April 28, 2024 • 36 mins
Margaret reads Danl a story about hackers using drones to disrupt for-profit incarceration.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media book Club book Club book Club 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 Kiljoy, and my guest today is Daniel Hi.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
First time, long time.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Daniel's often known as the person who does the editing
behind the scenes.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Yes, it is I, the occasional angelic voice interrupting the podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Yeah, I really like that effect. That's like one of
my favorite effects.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Okay, good, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
So Cool Zone Media book Club is every Sunday we
bring you fiction. And this week I'm recovering from oral surgery,
so instead of finding a different story, I'm going to
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
(01:02):
the novelette line. You ever spend your time thinking about
the word counts that distinguish different lengths of fiction.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Only all the time?
Speaker 1 (01:10):
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, novel, and how they're just it's
just so much there's social constructs just like gender and yeah, truly,
yeah truly, which I actually kind of did once. I
wrote this book called The Country It Goes once and
(01:32):
I was like, it's my first novel because it's about
fifty two thousand words long, okay, And then I quickly
learned that it is like far better for my career
if I was like, it's my it's a novella. Really yeah, interesting, yeah,
because a debut novel is like a specific thing, and
fifty thousand words is like it's on the line. It's okay,
(01:52):
you could call it either way. Okay, interesting, interesting, it's
a novella, gotcha, gotcha? This one you could call either
a short story or nottat, 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's Strange
(02:13):
Horizons in twenty eighteen, and it is a story of
AI and murder ooh fun and justifiable homicide.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Maybe topical.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
I know. It's called the Fortunate Death of Jonathan sandalson
Solid Name. Thanks. I straight up didn't think I was
gonna saw this story. I was like, I have clearly
written to extreme of a story. No one is going
to buy this, and I sold it to the first
magazine I sent it to Boom.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
There you go, rules.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Thanks. I was just trying to box troll that asshole
in the quitting like I'd gotten the two guys before
him to do. I swear I wasn't trying to get
him 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 SEVI octocopter box put
a bullet in Jonathan Sandalson's front left tire and sent
(03:13):
him careening into the ocean and the afterlife, the Feds
assumed it was me. Well, they assumed it was my handle.
Hey Hey, Cameron. They probably hadn't made the connection between
heyy and real world and me Jay Diana Diaz, not yet.
I watched the whole thing happen on a live feed.
(03:34):
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 four thirty am on September eighth, twenty twenty four,
mister Sandalson pulled out of his garage and his vintage beamer.
He drove a dumb, dumb car, probably because he was
(03:55):
afraid I'd hack anything else, which was true. I'd hacked
his neighbor secure 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
(04:19):
Amazon was in the area and it got a call
from my AI at four thirty one am. By four
point thirty two, it was tailing, mister Sanderson. I don't
go for manual control. That's a nubs 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,
(04:40):
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 civies. No targeting relatives, no targeting low or medium
level employees of Herculean Solutions Group, only Sandalson and the
(05:03):
board of directors. Oh and Sandalson's therapists. That might not
be fair, but it was fun to watch those fuckers
quit so fast. That morning, September eighth, 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.
(05:25):
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
(05:48):
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.
(06:09):
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 marks
BMW hit the coastal roads, 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
(06:29):
to harass a man for a year and feel innocent
in his death. I don't know. The city 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
(06:50):
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
(07:12):
him over the cliff. The city was a custom job.
Someone had handbuilt that fucking thing just to kill Jonathan sandalson.
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
(07:33):
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
(07:55):
my search AI to docks the man while I looked
for recent attacks by custom octocopters. I'm not the best
of 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
(08:19):
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
(08:41):
boxtroll people who aren't in the process of wrecking the world.
Those were important too, but it 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.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
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.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
That's right, they will be if you insist. If you say,
do not deliver this except by semi autonomous drone that
it can then repurpose to harass CEOs. But in the
like comments section, the like special part of the order,
you know, yeah, yeah, and we're back. I signed into
(09:44):
work at Taco Dick's at seven fifty nine am. Jittery
from caffeine intension. 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
(10:07):
the food robots and the customers. I prefer the food robots.
