CZM Book Club: "Intentionalities" by Aimee Ogden

Margaret reads you a science fiction story about space unions and family ties.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
Book Club book Club book Club. It's the Cool Zone
Media book Club, the book club that has a different
jingle every week. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and every
week I read you a different story. It's the book
club where you don't have to do the reading because
I do it for you. The jingle changes, but the

(00:26):
tagline stays roughly the same, even though I don't write
it down, I already said I'm the host. Well that's it,
because there's no guest. It's just me and you, dear listener,
and story. This week, Uncle Zone Media book Club, I'm
going to read you a story called Intentionalities by Amy Ogden.

(00:47):
And this story has it all. I really like this story.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
I know.

Speaker 3 (00:51):
I say that about all the stories, but that's because
I like them, or I wouldn't read them to you.
This story has it all. It has emotions, it has
precarious labor, it has the future, It has family, it
has a labor organizing. Those are the only things that
I'm aware of. I told you it was by Amy Ogden.
But who's Amy Ogden, you might ask, Well.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
It's a good thing.

Speaker 3 (01:08):
I'm about to read you Amy's bio. Amy Ogden is
an American Werewolf in the Netherlands. Her debut novella Son
Daughter c Daughters, was a Nebula Ward finalist, and she
has over one hundred short fiction publications that have appeared
in places such as Strange Horizons, Light Speed and Best
American Science Fiction and Fantasy twenty twenty two, and of course,
Cool Zone Media Book Club. When Intentionalities came out, Hank

(01:32):
Green tweeted at her that the story made him cry,
which we'll have to count as Amy's fifteen minutes of
Internet fame, even though she missed it at the time
because she was cleaning the bathroom. You can find more
about her work and her at Amyogdenwrights dot com. Amy
is spelled AI m E and I'll just read the
whole thing actually a I M E E og d

(01:55):
E n w R I T E s dot com.
But without further ado, because there's been some ado. Do
you ever think about those words that only exist in
very specific contexts, like we only say much ado or
further ado. We never talk about a do on its own, like, oh,
there was some ado. We don't say that because it

(02:18):
sounds like poop, and we're afraid to talk about that.
Intentionalities by Amy Ogden. This story was first published in
January twenty twenty one in Clark's World magazine, which again
is one of the best science fiction magazines and one
of the only ones I never got into. I haven't
been publishing short fiction in a little while. That's why

(02:40):
I've never been in it. But you know, if you're
writing short fiction, if Clark's Worlds currently open submission, you
should always submit to them first, because they reject you
so fast. It's like, really impressive how fast they reject you.
And since you can only submit a short story to
one magazine at a time, it's cool to like get
the rejections racked up per story if you're writing short
fiction and you get rejected, like these magazines have like

(03:03):
a less than one percent acceptance rate, and even professional
authors are rejected about as often as they're accepted, even
once they've already got like a bunch of credits and
things like that. So don't take it personally, just like
I don't take it personally that Neil Clark has never
published me in Clark's World. I don't take that personally
at all. Intentionality is by Amy Ogden. Soorrel never intended

(03:26):
to confer a child to the Braxos corporation. But Sorel
had never intended a lot of things that managed to
happen with or without her say so. She had scarcely
marched across the auditorium diploma in hand. When Congress passed
the Protecting America's Children Act, education was handed over to
the private sector, mostly to prison corporations whose personnel already

(03:46):
had certifications in sub lethal youth management. Sorel didn't have
an SYM license nor the heart to teach with a
taser on her rip. Instead, she found work serving as
a custodian at Mission Health's main hospital, Camp. Mission belonged
to the parent corp that owned her student loan debt
and her father's end of life bills too. Having them

(04:07):
deduct the payments straight from her paycheck cut her interest
rate by a full half percent. The hospital had Braxos
ads everywhere, of course, along with those for several other
parent corp holdings. One Halavid played in the air over
the middle of the cafeteria several times a day on
a twenty minute loop. Braxos Our Future in Yours Hand

