped. For all the good it did. My hands shook, made tapping out commands on my tablet all the harder. The IP address led to a VPN, a shitty one with known vulnerabilities and a tendency to take at least a day to wipe their logs, no matter what they claim in their ads. That gave me another IP address. That gave me a name. I set my search AI to dox the man while I

looked for recent attacks by custom octocopters. I'm not the best at finding people and what they've done. I've got nothing on Marcel. But even still, it didn't take long. Three weeks ago, someone box killed a judge in San Diego. There was video. I clicked. I wish I hadn't. Box killers are the enemy. Box trolling, at least leftist box trolling,

is a proud political tradition that goes back years. Okay, like maybe three or four years. Still, we don't kill people. Don't risk killing people with autonomous or semi-autonomous drones. That's the golden rule of box trolling. The other two rules, don't snitch on your fellow box trollers and don't box troll people who aren't in the process of wrecking the world, those were important too, but ain't got nothing on the golden rule. We have a reputation to maintain.

Much like the reputation of these fine products and services that support this podcast. You're muted. I love as an audio engineer when I miss that very simple thing. Oh, you're muted. I hope that these products and services are eventually dropped by box to you and or me and or the listener. That's right.

They will be if you insist, if you say, do not deliver this except by semi-autonomous drone that I can then repurpose to harass CEOs. Put in the comment section,, special part of the order, you know? Yeah. Yeah. 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. 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, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. 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, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. I signed into work at Taco Dick's at 7.59 a.m., jittery from caffeine and tension. work at Taco Dick's at 7.59am, jittery from caffeine and tension. I get marked late if I'm not at least a minute early, and that pisses me off enough that I always sign in one minute early to the millisecond, whether or not I'm actually there. I usually am, though. I'm too poor to risk getting fired. Working at an automated fast food joint is lonely. Just me and the food robots and the customers. I prefer the food robots and the customers. I prefer the food robots. I'd rather help a guac box that's accidentally tracked itself into a corner than some hungover asshole who is upset because there are potatoes in his potato and rice

burrito. Mostly, people in boxes can figure that shit out themselves and I'm extraneous. So at least half my day I sit around and listen to podcasts. That's what I was doing that morning at 9am. Just listening to the history of the Magonistas and the Mexican Revolution. Just trying to get through my day without thinking about the death of my mark when that voice of the state robot cut in on my headphones. While authorities have yet to issue an arrest warrant, they are asking for the public's help in identifying the hacker known as J.J. Cameron. They pronounced he-he wrong, like J.J. instead of he-he. Simple as that. Sudden as that.

I was a wanted girl. Fuck. When I first got into the whole hacktivist thing three years back, I'd started off small. Stealing $400,000 wasn't nearly enough to bankrupt a for-profit prison, let alone a holding company the size of Herculean Solutions Group, with dozens of prisons and deportation internment camps to its name. When my friend Miguel got deported, and he'd spent all but the first two years of his 20 years living in the land of the free,

the people who deported him took all of his cash. Is that legal, I'd asked him when he got online in Nogales and called me. I don't know. They gave me a fucking bank card, but it doesn't work right, and the balance isn't half of what I had on me when they picked me up. Tell me about the bank card. Like, the details. That's how it had started. $400,000, which was all I could grab easily,

filing a counterfeit request for middle management bonuses. I tried to give it all to Miguel, but he made me split it 100 ways and give it to the next 99 deportees he ran across. I never heard from him again. I don't think he got caught. Marcel was good at keeping tabs on people and helped me write an AI to main a search for him in any new databases of the dead or arrested. But I'm pretty sure he got spooked, went underground,

and stayed underground. It's funny how deep you can get buried without dying these days. Hey, hey, what the hell am I gonna do? Maximum. Go to Mexico? Hey, hey. If I'm in Mexico when the feds catch me, I don't know, they might just fucking box kill me. Maximum. Iceland? Hey, hey. I could definitely get to Iceland. They definitely still let American citizens in without a visa. Maximum. I'm just trying to help my favorite forever house guest. Hey, hey. I'm freaking the fuck out. Maximum.

