#skyboat

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Kickstarting the audiobook of The Lost Cause, my novel of environmental hope

Tonight (October 2), I'm in Boise to host an event with VE Schwab. On October 7–8, I'm in Milan to keynote Wired Nextfest.

The Lost Cause is my next novel. It's about the climate emergency. It's hopeful. Library Journal called it "a message hope in a near-future that looks increasingly bleak." As with every other one of my books Amazon refuses to sell the audiobook, so I made my own, and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/the-lost-cause-a-novel-of-climate-and-hope

That's a lot to unpack, I know. So many questions! Including this one: "How is it that I have another book out in 2023?" Because this is my third book this year. Short answer: I write when I'm anxious, so I came out of lockdown with nine books. Nine!

Hope and writing are closely related activities. Hope (the belief that you can make things better) is nothing so cheap and fatalistic as optimism (the belief that things will improve no matter what you do). The Lost Cause is full of people who are full of hope.

The action begins a full generation after the Hail Mary passage of the Green New Deal, and the people who grew up fighting the climate emergency (rather than sitting hopelessly by while the powers that be insisted that nothing could or should be done) have a name for themselves: they call themselves "the first generation in a century that doesn't fear the future."

I fear the future. Unchecked corporate power has us barreling over a cliff's edge and all the one-percent has to say is, "Well, it's too late to swerve now, what if the bus rolls and someone breaks a leg? Don't worry, we'll just keep speeding up and leap the gorge":

https://locusmag.com/2022/07/cory-doctorow-the-swerve/

That unchecked corporate power has no better avatar than Amazon, one of the tech monopolies that has converted the old, good internet into "five giant websites, each filled with screenshots of the other four":

https://twitter.com/tveastman/status/1069674780826071040

Amazon maintains a near-total grip over print and ebooks, but when it comes to audiobooks, that control is total. The company's Audible division has captured more than 90% of the market, and it abuses that dominance to cram Digital Rights Management onto every book it sells, even if the author doesn't want it:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/25/can-you-hear-me-now/#acx-ripoff

I wrote a whole-ass book about this and it came out less than a month ago; it's called The Internet Con and it lays out an audacious plan to halt the internet's enshittification and throw it into reverse:

http://www.seizethemeansofcomputation.org/

The tldr is this: when an audiobook is wrapped in Amazon's DRM, only Amazon can legally remove it. That means that every book I sell you on Audible is a book you have to throw away if you ever break up with Amazon, and Amazon can use the fact that it's hold you hostage to screw me – and every other author – over.

As I said last time this came up:

Fuck that sideways.

With a brick.

My books are sold without DRM, so you can play them in any app and do anything copyright permits, and that means Amazon won't carry them, and that means my publishers don't want to pay to produce them, and that means I produce them myself, and then I make the (significant) costs back by selling them on Kickstarter.

And you know what? It works. Readers don't want DRM. I mean, duh. No one woke up this morning and said, "Dammit, why won't someone sell me a product that lets me do less with my books?" I sell boatloads" of books through these crowdfunding campaigns. I sold so many copies of my last book, *The Internet Con, that they sold out the initial print run in two weeks (don't worry, they held back stock for my upcoming events).

But beyond that, I think there's another reason my readers keep coming back, even though I wrote a genuinely stupid number of books while working through lockdown anxiety while the wildfires raged and ashes sifted down out of the sky and settled on my laptop as I lay in my backyard hammock, pounding my keyboard.

(I went through two keyboards during lockdown. Thankfully, I bought a user-serviceable laptop from Framework and fixed it myself both times, in a matter of minutes. No, no one pays me to mention this, but hot damn is it cool.)

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/13/graceful-failure/#frame

The reason readers come back to my books is that they're full of hope. In the same way that writing lets me feel like I'm not a passenger in life, but rather, someone with a say in my destination, the books that I write are full of practical ways and dramatic scenes in which other people seize the means of computation, the reins of power or their own destinies.

The protagonist of The Lost Cause is Brooks Palazzo, a high-school senior in Burbank whose parents were part of the original cohort of volunteers who kicked off the global transformation, and left him an orphan when they succumbed to one of the zoonotic plagues that arise every time another habitat is destroyed.

Brooks grew up knowing what his life would be: the work of repair and care, which millions of young people are doing. Relocating entire cities off endangered coastlines and floodplains, or out of fire-zones. Fighting floods and fires. Caring for tens of millions of refugees for whom the change came too late.

But with every revolution comes a counter-revolution. The losers of a just war don't dig holes, climb inside and pull the dirt down on top of themselves. Two groups of reactionaries – seagoing anarcho-capitalist billionaire wreckers and seething white nationalist militias – have formed an alliance.

They've already gotten their champion into the White House. Next up: dismantling every cause for hope Brooks and his friends have, and bringing back the fear.

That's the setup for a novel about solidarity, care, library socialism, and snatching victory from defeat's jaws. Writing it help keep me sane during the lockdown, and when it came time to record the audiobook, I spent a lot of time thinking about who could read it. I've had some great narrators: Wil Wheaton, @neil-gaiman, Amber Benson, Bronson Pinchot, and more.

