SiSU: - Homeland - Cory Doctorow

Homeland
underlying truth. “But look at a dandelion: by the time it's seeding, it's made thousands of
potential copies of itself, all those little bits of fluff that make up the puffball. When a gust
of wind comes along, the dandelion doesn't follow all its children to make sure they get
steered in the right direction and have their mittens and a packed lunch with them. Almost
every seed a dandelion tosses into the wind is going to die without taking root, but that's
not what matters to a dandelion. Dandelions don't care that every seed survives: they
care that every opportunity to take root is exploited. A successful dandelion is one that
colonizes every crack in the sidewalk, not one that successfully plants all its seeds.
“Sending out messages about the darknet shouldn't cost much. It's probably worth tailoring
each message a little to the people we're spamming -- put their name in the message,
mention some kind of fit with what they do. But keep it down to less than a minute for
each message, dandelion-style. The important thing isn't to make sure that everyone we
hit repeats the story, but rather to make sure that everyone who might give us a little signal
boost knows that the story is out there to be boosted.”
“And if that doesn't work?” I said. It all seemed a little too easy, too pat.
“We try something else,” she said.
“And if a snatch squad takes us away and throws us in the ocean with weights around our
ankles before we can try something else?”
Kylie gave me a look down her nose.
Van leapt in. “Marcus, I know you've got a reason to be worried, but honestly, what else
can we do? It's not like you've got a better idea, right? You and Darryl decided it was time
to do this, and we're all going along with it, but don't just shoot down everything -- that's
not fair.”
I briefly reconsidered trying to get in touch with the creeps who'd been spying on me, but I
didn't want to do that -- and I didn't know how, either. Half of me wanted to just say screw it,
and start shouting it all from the mountaintops, using my own accounts, which had plenty
of followers. It'd probably cost me my job, but hell, if it was a race to make this well known
before Zyz could come after me, that was more important than a paycheck I might never
get to cash. The other half of me was, well, scared. The thing about Kylie's suggestion
was that it sounded a lot safer.
“Fine,” I said. “But when we all get sent to a secret prison in Afghanistan, don't come crying
to me.”
-..-
Darryl gave us a ride back to Ange's place. We flopped around her room as we had a million
times before, perching with our computers on our laps, quickly researching people who
might pick up our message, tailoring it for each one, and firing it out using the anonymous
accounts that we'd cooked up at Jolu's office. We both used IPredator and Tor to do the
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