I'd rather help a gualk 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
(10:27):
sit around and listen to podcasts. That's what I was
doing that morning, nine am, just listening to the history
of the Maganestas in 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
(10:48):
and identifying the hacker known as JJ Cameron. They pronounced
he Hey wrong like JJ instead of he he simple
as that, sudden as that I was a wanted girl. Fuck.
When I first got into the whole hackedavist thing three
years back, I'd started off small. Stealing four hundred thousand
dollars wasn't nearly enough to bankrupt a for profit prison,
(11:11):
let alone a holding company the size of Herculean Solutions
Group with dozens of prisons and deportation and tournament camps
to its name. When my friend Miguel got deported, and
he'd spent all but the first two years of his
twenty 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
(11:31):
Nogaulis and called me.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
They gave me a fucking bank card, but it doesn't
work right and the balance is in 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 four hundred thousand dollars, which was all
I could grab easily filing a counterfeit request for middle
management bonuses. I tried to give it all to Miguel,
(11:55):
but he made me split it one hundred ways and
give it to the next ninety nine deporties. He ran cross.
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 databasis of the dead or arrested.
But I'm pretty sure he got spooked, went underground and
(12:15):
stayed underground. It's funny how deep you can get buried
without dying these days. Hey, what the hell am I
gonna do? Maximum? Go to Mexico? Hey? If I'm in Mexico,
when the Feds catch me, I don't know, they might
just fucking box kill me. Maximum Iceland, heyy, I could
(12:39):
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, I'm freaking the fuck out. Maximum.
Use your AI. HEYY, it trolls people, I'd tell it
to troll That's all it does. It's semi autonomous software,
not a fucking oracle. Or something Star Trek shit, Maximum,
(13:02):
cool because I didn't know that because I'm a total nube.
Hey sorry, Maximum, you said you tracked down the person
who did it. Hey, yeah, I'm about eighty percent. I
got the guy. He's bad at OPSEC. Took me twenty minutes, ruthless, though.
I don't think my life will get any better if
he knows who I am. Maximum, What do you mean? Hey,
(13:24):
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
(13:45):
respond with? Maximum? Okay, yeah, the box Killer guys 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, 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,
(14:09):
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?
Speaker 2 (14:19):
Why not?
Speaker 1 (14:20):
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. First, if I read this
guy out, hell, if I get caught snooping on him
at all, you'll be telling your roommates some neat new
fact about what dead bodies do. Hey. Second, I mean,
(14:42):
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 Sandalson 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
going to go down for this, and it shouldn't be you. Hey,
that's an idea. Maximum? What is maximum? What's the idea? Maximum?
(15:09):
God damn it, I'm coming into your work. Yea. How
hard it is to read transcriptive chat.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
A text message conversation?
Speaker 1 (15:18):
Yes, yeah, he 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 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
(15:40):
not his fault, any of it. It's just who he is.
He also won't let me call him three M, which
is fucked up. He should let me call him three M.
So what's your plan, he asked as he propped himself
up on the end of the counter, and Taco Dix.
My plan is to not talk about it here, I said.
There weren't any customers, but that sure shit didn't mean
(16:01):
no one was listening. Then can I get a French
fri 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 Dix 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
(16:21):
a real person and probably the one responsible for all
my box NetCrime, a couple of forum hacked 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
(16:44):
though were 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'd applied to Herculean Solutions
(17:04):
group and had been turned down and maybe taking it personally.
And the activist angle of the trolling was just to
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
(17:26):
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
(17:48):
you did, Newbgirl zero one, I think so, yeah, Maximum,
nice handle, New Girl zero one. Whatever, Maximum, you never
let me or anyone help any more, New Girl zero one,
the fuck would you want in now? For it's over?