I record my audiobooks with Skyboat Media, a brilliant studio near my place in LA. Back in August, I spent a week in their recording booth – "The Tardis" – doing something I'd never tried before: I recorded a whole audiobook, with directorial supervision: The Internet Con:

https://transactions.sendowl.com/products/78992826/DEA0CE12/purchase

When it was done, the director – audiobook legend Gabrielle de Cuir – sat me down and said, "Look, I've never said this to an author before, but I think you should read The Lost Cause. I don't direct anyone anymore except for Wil Wheaton and LeVar Burton, but I would direct you on this one."

I was immensely flattered – and very nervous. Reading The Internet Con was one thing – the book is built around the speeches I've been giving for 20 years and I knew I could sell those lines – but The Lost Cause is a novel, with a whole cast of characters. Could I do it?

Reader, I did it. I just listened to the proofs last week and:

It.

Came.

Out.

Great.

The Lost Cause goes on sale on November 14th, and I'll be selling this audiobook I made everywhere audiobooks are sold – except for the stores that require DRM, nonconsensually shackling readers and writers to their platforms. So you'll be able to get it on Libro.fm, downpour.com, even Google Play – but not Audible, Apple Books, or Audiobooks.com.

But in addition to those worthy retailers, I will be sending out thousands – and thousands! – of audiobook to my Kickstarter backers on the on-sale date, either as a folder of DRM-free MP3s, or as a download code for Libro.fm, to make things easy for people who don't want to have to figure out how to sideload an audiobook into a standalone app.

And, of course, the mobile duopoly have made this kind of sideloading exponentially harder over the past decade, though far be it from me to connect this with their policy of charging 30% commissions on everything sold through an app, a commission they don't receive if you get your files on the web and load 'em yourself:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/red-team-blues-another-audiobook-that-amazon-wont-sell/posts/3788112

As with my previous Kickstarters, I'm also selling ebooks and hardcovers – signed or unsigned, and this time I've found a great partner to fulfill EU orders from within the EU, so backers won't have to pay VAT and customs charges. The wonderful Otherland – who have hosted me on my last two trips to Berlin – are going to manage that shipping for me:

https://www.otherland-berlin.de/en/home.html

Kim Stanley Robinson read the book and said, "Along with the rush of adrenaline I felt a solid surge of hope. May it go like this." That's just about the perfect quote, because the book is a ride. It's not just a kumbaya tale of a better world that is possible: it's a post-cyberpunk novel of high-tech guerrilla and meme warfare, climate tech and bad climate tech, wildcat prefab urban infill, and far-right militamen who adapt to a ban on assault-rifles by switching to super-soakers full of hydrochloric acid.

It's a book about struggle, hope in the darkness, and a way through this rotten moment. It's a book that dares to imagine that things might get worse but also better. This is a curious emotional melange, but it's one that I'm increasingly feeling these days.

Like, Amazon, that giant bully, whose blockade on DRM-free audiobooks cost me enough money to pay off my mortgage and put my kid through university (according to my agent)? The incredible Lina Khan brought a long-overdue antitrust case against Amazon while her rockstar DoJ counterpart, Jonathan Kanter, is dragging Google through the courts.

The EU is taking on Apple, and French cops are kicking down Nvidia's doors and grabbing their files, looking to build another antitrust case for monopolizing GPUs. The writers won their strike and Joe Biden walked the picket-line with the UAW, the first president in history to join striking workers:

https://doctorow.medium.com/joe-biden-is-headed-to-a-uaw-picket-line-in-detroit-f80bd0b372ab?sk=f3abdfd3f26d2f615ad9d2f1839bcc07

Solar is now our cheapest energy source, which is wild, because if we could only capture 0.4% of the solar energy that makes it through the atmosphere, we could give everyone alive the same energy budget as Canadians (who have American lifestyles but higher heating bills). As Deb Chachra writes in her forthcoming How Infrastructure Works (my review pending): we get a fresh supply of energy every time the sun rises and we only get new materials when a comet survives atmospheric entry, but we treat energy as scarce and throw away our materials after a single use:

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/612711/how-infrastructure-works-by-deb-chachra/

Anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop. We have shot past many of our planetary boundaries and there are waves of climate crises in our future, but they don't have to be climate disasters. That's up to us – it'll depend on whether we come together to save ourselves and each other, or tear ourselves apart.

The Lost Cause dares to imagine what it might be like if we do the former. We don't live in a post-enshittification world yet, but we could. With these indie audiobooks, I've found a way to treat the terminal enshittification of the Amazon monopoly as damage and route around it. I hope you'll back the Kickstarter, fight enshittification, inject some hope into your reading, and enjoy a kickass adventure novel in the process:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/the-lost-cause-a-novel-of-climate-and-hope

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/02/the-lost-cause/#the-first-generation-that-doesnt-fear-the-future

[aryastarkinsky]

I find this very funny 🤭

[eruzaarto]

BOAT.

[craigbrasco]

Inktober 2024, Day 29 - Navigator. The traveler waved to the skyboat navigator.

[indigowriting]

it's finally done! i can officially say that i wrote and finished an original short story :D you can read it below the cut.

-

Synopsis: Waking without memories, Reva has only her two companions and the tomb they're exploring for company—and the two women who accompany her studiously avoid explaining to her what happened, or what, exactly, their relationship is.