(04:27):
in hand, a blurb about the future career training and
Advocacy Act. All the ads became white noise to Sorrel
sooner or later, but she caught herself sometimes humming that
little jingle or the one for the new hyperloop line.
So Sorrel made plans, the kind of plans that can
only be made because believing they could come true was

(04:47):
the only thing that could get a body out of
bed in the morning she was making ends meet. She
would find a cheaper apartment and save money there. She
would skip breakfast a couple times a week, another couple
of bucks to sock away. She would st stop going
out to the matinee theater on her Tuesday mornings off,
cancel her vidgas streaming service, skip the occasional beaters with
friends who still lived nearby. The shell sparkled overhead, reflecting

(05:11):
sunlight back into space, but Sorel's apartment sweltered in the
hotter than ever summer's with the air conditioning off. In
her head, the numbers added up, slowly but steadily, building
sturdy mountains out of nickel and diime mole hills, but
the balance in her checking account never fell in line
the way its imaginary counterpart did. After two months of overdraft,

(05:32):
fees her bank account transferred her account to a high
risk financial management plan. When she sat down at the
first required meeting with her assigned case manager, the man
didn't even look at her as he typed her entire
biography into a two hundred character field on his form.
When he asked how she planned to develop her financial
outlook to prevent reaching felony levels of debt, he called

(05:54):
her Sarah. Her hands refused to warm to the temperature
of the office. She clasped them on her lap so
he wouldn't see them shake. Nothing she could say would
be right. No secret money stashed away, no education and
career development plant, no chance of an inheritance. Her head
was an empty box and the only thing bouncing inside

(06:14):
of it was that stupid Braxos jingle. I'm going to
confer a child to Braxos, she said, and he looked
up from his tablet. Sorrel meant to have a plan
in place before the screening test arrived in the mail,
another part time job under employment relief funds crowdfunding, but
her biz pass resume only ever racked up a couple

(06:35):
dozen hits and no leads, and her relief application bounds
and or hit you up ended up in the red
after she paid the fee to close it out. So
when the screening test came, Sorel viciously swabbed the inside
of her cheek and then dropped it back in the
postal box, postage paid. By the time the response arrived,
she'd convinced herself not to read it in detail. She

(06:56):
would check to see if there was a contract, and
if so, she could and send it back. If not,
no harm, she would simply be back where she'd started.
Knowing what small genetic accidents kept her from being a
viable candidate wouldn't change things. She opened the envelope. The
cover letter fell out. Behind it peaked another document on

(07:16):
heavy paper. At the bottom, a hungry signature line waited.
Her fingers brushed the letter, not hard enough to sweep
it aside. Instead, they crawled word by word over the ink,
collecting the scrabble tile names of celebrated genes. A novel
mutation in the po LB gene was her crowning glory,

(07:37):
promising a vastly increased rate of replication fidelity that would
help her offspring to withstand the withering radiation of space.
It would keep the baby's genes, hewing closely to the
original versions that Sorrel would bestow upon it, in other words,
a tie to bind them between worlds. Her hands seized
and she crushed the cover letter. Her signature on the

(07:59):
contracted more than usual, but still recognizable as her own.
She put it into the envelope and dropped it into
the mailbox downstairs before she changed her mind. It was
only five years. Sorrel could make it through five years
unscathed if it meant a light at the end of
the interminable tunnel of debt she'd fallen into. Sorel got

(08:22):
sucked into an argument with the crowd outside the clinic.
She was supposed to keep her head down and follow
the company liaison from the taxi to the door, but
then some asshole hit her in the head with a
sign declaring the Youth Occupational Success Act as slavery. It
wasn't slavery. It was just ten years of service after
their training, and after that the kids would be set
up for any career they wanted. She tried to say

(08:44):
that at least, but the protester shouted her down, calling
her corporate broodmare and mother of the year and more.
Succinctly bitch, and then the liaison was pulling her away
through the bristling cardboard signs and grabbing hands and into
the cool, clean lobby. While she waited for her appointment,
Sorel considered asking about the sperm donor. It was doubtful

(09:07):
that Braxos could tell her much, but even if she
couldn't know who he was, she would have liked to
hear what he was like, where he lived, why they
wanted to knit her DNA to his. But when the
technician called her name, he didn't look up from his tablet,
only rattled off her identifying information.

