CZM Book Club: "Party Discipline" by Cory Doctorow, Part Two

one's coming in just on part two. So we'll just get right into it, and we'll say that where we last left our heroes, they were planning a communist party at a factory, which is when you take over a factory and start using its machinery to print stuff to give away, which is a type of communist party I like more than the other kind, if I have to be honest. But they just got pulled into the vice principal's office by a cop. What's gonna happen? Who's to know?

We can only find out by listening right now. The cop pulled the vice principal's chair out from behind the desk and sat down on it in front of us. He didn't say anything. He was young, I saw, not much older than us, and still had some acne on one cheek. White dude, not my type, but good looking, except that he was a cop and he was playing

mind games with us. Are we being detained? Somewhere in my bag was a Black Lives Matter bust card, and while I'd forgotten almost everything written on it, I remembered that this was the first question I should ask. You are here at the request of your school administration. Oh, even when there wasn't a fresh lockdown, the administration had plenty of powers to search us, ask us all kinds of nosy questions after a lockdown. Forget it? Are we

entitled to lawyers? Charrell's voice was a squeak, but I was proud of her. She remembered the second line from the bust card, you are not. The cop looked smackably smug. I didn't say anything. That was definitely the third line on the bust card. Keep your damn mouth shut. He didn't say anything either. Well, I wasn't gonna be the

first one to speak. The silence went on so long I started to worry that I was going to bust out laughing because I was damned silly, the three of us sitting there in total silence, playing foolish head games. I could tell Charrelle was on the verge of giggling too, that psychic thing you get with your best girlfriends. Don't giggle, don't do it, I thought, at her. I was sure she was doing the same thing for me, And you know what it's like when someone tells you not to

laugh when you're about to laugh. That makes it a thousand times worse. I swear we'd have burst something if the cop didn't finally speak, what do you know about Steelbridge? Girls? At first, it was just the girls, I noticed, because seriously, who the hell was this kid to be calling me a girl? Then I tried to figure out what Steelbridge was because the name did ring a bell. My cousin Antoine is a sheet metal worker. There, Oh, that's steel Bridge.

I was surprised at first, but Charrell was telling them anything they couldn't learn with one pass through her social media. He did the silence thing again. Someone needed to teach that boy a second interrogation technique now that we knew what this was about and what he was trying for, the hardest thing about these silences was fighting the giggles. What else do you know about steele Bridge? He was

terrible at his job, maybe too terrible. Could he be trying to law less into a false sense of security about his cluelessness. If so, he was being pretty obvious about it. Maybe he was a double bluff then, But nah, he didn't seem smart enough for that, So maybe triple bluff. Okay, maybe I was getting nervous too. I don't see what this has to do with school. Didn't you say this came from the school administration? What do they have to

do with some company and Encino? Oops? Well it wasn't Encino, but the fact that I knew it was was more than I wanted to say. Well, nay, you are not as smart as you think you are. We requested that they put us in touch with you too. He was pretending he hadn't noticed me saying Sino badly. He jumped like I'd stung him. We're worried about you, he sucked at being fatherly more staring games were worried about you.

You said that we're worried that there may be some illegal activities coming up at this factory, labor trouble, felonies, jail time. I hear you two are good students. I don't think you want that kind of trouble, not so close to graduating. Was that whole lockdown just so you could get a look inside our backpacks? When Charrell said it, I stared at her in disbelief. But the cop blushed like a stoplight. Shit, that's crazy, how can that even be legal? The cop actually rocked back in his chair.

You two are too smart to be in this kind of trouble. I wouldn't want to see you throwing away your lives. I had to look at your grades. You could go to a good university. He gave us what must have been his most significant look. It's better than going to prison for twenty years. The way he was talking and looking at us made me think that he wasn't as confident as he should be. I wondered why, how long after a lockdown does the school have to

allow students to talk to their lawyers. He squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed at them with his forefinger and thumb. Everything you do from now on will be logged. You're in this investigation. Remember that he stood up and left the office. I guess I knew the answer about the lawyer thing. Tutelou Charrell only mouthed the words, but it still nearly set off my giggles, and I glared at her.