And also, remember how I almost just got caught Maximum
(18:09):
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'm misshelping, 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 counterdoxing. I can help New Girl
(18:31):
zero one. 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 and
suits who walked in. People who wear suits don't eat
(18:51):
at Taco Dicks. They weren't 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,
than leaving. Then I remembered I had a Taco Dick's
(19:13):
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
(19:33):
proverbial hard drive of my mind for everything I'd read
about interacting with federal agents. Can I help you navigate
the ordering system?
Speaker 2 (19:41):
I asked.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
That's not lying, and it's not admission. We'd like to
ask you a few questions, Miss 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
(20:04):
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 Sandalson. Bad Cops said, do
you know anything about that? If you provide me with
your information, I'll have my lawyer contact you. The thing is,
(20:28):
we're trying down a hacker with the name of Hey
Hey Cameron. 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.
(20:48):
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.
Miss Diaz. Yes, he slid a business card across the counter,
Dale Carter FBI. With that, they left Bach And this
(21:11):
is a good point to tell you about our perennial
sponsor of the show. Don't talk to cops.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Amen, something I've learned in the past and learned doubly
from you.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
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
(21:42):
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.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
That's s h u t t f u c k up.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
Once again, that's sahu t thche f uc k up.
Because you can't talk yourself out of custody, but you
can talk yourself into a conviction.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
Providing identification to law enforcement required in some states and
situations giving them an 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
(22:33):
does not provide legal advice, and the foregoing statements are
for informational purposes only. If you have specific legal questions,
consult an attorney.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
And we're back when the Feds have a case, Marcel said,
they now 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 of 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
(23:07):
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,
(23:28):
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 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 you found somewhere
(23:49):
else to stay what. I'd been staying with Marcel in
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 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
(24:11):
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.
(24:34):
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.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
Fuck you.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
I pulled my leg free and started out of the park.
Eat a bag of rocks. You fucking cowered. 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
(25:11):
have been a snitch net on top of the network
at work. It's not standard Taco Dick's protocol, and I'd
double and triple checked when I first started working there.
The regional manager must have installed it after I'd convinced
the gualk box to leave work and go join the
Mayday Parade downtown and dispense free Guacamolean 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.
(25:35):
Sure there was some plausible deniability. It could have been
a customer, but I'd bet what little I owned that
they were on to me. The whole he made use
of the network thing was probably a faint 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
(25:56):
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 mister Sanderson to walk away.
(26:18):
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,
(26:39):
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 Dix. I had slept
there before I met Marcel and the rest of his
chicken shit friends. I'd sleep there again. Whenever I closed
my eyes, I saw Sanderson drive off that cliff. I
saw the blood in the pool and the screaming family.
(27:02):
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
(27:24):
had the amateur lights you're allowed to use under fifty
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
(27:45):
be fine, I'd be fine living in fear as garbage.
I got my tablet out and set 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. New Girl zero one. Damn you fucked me up?
(28:06):
Something real, Neseramus Mill. I don't know what you're talking about.
New Girl zero one. Nicholas Sanchez, forty four years old,
San Diego, resident of nineteen years, law abiding, tax pain productive,
undocumented member of society, Low level office job volunteers at
a community center called Noester Lugar, teaching English as a
second language. Also pilot a handmaid not printed octocopter with
(28:31):
an H and K G thirty six ce mounted to
the bottom. Newgirl zero one? That enough? Or do you
want me to send you a screencap of your driver's license?
Neseramus Mill? How did you find me? New Girl zero one?
Don't use VPNs with non vulnerabilities. Neaseramus Mill, what do
you want? New Girl zero one? Fuck, that's a hard question.
(28:55):
The Feds are up in my shit. They think I
did it, and there's not an easy way to prove
I didn't, Neseramus Mill. Besides ratting me out, New Girl
zero one, I'm not fucking ratting anyone out. I just
I just need help, your Helpnaseramus Mill, So you're blackmailing me,
New Girl zero one. God damn it, I'm not ratting
(29:17):
you out. I'm not blackmailing you. I'm not even fucking
mad at you. I'm glad Sandalson 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 Younaseramus Mill.
