CZM Book Club: "The Fortunate Death of Jonathan Sandelson" by Margaret Killjoy, Part One

yeah truly, which I actually kind of did once. I wrote this book called The Country It Goes once and 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,

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 Horizons in twenty eighteen, and it is a story of AI and murder ooh fun and justifiable homicide.

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. 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 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 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, 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 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. 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 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. 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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.

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 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 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

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, 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 Nogaulis and called me.

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 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 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, 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, 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 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, 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?

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? God damn it, I'm coming into your work. Yea. How hard it is to read transcriptive chat.

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 proverbial hard drive of my mind for everything I'd read about interacting with federal agents. Can I help you navigate the ordering system?

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, 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. 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 is a good point to tell you about our perennial

sponsor of the show. Don't talk to cops.

serious legal problems. The concept of not talking to cops does not provide legal advice, and the foregoing statements are for informational purposes only. If you have specific legal questions, consult an attorney.

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, 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 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

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.

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.

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. 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 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. 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, 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. 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 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 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? 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 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. 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

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. 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 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 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. 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. 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. 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 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 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 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 gonna leave it today.

and translatable and real. It was really really really great storytelling.

I love that. Especially the comparison to worker drones was great.