Wordcount: 3.715 Setting: ambiguously science fiction Rating: 16+

Onlining hits like a sledgehammer—loud, insistent, painful, edged with the distinct lack of deftitude, of tacks. Her eyes snap open, and her body judders as it attempts to remember how to drag in the breaths that are now necessary. Her field of vision is a wash of muted greys, fuzzy and indistinct. Something hard digs into her shoulder—stone, or metal. Her hands spasm without direction, a leftover of the ReviLine coursing through her veins, released in a sharp pulse moments before to drag her body back to the land of the living. Her mouth is cottony and the faint taste of metal lingers at the back of her throat.

And then—two hands, one on each shoulder; indistinct words. Someone’s face floats into her vision, slowly fading into colour as her retinal cones boot back up, and then another, one almost gaunt, the other rounded, both of them reading clear anxiety, though the round face hides it better. She coughs, the sound harsh, and finally gets ahold of her faculties; shoves herself roughly into an upright position. “How long?” she croaks out, the weight of hands through her mesh inner suit burning brands, grounding her in reality. Her surroundings have finally solidified—the dusty inside of a tomb, high ceilings and lantern-light bathing the marble of the walls in a warm glow that nevertheless is unable to hide the disrepair. She doesn’t remember coming here, which means she must not have uploaded before coming into the tomb—must not have expected the tomb to be as dangerous as, apparently, it is. At least the rest of her memories are coming back—and yet, they feel fragmented, incomplete; a mere handful of what they should be. She frowns. “How long?” she asks again, this time locking gazes with her companions. She should know their names—there’s an instinctive trust, an ease when she looks at them, but she can’t, and that makes her skin itch.

The others exchange a glance. “Two days,” the gaunt one finally says. “Reva, what’s your last memory?”

Reva. It must be her name, but there’s no sense of attachment. She swallows and tries to focus; latches, finally, onto a memory. “Skyboating,” she says. “I was...” but that’s as far as it goes, the rest of it hazy and unsteady, as if ancient, crumbling film, staticked and choppy. It fills her chest with something ugly, roiling and hot, and the way the gaunt woman’s lips pinch into a thin line makes the sensation worse.

“It’s getting worse,” she says grimly, and then sighs; withdraws her hand from Reva’s shoulder. She holds herself as if someone is going to tell her she needs to leave; as if she thinks her presence here is in question, as if she’s used to taking up no space at all and hates having to negotiate her existence—sharp lines, large gestures. Even her retreat from Reva’s side takes up more space than it should, leaves her closer to her than it should. “Maj, she doesn’t remember us.”

“No shit,” says Maj, and it’s a quiet anger; makes Reva flinch instinctively. When she notices the reaction, her thick brows furrow, eyes rounding. “Sorry,” she says, the word sounding unpracticed but still, somehow, Reva knows it’s sincere. She lets out a sigh. “Let me help you up,” she says. “We’re only a third of the way into this tomb—you should eat something.” Her hand slides from Reva’s shoulder down to her arm, and when she pulls her to her feet, the motion is surprisingly gentle. “El.”

“I’ve got it,” El says, and pulls the large pack off her back, digging through one of its many pockets, muttering to herself as she goes through its contents before finally finding what she’s looking for—a slightly-battered rations bar and a bottle of what must be water or a fortified drink, faded letters stamped into the metal. When Reva takes it, it’s strangely warm against her palm—the heat of a warm body, of a yam plucked from the fire; the kind of heat that sits and simmers, self-sustaining, burning a eternal fuel.

The others are looking at her, and it’s only then that she realises that she hasn’t spoken in—how long? She doesn’t know. The passage they’re in has narrowed, and, stopped as they are, they can’t quite stand three to a shoulder, Maj and El turned slightly inwards so they can better fit, her in the middle. It’s familiar in a way she knows, instinctively, should spark—something. What, she’s not sure, and she realises, suddenly, they’re—waiting. As if this has happened before. But she doesn’t have anything to say, and it burns like liquid shame down her throat as she unscrews the bottle cap, hides her face behind it as she drinks. The liquid inside—thicker than water, but not quite thick enough to be a protein slurry, and tasting too much like fresh berries to be, either—is cold in contrast to the warmth of its container.

In the end, her companions don’t press. Reva is grateful for it, in the way that she is grateful for her every breath: aching, ashamed at the weakness she knows, somehow, she should have carved out of herself. The ReviLine in her blood is tell enough—no one upgrades their body that way unless they have a very specific, bloody goal in mind. It makes her wonder about Maj and El—for all that they’ve been brusque, they walk around her as if they are entering a tomb, a mausoleum: gentle, measured. Her mind stutters at the word reverent—something about that stings. Instead of thinking too hard on it, she caps the bottle; scans the walls ahead of them. The paint that was in the earlier section has faded, simplified; the narrative turned narrow, featuring only a small number of the characters it did previously. She can’t understand the specifics, but the paintings suggest something precious hidden in the tomb—and not just sanctified dead.

The bottle is gone from her hand, she realises suddenly, and when she looks, it’s been slipped back into El’s pack. She has no memory of doing so. It must have been unconscious. As easy as breathing. The thought makes the hair at the nape of her neck prickle.

And then: a crack in the wall; hairline, barely visible; spreading down, across the floor. Too even, too straight, to be anything but purposeful. Maj and El, walking in synchrony half a step ahead of her, are too busy looking at the murals, and so it is only Reva—eyes enhanced by the ReviLine in her blood, ten times more sensitive than a baseline human’s, able to pick out subtleties in the flickering light that others would miss—who sees it. Before the conscious thought of recognition sparks, she’s grabbing the others, bounding over the trap as it falls away, revealing sparking rows upon rows of jagged-tipped pikes embedded at the bottom—a painful, deadly end to anyone caught unawares.

