This chapter is dedicated to Chapters/Indigo, the national Canadianmegachain. I was working at Bakka, the independent science fictionbookstore, when Chapters opened its first store in Toronto and I knewthat something big was going on right away, because two of oursmartest, best-informed customers stopped in to tell me that they'd beenhired to run the science fiction section. From the start, Chapters raisedthe bar on what a big corporate bookstore could be, extending its hours,adding a friendly cafe and lots of seating, installing in-store self-serviceterminals and stocking the most amazing variety of titles.
Chapters/IndigoI blogged the press-conference even before I'd sent out the invitationsto the press. I could tell that all these writers wanted to make me into aleader or a general or a supreme guerrilla commandant, and I figuredone way of solving that would be to have a bunch of Xnetters runningaround answering questions too.
Then I emailed the press. The responses ranged from puzzled to en-thusiastic — only the Fox reporter was "outraged" that I had the gall toask her to play a game in order to appear on her TV show. The rest ofthem seemed to think that it would make a pretty cool story, thoughplenty of them wanted lots of tech support for signing onto the gameI picked 8PM, after dinner. Mom had been bugging me about all theevenings I'd been spending out of the house until I finally spilled thebeans about Ange, whereupon she came over all misty and kept lookingat me like, my-little-boy's-growing-up. She wanted to meet Ange, and Iused that as leverage, promising to bring her over the next night if Icould "go to the movies" with Ange tonight.
Ange's mom and sister were out again — they weren't real stay-at-homes — which left me and Ange alone in her room with her Xbox and194mine. I unplugged one of her bedside screens and attached my Xbox to itso that we could both login at once.
Both Xboxes were idle, logged into Clockwork Plunder. I was pacing.
"It's going to be fine," she said. She glanced at her screen. "PatcheyePete's Market has 600 players in it now!" We'd picked Patcheye Pete's be-cause it was the market closest to the village square where new playersspawned. If the reporters weren't already Clockwork Plunder players —ha! — then that's where they'd show up. In my blog post I'd askedpeople generally to hang out on the route between Patcheye Pete's andthe spawn-gate and direct anyone who looked like a disoriented reporterover to Pete's.
"What the hell am I going to tell them?""You just answer their questions — and if you don't like a question, ig-nore it. Someone else can answer it. It'll be fine.""This is insane.""This is perfect, Marcus. If you want to really screw the DHS, you haveto embarrass them. It's not like you're going to be able to out-shoot them.
Your only weapon is your ability to make them look like morons."I flopped on the bed and she pulled my head into her lap and strokedmy hair. I'd been playing around with different haircuts before thebombing, dying it all kinds of funny colors, but since I'd gotten out of jailI couldn't be bothered. It had gotten long and stupid and shaggy and I'dgone into the bathroom and grabbed my clippers and buzzed it down tohalf an inch all around, which took zero effort to take care of and helpedme to be invisible when I was out jamming and cloning arphids.
I opened my eyes and stared into her big brown eyes behind herglasses. They were round and liquid and expressive. She could makethem bug out when she wanted to make me laugh, or make them softand sad, or lazy and sleepy in a way that made me melt into a puddle ofhorniness.
That's what she was doing right now.
I sat up slowly and hugged her. She hugged me back. We kissed. Shewas an amazing kisser. I know I've already said that, but it bears repeat-ing. We kissed a lot, but for one reason or another we always stopped be-fore it got too heavy.
Now I wanted to go farther. I found the hem of her t-shirt and tugged.
She put her hands over her head and pulled back a few inches. I knewthat she'd do that. I'd known since the night in the park. Maybe that's195why we hadn't gone farther — I knew I couldn't rely on her to back off,which scared me a little.
But I wasn't scared then. The impending press-conference, the fightswith my parents, the international attention, the sense that there was amovement that was careening around the city like a wild pinball — itmade my skin tingle and my blood sing.
And she was beautiful, and smart, and clever and funny, and I wasfalling in love with her.
Her shirt slid off, her arching her back to help me get it over hershoulders. She reached behind her and did something and her bra fellaway. I stared goggle-eyed, motionless and breathless, and then shegrabbed my shirt and pulled it over my head, grabbing me and pullingmy bare chest to hers.
We rolled on the bed and touched each other and ground our bodiestogether and groaned. She kissed all over my chest and I did the same toher. I couldn't breathe, I couldn't think, I could only move and kiss andlick and touch.
We dared each other to go forward. I undid her jeans. She undid mine.
I lowered her zipper, she did mine, and tugged my jeans off. I tugged offhers. A moment later we were both naked, except for my socks, which Ipeeled off with my toes.