Use your AI? Hey, hey. It trolls people I tell it to troll. That's all it does. It's semi-autonomous software, not a fucking Oracle or some Star Trek shit. Maximum. Cool, because I didn't know that because I'm a total noob. Hey, hey, sorry.

Maximum. You said you tracked down the person who did it? Hehe. Yeah, I'm about 80% I got the guy. He's bad at OPSEC, took me 20 minutes. Ruthless, though. I don't think my life will get any better if he knows who I am. Maximum.

What do you mean? Hehe. Here's a video. Content warning. Maximum. Did you know that dead men are more likely to float face down than dead women? It has to do with their center of gravity or something. They all sink at first, but later they float back up. Hey, hey, you watch a video of a guy bleeding out in a swimming pool shot by a drone at Sunday barbecue, and that's what you respond with?

Maximum. Okay, yeah, the box killer guy is fucked up he killed some dude in front of his screaming kids and shit it's just that i wrote a paper on dead bodies floating when i was in college and i thought it was kind of cool hey hey why are we friends maximum for you i think it's because you need somewhere to live for me i'm guessing it's because you put up with me maximum anyway your box Anyway, your box killer is scary AF, and there's no reason why you should take the fall for what someone else did. You could snitch.

Hey, hey. No. Maximum. Why not? Hey, hey. Because I am not a bad person. Maximum. Yeah, I get it.

The second rule of Box Troll Club is no snitching, but the first rule of Box Troll Club is no killing. Hey, hey. First, if I rat this guy out, hell, if I get caught snooping on him at all, you'll be telling your roommate some neat new fact about what dead bodies do. Hey, hey. Second, I mean, I don't know this judge, but I know my mark. I promise you that that box killer man has less blood on his hands than that fucking dead CEO did. I'm not really sad Sandelson is dead. And when I'm being thrown under a bus, I don't try to find someone else to be under the bus instead. Maximum.

Someone's gonna go down for this and it shouldn't be you. Hey, hey. That's an idea. Maximum. What is? Maximum. What's the idea? Maximum. God damn the idea? Maximum.

God damn it, I'm coming into your work. You know how hard it is to read transcript of chat? A text message conversation, yes. Yeah. You nailed it though. Thank you, thank you. Marcel Maximus Monroe has a way of drawing every eye in the room every time. It's that he doesn't stand, he leans.

Everywhere he goes, he drapes himself against walls and doorways and chairs. He's the kind of guy who looks like he's smoking even when he's not. It's not his fault, any of it. It's just who he is. He also won't let me call him 3M, which is fucked up. He should let me call him 3M, which is fucked up. He should let me call him 3M. So what's your plan, he asked as he propped himself up on the end of the counter in Taco Dick's. My plan is to not talk about it here, I said. There weren't any customers, but that sure as shit didn't mean no one was listening. Then can I get a french fry burrito, he asked.

No, I answered, but I put in the order anyway. He went to a booth to eat and I ran my tablet through a couple VPNs. I had the Taco Dicks network pretty well owned, but you can never be too careful. It didn't take too long to set up Jonas James Abrams as if he was a real person and probably the one responsible for all my box net crime. A couple of forum hacks to insert backdated posts on above-ground boxer sites, a few purchase records for drone equipment, and an IT profile on Jobber. Everyone assumes that every hacker who has ever lived

has an above-ground career in IT. Some of us just sell burritos because some of us are women who, even though we're more or less white, have Latinx last names and federal records for computer crime going back to middle school. I used one of my custom sock puppet tools to develop Abram's personality and internet history. He was disgruntled. He wasn't an activist. He was an IT guy at the end of his proverbial rope who had applied to Herculean Solutions Group and had been turned down and

maybe taken it personally and the activist angle of the trolling was just a cover. It only took me an hour. Would have been less, but halfway through, the food mover box dropped a sack of potatoes and I had to get down on all fours and rescue a couple dozen spuds that rolled underneath the fryer. The best part was,

