Homeland

Chapter 11

This chapter is dedicated to Borderlands Books, San Francisco's magnificent independent science fiction bookstore. Borderlands is basically located across the street from the fictional Cesar Chavez High depicted in Little Brother, and it's not just notorious for its brilliant events, signings, book clubs and such, and also for its (late, lamented) amazing hairless Egyptian cat, Ripley, who liked to perch like a buzzing gargoyle on the computer at the front of the store. Borderlands is about the friendliest bookstore you could ask for, filled with comfy places to sit and read (and an adjacent cafe), and staffed by incredibly knowledgeable clerks who know everything there is to know about science fiction. Even better, they've always been willing to take orders for my book (by net or phone) and hold them for me to sign when I drop into the store, then they ship them within the US for free! 

Borderlands Books: 866 Valencia Ave, San Francisco CA USA 94110 +1 888 893 4008

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What if you threw a blockbuster news event and no one showed up? We'd just dumped one of the biggest troves of leaked documents in the history of the human race all over the net, and no one really gave a crap. Some critical combination of the sheer size of the dump, our sketchy promotions strategy, the pain in the ass nature of Tor, and the fact that the net was full of people saying that they were hoaxes and stupid and that there was nothing juicy there -- it all added up to a big, fat yawn.

Joe finally came by my desk at 3:30, just as I was falling into the post-lunch slump, wherein my blood sugar troughed out so low that I felt like I could barely keep my eyes open -- probably as a result of all the horchata I'd guzzled at lunch, the sugar sending my blood sugar spiking to infinity so it had nowhere to go but down.

"Hello, Marcus," he said. He was in dressed in his campaigning uniform, a nicely tailored button-up sweater over a crisp white shirt, slacks that showed off the fact that although he was pushing fifty, he still had the waistline he'd had as a college varsity sprinter, a Joe for Senate badge on his lapel. He had like eight of those sweaters, and he kept a spare in a dry-cleaning bag by his desk, just in case a car splattered him or a baby got sick on him between campaign stops.

"Joe," I said, feeling like I was about to be sick. "Look, I'm sorry I wasn't in yesterday, I was really under the weather. And well, today, you know, it's just been crazy. I've just about got the network here sorted out, but the website --" I waved my hands in a way that was meant to convey that it was a total disaster.

He looked grave. "I thought that the Web site was all in order? I remember you saying something to that effect. Or did I misunderstand?"

I was sinking lower with every utterance. "Well, yeah, it looked okay but when I started doing a code-audit I found a bunch of potential code-injection vulnerabilities so I've been doing what I can to reduce the attack-surface of the site, you know, so I can get it all down to a manageable scale, and --"

He held his hands up to stop my torrent of technobabble. "My, it certainly sounds like quite an undertaking. I really thought that Myra was better than that."

And now I really felt like a jerk. Myra, my predecessor, had done an awful lot with very little, and here I was, dumping all over all her hard work to cover my own useless butt. "Well, yeah, I mean, she did, but things move really fast, and the patch levels were super lagged, and you know, the last thing we want is someone hijacking our donors' credit card numbers or passwords, or using our site to install malicious software on visitors' computers, and, well --"