Speaker 4 (09:25):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (09:26):
She stood up and fumbled for her purse or jacket,
the outdated magazine where she'd been staring at a recipe
she would never make. That's me, Follow me. He disappeared
into the hallway behind the waiting room, and Sorrel trotted
to keep up. The waiting room had been full. He
must have had a lot of clients that day. Knowing
it was true didn't make Sorrel feel better about it.

(09:48):
In the patient room, a sheet and a green cotton
gown had been folded neatly and left on the edge
of the exam table. The technician excused himself, while Sorrel changed.
Don't forget to take your underwear off off, he reminded her,
before the door whispered shut. Sorols slipped into the gown
and lay back on the table, Her skin prickled with
cold where the sheet touched her legs. She wriggled, trying

(10:11):
to find a comfortable position. Exactly how many people had
lain here, expecting to get pregnant while still snugly encased
in a pair of haines. A knock on the door
pulled her fingers taut on the sheet. Come in, she called,
and another technician, a different sandy haired white man, entered
with a small cart. Sorrel Macintosh, she said, reading from

(10:32):
a vile label on the cart, and compared it to
the readout on his tablet. Thumb print here. She pressed
the tablet where he indicated, and it chimed its approval.
She was, in fact, who, she said to was no
allergies he should be aware of, she averred, no new
health condition since the mandatory complete physical last week. At
his instruction, she fumbled her feet into the stirrups and

(10:54):
stared up into the clean, white fluorescent light. Someone had
hung a suncatcher from one inner section of the drop
ceiling tiles. A cribmobile for adults suspended it twisted on
its string from the draft from the HVAC vent, beaming
faintly flower shaped patches onto the white wall while the
cold speculum stretched Sorel open. This is the lydocane injection.

(11:18):
The technician pulled up beside her on a rolling stool
to show her a syringe. You might feel a little pinch.
That little pinch darkened the edges of Sorel's world. When
she swam nauseously up from the depths of her dizziness.
The technician had stripped off his latex gloves and tossed
them into the used kit on his cart. You did great,

(11:38):
he said, entering data on the tablet. Sorrel craned her neck,
but couldn't see what he wrote, nor guess what he'd
need to. Please, remain in this position for ten minutes
before you get up. There are tissues to clean yourself
up if you need. Thank you for coming in today.
Thank you, said Sorel foolishly. Awkwardly, he pushed the cart

(11:59):
out with one foot and shut the door. Sorrel stared
at the ceiling alone with the realization she'd forgotten to
ask about the donor. Alone altogether. Now, five years wasn't forever.
She could be alone for five years. But you won't
be left alone without advertisements. Advertisements are always there. Whenever

(12:19):
you're lonely, turn to advertisements. This show brought to you
by advertisements. How was my ad for ads?

Speaker 4 (12:27):
How was it? Here's the other ads.

Speaker 3 (12:42):
Sorel wasn't supposed to be the first one to hold
the baby. The pre delivery instructions had been clear that
the Braxos technician would handle the infant before she did.
First things. First, turn the newborn into a number, break
her up from a person into a DNA word search puzzle.
But the sea section had run long, and the technician
had left the operating room for a bathroom break, and

(13:05):
so this pink, wrinkled, cotton smelling thing had been pressed
directly into Sorel's arms. Her whole body trembled, Convinced she
was ice cold in the wake of an epidural. I'll
drop her, she cried, as the little mouth pushed and
puckered against her neck. You can do this, mamma, the
nurse tutted and draped a warm felt blanket over her

(13:25):
head and around her shoulders, anchoring it under the baby's
tiny weight. Sorel didn't have the energy to explain it
to her. If anything happened to the child, if she
wasn't contractually perfect, then these nine months of worry and
wellness checks had been for nothing. Then she was still
in the same tunnel, digging ever downward. Two turned around
to hope to surface again. No one's ever dropped a

(13:48):
baby on my watch. But if you do, fumble her,
the nurse went on, appending a wink, I'll catch her
before she hits the ground. She clapsed the wave function
of Sorel's violently oscillating knee by squeezing it.