It had been old and corny for almost as long as by Felicia, but it was also something both our mothers would smack us for saying and that made it damn funny. Just then, once the door clicked shut behind Detective No Name, Charrell jumped up and started throwing things in her bag quick as she could, and I did the same. After a second, I took the hint of

her not saying anything and worked silently. But you know else, what doesn't do good ad transition because tired is Margaret and this now ad time.

her fingers at me. I passed her my phone, not quite believing I was doing it, and watched as she dropped it into the rice pudding as well, then closed the door. All right, they're safe now, They were the first words either of us had spoken since the cop had left Cherrelle. Why is my phone in a bowl of rice pudding? She I rolled me. The vending machines are shielded to keep identity thieves from putting in skimmers. Once our phones were inside it, they couldn't get any

network service, no matter what. I shook my head. How do you know that? I just do? Okay, I know people, I snorted. She knew the same people I knew, plus orus five percent. My guess was that she'd read this online somewhere one of those hashtags resistance sights. Okay, then, why is my phone in the pudding, because dummy. If the pudding is left on the release bed, the machine thinks you forgot it, and it chimes you a few times.

See it was chiming us and flashing a light. But if there's anything on the food bed, it starts taking pictures and analyzing them and sending them to the bomb squad just in case. So we put the phones in the pudding and then we get them back and wipe them down and we're done. But Scherill, it's pudding, she shrugged. Waterproof is putting proof? What if someone comes in for rice pudding? She gave me a look, girl, knowing he's rice pudding. That shit is gross. I didn't tell her

that was my favorite dessert. My stomach was all in thoughts. Anyway, how do you know all this, she shrugged. Looked it up back when you first started talking about communist parties, I started talking about communist parties, Maybe I did. Maybe it was me that started it. I'd always been fascinated by them, that was for sure. Why, Because Linee, for a smart girl, you are sometimes Hella dumb. If you were going to go and get into trouble, I wanted to know what kind and what I could do to

take the edge off of it. That stole the words right out of my mouth. Scharrell had done that before, taken my crazy plans and turned them into careful schemes. But I hadn't been thinking of the Communist Party as my plan, hadn't She told me about Antoine and the factory. You want to do this as much as I do. She made a face, and I knew I was right that cop. Though you think he has anything, I think he wants something. He pulled a phony lockdown just so

we could search our bags. To me, that says they're worried but don't have enough to do something about it. Charrelle, since when are you a tactician? Since I figured out that you were going to get us both busted if I didn't start paying attention, LINEE. Communist parties are dumb. They only work when you tell a lot of people about them, and the more people you tell, the more likely it is that you will get busted. It was true, I shrugged. Everything is like that, sure, everything. If it's good,

it's scary. That's why we'd do it. If there wasn't any risk from having a Communist party, it wouldn't be exciting, but you could still sneak in at night and make the trolleys give them to homeless people. Why do you want to have a party. I didn't know, but I felt like the answers on the tip of my tongue. I shrugged again. Oh no, Chrell, I didn't invent them. Nah,

you didn't. That fell went to jail. Once t Sha was snoring, I got out my burner, a phone i'd made in shop class following a recipe i'd found on a darknet Google. It had been freshman year and all the kids were doing it and I hadn't used mine in years. It powered up and complained that it couldn't find its update server and warned that it had been years since it had been patched. That I shouldn't let it near the net. That was good advice, but I

couldn't take it. Instead, I gave it a connection through my regular phone, using the app that Charrell had sideloaded for me using her fingernails after we cleaned off the rice pudding. That app was designed to let you tunnel your leaky abandoned smart appliances through it to keep them from being exposed to the public Internet, and Charrell said that no one could listen in on its connections. I