(29:38):
You're the one tracking him, right, New Girl zero one. Yeah,
it's called box trolling, Neseramus Mill. Does it work, New
Girl zero one? 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
(29:58):
that's the theory anyway. Naseramus Mill, I had to kill him.
New Girl zero one, Whynaseramus 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 Sandalson. I
left the message with the secretary that if my kid
(30:21):
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. New Girl zero one, fuck
the guy in the pool that was the judge. I
bet why the Sunday barbecue Maaseramus Mill dead is dead.
(30:41):
His family will mourn him either way, New Girl zero one.
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 going to fucking go to the end
of the earth to haunt you, well me maybe, and
or dedicate their lives to him, making other immigrants lives miserable.
(31:01):
Cycle continues, Naseramus Mill. I cannot control his kids nor
their reactions. I control only me. I knew Sandalson 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. New Girl zero one, all right, Naseramus Mill.
(31:22):
The border militia camp was harder. You can't get enough
explosive onto a quad copter. I had to rig one
of their own trucks to blow. How to do the
work in person? Sanderson was the hardest, though, couldn't get
near him with a drone. I guess thanks to you,
New Girl zero one. Why are you telling me this?
Weren't you worried I would blackmail you, Maseramus Mil. At
(31:43):
this point it might be important to be understood than
to live. New Girl zero one. What was his name,
Messermus Mill? What New Girl zero one? Your kid? What
was his name? Master Ramus Mill? Daniel, New Girl zero one?
Thats fucking rough, nas Ramus Mill fedser after you? New
(32:04):
Girls zero one? Yeah, they think I did it, Neseramus Mill.
I'll turn myself in New girlszrera one. What no why
I I'll be real. I was sort of hoping you'd
say that when I talk to you, but but now, hey,
don't do that, Naseramus Mill. It's fine if I go down.
No one expects to survive a killing spray New Girls
(32:25):
zero one. See, now that's a better idea, Neseramus Mill.
It's better if I die New Girls zero one. No, no,
just that people think you're dead, as long as we
can do it without killing anyone else, Maseramus Mill. You
know how to do that New Girls here one No,
but I know someone who does, and that's where we're
(32:48):
gonna leave it today.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
WHOA talk about chills down my spine when you get
to what was his name? Daniel? Yeah, wow, that was gripping.
Speaker 1 (33:02):
Thanks.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
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 like immediately understandable, in a way that I feel
like sci fi really requires in my experience. Yeah, sci
fi often like requires a sci fi fan who's like
(33:24):
ready to grabble on to something, who's ready to like
take on 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.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
Thank you. I really appreciate that. 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 total, you know, but like I'm going to do
it as legibly as I can.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
I loved it. There was a bunch of terms that
I wrote down and I just thought were perfect. First
of all, dumb dumb car was great. 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 micro
trips for cars, and it's like, well, better to have
a dumb dumb car. I guess, yeah, totally personal emp
I loved. I was like, of course that is for
sure right on the horizon. Yeah, Box for Drone is great.
(34:22):
I love that. Especially the comparison to worker drones was great.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
Thanks.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
Also, I was getting a lot of the struggle that
our main character is going through, or rather what they're
you know, talking about in their goal of taking down
sandalson gave me a lot of like cop city vibes
right now and the whole box trolling gave me kind
of real mud reaching 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
(34:49):
super effective and very well illustrated by you.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
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 offense 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 for us? That's going to be such a
pain in the ass, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
That's going to be such a pain.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
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 like you buy solo, you buy us? Is the chant,
and it's just like, look, is it worth it? Like
we're gonna make your life such a pain in the button.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
Yeah, we're gonna make it miserable. All right.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
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 work back when
I wrote this, I'm not sure I do anymore.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
Who knows how they're work anymore? Who knows they're double
tapping on their AirPod to skip to the next whatever.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
See y'all next week.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
It could Happen here as a production of pool 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.
