CZM Book Club: Cool Zone 2055: After the Battle

That's right. This is a podcast I recorded in the year twenty fifty five and then sent back to myself, which was nice of me to give me this heads up, to give all of you this heads up. And so without further ado, here's an episode Hello and welcome to Cool Zone twenty fifty five, how to Survive the Dinoh Wars.

I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and this week we are continuing to relay the last podcast script sent to us by our fearless correspondent Mix bunny Face Murder And if you're spelling that out, that's just the bunny face emoji and then the dagger emoji who is currently trapped behind the Iron curtain on the Iberian Peninsula. Although it goes

without saying, I'm going to say it anyway. The only way that mixed Bunnyface and the rest of the millions of people in Catalonia are going to survive the year is if we are able to fight our way to them and distract the Iberian failings. I know everyone thinks we've got our own problems here wherever here is, and you're right, but we cannot fight this war as a series of localized skirmishes. The revolution will be worldwide or

it will fail. We've made it this far because of international Soliday already in coordination, and it will be exactly those two things, plus bravery, that will see us through and into the world. We know that we can make a world in which many worlds are possible, an internationalist world, an anti capitalist world, an anti authoritarian world. We've made it this far, and we've got to keep pushing. And

I know you know all of that already. I know you're already working, you're already putting your queer shoulder to the wheel. I just want you to know that I'm proud of you. I'm proud of us, and we've got to keep going. Whoever you are, dear listener, you have got to keep going even though you don't feel like you're useful to the revolution right now, write this moment. The fascist death machine wants you dead and we don't

want to let it win. Stay alive. If not for today, then for tomorrow you will have your chance to be useful. And look, there are thousands of ways to be useful. The revolution needs bookkeepers and line cooks, and it needs singers and metalworkers and project managers and engineers and hackers. It needs party planners and historians. It also needs you know, fighters, and it needs trained Dino writers. You know where I'm

going to take this. If you want to become one of the many, the proud, the Dino writers, there is no better way to get started than to sign up with Cool Zone Media's biggest and most generous sponsor, Dino Cadence. That's right, Dino Cadence. From dance troop to elite fighting school. Dino Cadence is a living example of how all of us can turn our talents towards the struggle. So apply today and then tomorrow you can ride a Dino into

war banner streaming battalion screaming. Admission is free, but spots are limited, So apply to Dino Cadence today. And now here's from Mixed bunny Face Murder, who where we left them last time, had scarcely survived in ambush that saw nearly all of a unit of mighty Dreadnoughts defeated, and made it most of the way back towards the main camp before I collapsed in exhaustion and the world drifted out of focus and my mind drifted out of focus.

They're awake, I heard in Cotalan. My first thought was, Hey, that's cool that my cottalan is good enough that I can understand it when I'm half conscious. My second thought was there is a very handsome woman looking down at me. My third thought was I appear to be in some kind of hospital tent. Only then did awareness truly come over me. My brain refused to incorporate the recent trauma, though, and it was just a fuzzy oh that didn't go well.

It's strange being a journalist, because I knew that soon enough I would be writing what happened. I have to not like because it's my job, but because you know, it's what I do. It's how I contribute to this terrifying and glorious world. I let people know what's happening in my strange corner of that world. I tell people how I'm feeling in case they can resonate with it. I entertain people, I hope, which has value to forgive me these introspective asides. They're only going to get worse.

I am particularly aware of my mortality. Just now, for some odd reason, I woke up in a hospital tent in the main camp, and that first face I'd seen was doctor Abodi, a surgeon from Ohio. Good news, she said, in an accent that felt like home. I'm not going to cut off any of your limbs. So I laughed until it hurt, which didn't take long. Once I moved my arm by accident, pain coursed through me and I felt better. Look I am a simple creature. Okay, how

bad is it? I asked? Your wounds are the war either? I suppose? Well, they're setbacks, for sure, she said. In both cases, you're not going to be walking for a while. Then you're going to be walking on crutches for a while. If I had to guess, you're a cane user now long term, at least some days, for the rest of your life, but I suspect you'll regain full use of your arm. She reached up and scratched the shaved half

of her head reflexively in thought. As for the war, they don't tell us civilians too much, but I'll tell you that it is not looking good, not here, not for us. We're not cut off, not yet. There's still soldiers and materiel flowing in from Barcelona. But Barcelona itself is cut off unless a new front opens up for the Iberian Phalanx. It's kind of just a matter of time. Unspoken,

we both knew what she meant by that. Maybe, dear listener, with all the horrors of this war, the fall of Valencia in twenty fifty three went unremarked upon in your circles. In different times, the exodus would have been one of the most important events in human history. When a million people died, helping a million people flee by boats, When horrid Nazi sea monsters rip people down into the depths of the Mediterranean, when Spanish soldiers and angry workers and

art militias. Do you remember the art militias fighting as a form of expressionist art, the field of battle as the canvas when all these people with different politics fought alongside one another against the iron tide of fascism, but collapsed under its weight. It was the stand of Valencia that brought me to Iberia in the first place, to interview refugees who'd made their way to Barcelona. Many of those people have since joined up. Many of those people