hoped she was right. I pointed the burner out of sight that Charell said she'd researched, and we waited while the burner downloaded new versions of all its software. Once it had rebooted, I was able to connect it straight to the net. My stomach fluttered when I did it, though, and send Shiell a message on her old anonymous account, a long garbage string like you saw on the cards that drug dealers left in public bathrooms. Charrell had explained it to me. It was an address in the blockchain

that had a public key in it. Download the key, encrypt with it, and post your message back to the blockchain. Everyone could see it, but only the private keyholder could decrypt it. Yes, those messages lived in the blockchain forever, So your secret scirrel ever got hacked for a private key, every message sent this way would be visible to everyone in the world for all time. Like they said in the crime shows, Crypto giveth and Crypto Taketh Away. I figured it out. It took her less than a minute

to reply. She was waiting to hear from me that you it's me. What did you give me for my fifteenth birthday. I rolled my eyes. She was such a secret squirrel nothing. We had a fight and you didn't invite me. Yeah, okay, you asked me something.

a party, This should be good. I checked to make sure Tisha was still asleep because it feels like there's no alternative, Like, no matter what we do, the same thing's gonna happen. We're gonna end up like your cous If we're lucky, get a job that lasts a while before the company runs off and takes our last paychecks. Two. It's all so big and we're so little. But put us all together and you can see it. There's other people out there feel the same as you. A connection,

get it. You woke me to tell me that shut up. Okay, Okay, yeah, I hear you. That's the reason, maybe even a good one, but it does make everything a zillion times more dangerous. You all live forever. Shut up, Tisha, opened one eye, but down your phone already. I'm trying to Sleepierre Robert, when I decided that I had to have you as a guest, I have to admit that Candy Billy was

part of the reason for it. I don't know. You describe post apocalyptic radical hacker party people pretty well in your book After the Revolution, Which isn't me plugging that, It's just true.

looked around. You don't want to know, Charrell thumped her hand on the table. Yes we do. It's our asses on the line too, in case you haven't noticed. He sighed and looked around dramatically. He wasn't much of a spy. Charrell had a better poker face. I can't talk about it seriously. But not everyone who becomes a cop believes in the system, all right. Some of them just need a job and also a way to look themselves in the mirror. The cops were infiltrated by Wobbley's. That would

be pretty weird if it was true. Maybe it was true. The world was pretty weird. What happens when we tell everyone at school to show up on the right date. It's not like they've got the tightest game in the world. Their kids cops will figure it out, for sure. Charrell said it, but I was thinking it too. Antoine made a face. Yet, the thing is, we got to be tight about this. We've got the same problem, but not with school kids, but all the other people we want

to show up, these wobblies, they said. Maybe we don't just tell everyone about it in advance. Instead we invite them over for dinner or whatnot, out for drinks, and then we just drag them along make sure they bag their phones. Surprise, he made a face. Hell of a surprise. Charrell's sighed eyed him. I was surprised myself. What if we pretend it's something else, like a party at someone's parents' house.

Everyone will come out with their stuff offline because they don't want to get busted for underage drinking in that, and then we'll bring them to the party. We just invite the ones who we can trust to keep their mouths shut. Charrel was about to jump in and say something, but I held my hand up. No, wait, it could work. Thing is, what if there was a party at someone's house, we just diverted some people from it, caught him before they arrived, got him ready, drove him away. We could

say it was someone else's party, not us. No one would know who was organizing that, so no one could snitch on us afterwards. Charrell had the biggest smile right then, and she made twinkle fingers at me, which meant I agree and hell yeah. And when I was done, she said, who do we get to have a party. That was both harder and easier than it sounded. Easier because there were only three kids whose parents were out of town that night. Harder because those kids sucked. Two were junior