They tumble to the ground just shy of the edge that drops off into the pit, a jumble of limbs. Instinctively, Reva rolls to protect them, her shoulder hitting the ground with a crunch that echoes in the small space, but it’s not enough—a muffled cry, the wet crack of bone. Her body, not as large as her companions’, wasn’t able to cushion the both of them. When she scrambles to her feet, Maj has curled in on herself, cradling her arm to her chest, her face a harsh set of pain. “Fuck,” she says, the word a shaky inhalation. The blood has stained her grey top dark, and the bone glints where it juts from the skin, surrounded by the wet mass of flesh where her skin’s torn.

“Kit,” Reva snaps, the words coming to her without thought. Her skin is hot, ants crawling beneath it. Her shoulder was dislocated—she roughly sets it. The ReviLine will take care of any lasting damage, and it’s not important right now. El digs out bandages and a splint, disinfectant and EasyKnit in her periphery; hands them to her in quick succession. Her long, narrow fingers don’t shake, but her mouth is set into a flickering line, and the part of Reva that isn’t holding Maj’s arm steady as she mindlessly sets the bone, pours EasyKnit over it and splints and wraps it can see the glint of tears held at bay by it.

It’s over almost as quickly as it happened. The silence is stark against Maj’s ragged, almost-gasping breaths. Reva sits back on her heels and swallows. “We should stop,” she says. “If there’s a trap like that, there’s certain to be more.”

“No.” 

It’s Maj who speaks, and she props herself up against the wall single-handedly; meets Reva’s gaze head-on. She runs her tongue across her lips, tips her head back against the dusty wall. “We can’t.”

“Why?” Reva demands. She shouldn’t, probably, but—seeing Maj bloodied like that—something about it twisted beneath her ribs; bone shards in her lungs. “Whatever treasure you’ve brought me with you to find—surely it’s not worth your life.”

El, already close, shuffles closer; pulls out a cloth and wipes the blood off her hands. “There’s nothing more important,” she says, quietly, and then refuses to say any more. Somehow, out of everything, that’s what holds Reva’s attention—the way her fingers clean the blood away, taking her hand and turning it so she can dig the already-dried blood from beneath her nails. She is certain there are things Maj and El aren’t telling her, and this—it both proves it and confounds it. What sort of woman lies to someone whose hand she holds this way? Still, she remains silent; lets El finish cleaning the blood off, until her skin is unmarred once again; lets her hold them for a moment, then two, without reason. Her gaze searches Reva’s face for something she doesn’t know the name of, and when she lets go, there’s a sense sorrow, quickly hidden as her face smoothes out into neutrality. “There,” she says. “Now you won’t rub it on your clothes.”

Reva nods her thanks. “If we’re going to continue, I should be in front,” she says. She thinks about suggesting they take a break, just long enough for the EasyKnit to begin taking effect, but she’s certain the others will rebuff it. Whatever it is they’re looking for, it spells tension in the lines of their bodies, desperation in the silent glances they give each other. Reva wonders if they told her, before; if she’s as close to them as these wordless actions she finds herself performing, or if it’s one-sided; if she trusts them more than they trust her. The thought makes her skin prickle uncomfortably, and she pushes it aside. This isn’t the time for those sorts of thoughts. Instead, she rises to her feet; offers a hand to Maj, propped up against the wall. There’s no hesitation to the other’s actions as she reaches out to take it. Reva doesn’t think about what that says; instead, says to El, “Monitor her for any adverse reactions. I’ll keep an eye out for more traps.”

El nods. “Alright,” she says. As Reva turns, she thinks she hears her say something else, but it’s too quiet to be distinct, even for her; could just be the click of her throat as she swallows. Behind her, there’s the sound of fabric on fabric; Maj leaning against El, probably. She scans the corridor ahead of them. It hasn’t narrowed any more since they crossed the trap, and it doesn’t appear to ahead of them, either. The paint on the walls is much more faded, now, and all she can really make out are indistinct human shapes. There’s no signs of traps, but she runs her fingers along the walls on either side anyway.

They walk like this for some time. Reva tracks the breaths of her companions behind her as they journey onward, the sounds so synchronous that it’s only her ReviLine-enhanced senses that let her pick out that it’s two, rather than one. At some point, she realises her own steps have fallen in time with the others’. She wishes she had uploaded more recently—like this, she may as well be walking through ancient ruins, stumbling unawares into things she does not have the knowledge necessary to understand. It’s disconcerting—but more importantly, it’s dangerous, to trust, as she apparently does, these two women who she doesn’t even know.

She keeps her thoughts to herself, though. There’s no point in voicing them aloud—and she needs to save her breath in case they come across any aerosolised traps. So she lets her steps stay in rhythm with El and Maj’s, and ignores the prickle at the nape of her neck that tells her they are watching her, because for reasons she doesn’t understand, this reads as comfort rather than danger.