Cool Zone Media book Club book Club book Club 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 Kiljoy, and my guest today is Daniel Hi.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
First time, long time.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Daniel's often known as the person who does the editing
behind the scenes.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Yes, it is I, the occasional angelic voice interrupting the podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Yeah, I really like that effect. That's like one of
my favorite effects.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Okay, good, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
So Cool Zone Media book Club is every Sunday we
bring you fiction. And this week I'm recovering from oral surgery,
so instead of finding a different story, I'm going to
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
(01:02):
the novelette line. You ever spend your time thinking about
the word counts that distinguish different lengths of fiction.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Only all the time?
Speaker 1 (01:10):
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, novel, and how they're just it's
just so much there's social constructs just like gender and yeah, truly,
yeah truly, which I actually kind of did once. I
wrote this book called The Country It Goes once and
(01:32):
I was like, it's my first novel because it's about
fifty two thousand words long, okay, And then I quickly
learned that it is like far better for my career
if I was like, it's my it's a novella. Really yeah, interesting, yeah,
because a debut novel is like a specific thing, and
fifty thousand words is like it's on the line. It's okay,
(01:52):
you could call it either way. Okay, interesting, interesting, it's
a novella, gotcha, gotcha? This one you could call either
a short story or nottat, 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's Strange
(02:13):
Horizons in twenty eighteen, and it is a story of
AI and murder ooh fun and justifiable homicide.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Maybe topical.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
I know. It's called the Fortunate Death of Jonathan sandalson
Solid Name. Thanks. I straight up didn't think I was
gonna saw this story. I was like, I have clearly
written to extreme of a story. No one is going
to buy this, and I sold it to the first
magazine I sent it to Boom.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
There you go, rules.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Thanks. I was just trying to box troll that asshole
in the quitting like I'd gotten the two guys before
him to do. I swear I wasn't trying to get
him 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 SEVI octocopter box put
a bullet in Jonathan Sandalson's front left tire and sent
(03:13):
him careening into the ocean and the afterlife, the Feds
assumed it was me. Well, they assumed it was my handle.
Hey Hey, Cameron. They probably hadn't made the connection between
heyy and real world and me Jay Diana Diaz, not yet.
I watched the whole thing happen on a live feed.
(03:34):
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 four thirty am on September eighth, twenty twenty four,
mister Sandalson pulled out of his garage and his vintage beamer.
He drove a dumb, dumb car, probably because he was
(03:55):
afraid I'd hack anything else, which was true. I'd hacked
his neighbor secure 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
(04:19):
Amazon was in the area and it got a call
from my AI at four thirty one am. By four
point thirty two, it was tailing, mister Sanderson. I don't
go for manual control. That's a nubs 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,
(04:40):
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 civies. No targeting relatives, no targeting low or medium
level employees of Herculean Solutions Group, only Sandalson and the
(05:03):
board of directors. Oh and Sandalson's therapists. That might not
be fair, but it was fun to watch those fuckers
quit so fast. That morning, September eighth, 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.
(05:25):
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
(05:48):
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.
(06:09):
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 marks
BMW hit the coastal roads, 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
(06:29):
to harass a man for a year and feel innocent
in his death. I don't know. The city 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
(06:50):
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
(07:12):
him over the cliff. The city was a custom job.
Someone had handbuilt that fucking thing just to kill Jonathan sandalson.
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
(07:33):
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
(07:55):
my search AI to docks the man while I looked
for recent attacks by custom octocopters. I'm not the best
of 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
(08:19):
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
(08:41):
boxtroll people who aren't in the process of wrecking the world.
Those were important too, but it 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.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
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.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
That's right, they will be if you insist. If you say,
do not deliver this except by semi autonomous drone that
it can then repurpose to harass CEOs. But in the
like comments section, the like special part of the order,
you know, yeah, yeah, and we're back. I signed into
(09:44):
work at Taco Dick's at seven fifty nine am. Jittery
from caffeine intension. 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
(10:07):
the food robots and the customers. I prefer the food robots.
