By Cory Doctorow

I've been podcasting my short story "When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth"
-- about the sysadmins surviving in data-centers after the apocalypse
-- since Oct 27 and I've wrapped up the story today. You can download
all six parts as MP3s or Oggs on my podcast page -- or just wait for
the story to come out in the second issue of Baen's Astounding
Stories, a DRM-free, pay-to-download science fiction mag.

Podcast page: http://craphound.com/podcast.php

--

Cory Doctorow
doctorow@craphound.com

By Cory Doctorow

The tenth and final installment of my serialized novel-in-progress
went live on Salon just now. I'm working hard on the next section of
the novel and hope to have it in the can by the new year, though it
remains to be seen whether Salon will take up syndicating it, too.
I've really, really appreciated the warm feedback I've gotten from
you folks for this over the last two and a half months -- it's really
helped me keep focused as I worked on the next section.

In today's installment, Lester and Andrea reunite, but the New Work
economy hits the skids:

> Lester came down the drive grinning and bouncing on the balls of
> his feet. Perry had evidently been expecting him, for he came
> racing through the shantytown and pelted down the roadway and threw
> himself at Lester, grabbing him in a crazy, exuberant, whooping
> hug. Francis gimped out a moment later and gave him a solemn
> handshake. She hadn't blogged their meeting in Detroit, so if
> Francis and Perry knew about Lester's transformation, they'd found
> out without hearing it from her.
>
> She finished recording the homecoming from Mrs Torrence's crow's
> nest, then paid the grinning old bag and took the stairs two at a
> time, hurrying to catch up with Lester and his crowd.
>
> Lester accepted her hug warmly but distantly, letting go a fraction
> of a second before she did. She didn't let it get to her. He had
> drawn a crowd now, with Francis's protege printer-techs in the
> innermost circle, and he was recounting the story of his
> transformation. He had them as spellbound as a roomful of ewoks
> listening to C3PO.
>
> "Shit, why don't we sell that stuff?" Jason said. He'd taken a real
> interest in the business end of their 3D printer project.
>
> "Too much competition," Lester said. "There are already a dozen
> shops tooling up to make bathtub versions of the therapy here in
> America. Hundreds more in Eastern Europe. There just won't be any
> profit in it by the time we get to market. Getting thin on the
> cheap's going to be *easy*. Hell, all it takes to do it is the
> stuff you'd use for an E lab. You can buy all that in a kit from a
> catalog."
>
> Jason nodded, but looked unconvinced.
>
> Andrea took Lester's return as her cue to write about his
> transformation. She snapped more pics of him, added some video. He
> gave her ten minutes' description of the therapies he'd undergone,
> and named a price for the therapy that was substantially lower than
> a couple weeks in a Hollywood fat-farm, and far more effective.


Final installment:
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2005/11/14/themepunks_10/index.html
Previous Installments:
http://dir.salon.com/topics/cory_doctorow/