SiSU: - Homeland - Cory Doctorow

Homeland
a loose, floppy cotton top that hung down as low as the skirt. She looked amazing, and I
found myself staring for longer than was polite. She caught me at it and gave me a weird
look and I looked away.
“You ready to talk about it?” Darryl said.
“Not really,” I said. “But I guess I'd better.”
-..-
Telling it again, the day after, with a full stomach, felt a little like I was recounting the plot
of a movie I'd seen and less like I was telling the story of something that had happened
to me. I found myself discoursing on weird details I'd noticed, like the Zyz guys' tactical
gear obsession, which provoked comforting hoots of laughter from Van, making it all seem
more like a well-worn story of my life, rather than a source of imminent doom. Darryl and
Van knew about Zyz, so I was able to skip over that part of my talk with Ange, which left
me with the part where she'd told me I was a coward and a jerk for not putting my life at
risk. Or at least, that's how it came out.
They made sympathetic faces and noises, and I felt better in a way that was also kind of
bad. Like I knew that I'd made myself to be the hero of a story that I didn't deserve to be
the hero of.
“Jesus, Marcus, what a frigging nightmare,” Van said.
“So what are you going to do?” Darryl said.
Van gave him an impatient look. “What do you think? He's going to walk away from this.
He's right: this is too risky for him. It's not his fight.”
Darryl had been holding her hand, and he let go of it. “Come on, he can't do that. For one
thing, there's other people involved now. Even if he stops, they won't.”
Van folded her arms. “Jolu will shut it down if Marcus tells him to. Problem solved.”
It was amazing. They'd gone from being a cuddly couple to furious in seconds. It made me
realize how infrequently I bickered with Ange, and how little I knew about their relationship.
I tried to say something, but Darryl was already speaking.
“No, he won't. He can't and he shouldn't. The stuff about Zyz, all that other stuff, it needs
to come out.”
“Oh really? And why does it need to come out? Is it going to solve anything? Don't you
think that everyone already knows that the whole system is rotten? Do you think a bunch of
anonymous, unverified Internet rumors are going to make people rise up and take action?
Throw off their chains and free the world? Come on, Darryl. After everything you've been
through --”
Darryl stood up abruptly. “Going for a walk,” he said. He was out the door before I could
say anything. Darryl had had it worse than me, had been in Gitmo-by-the-Bay for months.
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