I'd rather help a gualk 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
(10:27):
sit around and listen to podcasts. That's what I was
doing that morning, nine am, just listening to the history
of the Maganestas in 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
(10:48):
and identifying the hacker known as JJ Cameron. They pronounced
he Hey wrong like JJ instead of he he simple
as that, sudden as that I was a wanted girl. Fuck.
When I first got into the whole hackedavist thing three
years back, I'd started off small. Stealing four hundred thousand
dollars wasn't nearly enough to bankrupt a for profit prison,
(11:11):
let alone a holding company the size of Herculean Solutions
Group with dozens of prisons and deportation and tournament camps
to its name. When my friend Miguel got deported, and
he'd spent all but the first two years of his
twenty 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
(11:31):
Nogaulis and called me.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
They gave me a fucking bank card, but it doesn't
work right and the balance is in 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 four hundred thousand dollars, which was all
I could grab easily filing a counterfeit request for middle
management bonuses. I tried to give it all to Miguel,
(11:55):
but he made me split it one hundred ways and
give it to the next ninety nine deporties. He ran cross.
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 databasis of the dead or arrested.
But I'm pretty sure he got spooked, went underground and
(12:15):
stayed underground. It's funny how deep you can get buried
without dying these days. Hey, what the hell am I
gonna do? Maximum? Go to Mexico? Hey? If I'm in Mexico,
when the Feds catch me, I don't know, they might
just fucking box kill me. Maximum Iceland, heyy, I could
(12:39):
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, I'm freaking the fuck out. Maximum.
Use your AI. HEYY, it trolls people, I'd tell it
to troll That's all it does. It's semi autonomous software,
not a fucking oracle. Or something Star Trek shit, Maximum,
(13:02):
cool because I didn't know that because I'm a total nube.
Hey sorry, Maximum, you said you tracked down the person
who did it. Hey, yeah, I'm about eighty percent. I
got the guy. He's bad at OPSEC. Took me twenty minutes, ruthless, though.
I don't think my life will get any better if
he knows who I am. Maximum, What do you mean? Hey,
(13:24):
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
(13:45):
respond with? Maximum? Okay, yeah, the box Killer guys 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, 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,
(14:09):
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?
Speaker 2 (14:19):
Why not?
Speaker 1 (14:20):
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. First, if I read this
guy out, hell, if I get caught snooping on him
at all, you'll be telling your roommates some neat new
fact about what dead bodies do. Hey. Second, I mean,
(14:42):
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 Sandalson 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
going to go down for this, and it shouldn't be you. Hey,
that's an idea. Maximum? What is maximum? What's the idea? Maximum?
(15:09):
God damn it, I'm coming into your work. Yea. How
hard it is to read transcriptive chat.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
A text message conversation?
Speaker 1 (15:18):
Yes, yeah, he 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 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
(15:40):
not his fault, any of it. It's just who he is.
He also won't let me call him three M, which
is fucked up. He should let me call him three M.
So what's your plan, he asked as he propped himself
up on the end of the counter, and Taco Dix.
My plan is to not talk about it here, I said.
There weren't any customers, but that sure shit didn't mean
(16:01):
no one was listening. Then can I get a French
fri 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 Dix 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
(16:21):
a real person and probably the one responsible for all
my box NetCrime, a couple of forum hacked 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
(16:44):
though were 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'd applied to Herculean Solutions
(17:04):
group and had been turned down and maybe taking it personally.
And the activist angle of the trolling was just to
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
(17:26):
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
(17:48):
you did, Newbgirl zero one, I think so, yeah, Maximum,
nice handle, New Girl zero one. Whatever, Maximum, you never
let me or anyone help any more, New Girl zero one,
the fuck would you want in now? For it's over?