Jonas Abrams was a fall guy who didn't exist. He was already underground. They'd never catch him. Eventually, they might figure out he wasn't real, but he should buy me some time and plausible deniability. After I finished setting up the puppet, I ordered myself rice and beans and went to go join Marcel in his booth. He took out his phone. I did the same. Encryption is safer than voice. Maximum. It work out, whatever you did? than voice. Maximum, it work out, whatever you did? Noobgirl01, I think so, yeah. Maximum,

nice handle, Noobgirl01, whatever. Maximum, you never let me or anyone help anymore. Noobgirl01, the fuck would you want in now for? It's over, and also remember how I almost just got caught? Maximum, just saying. You're never on the channels or nothing anymore. I glared at him for a minute, but he didn't do me the kindness of looking up from his phone to catch it. Maximum, I miss helping, that's all. Doing white hat shit is murder boring. And besides, I'm good at making people get underground or stay underground.

You have box trolling. I have doxing and counter-doxing. I can help. Noobgirl01. Working with other people is how you get caught. Maximum. No, working with the wrong people is how you get caught. Just a couple of roommates sitting across from one another, texting instead of talking. A common enough scene. Still probably didn't look good to the two feds in suits who walked in. A common enough scene. Still probably didn't look good to the two feds in suits who walked in.

People who wear suits don't eat at Taco Dick's. They were caricatures of feds. One man, one woman. Dressed like gender was a thing that mattered. The man was white. Real white. Red hair and shit. The woman might have been white and might not have been.

They walked right up to the counter. I thought about just putting my head down, pretending I didn't work there then leaving Then I remembered I had a Taco Dicks visor on Also that more information is always better than less information I locked my phone in my tablet And went to stand behind the counter Can I help you navigate the ordering system? I asked on script

Jay Diaz? The woman asked She was going to be good cop. I could hear it in her voice. I scoured the proverbial hard drive of my mind for everything I'd read about interacting with federal agents. Can I help you navigate the ordering system? I asked. That's not lying, and it's not admission. We'd like to ask you a few questions, Ms. Diaz. That was the man, mission. We'd like to ask you a few questions, Ms. Diaz. That was the man, bad cop, his voice full of rocks and threat. If you provide me with your information, I said, not doing a particularly good job of making eye contact, I'll have my lawyer contact you. That's also off a script, a different script. I was scared. I wanted to just play along, play dumb, start denying things.

But everything I'd read, both anecdotes and data, said STFU was always the safer bet for the innocent and guilty alike. We're investigating the drone-related death of Jonathan Sandelson, Bad Cop said. Do you know anything about that? If you provide me with your information, I'll have my lawyer contact you. The thing is, we're trying down a hacker with the name of HeyHeyCameron. We think he made use of this network to construct another alias. I don't have a good poker face, and I don't play cards. I don't play liars when I play RPGs,

because I suck at it. But I kept myself from gasping, and for that, I deserve an Oscar. It's possible that this location's network was just a stop along the way, but analysis indicates it likely originated here. If you have any information that might be of use to us, I recommend you tell us sooner than later, Ms. Diaz. He slid a business card across the counter. Dale Carter, FBI. With that, they left.

Fuck. FBI. With that, they left. Fuck. And this is a good point to tell you about our perennial sponsor of the show, Don't Talk to Cops. Amen. Something I have learned in the past and learned doubly

from you. Yeah, thanks. Here's those ads. Hi, Margaret Kiljoy here. Boy, the world sure is a mess right now, huh? Seems like every day there are more and more reasons to get out into the streets and protest. That's why, when I get arrested, there's only one strategy I trust. I shut the fuck up. I say, I would like to remain silent, I would like to talk to my lawyer,

and then I shut the fuck up. In the United States of America, it's constitutionally protected and recommended by the National Lawyers Guild. That's S-H-U-T-T-H-E-F-U-C-K-U-P. Once again, that's S-H-U-T-T-H-E-F-U-C-K-U-P. Because you can't talk yourself out of custody, but you can talk yourself into a conviction. Providing identification to law enforcement required in some states and situations. Giving name and address expedient in most circumstances. Never discuss the events leading to arrest with anyone except your lawyer, doctor, or therapist. Posting pictures of protests and actions on social media may lead to complications. If you have already talked to cops or experienced confusion about talking to cops, call your attorney immediately, as these may be signs of more serious legal problems.