Speaker 4 (14:00):
Through the sheets.

Speaker 3 (14:02):
Then the Braxos technicians stumbled back into the oar, scrubbing
in and making his apologies. Concurrently, Sorel hadn't stopped shaking
by the time he lifted the infant from her arms.
No ordering the trip from the operating floor to the
recovery ward. She was shaking still when her pre delivery
clothes folded on the room's empty chair buzzed. The nurse

(14:24):
brought her the phone wrapped in sorrels wadded up jeans,
and Sorel fumbled her passcoat twice before it unlocked. There
was a new message from her bank. The initial Braxos
payment had been received. Every zero in the number looped
her around and round inside it, dizzying her with relief.
She shut the phone off and tossed it by her

(14:44):
feet before the nausea overwhelmed her. Here we are now.
The nurse appeared in the doorway with a swaddled infant
in her arms. When Sorel didn't hold her arms out,
she nestled the baby in the bed alongside her. She's
been fed, according to your wishes, you two shuldt a
court and get some rest, not necessarily in that order.
Her smile had ossified since earlier. Maybe she was at

(15:07):
the end of a long shift. Maybe she'd remembered that
Sorel was a Braxos parent. If you're going to name
her yourself, you can start thinking on that. Otherwise, we'll
use the random generator tomorrow for the official certificate. In
the meantime, you just buzz the nursing station if you
need anything, all right, dear, okay. The nurse dimmed the lights.

(15:28):
Sorel frowned down at the infant beside her, scrying for
her own reflection in the opaque, blue black eyes and
petulant face. In the morning, she had the nurse enter
the name Abigail onto the birth certificate. Abigail had been
Sorel's mother's name. You can use the generator for a
middle name, she said, aiming the little plastic bottle at

(15:49):
Abigail's incompetently pursed mouth. The nurse's reading lenses jumped as
she wrinkled her nose at the tablet. Abigail April doesn't
make much sense for a little girl born in July.
It's fine. Sorrel nudged Abigail's lips with the bottle nipple
the way the nutritional consultant had showed her. This time,
she latched on tiny bubbles rolled up to the top

(16:11):
of the chalky liquid with each of her sluggish pulls.
Just put in Abigail April. The nurse turned her back
to tap on the tablet. Abigail's feeble gulps competed with
the room silence they were absorbed into it. Sorrel re
arranged to hold the baby in the bottle with the
same arm and fumbled her phone out to watch the
day's news. The top story detailed the construction project that

(16:34):
would house the news Braxos Crush. She scrolled past it
to a bit about a hyperlooped derailment outside Rio, then
glazed over the coverage of the water ryots. Nothing new
to see there. A loud slurping noise roused her from
behind drooping eyelids. The baby had made it to the
end of the bottle and failed to distinguish dry air
from milk. Soorrel flicked the bottle onto the bedside table

(16:58):
and hefted the baby toward her shoulder. The baby burped
before she ever made it there, dribbling a mouthful of
sour milk slabber down the front of Abigail's gown. God,
damn it, Abigail April, she said, and the words rolled
out too naturally out of her mouth. She snatched a
tissue to wipe off her shirt, and the baby's pointed chin.
Damn it, damn it, damn it, damn it. She knew

(17:19):
from the outset the name was a mistake. Pretending it
was the first such she'd made. That was only a
concession to what was left of her pride. Sorel didn't
mean for Abigail's second birthday party to be her first
and only one. She made a cake yellow with chocolate frosting,
invited the other three children around Abigail's age from the
mission housing complex where they lived now. One of the

(17:42):
kid's older siblings who tagged along, sang Happy Birthday with
the adults, but the other little kids only shrieked and
confused anticipation. When Sorrel stopped Abigail from grabbing for the
cake with its still lit candles, no no hot, Abigail
burst into frustrated tears. Sorel cried too, but only later