Finally, after what feels like an eternity, the corridor opens up into a large room whose angled walls are shallow enough to give the impression of it being circular. A column stands at each intersection, marble and intricately-carved, and the walls are a riot of paint, murals depicting people in various scenes, some action-focused, some where the figures appear to be talking to each other. In the centre of the room, there’s a large pool with a raised dias in the centre, and a basin too high for her to see the contents of. Around the base of the dias are carvings of birds—she counts twelve in total as she circles it, looking for any signs of traps. Five of them, though, have been defaced in some way—some missing heads, or wings, or with gouge-like marks tearing them in half. The almost-lifelike detail of the carvings makes the sight strangely discomfiting—as if, if not for the destruction, they could step down and begin to crow.

“If there’s any treasure, it should be in the basin,” she says. She’s not sure what sort of treasure would even be placed in a basin, but tombs, she knows, are not always beholden to logic. “There aren’t any traps as far as I can tell.”

Maj lets out a snort. “Of course the bastards who built this place would put all their traps on the way to the main chamber, and none in it,” she scoffs. “Typical.”

Reva wonders, for a brief moment, what other traps they encountered along the way. Whatever they were, she can’t remember them—probably because one of them kicked her offline. Still, she doesn’t expect for El to snap, “Maj,” voice slightly raised for the first time that Reva has heard. And, surprisingly enough, Maj actually looks regretful, her lips twisting into a frown. El wavers for a moment, anger clear in her frame, before she lets out a sigh, visibly wresting her emotions under control. “Together?” she says.

Maj nods. “Always,” she says. Her gaze darts to Reva for a moment, as if she wants to add something, but, strangely enough, she doesn’t. Perhaps she was considering asking for a moment of privacy, but thought better of it. Still—that doesn’t quite fit.

Reva doesn’t ask. Right now, no matter whatever else they haven’t told her, she’s responsible for keeping them safe. “I’ll come with you,” she says, tilting her head towards the dias. “There might be traps that I can’t see from here.”

“Alright,” El says; and then: “just...be careful. We don’t want anyone else to get hurt.”

Better me than you, Reva doesn’t tell her. At least I can online again. Still, she nods.

There’s no more words spoken. They make their way towards the dias, steps light. The pool isn’t anything special—just water, though it’s kept brilliantly clear through what must be a sophisticated filtration system, pebbles paving the bottom. The water is cool even through her boots, and it only takes a few steps to make it across to the dias. It takes a moment longer to climb up onto it—it’s taller than it appears, award to try and step up onto. 

The basin, though—whatever Reva was expecting, this isn’t it: an almost slate-grey, deep-sided, the bottom quarter is filled with a milky, rosy-gold liquid. It doesn’t look like any sort of treasure that Reva can think of, but the way Maj and El look at it—it must be important to them, at least.

And then—Maj slips her pack off and tugs the zipper open one-handedly, pulling out an ornate, silver cup, delicate filigree spilling across the outside, and dips it into the basin, filling it with liquid before Reva can even open her mouth to warn her. As she draws it back out, the level of the liquid recedes, and for a moment, there’s a deep, heavy silence. 

Then, as if a clap of thunder echoing through the room, the ground beneath them bucks; sways, shakes. Maj drops to the ground, cradling the cup, and a moment later, El falls to her side. Reva crouches, keeping an eye on the basin to make sure that, if it does come tumbling down, she can catch it.

Finally, the commotion stops. Around them, dust streams through the room in plumes, hazy in the light of their lanterns. Maj and El are both wide-eyed, focused on the cup, and when a few moments pass without further disturbances, Maj rises shakily to her feet; holds the cup out to Reva. “Drink,” she says.

Reva stares at her, uncomprehending. “This is your treasure,” she says. “Don’t you want to—to take it with you, to analyse it, or sell it, or—?”

“Crow,” Maj says, and, oh—that’s not anger, or irritation; that’s desperation. “Please, this—the treasure,  it’s you.” Her eyes are glassy, and she blinks rapidly in a clear attempt to banish them. By her side, El is only slightly better; the tumble to the ground sent her hair into a disarray, and there’s dust in a fine layer all over her face, her eyes wide, imploring.

Crow. She doesn’t understand the depth behind it, but she can tell, instantly, that that’s her name—not Reva. Or perhaps Reva is her name, but it’s never been anything more than that. The way Maj says Crow is as if it is precious. She’s not a woman who looks like she would ever do anything gently, but this—this is painfully so. Crow swallows; glances at El. “If I drink it, you have to explain what you’ve been hiding from me,” she says, because somehow, the concept of saying no doesn’t even pass her mind.

“Of course,” El says; quick, as if all she’s been waiting for is Crow to ask her.

There’s a beat of silence, and then Crow takes the cup. Maj’s hands are warm where they brush. The liquid tastes almost floral as she swallows it, her eyes closing of their own accord. When she opens them, her companions are looking at her, hope writ clear across their faces.

Whatever they see on hers must not be what they were expecting, because Maj says, voice trembling, “Crow...” and then tears begin to fall down her cheeks, round as raindrops off leaves. “She doesn’t remember,” she says to El, and her voice is broken, devastated; the first hint of fragility Crow has seen in her; and a moment later, El is cradling her, the two of them sinking to the ground, wrapped around each other, both crying—Maj fast and hiccoughing, El slower, like melting ice. “It was supposed to work,” she can barely make out in between Maj’s sobs. She swallows thickly. It feels like an intrusion to be here, watching them fall to pieces, but to leave feels sacrilegious, and—she doesn’t want them to be alone, even if she’s the source of their grief.