have since died in the fighting. Everyone who didn't make it out of Valencia was sucked into the Iberian Phalanx's war machine as conscript labor, as lab rats, as dead bodies to resurrect as literal food for the terrors they were designing and growing in the nightmare labs in Madrid. Imagine having the people eaten by Nazi sea monsters as the lucky ones. The twenty first century has given total war a new definition. It's not that if we don't fight,

we fall under occupation. It's not that if we don't fight, we die. It's that if we don't fight, we will be transformed into horrors beyond the comprehension of the human mind, horrors that challenge the cruelty of even the old gods. So when doctor Abadi said it's kind of just a matter of time, it was with a weight that would have seemed almost unknowable to people only a generation or two back. But do you know what else would have seemed unknowable to people only a generation or two back,

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to Wimpy Wobble's wizard World today and we're back. Doctor. Our body cleared me from the hospital tent in the early evening the day after the battle. It turns out, because I lost a day to pain and drugs, powered chairs were in short supply, so I let a handsome, old orderly volunteer to push me around in an old fashioned wheelchair. His name was Florencio and he'd been born in the twentieth century. Just barely, and he blushed like

wildfire every time I flirted with him. He'd spent his whole life in Madrid, and his whole career as an orderly He'd evacuated during the coup, and he wept openly and fiercely when he talked about the triage of which patients they could get out of the city. They'd prioritized anyone the fascists were most likely to kill, But he was certain, as certain as he was that the sun would rise each morning that the remaining patients had been trans into the demonic labs, into the nightmare factories. I

did what I could do. Signor Senora, he said, using one of the many outdated non binary honorifics that people have explored over the decades. I found it quaint and charming. We were outside in the cooling air, watching the sun set over the hills. I've been a war correspondent since this war kicked off, I told him, and I haven't met many people who've directly physically saved more lives than

you have. You have to focus on what you've accomplished, on the people you've saved, not the things that you've failed. War has made an old person of you, he said, smiling, glad I got to live to be old. Then I told him, even if I had to speed run the whole thing. The old books always say that war is mostly waiting around, bored and miserable, until bad stuff happens.

And certainly it really is mostly waiting around. There'd been a flurry of excitement when I'd first arrived, sure, but I spent the next two weeks without much going on. I wasn't bored and miserable. Though. Morale is a terrain of struggle, and it's one of the terrains we're winning on. I think that the complex stew of ideologies and frameworks and nationalities and just types of people and ways of looking at the world has made even a poorly fed camp on the losing side of a campaign into a

place that is vibrant and exciting. We had enough fanatic nihilism to accept our dire situation, enough diehard old and archosyndicalus to remind us of the glory and legacy that we were part of. We had enough religious sorts to keep us arguing over theology, and enough political sorts to keep us arguing about politics. The semi democratic nature of the command meant that everyone kept up with planning and strategy and felt invested in our decisions. There was music

from around the world. I took my turn telling stories around the fire, and I kept busy talking to dino handlers and medics and messengers and scouts. By the end of the second week, I could get around on crutches and even manage to be able to type a little again. But there's no getting around it. The Iberian Phalanx could attack at any moment, and the odds are not going to be in our favor if they do. I've been

compiling this missive, this podcast script. What would I write if it were the last thing I would ever say in public? Some days, especially first thing in the morning, with a lover's arm draped over my chest and a little bit of a drool on my shoulder, the immediatism of many of the soldiers around me appeals to me. Maybe it's better to be forgotten. But after the midday meal, hardtack and tea, lately not something to write home about.

I sit down to write, and there are so many things I want to say, so many things that I don't want lost forever. If you'll forgive me the self indulgence. I want to tell you about well. Me born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in twenty twenty eight. Back then Pennsylvania was a state,

but I don't remember it as a state. I was in elementary school when our statehood was revoked and our teacher was replaced by someone quote less woke, who informed us that in the state's rights era of the Republican government, only states that understood core American values could be trusted. With such a high degree of independence, Pennsylvania joined Rhode Island, Maryland, and Massachusetts as an fat a federally administered territory. At first,

this didn't change too much. I was still a second generation non binary kid and a third generation anarchist, so what the government said we should do didn't change my life too much. By middle school, though, my family started a home school co op because too many of my generation of kids was getting suspended or even sent a juvie or being trans and or non binary. I remember really loving my childhood. We were poor as hell, but so was the whole city, and we shared. We lived

with my grandmother, missus Jones. She insisted that everyone call her, even though she had never been married. She just thought it sounded classy. She'd bought a cheap house in the mid auts, and there was always a rotating cast of folks passing through or extra families living with us. Sometimes there was drama, and more than once my grandma ran people out at gunpoint if they couldn't act right, if

they weren't safe around us kids. But I had a lot of friends, and when adults in our lives told stories about the bullies and the homophobia that they'd faced us kids, it felt almost exactly the same as when they told ghost stories about murderers and demons. These were just imaginary tales to scare kids. All three of my immediate parents worked full time, and missus Jones. She let me call her another name, but she swore me to never mention it in print. Zones was the closest adult

in my life. The federal administration rescinded our co ops homeschooling license when I was thirteen, and they sent us back to public school. My peers were mostly good, but the stuff they taught us was pure Christian nationalist propaganda. I used to get sent to the principal's office almost every day. The principle, though he was secretly on our side, so he'd say, when you walk out here, you'd better look like I scolded you, or they'll take me away

and disappear me. What's worse, he he meant it that whole situation didn't last. When I was sixteen, the war came and it shattered well everything. My whole family and our whole extended network fled the city and crowded into a land project out in the mountains of the still a state because it was full of boot liquors West Virginia, and we were sheltered in our way by being in a place that just no one gives a single shit about. We were also sheltered by these goods and services the