(18:02):
when they were alone, while Abigail played with the presents
that Braxos had paid for. They sent money every month
for toys and games, as well as for child care
and food and clothes and educational programming. They wanted well
rounded humans, not neurotic labrats. Abigail was currently banging a
plastic spaceship against various things in the apartment, examining the

(18:23):
different sounds it made when bounced off the couch versus
tapped on the wall. The week before, Sorel had started
to fill out a dating profile on amoor dot com
and till she got to the question about whether or
not she had children, and froze, as she always did.
This time she'd been saved by the paying of July's
check arriving in her bank account. She closed the amor

(18:44):
tab and studied the solid black numbers. Walls of zeros
holding off all the awful things lying just out of sight,
never out of memory, hunger and sickness and exhaustion. Walls
full of holes, gaping wounds through which Sorel couldn't help
but jopoggle all the painful possibilities to test how loose
they'd grown. We could go on vacation, she said to Abigail,

(19:06):
who was banging the spaceship against the toy bin. Now,
she wiped her nose on her sleeve, a habit she'd
been trying to break, Abigail of neither of us have
ever had a vacation. Abigail put the nose cone of
the ship in her mouth. Snack pease, she said, round
her mouthful of Braxos fuselage. Sorrel picked her up and

(19:27):
carried her into the kitchen to make peanut butter banana,
which was too messy to eat on the carpet. She
cut the banana into little discs, dabbed peanut butter on top,
and placed a single cheerio halo in the middle of each.
Abigail ate three slices and pulped the rest in her
fists to paint an abstract master work on her high
chair tray. Sorel hated it when dark phantasies flitted through

(19:48):
her head. One day, while waiting to cross the street
to do their grocery shopping, she caught herself dreaming about
a car blowing through the intersection beneath a bloody red light.
She imagined Abigail sailing through the air, imagined her legs
shattering into the kind of shrapnel that would never again
tolerate space travel. She could hear the sound of Abigail
hitting the pavement, the screaming Abigail's her own intrusive thoughts,

(20:12):
horrible thoughts that she held on the back of her
tongue to save her and never quite swallow. Mommy owl.
Abigail protested, wringing her hand halfway free of surels. But
she didn't pull all the way clear, and she didn't
fumble into traffic, and her perfect legs carried them all
the way down the street to the Amazon market, where
the animated Cereal mascot sang Doggerel verses to Abigail, begging

(20:34):
her to convince her mother to choose their variety of
technicolor breakfast starch. And if you want to live in
a cyberpunk dystopia in which advertising shows up in the
oddest of places, you can listen to this podcast or
really a lot of things, because you do live in
a cyberpunk dystopia. Congratulations, here's the advertisers. Sorrel meant for

(21:05):
Abigail to get plenty of sleep, to be well adjusted
and happy when she started her technical track pre kindergarten classes.
Yet she woke her up three nights out of four,
slipping into her big girl bed beneath the purple and
green comforter, shuddering silently with tears that Abigail could not
be allowed to hear, but which she certainly must have
been able to feel. Go back to sleep, Baby, Sorrel

(21:27):
begged every night, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. The nights that
she didn't wake Abigail up were the ones that came
at the end of the days when she met her
developmental unit lead singly or in groups with her future cohort.
It was important that she spend time with the unit lead,
a smiling tie woman with a kindergartener teacher's affect and
an outminer's rangy stature. Adjusting to other adults and to

(21:51):
her peer group would ensure an orderly, non traumatic transition,
the Braxos Parent Handbook informed Sorel. Together, the ohort played
what looked to them like games, activities that taught them
how to work in teams, how to trust their intuition
and each other. The unit lead was generous with praise
and rewards alike. Abigail would come home from these meetings

(22:13):
with her sweater covered in colorful stickers and explain each
one's providence to Sorel over dinner. On those nights, Sorel's
body was too heavy to lift from her bed the
rest of the time, though, when she fumbled her way,
half awake, into Abigail's room and roused her from her
well earned sleep, she wrapped herself around a single, hard
edged solace, the knowledge that a good mother wouldn't put