Time passes in ebbs and flows. Eventually, Maj’s tears run dry. When she pulls back, her face is still raw with emotion, but she sets her lips in a firm line. “I’m sorry,” she says. “It was my idea to not tell you if you had another episode. I thought—I thought it would be easier for you, if you didn’t have to miss your memories. If you were able to just—get them back.”

“You’ve been having episodes starting about a year ago,” El adds, quietly. “At first, we didn’t know—we thought it must be an injury, or an illness. The ReviLine—it’s supposed to be top of the line. That’s why your family upgraded you—so you could finish tomb expeditions that would have killed anyone else permanently. But I guess even perfect technology fails eventually,” she adds, bitterly. “Everyone we visited told us the same thing: you’d offlined too many times, and the strain of it on your system was beginning to destroy your memories. Eventually, you started offlining more and more, and at random, and each time, you would forget more and more.”

“This was the first time you’d forgotten us,” Maj says, quiet. She’s not looking at Crow; as if it’s too painful. “The fountain—it was supposed to heal you.”

There’s flames of anger licking at Crow, but—she can understand their decisions. She can understand why her past self agreed to search for this—fountain. She can feel the sharp, ragged outline of sorrow in her chest, the absence of things she should know; the absence of memories for the two women she is certain, now, mean more to her than anything in the universe. How cruel, then, for their hopes to be crushed. She lets out a shallow breath; drops the now-empty cup. It hits the ground with a sharp clang. A moment later, her knees hit the ground in front of them. “I can’t be the Crow you knew,” she says, quietly, “but if you can tell me our history—maybe I can be a Crow.” The crows on the dias, she notices distantly, are all gone, now. She holds out her hands, palms up.

For a moment, the others hesitate; then, at once, they take her hands in their own, and begin to speak.

[findingweeherbs]

She sang the Skyboat song for Season 7 Outlander….💔🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿😞🙏🏻.

[bluegekk0]

So like is everyone in the Shivering Isles actually insane? Why is that guy walking in circles and talking about building a skyboat? Why is that argonian looking for a fork? Do these people all smoke crack? What is going on?? Can I have some???

[ffccrxxxsss]

Skyboat brand callings : 44543$ paid loked on paid paid loked fcdx : open line cast caskets lay on paid loked on loked call Florida: 5553342$ paid call fort Lauderdale called ft. Lauderdale Florida convo leak paid receive and send mail paid must return to Candace Marie Hughes and home and loked on paid lay on paid loked on. Loked.

[pianotunerwolverhampton]

Here is one of the songs from my musical memories concert over the weekend - sky boat song played on the 1890s C Bechstein Concert Grand. All Saints Church, Wellington, Telford, Shropshire

www.matthewjamesrichards.co.uk

#SkyBoat #church

#piano #telford #Wellington #pianotuner #pianotuning #pianotuners #music #bechstein #pianist #musicians #grandpiano

[nebby2006]

Skyboats

Every morning I would wake at dawn To find him kneeling His ear placed to the ground Or towards the air And sea

He would have me Make what he heard Into reality

My hands broke weaving Stone and sowing Water into Air. They bled into the sounds, So I became apart of Them

The sounds looked Like skins and nerves they, Looked like bone too, And they breathed.

Sometimes I would Kneel on the Ground of sand and rock

Then I would Lean my ear up To the things I had made I would hear each Of their songs.

One morning I woke Late. Stumbling from the cold

I found him peeling, In one hand a knife, The other one shook - Pulling back skin -

He raised his head Nodded for me to join him Red water pooled around us, Their songs grew long and, Quiet,

We took the bone and Made structure

We took the skin and dried it And warmed ourselves with the flesh,

By summer we were finished, Floating on the clouds, Making our own songs: And leaving the lost ones behind. P.S. This is an ekphrastic poem about boats at my local library, I can take a picture of them if anyones interested!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The Bezzle excerpt (Part IV)

I'm on tour with my new novel The Bezzle! Catch me TONIGHT in SALT LAKE CITY (Feb 21, Weller Book Works) and TOMORROW in SAN DIEGO (Feb 22, Mysterious Galaxy). After that, it's LA, Seattle, Portland, Phoenix and more!

This week marks the publication of my latest novel, The Bezzle, and to celebrate, I'm serializing an excerpt from Chapter 14 in six parts:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

The Bezzle is a revenge story, a crime novel, and a technothriller. It stars Martin Hench, a hard-fighting forensic accountant who specializes in unwinding high-tech scams. Hench made his debt in last year's Red Team Blues (now in paperback!); The Bezzle is a standalone followup:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865854/redteamblues

The serial tells the tale of Stefon Magner, AKA Steve Soul, a once-famous R&B frontman whose disintegrating career turned to tragedy when his crooked manager forged his signature on a rights assignment contract that let him steal all of Stefon's royalties, which ballooned after modern hiphop artists discovered his grooves and started buying licenses to sample them. The first three installments related the sad circumstances of Stefon's life, and the real-world analogues (like Leonard Cohen and George Clinton, both of whom were pauperized by sticky-fingered managers) as well as one real-world countermeasure, copyright termination, a thing that more artists should know about and use:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/26/take-it-back/

Today's installment weaves in a major subplot for the first time in the serial: Los Angeles's notorious, murderous Sheriff's Deputy gangs. These are another unbelievable true tale: for decades, the LASD's deputies have formed themselves into criminal gangs, some of which require that initiates murder someone to be inducted:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_LASD_deputy_gangs