The concept of not talking to cops does not provide legal advice, and the foregoing statements are for informational purposes only. If you have specific legal questions, consult an attorney. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how Tex Elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. 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. Thank you. 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 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, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, 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. When the feds have a case, Marcel said, they don't show up in uniform and shit. I was off shift and we sat in the park down by the South Congress Bridge. The bats would be out in a couple hours, but it wasn't peak bat season, so the place wasn't mobbed with bat tourists. They don't even do it to get information out of people. They do it to stir people up, to scare people into coming forward or making some dumb move. They don't need to scare confessions out of anyone they've got a solid case against.

He was nervous, I realized. Scared, even. Yeah, he was still leaning. Even while sitting down, he was somehow leaning. But there was a tremor in his voice. Yeah, sure, I said. I mean, he was right. I'd read about this shit. They're good at it, scaring people. Hey, we're friends, right? Sure, I said. It was hard to concentrate on anything but fear, to be honest. You'd never do anything to hurt me, right? Marcel asked. Of course not.

Then Marcel took a deep breath in. Maybe it'd be better if he found somewhere else to stay. What? I'd been staying with Marcel and his roommates for a couple months, and it was generally agreed that as soon as a room opened up, I could move in. I paid my share of utilities, even. Earlier you wanted to help,

now you're fucking kicking me out? My boyfriend's a coke dealer, for Christ's sake. We can't risk a police raid. I'll go to prison. And a box killer. I don't know, I was making light of it, but I can't get that image out of my head. Whatever happened to them not having a case, I asked. I tried to keep my voice level because frankly, this was not a good conversation for us to be having in public. Them not having enough information. That's why they'd raid, he said.

Fuck having emotions. Fuck having friends. Fuck everything. I'll leave, I said. But it's too late. You know that, right? You need to get everything sketchy out of the house. I stood up, grabbed my backpack. Hey, Jay, Marcel said. He grabbed my leg.

If you need anything, I don't know, money or something? Fuck you. I pulled my leg free and started out of the park. Eat a bag of rocks, you fucking coward. Did you know that you can get fired by text? It turns out you can get fired by text. There was no proof of my misuse of the network, but hey, no union. I hear there's plenty of jobs in jail. There must have been a snitch net on top of the network at work. It's not standard taco dicks protocol, and I double and triple checked when I first started working there.

The regional manager must have installed it after I'd convinced the guac box to leave work and go join the mayday parade downtown and dispense free guacamole and chips for demonstrators. I can't believe I hadn't checked again before making the alias. That's amateur shit. That's how they must have found me. Sure, there was some plausible deniability. It could have been a customer. But I'd bet what little I owned that they were onto me. The whole, he made use of the network thing,

was probably a feint designed to draw out a response. Maybe to trick me into giving a little self-assured smile. Killing a dude with a box is a life in prison thing. No parole, probably a communications management unit. To be honest, even just my box trolling campaign was a life in prison thing. I'd driven one CEO into early retirement, and another to move to the other side of the globe, and Herculean Solutions Group had roughly a third of the gross value it did three years ago.

By my projections, they would have gone under if I'd gotten Mr. Sandelson to walk away. Destroying a major company through a campaign of harassment is definitely a life in prison thing. It's just politically motivated premeditated murder. That's a for real terrorism thing. That's a whole different class of bad that's a no matter how deep you go underground they'll follow you to the ends of the earth thing if they wanted to find me though i guess that would be easy i pushed the dumpster up against the shitty cement facade hopped up and pulled myself onto the roof of taco dicks i'd slept there before i met marcel and the rest of his chicken ship friends. I'd sleep there again. Whenever I closed my eyes, I saw Desandleson drive off that cliff.