(22:34):
her own emotional needs above those of her small child,
that she wouldn't wake a little girl and leave her
sleepless and frightened. So a good mother was something Abigail
could never have snatched away from her. Sorel knew she
could never let the Braxis rep take Abigail away. She
made spreadsheet after spreadsheet, trying to find a way to

(22:54):
pay back what she'd been given. Not so much crunchy
numbers as being crushed by them. She poured over the contract,
asking on law advice forums, but she found no gap
in the net of legalisms wide enough for even a
bony five year old to slip through. She could never
let it happen. She can never. She could not be
standing on the apartment complex stairs on Abigail's cakeless unsung

(23:16):
fifth birthday, watching the unit lead, the medical technician, and
the legal representative load Abigail's things, load Abigail into the
company driveless car. The unit lead came back last to
shake Sorel's limp hand. Don't worry, she told Sorel, her
voice as firm as her grip. She will be loved.

(23:37):
She turned to look at Abigail, whose perplexed, nervous, excited
face was just visible through the tinted window. We have
a very dedicated training staff. Sorel didn't cry when the
car drove off, and Abigail didn't look back. Soorrel wouldn't
have driven all the way out to the Braxfast development
complex outside Baltimore if she'd known the abbey M listed

(23:58):
on the dark web registry she'd found was the wrong one.
Or maybe she would have. After all, she had no
other leads, no more ideas, nowhere else to go. Someone's
abby M was better than no abby M whatsoever. Either way,
When Sorel shook the facility fence outside Newark and screamed
her name, no one answered except the company's private police.

(24:20):
After letting her cool off overnight, they sent her home
with a bill for an overnight security stay. Along with
the bill, there were some QR codes key to suggestions
on how she might cover the costs. One of those
codes pulled up Braxos's star studded logo Braxos. The site said,
its colors hideously familiar. Our future in yours hand in hand.

(24:43):
She had enough of Braxos's money already. She never wanted
to see another nickel. She paid the fine with what
was left of her last payout and closed the associated account.
Sorel went to the interview with a tidy CV printed
expensively on real paper, armed with preloaded answers to questions,
and an air of projected confidence for a field she'd
never worked in before. Instead, she found herself spilling her

(25:06):
every secret to the interviewer, a woman a little younger
than herself, with an otherwise nice suit with an old
coffee stain on one's sleeve. She knew she couldn't change
what had happened, couldn't undo her signature on the contract,
couldn't reclaim what had been surrendered. It had been legal,
but it hadn't been right. The interview put a box
of tissues on the desk between them. There are a

(25:28):
lot of us with similar stories, she said. Sorel blew
her nose, did you a nephew, said the interviewer. They
sat together, kneeding the silence, making it elastic, making it strong,
making something that would rise. Sorrel went after the future career,
training an advocacy act with both hands, tearing at it

(25:49):
with every weapon she could find, every fundraised dollar or
agami bent in ao blades, every legal precedent, an obscure statute,
fired like bullets into the belly of the behemoth in
her her entire life, there had been so few things
she'd really wanted, really striving for. It had never seemed
worth reaching for things when they had all been set
so far above her. A lifetime's worth of unspent aspiration

(26:12):
and ardor now poured out of her and into her work.
She wasn't fighting alone either. The organization she worked for
had siblings all over the country, more people like her,
or people who understood her, A chorus of voices shouting
down the clarion call of this idea, thousands of people,
millions of dollars a year of work, five a decade.

(26:36):
It still wasn't enough. It still only scratched the surface.
But a scratch can be big enough for the cold
to get into and break the whole thing open. When
the miners' union spokespeople made landfall on Earth to negotiate
their terms for the release of Braxo's company property and
their own emancipation, Sorrel was supposed to be on the

(26:58):
other side of the planet filling out documentation for the
class action lawsuit, But without her asking, her supervisor quietly
swapped a few assignments, and so Sorel found herself as
one of the nonprofits representatives at the introductory's summit, The
miners stood out in the sea of black suits and skirts.
They wore company work suits emerald green or sapphire blue,