And also, remember how I almost just got caught Maximum
(18:09):
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'm misshelping, 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 counterdoxing. I can help New Girl
(18:31):
zero one. 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 and
suits who walked in. People who wear suits don't eat
(18:51):
at Taco Dicks. They weren't 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,
than leaving. Then I remembered I had a Taco Dick's
(19:13):
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
(19:33):
proverbial hard drive of my mind for everything I'd read
about interacting with federal agents. Can I help you navigate
the ordering system?
Speaker 2 (19:41):
I asked.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
That's not lying, and it's not admission. We'd like to
ask you a few questions, Miss 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
(20:04):
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 Sandalson. Bad Cops said, do
you know anything about that? If you provide me with
your information, I'll have my lawyer contact you. The thing is,
(20:28):
we're trying down a hacker with the name of Hey
Hey Cameron. 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.
(20:48):
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.
Miss Diaz. Yes, he slid a business card across the counter,
Dale Carter FBI. With that, they left Bach And this
(21:11):
is a good point to tell you about our perennial
sponsor of the show. Don't talk to cops.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Amen, something I've learned in the past and learned doubly
from you.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
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
(21:42):
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.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
That's s h u t t f u c k up.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
Once again, that's sahu t thche f uc k up.
Because you can't talk yourself out of custody, but you
can talk yourself into a conviction.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
Providing identification to law enforcement required in some states and
situations giving them an 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
(22:33):
does not provide legal advice, and the foregoing statements are
for informational purposes only. If you have specific legal questions,
consult an attorney.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
And we're back when the Feds have a case, Marcel said,
they now 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 of 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
(23:07):
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,
(23:28):
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 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 you found somewhere
(23:49):
else to stay what. I'd been staying with Marcel in
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 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
(24:11):
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.
(24:34):
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.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
Fuck you.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
I pulled my leg free and started out of the park.
Eat a bag of rocks. You fucking cowered. 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
(25:11):
have been a snitch net on top of the network
at work. It's not standard Taco Dick's protocol, and I'd
double and triple checked when I first started working there.
The regional manager must have installed it after I'd convinced
the gualk box to leave work and go join the
Mayday Parade downtown and dispense free Guacamolean 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.
(25:35):
Sure there was some plausible deniability. It could have been
a customer, but I'd bet what little I owned that
they were on to me. The whole he made use
of the network thing was probably a faint 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
(25:56):
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 mister Sanderson to walk away.
(26:18):
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,
(26:39):
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 Dix. I had slept
there before I met Marcel and the rest of his
chicken shit friends. I'd sleep there again. Whenever I closed
my eyes, I saw Sanderson drive off that cliff. I
saw the blood in the pool and the screaming family.
(27:02):
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
(27:24):
had the amateur lights you're allowed to use under fifty
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
(27:45):
be fine, I'd be fine living in fear as garbage.
I got my tablet out and set 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. New Girl zero one. Damn you fucked me up?
(28:06):
Something real, Neseramus Mill. I don't know what you're talking about.
New Girl zero one. Nicholas Sanchez, forty four years old,
San Diego, resident of nineteen years, law abiding, tax pain productive,
undocumented member of society, Low level office job volunteers at
a community center called Noester Lugar, teaching English as a
second language. Also pilot a handmaid not printed octocopter with
(28:31):
an H and K G thirty six ce mounted to
the bottom. Newgirl zero one? That enough? Or do you
want me to send you a screencap of your driver's license?
Neseramus Mill? How did you find me? New Girl zero one?
Don't use VPNs with non vulnerabilities. Neaseramus Mill, what do
you want? New Girl zero one? Fuck, that's a hard question.
(28:55):
The Feds are up in my shit. They think I
did it, and there's not an easy way to prove
I didn't, Neseramus Mill. Besides ratting me out, New Girl
zero one, I'm not fucking ratting anyone out. I just
I just need help, your Helpnaseramus Mill, So you're blackmailing me,
New Girl zero one. God damn it, I'm not ratting
(29:17):
you out. I'm not blackmailing you. I'm not even fucking
mad at you. I'm glad Sandalson 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 Younaseramus Mill.