I saw the blood in the pool and the screaming family. I saw it from drone operator's point of view. I'd be willing to bet my dreams would be worse if I'd had time to sleep and to dream. Plenty of time to sleep when I'm dead, floating face up in the water. A handful of boxes buzzed overhead. Some of them had TSA running lights, which likely meant they were registered work boxes.

Some of them didn't. Some of them had the amateur lights you're allowed to use under 50 feet altitude and in line of sight with the user. One of them ran dark. When it went over, I got chills. I'd always assumed that was a metaphor, but I shook down my spine. It was probably just kids. How many boxes had I run dark in middle school? How many boxes did I still run dark? It would be fine. I'd be

fine. Living in fear is garbage. I got my tablet out and sat down to work. Didn't use the Taco Dick's Wi-Fi. I tethered to one of the burner cards I kept around for my phone. Someone did this to me. It was time he and I talked. Noob Girl 01 Damn, you fucked me up something real. Nessiremos Mill I don't know what you're talking about.

Noob Girl 01. Nicholas Sanchez, 44 years old, San Diego resident of 19 years. Law-abiding, tax-paying, productive, undocumented member of society. Low-level office job. Volunteers at a community center called Nuestra Lugar. Teaching English as a second language. Also, pilot a handmade, not printed, octocopter with an H&K G36C mounted to the bottom.

Noobgirl01. That enough? Or do you want me to send you a screen cap of your driver's license? Nessaramus Mill. How did you find me? Noobgirl01. Don't use VPNs with known vulnerabilities. NessaramusMill. What do you want?

Noobgirl01. Fuck, that's a hard question. The feds are up in my shit. They think I did it, and there's not an easy way to prove I didn't. Nasser Amos Mill Besides ratting me out, NoobGirl01 I'm not fucking ratting anyone out.

I just... I just need help. Your help. Nasser Amos Mill So you're blackmailing me. NoobGirl01. God damn it. I'm not ratting you out. I'm not blackmailing you. I'm not even fucking mad at you. I'm glad Sandelson is dead, which I thought I'd feel complicated about, but I don't. He was a monster and now he's dead and that's good and I'm not sad. I'm just fucking scared. I'm scared of the feds and frankly,

I'm kind of scared of you. Nessaramus Mill. You're the one tracking him, right? Noobgirl01. Yeah, it's called box trolling. Nessaramus Mill. Does it work? Noobgirl01. Honestly, it works better than killing people. Because you kill someone, you make a martyr. Break them down and everyone just pities them or some shit and everything they believe in loses credibility and power. I don't know, that's the theory anyway. Nassaramus Mill. I had to kill him. NoobGirl01.

Why? Nassaramus Mill. He deported my son. Got a judge in his pocket who sends people his way for minor infractions, and any conviction at all was enough to get my kid deported. I told Sandelson, I left the message with the secretary, that if my kid died on his way back home to the States, I would murder him. Border militia shot my son down in the desert, claimed he'd been working for the Narcos, and they got away with it. Noobgirl01.

Fuck the guy in the pool. That was the judge, I bet. Why the Sunday barbecue? Maseramus Mill. Dead is dead. His family will mourn him either way. Noobgirl01. This is why you don't fucking kill people.

You break them or drive them into hiding. Render them ineffective. It's not just an ethics thing. It's an efficacy thing. That dude's kids are gonna fucking go to the end of the earth to hunt you. Well, me, maybe. And or dedicate their lives to making other immigrants' lives miserable. Cycle continues. Nasser Amos Mill. I cannot control his kids, nor their reactions. I control only me. I knew Sandelson wouldn't believe me if my threat even reached his ears. But I said what I said, and I'm a man of my word.