(27:21):
depending on which project they had been tagged to. The
name Braxos defiantly blazoned down each sleeve between the clasps
of their exoskeletons. Sorel avoided them for the most part,
afraid to look too long into their hunger and hurt.
Not all of them responded in kind. One young woman
took up a low orbit around Sorrel, falling closer with

(27:43):
each passing cycle. Sorel looked her over from the corners
of her eyes, past the sides of her pocket as
she nudged keynotes in legal references to the nonprofit's lead representative,
seventeen or eighteen, the right age, black hair, shorn short,
the right color, eyes like brown, bruises in her face,
right and wrong, all at once. During a break, her

(28:06):
orbital integrity collapsed entirely. She stopped in front of Sorel's
seat on her way back from the coffee machine, a
paper cup in either hand, was I yours? She asked
a challenge a rebuke a wish. Maybe it was wishful
thinking to recognize any of Abigail and the curl of
close cropped hair behind one ear. Maybe it was self

(28:28):
punishment to look into this stern, stubborn face and see
a round cheeked little girl's smile. No, she said, and
it was the truth either way. Maybe I gave birth
to you. I don't know, but I don't have the
right to call you mine either way. The young woman's
bruised eyes did not soften. She did not reach for

(28:49):
Sorel's hand. Her exoskeleton whined faintly as she set one
of the coffee cups in front of Sorrel. She did
not walk away. Steam rose from the surface and led
away to nothing in the cool, dry meeting room air.
Sorel took a deep breath and spoke slowly, stuttering but
doling out every word carefully, to say exactly what she

(29:11):
meant to say it all and leave nothing behind or
forgotten or overlooked. And that's the story. Hey, I hope
you liked it anywhere near as much as I do,
because then you would have liked it a lot. I
had to like a little bit pause near the end
because I get choked up. I mean Abigail meets Sorrel

(29:31):
or the maybe Abigail meets Sorel. You know I'm a
sucker for it. What do you want? I asked Amy,
the author about the story, and Amy told me to
tell you at the outline stage. I intended for this
to be a flash piece, but I figured out very
quickly I couldn't unpack my feelings about motherhood, choices, and

(29:52):
complicity into less than a thousand words. As a parent,
and as someone who has and or had a strange
relationships with both my own own parents, I think constantly
about how every day that passes means a million decisions,
most of them subconscious, most of which don't feel like
decisions at all, because of the societal stew that we
all marinate in daily that tries to leave us all
more or less isotonic to what we're swimming in. This

(30:15):
story grew out of that and the nagging fear that
I'll embark on one of those egregiously wrong paths. It
feels so obvious and safe and comfortable when I take
my kids by the hand and lead them out into it.

Speaker 1 (30:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (30:27):
I think that the fact that this was written by
a mother is very clear, and I love, you know,
there's this whole era of like really masculine science fiction
that was like, you know, the only people who can
talk about space and stuff are like men, and no
one has emotions, and no one talks about family and shit,
you know, and it's just like so completely untrue. And

(30:49):
I love that this is a story about space and
near future and it is about science and it is
also about emotion and family and those aren't contradictory, right,
Like you can talk about both because we're human and
we can do that. We contain multitudes. That was my addendum.
I think you'll figure that out. And I asked Amy
what to plug. She said that her novella Emergent Properties

(31:11):
came out last year, and although it's more upbeat, it
does feature complicated parent child relationships, a sentiment of fuck capitalism,
and in this case, body hopping robots. So check out
Emergent Properties or anything else that Amy Ogden has written
on a bunch of different magazines. And if you listen
to this on it could happen here. You could check
out my history podcast Go Cool People Did Cool Stuff.

(31:32):
If you are checking us out on Cool People Did
Cool stuff you could check out It could Happen here
Because this is on both feeds, it's a podcast without
its own feed. It sits upon other feeds as a symbiote,
like Dax from Star Trek. Different gender. I don't know
how the different genders of the podcast are. It gets

(31:54):
to the metaphor fall apart. I'll talk to you next week.
Bye everyone.

Speaker 1 (32:00):
It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
coolzonemedia dot 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 dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.