collected hundreds more. The pile grew. We competed to find the juiciest stories, the craziest pictures.
The deal with my parents was that I’d eat breakfast with them every morning and talk about the projects I was doing. They liked that I was reading Kerouac. It had been a favorite book of both of theirs and it turned out there was already a copy on the bookcase in my parents’ room. My dad brought it down and I flipped through it. There were passages marked up with pen, dog-eared pages, notes in the margin. My dad had really loved this book.
It made me remember a better time, when my Dad and I had been able to talk for five minutes without shouting at each other about terrorism, and we had a great breakfast talking about the way that the novel was plotted, all the crazy adventures.
But the next morning at breakfast they were both glued to the radio.
“Abuses of Authority — it’s the latest craze on San Francisco’s notorious Xnet, and it’s captured the world’s attention. Called A-oh-A, the movement is composed of ‘Little Brothers’ who watch back against the Department of Homeland Security’s anti-terrorism measures, documenting the failures and excesses. The rallying cry is a popular viral video clip of a General Claude Geist, a retired three-star general, being tackled by DHS officers on the sidewalk in front of City Hall. Geist hasn’t made a statement on the incident, but commentary from young people who are upset with their own treatment has been fast and furious.
“Most notable has been the global attention the movement has received. Stills from the Geist video have appeared on the front pages of newspapers in Korea, Great Britain, Germany, Egypt and Japan, and broadcasters around the world have aired the clip on prime-time news. The issue came to a head last night, when the British Broadcasting Corporation’s National News Evening program ran a special report on the fact that no American broadcaster or news agency has covered this story. Commenters on the BBC’s website noted that BBC America’s version of the news did not carry the report.”
They brought on a couple of interviews: British media watchdogs, a Swedish Pirate Party kid who made jeering remarks about America’s corrupt press, a retired American newscaster living in Tokyo, then they aired a short clip from Al-Jazeera, comparing the American press record and the record of the national news-media in Syria.
I felt like my parents were staring at me, that they knew what I was doing. But when I cleared away my dishes, I saw that they were looking at each other.
Dad was holding his coffee cup so hard his hands were shaking. Mom was looking at him.
“They’re trying to discredit us,” Dad said finally. “They’re trying to sabotage the efforts to keep us safe.”
I opened my mouth, but my mom caught my eye and shook her head. Instead I went up to my room and worked on my Kerouac paper. Once I’d heard the door slam twice, I fired up my Xbox and got online.
> Hello M1k3y. This is Colin Brown. I’m a producer with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s news programme The National. We’re doing a story on Xnet and have sent a reporter to San Francisco to cover it from there. Would you be interested in doing an interview to discuss your group and its actions?
I stared at the screen. Jesus. They wanted to
> Um thanks no. I’m all about privacy. And it’s not “my group.” But thanks for doing the story!
A minute later, another email.
> We can mask you and ensure your anonymity. You know that the Department of Homeland Security will be happy to provide their own spokesperson. I’m interested in getting your side.
I filed the email. He was right, but I’d be crazy to do this. For all I knew, he
I picked up more Kerouac. Another email came in. Same request, different news-agency: KQED wanted to meet me and record a radio interview. A station in Brazil. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Deutsche Welle. All day, the press requests came in. All day, I politely turned them down.
I didn’t get much Kerouac read that day.
“Hold a press-conference,” is what Ange said, as we sat in the cafe near her place that evening. I wasn’t keen on going out to her school anymore, getting stuck on a bus with Van again.
“What? Are you crazy?”
“Do it in Clockwork Plunder. Just pick a trading post where there’s no PvP allowed and name a time. You can login from here.”
PvP is player-versus-player combat. Parts of Clockwork Plunder were neutral ground, which meant that we could theoretically bring in a ton of noob reporters without worrying about gamers killing them in the middle of the press-conference.
“I don’t know anything about press conferences.”
“Oh, just google it. I’m sure someone’s written an article on holding a successful one. I mean, if the President can manage it, I’m sure you can. He looks like he can barely tie his shoes without help.”
We ordered more coffee.
“You are a very smart woman,” I said.
“And I’m beautiful,” she said.
“That too,” I said.
Chapter 15
This chapter is dedicated to Chapters/Indigo, the national Canadian megachain. I was working at Bakka, the independent science fiction bookstore, when Chapters opened its first store in Toronto and I knew that something big was going on right away, because two of our smartest, best-informed customers stopped in to tell me that they’d been hired to run the science fiction section. From the start, Chapters raised the bar on what a big corporate bookstore could be, extending its hours, adding a friendly cafe and lots of seating, installing in-store self-service terminals and stocking the most amazing variety of titles.
