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I grabbed ed it on as I walked to the main desk Thethe default oes off-line That’s where group ory it’s oes straight to Buffy—and delivered to the appropriate in-boxes I get the administrative junk that Shaun’s too much of a jerk and Buffy’s too much of a flake to deal with Technically, we’re a collective, but functionally? It’s all me

Not that I object to the responsibility, except when it fills htmares It’s nice to know that our licenses are paid up, we’re in good with the umbrella network that supports our accreditation, and nobody’s suing us for libel Wetop ten percent for the Bay Area at least twice asteady in the thirteen to seventeen percent bracket, which isn’t bad for a strict Newsie I could increasemy reports naked, but unlike some people, I’m still in this for the news

Shaun, Buffy, and I all publish under our own blogs and bylines, which is why I get so das are published under the uator site in Northern California We get readers and click-through traffic by dint of being listed on their front page, and they get a cut of our profits from all secondary- to strike out on our own for a while now, to go froers in an alpha world to baby alphas with a domain to defend It’s not easy You need souarantee you’ll take your readership with you, and our nuh to interest any sponsors

My in-box finished loading I began picking through thepractice and half the desire to get downstairs to dinner Spam; misrouted critique of Buffy’s latest poeh XII”; a threatened lawsuit if we didn’t stop uploading a picture of so uncle—all the usual crap I reached for et up, when a ht my eye

URGENT—PLEASE REPLY—YOU HAVE BEEN SELECTED

I would have disent People stopped flinging that word around like confetti after the Rising Soe that zoer dick seeued, I clicked the title

I was still sitting there staring at the screen five minutes later when Shaun opened the door to ht accoe, Moe?” There was a note of real concern in his voice as he took in lasses, and the fact that I wasn’t dressed “Is everything okay? Buffy’s okay, isn’t she?”

Wordless, I gestured to the screen He stepped up behindover my shoulder Another five minutes passed before he said, in a careful, subdued tone, “Georgia, is that what I think it is?”

“Uh-huh”

“They really It’s not a joke?”

“That’s the federal seal The registered letter should be here in theso broadly that it felt like I was going to pull sooing to do it

“We’re going to cover the presidential can”

My profession owes a lot to Dr Alexander Kellis, inventor of the misnamed “Kellis flu,” and Amanda Amberlee, the first individual successfully infected with theAht should be done by bored teenagers talking about how depressed they were Some folks used it to report on politics and the news, but that application idely viewed as reserved for conspiracy nuts and people whose opinions were too vitriolic for thethe traditional newsa real place on the world stage They thought of us as “quaint” Then the zoed

The “real” ers were bound by nothingWe were the first to report that people who’d been pronounced dead were getting up and noshing on their relatives We were the ones who stood up and said “yes, there are zo people” while the rest of the world was still buzzing about the a act of ecoterrorism that released a half-tested “cure for the co tips on self-defense when everybody else was barely beginning to adht be a problem

The early network reports are preserved online, over the protests of the et the reports taken down, but soet how badly ere betrayed People died in the streets while news anchorstheir zoe they claieto the time stamps on those reports, the first one aired the day Dr Matras from the CDC violated national security to post details on the infection on his eleven-year-old daughter’s blog Twenty-five years after the fact his words—siround of happy teddy bears—still send shivers down my spine There was a war on, and the ones whose responsibility it was to infor it