It was then that I caught sight of the bedside clock, which had longago rolled onto the floor and lay there, glowing up at us.
"Crap!" I yelped. "It starts in two minutes!" I couldn't freaking believethat I was about to stop what I was about to stop doing, when I wasabout to stop doing it. I mean, if you'd asked me, "Marcus, you are aboutto get laid for the firstest time EVAR, will you stop if I let off this nuclearbomb in the same room as you?" the answer would have been a resound-ing and unequivical NO.
And yet we stopped for this.
She grabbed me and pulled my face to hers and kissed me until Ithought I would pass out, then we both grabbed our clothes and more orless dressed, grabbing our keyboards and mice and heading for PatcheyePete's.
You could easily tell who the press were: they were the noobs whoplayed their characters like staggering drunks, weaving back and forthand up and down, trying to get the hang of it all, occasionally hitting the196wrong key and offering strangers all or part of their inventory, or givingthem accidental hugs and kicks.
The Xnetters were easy to spot, too: we all played Clockwork Plunderwhenever we had some spare time (or didn't feel like doing our home-work), and we had pretty tricked-out characters with cool weapons andbooby-traps on the keys sticking out of our backs that would cream any-one who tried to snatch them and leave us to wind down.
When I appeared, a system status message displayed M1K3Y HASENTERED PATCHEYE PETE'S — WELCOME SWABBIE WE OFFERFAIR TRADE FOR FINE BOOTY. All the players on the screen froze,then they crowded around me. The chat exploded. I thought about turn-ing on my voice-paging and grabbing a headset, but seeing how manypeople were trying to talk at once, I realized how confusing that wouldbe. Text was much easier to follow and they couldn't misquote me (hehheh).
I'd scouted the location before with Ange — it was great campaigningwith her, since we could both keep each other wound up. There was ahigh-spot on a pile of boxes of salt-rations that I could stand on and beseen from anywhere in the market.
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Good evening and thank you all for coming. My name is M1k3y andI'm not the leader of anything. All around you are Xnetters who have asmuch to say about why we're here as I do. I use the Xnet because I be-lieve in freedom and the Constitution of the United States of America. Iuse Xnet because the DHS has turned my city into a police-state wherewe're all suspected terrorists. I use Xnet because I think you can't defendfreedom by tearing up the Bill of Rights. I learned about the Constitutionin a California school and I was raised to love my country for its free-dom. If I have a philosophy, it is this:
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Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powersfrom the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of govern-ment becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to al-ter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundationon such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to themshall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
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197I didn't write that, but I believe it. The DHS does not govern with myconsent.
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Thank youI'd written this the day before, bouncing drafts back and forth withAnge. Pasting it in only took a second, though it took everyone in thegame a moment to read it. A lot of the Xnetters cheered, big showy pirate"Hurrah"s with raised sabers and pet parrots squawking and flyingoverhead.
Gradually, the journalists digested it too. The chat was running pastfast, so fast you could barely read it, lots of Xnetters saying things like"Right on" and "America, love it or leave it" and "DHS go home" and"America out of San Francisco," all slogans that had been big on the Xnetblogosphere.
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M1k3y, this is Priya Rajneesh from the BBC. You say you're not theleader of any movement, but do you believe there is a movement? Is itcalled the Xnet?
Lots of answers. Some people said there wasn't a movement, somesaid there was and lots of people had ideas about what it was called:
Xnet, Little Brothers, Little Sisters, and my personal favorite, the UnitedStates of America.
They were really cooking. I let them go, thinking of what I could say.
Once I had it, I typed,>
I think that kind of answers your question, doesn't it? There may beone or more movements and they may be called Xnet or not.
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M1k3y, I'm Doug Christensen from the Washington Internet Daily.
What do you think the DHS should be doing to prevent another attackon San Francisco, if what they're doing isn't successful.
More chatter. Lots of people said that the terrorists and the govern-ment were the same — either literally, or just meaning that they wereequally bad. Some said the government knew how to catch terrorists butpreferred not to because "war presidents" got re-elected.
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I don't know198I typed finally.
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I really don't. I ask myself this question a lot because I don't want toget blown up and I don't want my city to get blown up. Here's what I'vefigured out, though: if it's the DHS's job to keep us safe, they're failing.
All the crap they've done, none of it would stop the bridge from beingblown up again. Tracing us around the city? Taking away our freedom?
Making us suspicious of each other, turning us against each other?
Calling dissenters traitors? The point of terrorism is to terrify us. TheDHS terrifies me.
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I don't have any say in what the terrorists do to me, but if this is a freecountry then I should be able to at least say what my own cops do to me.
I should be able to keep them from terrorizing me.