They sport gang tattoos, have secret signs, and run vast criminal enterprises. This has been the subject of numerous investigative press reports, and one extensive official report that called the gangs "a cancer":

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/deputy-gangs-cancer-los-angeles-county-sheriffs-department-scathing-re-rcna73367

The sordid tales of the LASD gangs beggar belief. For example, deputies in charge of LA County jails forced inmates to pit-fight and took bets on the outcomes:

https://www.aclu.org/publications/report-cruel-and-usual-punishment-how-savage-gang-deputies-controls-la-county-jails

The taxpayers of LA have shelled out tens of millions of dollars to settle claims against LA's criminals with badges:

https://news.yahoo.com/deputies-accused-being-secret-societies-230851807.html

Periodically, LA judges and officials will insist that they are tackling the problem:

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-05-17/dozens-of-lasd-deputies-ordered-to-show-suspected-gang-tattoos-reveal-others-who-have-them

But at every turn, the LA police "unions" manage to crush these investigations:

https://abc7.com/los-angeles-county-lasd-deputy-gangs-cliques/13492081/

And top cops are right there with them, insisting that these aren't "gangs" – they're just "subgroups":

https://lapublicpress.org/2024/01/former-la-sheriff-villanueva-sheriffs-gangs-are-just-subgroups/

It's very weird being an Angeleno and knowing that one of the largest, most militarized, best funded police departments in the world has been openly captured by a hyperviolent crime syndicate. When I was in the Skyboat Media studios last December with Wil Wheaton recording the audiobook for The Bezzle, Wil broke off from reading to say, "You know, someone's going to read this and google it and have their mind blown when they discover that it's real":

https://sowl.co/8nyGh

That's one of my favorite ways to turn literature into something more than entertainment. It's why I filled the Little Brother books with real-world surveillance, cryptography and security tech, giving enough detail to advance the plot and give readers an idea of what search terms would let them understand and use the concepts in the novel. That's something I'm happy to keep up with the Hench novels, unpicking the inner workings of scams and corruption. The more of us who are wise to this, the sooner we'll be able to get rid of it.

Here's part one of the serial:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/17/the-steve-soul-caper/#lead-singer-disease

Part two:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/19/crad-kilodney-was-an-outlier/#copyright-termination

Part three:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/20/fore/#lawyer-up

And now, onto part four!

The last of the boxes had been shelved.

Benedetto rose from his chair. “Thank you, gentlemen,” he said to the movers, and dug a roll of twenties out of his pocket and handed each of them two of their own. He turned to me as they filed out. “You wanna get sushi? The place next door is great.”

The empty storefront was in a down-­at-­heels strip mall in Eagle Rock. On one side, there was a Brazilian jujitsu studio that never seemed to have any students training in it. On the other side was Sushi Jiro, name on a faded sign with half its lightbulbs gone. Beyond that was a vaping store.

“The place next door is good?”

He laughed. “You San Francisco motherfuckers got terrible LA restaurant radar. Put Sushi Jiro in the Mission and it’d have a Michelin star and a six-­month waiting list. Here it’s in a strip mall and only the locals know how good it is. Bet you never had a decent meal in this town, am I right?”

“I’ve had a few,” I said, “but I admit my track record isn’t great.”

“Let’s improve it.”

The sushi was amazing.

#

Inglewood Jams had the kind of books that were performatively bad, designed to foil any attempt at human comprehension.

But whoever cooked them was an amateur, someone who mistook complexity for obfuscation. Like cross-­referencing was a species of transcendentally esoteric sorcery. I don’t mind cross-referencing. It’s meditative, like playing solitaire. I had Bene­detto send over some colored post-­it tabs and a big photocopier with an automatic feeder and I started making piles.

One night, I worked later than I planned. Sushi Jiro was becoming a serious hazard to my waistline and my sleep-­debt, because when your dinner break is ten yards and two doors away from your desk, it’s just too damned easy to get back to work after dinner.

That night, I’d fallen into a cross-­referencing reverie, and before I knew it, it was 2 a.m., my lower back was groaning, and my eyes were stinging.

I straightened, groaned, and slid my laptop into my bag. I found my keys and unlocked the door. The storefront was covered with brown butcher’s paper, but it didn’t go all the way to the edge. I had just a moment to sleepily note that there was some movement visible through the crack in the paper over the glass door when it came flying back toward me, bouncing off my toe, mostly, and my nose, a little. I put my one hand to my face as I instinctively threw myself into the door to close it again.

I was too late and too tired. A strong shoulder on the other side of the doorframe pushed it open and I stumbled back, and then the guy was on me, the door sighing shut behind him on its gas lift as he bore me to the ground and straddled my chest, a move he undertook with the ease of much practice. He pinned my arms under his knees and then gave me a couple of hard hits, one to the jaw, one to the nose.

My lip and nose were bleeding freely and my head was ringing from the hits and from getting smacked into the carpet tiles over concrete when I went down backward. I struggled—­to free my arms, to buck off my attacker, to focus on him.

He was a beefy white guy in his late fifties, with watery dark eyes and a patchy shave that showed gray mixed in with his dark stubble. As he raised his fist for another blow, I saw that he was wearing a big class ring. A minute later, that ring opened my cheek, just under the orbit of my eye.

Apart from some involuntary animal grunts, I hadn’t made a sound. Now I did. “Ow!” I shouted. “Shit!” I shouted. “Stop!” I shouted.

