Patrick Nielsen Hayden

When schools make war on their own students, something has to give. . . A Little Brother story, commissioned by Nelda Buckman. Kids hate email. Dee got my number from his older brother, who got it from Tina, my sister-in-law, who he knew from art school. He texted me just as I was starting to make progress with a gnarly bug in some logging software I was trying to get running for my cloud servers. My phone went bloop and vibrated a little on the kitchen table, making ripples in my coffee.

In a new Little Brother novella, there is no security in obscurity. But there can be redemption in mutual aid. For Clay F. Carlson, with thanks for his generous support of the Kickstarter campaign for the audiobook of Attack Surface, and for suggesting the prompt for this story. Thank you to Michael Running Wolf and Suzanne Stefanac for their generous assistance in researching this story. MARCUS Doctors smoke. Driving instructors text and drive. Dentists eat sugary snacks before bed. And hackers?

A contentious election and radicalized locals interfere with Canadian recovery workers’ efforts at the site of a catastrophic flood in near-future Mississippi. This story is set in the same future as The Lost Cause, Cory Doctorow’s new novel, available everywhere on November 14, 2023. Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping. —Fred Rogers (1986) It’s a treat to beat your feet on the Mississippi Mud.