Chamber of Commerce and couldn't be trusted. One was Ali Martinez, who, it turned out Sharrell had been keeping tabs on the whole time. He'd been a while from school, messaging with him late at night when I was in bed and shut off to keep from waking up my nosy sister. Ali says, his dad's going to be in Mexico that weekend visiting his mom. Ali's dad was US citizen and so was Ali, but his mom had been on document

and got de pored it when he was little. Charelle had on that defiant face of hers, daring me to make a big deal out of the fact that she and Ali had been sneaking around. Will you have a party? She rolled her eyes. He always has a party every single time his dad goes South, him and all his candy Billy Fred's headphone parties, so the neighbors don't phone

it in. They even make berrium. I made a face, then pictured Alejandro and his buddies and their lay mass girlfriends in a huge cuddle puddle, sloppy, drunk on biium and giggling like babies. Ugh, so ask him. Charrell's expression was pure animal in a trap. Can't you do it? I gave her a look, shit, she said with feeling. The way she said Hi Ali when she got him on the phone was the most surprising thing of all,

she practically sang the words. Listening to her end of the conversation made me wonder if I knew her at all. She even giggled at one point, love is blind and stupid, really really stupid. When she was done, she put the phone in her pocket. All set, you're going to say anything about What about that Ali Martinez Charrelle, She snorted, Okay, so I like him? Who cares? It's not like I don't know he's a fool. She tapped her temple, but you know she tapped her heart. Doesn't mean I'm not

in control. I only take him in small SIPs. Keeps him tolerable, if you say so. Like I said, it's a good thing. I'm immune to Cherelle's looks. It was a good thing. We weren't trying to keep Ali's party secret. There were a lot of kids at Burbank Kai who remembered him as the fun dude who used to throw those amazing parties before he disappeared, and the news that he was still alive and still throwing them went around

like wildfire. So it was only up to Cherrell and me to put the word out to the ones who weren't idiots that we were going to meet in Stowe Canyon to pregame, then arranged to meet them there after as they puffed up the hill on their bikes or

on foot. There was supposed to be twenty three of them, and they arrived in ones and twos and a foursome driven by someone's cool older sister, and then five more in an Uber, which was d U M dumb because everyone knows that Uber logged everything and that were Hella snitches rollover cops without a warrant, not that warrants were

hard to come by. They came with flasks and six packs and vapes, and they found us by following the blaze marks we chalked high up in the trees with glow in the dark chalksticks, giggling and stumbling through the night with the lights from their airplane mode phones bobbing towards us. We made them turn them off and bag their phones using the pouches we got off of Antoine, who got them from the wobbles. At fifteen people, we were way too noisy and no amount of shushing would

keep it down. We'd get spotted soon. But there was supposed to be twenty three twenty three people we knew and liked and trusted, though maybe not to show up on time. Didn't want to go without them. Should we split into two? I asked Charell, counting up again for the thirtieth time. Maybe they'd phoned us to say they'd be late, but of course our phones were off and bagged Charrell spit on the ground. She looked pale in

the moonlight. Don't want to get caught on my own and don't want to turn on my phone to figure out where you got to. We got one problem with those fools late and missing, don't need two problems with not knowing where we are. I looked at her eyes so wide you could see white all around the pupils, neck tense. I realized how scared she was, and that made me scared because there was a damned good reason to be scared. We were risking serious consequences, jail time,

even to throw a party. The knowledge of that went from something in my head to something in my guts in a second and left me feeling like I'd been punched. I wobbled, Why the actual fuck was I doing this? Why are we doing this? Charrell dun Dundune that's the end of part two.

so much. I knew for a long time when I was like nineteen, the kind of shit I was getting away with kids would not always be able to get away with. And I do feel like I had a moral responsibility to break as made laws as I did.

in which it interfaces. Yeah, our car serral system. Yeah, just keep putting one more can on there.

was aware of. I'd only read young adult books by him before walk Away, and then walk Away took the same ideas that he always talks about, which is like people finding the cracks in the system by being like cool teenage hackers, and then puts it at a grander scale, just like this, Like I don't know, it's one of the best stories of like Grand Revolution that I've read.

why my book is crossover. It's just an annoying genre because anyone who's not specifically in like publishing, you have to explain what the fuck it is. The protagonist is sixteen. That's what it means.