He split my lip again. I bucked hard but I couldn’t budge him. He had a double chin, a gut, and he was strong, and used that bulk to back up his strength. It was like trying to free myself from under a boulder. That kept punching me in the face.

The strip mall would be deserted. Everything was closed, even the vaping store.

Shouting wouldn’t help. I did it anyway. He shut my mouth for me with a left. I gagged on blood.

He took a break from punching me in the face, then. I think he was tired. His chest heaved, and he wiped sweat off his lip with the back of his hand, leaving behind a streaky mustache of my blood.

He contemplated me, weighing me up. I thought maybe he was trying to decide if I had any fight left in me, or perhaps whether I had any valuables he could help himself to.

He cleared his throat and looked at me again. “Goddammit, I messed your face up so bad I can’t tell for sure. I hope to fuck that you’re Martin Hench, though.”

Even with my addled wits, this was an important piece of intelligence: he came here for me. This wasn’t a random act of senseless Los Angeles street violence. This was aimed at me.

I was briefly angry at Benedetto for not warning me that Chuy Flores was such a tough son of a bitch. Then I had the presence of mind to lie.

“I don’t know who the fuck this Mark Hendricks is.” My voice was thick with gargled blood, but I was proud of Mark Hendricks. Pretty fast thinking for a guy with a probable concussion. The guy slapped me open-­handed across the face, and as I lay dazed for a moment, he shifted, reached into my back pocket for my wallet, and yanked it—­and the seat of my pants—­free. Before I could react, his knees were back on my biceps, pinning my arms and shoulders. It was a very neat move, and fast for an old guy like him.

He flipped my wallet open and squinted at it, then held it at arm’s length, then smiled broadly. He had bleach-­white teeth, a row of perfectly uniform caps. Los fucking Angeles, where even the thugs have a million-­dollar smile.

“Shoulda sprung for botox,” I slurred.

His grin got wider. “Maybe someday I will. Got these in trade from a cosmetic dentist I did some work for.” He dropped my wallet. “Listen, Martin Hench, you stay the fuck away from Thames Estuary and Lawrence Coleman.”

“It’s Lionel Coleman,” I said.

“What the fuck ever,” he said. He labored to his feet. I stayed still. He looked at me from a great height, and I stared up his nostrils. Without warning, he kicked my ribs hard enough that I heard one of them crack.

“You’ve been told,” he said to my writhing body, and let himself out.

ETA: Here's part five!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#poacher-turned-keeper

[eruzaarto]

Skyboat.

[my3dartblog]

Morning Star Skyboat is a continuation of my series of Сelestial Travelers.This beautiful ship captain who you can become can take you to the most exotic corners of the heavenly ocean. On board the Morning Star Skyboat can easily find the most mysterious and secret places that you've always dreamed of-) Model has many details of rotating and moving parts is designed specifically for use in your work! Software: Daz Studio 4, DAZ Studio 4 With IRAY Coming soon: https://3d-stuff.net/ #daz3d #dazstudio #3drender #3dart #daz3dstudio #irayrender #3dartwork #blender #blenderrender #blenderart #noaiart #noaiwriting #noai https://3d-stuff.net/

[the-great-horned-rat]

* NNNNNAAAHHH WHAT-WHAT DO TONIGHT? EAT-KILL SKYBOAT DWARFTHINGS? LAUGH AT GODLESS GIANTS?....CHEW HOLES INTO STUPID COMET GODTHINGS CITIES! YESSSSSS-YES DO-DO THAT MY CHILDREN!"

[pairofcosm]

What videos my characters would make as YouTubers:

Sovya (Isaia): a mix of gardening updates and detailed demonstrations of how they take apart and clean their various robot appendages. Also Jeanne makes them do the “I did my girlfriends makeup” trend

Beck-13 (Isaia): historical information and social activism about the injustices faced by clones

Ethan (The Knocking): book reviews and literary discussions of short stories and journals

Olivia (The Knocking): Ballet At Home For Beginners (All Ages!)

Diamond (Paracosm): very earnest but poor quality videos of him explaining how to fix a hovercar’s transmission

Reed (Paracosm): I PRANKED both of my dads SIMULTANEOUSLY (UNDERWATER PRANK MUST SEE!!!)

Sila (Paracosm): suspiciously aggressive informational videos that hint at the vast web of drama that runs deep through the atombee husbandry community. Reed and Diamond are too scared to comment

Pirouet (Paracosm): all his videos have been deleted by his boss. cringefail

Girana (dnd): worlds angriest video game streamer. Becomes famous for how many times she ragequits dark souls before finishing the game

Elain (dnd): somewhere between kickthepj and itsamemyleo. whimsical, creative, crafty storytelling videos. Is the hot gf guest appearances on Girana’s channel

Dirk (dnd): a few older videos of him and a band jamming and improvising some folk music, but mostly deactivated. One music class that Leo convinced him to teach and record.

Leo (dnd): mostly recordings of his lectures, but one singular “Day In The Life on my Sentient SkyBoat with my Pirate Husband!” that makes his students go “what the actual hell”

[amarynceus]

0216/1000

Naraleen Shipyards Series IV Cargo Transport, making a landing... somewhere... to deliver... something. (I don't always have a clear notion in my mind of a narrative for every painting, okay. (^-^)-b ) 56 minutes.

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