NoobGirl01 Alright. NassaramusMil The border militia camp was harder. You can't get enough explosive onto a quadcopter. I had to rig one of their own trucks to blow. Had to do the work in person. Sandelson was the hardest, though. Couldn't get near him with a drone. I guess thanks to you. NoobGirl01. Why are you telling me this?

Weren't you worried I would blackmail you? NessaramusMill. At this point, it might be important to be understood than to live. NoobGirl01. What was his name? NessaramusMill. What was his name? Nessermus Mill What? Noobgirl01 Your kid, what was his name? Nessermus Mill Daniel

Noobgirl01 That's fucking rough Nessermus Mill Feds are after you? Noobgirl01 Yeah, they think I did it Nessermus Mill I'll turn myself in

Noobgirl01 What? No, why? I'll be real, I was sort of hoping you'd say that when I talked to you, but now, hey, don't do that. Nessarimus Mill. It's fine if I go down. No one expects to survive a killing spree. NoobGirl01. See? Now that's a better idea. Nessarimus Mill. It's better if I die? Noobgirl01. No, no, just that people think you're dead. As long as we can do it without killing anyone else. Nassaramus Mill. You know how to do that? Noobgirl01. No, but I know someone who does. And that's where we're going to leave it today. Whoa.

Talk about chills down my spine when you get to, what was his name? Daniel. Yeah. Wow. That was gripping. Thanks. I really love your stories, Margaret. I think, you know, you are such a good writer. And also, you write in this way that feels super approachable and real and just immediately

understandable in a way that I feel like sci-fi really requires, in my experience, sci-fi often requires a sci-fi fan who's ready to grapple onto something, who's ready to take on- A thousand terms. Lore, a thousand terms and lore a thousand terms exactly but everything was so just like natural and easily understandable and translatable and real it was really really really great storytelling thank you i really appreciate that of course i try very hard specifically with that issue actually when i write where i'm like okay i need a term for what

they're doing totally you know but like i'm gonna do it as legibly as i can i loved it there's a bunch of terms that i wrote down that i just thought were perfect first of all dumb dumb car was great because it's just like as you know especially now when it's like oh we can't get used cars because we don't have enough microchips for cars. And it's like, well, it's better to have a dum-dum car, I guess. Yeah, totally. Personal EMP I loved. I was like, of course, that is for sure right on the horizon. Box for drone is great. I love that. Especially the comparison to worker drones was great. Thanks.

Also, I was getting a lot of the struggle that our main character is going through, or rather what they're talking about and their goal of taking down Sandelson gave me a lot of the struggle that our main character is going through, or rather what they're, you know, talking about and their goal of taking down Sandelson gave me a lot of like cop city vibes right now. And the whole box trolling gave me kind of real much-wrenching vibes. It's like the idea of, you know, just wearing someone down until they're ineffective. I was like, that is the move. I think that is super effective and very well illustrated by you. Thank you. It's funny. I hadn't even thought of that, but I mean, that's the strategy that like, you know, the forest defense stuff that I came up in is like, you just, you just make it not worth their time. You know, you're like, oh, you want to log this old growth forest. That's going to be such a pain in the ass, isn't it? That's going to be such a pain. We used to go to timber sales auctions where they would sell off public lands for cutting. And if it was an old growth sale, we would stand outside and if the name of the sale was like solo, let's

say, I'd be like, you buy solo, you buy us is the chant. And it's just like, look, is it worth it? Like, we're going to make your life such a pain in the butt. Yeah. We're going to make it miserable. All right. Well, if people want to hear part two, they're going to have to wait until next Sunday unless it's the future in which case you can just press next or whatever button I used to know about how computers worked back when I wrote this

I'm not sure I do anymore who knows how they work anymore they're double tapping on their airpod to skip to the next whatever it is see you all next week bye knows. They're double tapping on their AirPod to skip to the next whatever it is. See you all next week. 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 slash sources. Thanks for listening. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons?

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