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to Brother tim Sandwich Palace. We've got sandwiches, we've got heroes, we've got tacos, we've got French fruit fried potatoes in long string four and we're back. I lost missus Jones and two of my three parents in the six months of the war. We could have stayed out of it. Probably certainly us kids managed to. There's one moment that will stay with me, haunt me forever. My dad's name

was Erico. He wasn't Italian, he was fourth generally Polish, but he was a history nerd, so he named himself Rico. He wasn't my birth father, but he had gone through the endless legal ordeal to adopt me and marry my birth parents, so that there was a registered cisgender caretaker to protect me legally. During those anti trans years, he

was fighting in the anti war movement. And it's funny to say fighting in the anti war movement, and by that mean he carried a rifle and he trained in a militia because they were delivering EMP devices to communities across Appalachia and they were regularly involved in firefights in the process. I was sixteen and I wanted to go with him. We got in this massive blow up fight, just screaming and yelling. I started the yelling, but he yelled right back, which he wasn't allowed to do, and

I told him as much while I threw things. And the reason we were fighting is because I wanted to go with him. One of my best friends from the Land Project had gone off to fight already. They're seventeen, you're sixteen. Erico yelled at me. What kind of anarchist are you? I yelled back, I'm your father first and an anarchist second. He yelled, I would disgrace my ancestors before I'd put you in danger. And look, I yelled the thing that everyone in my position has yelled at

some point or another. I told him, you're not my real dad, and I stormed up to my room on the second floor of the old barn, and I slammed the door and the whole building shook, and outside my room in the common space, I heard Riko crying talking to my other parents, and I knew they were arguing about whether or not to let me come with them. And then and then they left. My seventeen year old friend, ginger Erico, Missus Jones, and my other father, Tomas, my

real dad, which wasn't something I ever believed in. They went out that night on a mission, and they never came back. We never found their bodies. Probably, almost certainly, they were killed by a drone strike outside of Martinsburg, West Virginia that night. Of the seventy people killed in that strike, only fifty four were successfully identified. For a long time, I like to think that they were still out there. I don't know what I like to think anymore.

The last thing I told Erico was you're not my real dad, and I'm going to be sitting on that in sorrow for the rest of my life. I forgive myself because I know that not only would he have forgiven me, he would have told me there was nothing to forgive that I hadn't done anything wrong. After they disappeared, I fell into a dark place for a while. After that, I barely left my room. I definitely never left the

land until after the war. I did, though, start writing a job, which I suppose got me into the mess I'm in now. But when I say mess, I will also say that I am surrounded by passionate people successfully holding back fascism against incredible odds. I'm talking every night with so many wonderful people. I'm sleeping next to or with so many wonderful people. And I don't know if Erico was right or wrong ethically or ideologically to stop his sixteen year old kid from fighting in a war,

but I know that I'm glad he did it. I'm glad he was willing to risk his own ethical purity to save my life. So thank you eric O Schpora, and I miss you Ginger, I miss you Tomas, I miss you, missus Jones. Maybe I'll see you soon. I sort of hope not, but maybe. Margaret here again. Thanks for listening to Cool Zone twenty fifty five How to

Survive the Dinah War. We still have a little bit more from Mixed Money Face Murder before well I feel like I'm dragging it out because I'm really hoping we'll get another missive tied to a pigeon, or even better, maybe we'll all march in there. Maybe we'll free Catalonia. That'd be nice. I hope it happens. And plugs at the end of a podcast. Well, if you like the work that I do, you should go back and read one of the first series that I ever did, Danielle

Kane series. The first book is called The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion. If you go back far enough in Cool Zone Media history, you can hear me read it on Cool Zone Media Book Club to Robert Evans. And the third book in that series was called The Immortal Choir Will Send. Nope, that's not the name of it. That's a maybe mixing up the first two books. The second book is called The Barrow We'll Send what it may, and the third book is called The Immortal Choir Holds

Every Voice. And it came out because I remember in summer of twenty twenty five, but more importantly than that, it was kickstarted in March. Yeah, it was March twenty twenty five that it was kickstarted, and so people back then they could have even as far back as February signed up for updates about that kickstarter, and then once the kickstarter went live, they could have gotten all kinds of stuff, including audiobook versions of all three of the books.

It was a good time to get into that series, That's what I remember. But take care of yourself, take care of each other. Where all we got, but where all we need. It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the Iheard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for it could happen here, updated monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources.

Thanks for listening.