(29:38):
You're the one tracking him, right, New Girl zero one. Yeah,
it's called box trolling, Neseramus Mill. Does it work, New
Girl zero one? 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
(29:58):
that's the theory anyway. Naseramus Mill, I had to kill him.
New Girl zero one, Whynaseramus 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 Sandalson. I
left the message with the secretary that if my kid
(30:21):
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. New Girl zero one, fuck
the guy in the pool that was the judge. I
bet why the Sunday barbecue Maaseramus Mill dead is dead.
(30:41):
His family will mourn him either way, New Girl zero one.
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 going to fucking go to the end
of the earth to haunt you, well me maybe, and
or dedicate their lives to him, making other immigrants lives miserable.
(31:01):
Cycle continues, Naseramus Mill. I cannot control his kids nor
their reactions. I control only me. I knew Sandalson 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. New Girl zero one, all right, Naseramus Mill.
(31:22):
The border militia camp was harder. You can't get enough
explosive onto a quad copter. I had to rig one
of their own trucks to blow. How to do the
work in person? Sanderson was the hardest, though, couldn't get
near him with a drone. I guess thanks to you,
New Girl zero one. Why are you telling me this?
Weren't you worried I would blackmail you, Maseramus Mil. At
(31:43):
this point it might be important to be understood than
to live. New Girl zero one. What was his name,
Messermus Mill? What New Girl zero one? Your kid? What
was his name? Master Ramus Mill? Daniel, New Girl zero one?
Thats fucking rough, nas Ramus Mill fedser after you? New
(32:04):
Girls zero one? Yeah, they think I did it, Neseramus Mill.
I'll turn myself in New girlszrera one. What no why
I I'll be real. I was sort of hoping you'd
say that when I talk to you, but but now, hey,
don't do that, Naseramus Mill. It's fine if I go down.
No one expects to survive a killing spray New Girls
(32:25):
zero one. See, now that's a better idea, Neseramus Mill.
It's better if I die New Girls zero one. No, no,
just that people think you're dead, as long as we
can do it without killing anyone else, Maseramus Mill. You
know how to do that New Girls here one No,
but I know someone who does, and that's where we're
(32:48):
gonna leave it today.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
WHOA talk about chills down my spine when you get
to what was his name? Daniel? Yeah, wow, that was gripping.
Speaker 1 (33:02):
Thanks.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
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 like immediately understandable, in a way that I feel
like sci fi really requires in my experience. Yeah, sci
fi often like requires a sci fi fan who's like
(33:24):
ready to grabble on to something, who's ready to like
take on 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.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
Thank you. I really appreciate that. 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 total, you know, but like I'm going to do
it as legibly as I can.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
I loved it. There was a bunch of terms that
I wrote down and I just thought were perfect. First
of all, dumb dumb car was great. 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 micro
trips for cars, and it's like, well, better to have
a dumb dumb car. I guess, yeah, totally personal emp
I loved. I was like, of course that is for
sure right on the horizon. Yeah, Box for Drone is great.
(34:22):
I love that. Especially the comparison to worker drones was great.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
Thanks.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
Also, I was getting a lot of the struggle that
our main character is going through, or rather what they're
you know, talking about in their goal of taking down
sandalson gave me a lot of like cop city vibes
right now and the whole box trolling gave me kind
of real mud reaching 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
(34:49):
super effective and very well illustrated by you.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
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 offense 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 for us? That's going to be such a
pain in the ass, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
That's going to be such a pain.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
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 like you buy solo, you buy us? Is the chant,
and it's just like, look, is it worth it? Like
we're gonna make your life such a pain in the button.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
Yeah, we're gonna make it miserable. All right.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
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 work back when
I wrote this, I'm not sure I do anymore.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
Who knows how they're work anymore? Who knows they're double
tapping on their AirPod to skip to the next whatever.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
See y'all next week.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
It could Happen here as a production of pool 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.
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