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I know that's not a good answer. Sorry.
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What do you mean when you say that the DHS wouldn't stop terror-ists? How do you know?
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Who are you?
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I'm with the Sydney Morning Herald.
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I'm 17 years old. I'm not a straight-A student or anything. Even so, Ifigured out how to make an Internet that they can't wiretap. I figured outhow to jam their person-tracking technology. I can turn innocent peopleinto suspects and turn guilty people into innocents in their eyes. I couldget metal onto an airplane or beat a no-fly list. I figured this stuff out bylooking at the web and by thinking about it. If I can do it, terrorists cando it. They told us they took away our freedom to make us safe. Do youfeel safe?
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In Australia? Why yes I doThe pirates all laughed.
199More journalists asked questions. Some were sympathetic, some werehostile. When I got tired, I handed my keyboard to Ange and let her beM1k3y for a while. It didn't really feel like M1k3y and me were the sameperson anymore anyway. M1k3y was the kind of kid who talked to inter-national journalists and inspired a movement. Marcus got suspendedfrom school and fought with his dad and wondered if he was goodenough for his kick-ass girlfriend.
By 11PM I'd had enough. Besides, my parents would be expecting mehome soon. I logged out of the game and so did Ange and we lay therefor a moment. I took her hand and she squeezed hard. We hugged.
She kissed my neck and murmured something.
"What?""I said I love you," she said. "What, you want me to send you atelegram?""Wow," I said.
"You're that surprised, huh?""No. Um. It's just — I was going to say that to you.""Sure you were," she said, and bit the tip of my nose.
"It's just that I've never said it before," I said. "So I was working up toit.""You still haven't said it, you know. Don't think I haven't noticed. Wegirls pick upon these things.""I love you, Ange Carvelli," I said.
"I love you too, Marcus Yallow."We kissed and nuzzled and I started to breathe hard and so did she.
That's when her mom knocked on the door.
"Angela," she said, "I think it's time your friend went home, don'tyou?""Yes, mother," she said, and mimed swinging an axe. As I put mysocks and shoes on, she muttered, "They'll say, that Angela, she was sucha good girl, who would have thought it, all the time she was in the backyard, helping her mother out by sharpening that hatchet."I laughed. "You don't know how easy you have it. There is no way myfolks would leave us alone in my bedroom until 11 o'clock.""11:45," she said, checking her clock.
"Crap!" I yelped and tied my shoes.
200"Go," she said, "run and be free! Look both ways before crossing theroad! Write if you get work! Don't even stop for a hug! If you're not outof here by the count of ten, there's going to be trouble, mister. One. Two.
Three."I shut her up by leaping onto the bed, landing on her and kissing heruntil she stopped trying to count. Satisfied with my victory, I poundeddown the stairs, my Xbox under my arm.
Her mom was at the foot of the stairs. We'd only met a couple times.
She looked like an older, taller version of Ange — Ange said her fatherwas the short one — with contacts instead of glasses. She seemed to havetentatively classed me as a good guy, I and appreciated it.
"Good night, Mrs Carvelli," I said.
"Good night, Mr Yallow," she said. It was one of our little rituals, eversince I'd called her Mrs Carvelli when we first met.
I found myself standing awkwardly by the door.
"Yes?" she said.
"Um," I said. "Thanks for having me over.""You're always welcome in our home, young man," she said.
"And thanks for Ange," I said finally, hating how lame it sounded. Butshe smiled broadly and gave me a brief hug.
"You're very welcome," she said.
The whole bus ride home, I thought over the press-conference,thought about Ange naked and writhing with me on her bed, thoughtabout her mother smiling and showing me the door.
My mom was waiting up for me. She asked me about the movie and Igave her the response I'd worked out in advance, cribbing from the re-view it had gotten in the Bay Guardian.
As I fell asleep, the press-conference came back. I was really proud ofit. It had been so cool, to have all these big-shot journos show up in thegame, to have them listen to me and to have them listen to all the peoplewho believed in the same things as me. I dropped off with a smile on mylips.
I should have known better.
XNET LEADER: I COULD GET METAL ONTO AN AIRPLANEDHS DOESN'T HAVE MY CONSENT TO GOVERN201XNET KIDS: USA OUT OF SAN FRANCISCOThose were the good headlines. Everyone sent me the articles to blog,but it was the last thing I wanted to do.
I'd blown it, somehow. The press had come to my press-conferenceand concluded that we were terrorists or terrorist dupes. The worst wasthe reporter on Fox News, who had apparently shown up anyway, andwho devoted a ten-minute commentary to us, talking about our"criminal treason." Her killer line, repeated on every news-outlet I found,was:
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