“According to a 66-page, 12-count indictment that was unsealed last Monday, The Farmer’s Market provided a fully functional e-commerce experience, including a storefront, order forms, online forums, customer service, and various payment methods for the different sources of supply.”
Tor-hidden online narcotics store, ‘The Farmer’s Market’, brought down in multinational sting, by Lisa Vaas, Naked Security, April 23, 2012

And I thought I was making that up. Well, it’s more drug smuggling than e-commerce in Electricland. But still… What will those crazy kids think up next? I’m afraid to find out.

“Using an online game called Foldit, players were able to predict the structure of a protein called retroviral protease, an enzyme that plays a critical role in the way HIV multiplies. Unlocking the build of the protein could theoretically aid scientists in developing drugs that would stop protease from spreading.”
Gamers Unlock Protein Mystery That Baffled AIDS Researchers For Years, by Leslie Horn, PCmag.com, September 19, 2011

Gamers for good!

Fleeting Pages Bookstore will be open from May 7 until June 7, 2011 at the former Borders in the East Liberty neighborhood of Pittsburgh. Loscation: 5986 Penn Circle South, Pittsburgh, PA.
Fleeting Pages Bookstore, FleetingPages, April 22, 2011

If you’ve ever wanted to find Wapshott titles in a bookstore and you’re in or near Pittsburgh, well, this is your chance from May 7 to June 7.

Please cross-post and spread the word. It’s one thing to have a bookstore; it’s another to have customers.

“How you know they’re doin’ it?” Helena in the passenger seat asked.

“I wired it for sound yesterday.” With black hair and the right attitude, Kate could pass her middle-aged Middle Eastern looks off as a Latina. That is, if no one looked too hard, and at her age, no one was ever looking too hard. “Russek uses a cleaning service. That bloody kid hardly noticed me as I cleaned around the little bastard. Didn’t even look away from his laptop. The audio’s been nicely steamy so far. Have a listen?” Kate held out an iPod and earbuds.

“Nah, not unless there’s something more useful in it than smut.”

“So far Miranda, Titania and Hermia haven’t heard anything of use,” Kate said, shoving the iPod back in her pocket. “But they’re getting an earful of rumpy pumpy.”

“Whatever that is,” Helena muttered, staring out the window shield.

“Sex,” Kate told her.

“Fucking Miranda!” Helena recrossed her legs and looked like she wanted to bite something or someone. “This is all her fault.”

“I blame Williams more.” Miranda had bailed Kate out more than once, so she was reluctant to go against her. “And this sodding Ryan kid. I detest smart kids.”

“Yeah, you right. Why didn’t you finish what Viola screwed up when she laid Ryan instead of killing him like she was supposed to?” Helena asked. She was pissed off that she had to be there to help clean up a mess not of her own making.

“It’s more complicated now,” Kate said with a sigh. “The little bugger had enough time to get away with more than the accounts and passwords. He grabbed some DARPA data we were using as well.”

“Sheee-yit.” Helena had lost everything to Katrina but her Ninth Ward drawl on certain words. “Can’t do nothing ’bout the DARPA stuff. I wish Titania and Miranda would stop fucking with people who are fucking scarier than us, it’s just fucking stupid. And can’t Miranda just change fucking the passwords or whatever the fuck she does on the internets?”

“I’m told that would tip off our funding sources,” Kate said, in a soothing voice. She was mildly amused by Helena’s rage and relieved she wasn’t holding it in. Helena didn’t have a rage meter; it was more like an on-off toggle. “And the DARPA stuff, well, they had the best possible toxin and plans to poison a small city. No sense reinventing the wheel, you know.”

“Only if your goddamn wheel doesn’t run over your goddamn self. Hey, girl, quit laughing.”

“Sssorry.” Kate could barely get this out between chuckles.

Helena stared into space while Kate collected herself. “How’d Williams get to DARPA before you?” she asked when her comrade was under control. “I thought this was supposed to be easy. Just get in, flip the switch and follow Miranda’s instructions on getting our footprints off the DARPA network or whatever you were supposed to do?”

“Fucking Miranda left a chink for the Ryan kid to get in and Williams had a way we don’t totally understand yet to wedge it open,” Kate admitted. “Miranda thought she was IMing me when she was IMing the kid.”

“Aw, Christ inna Cadillac.”

“Indeed. I was delayed by the chaos in Irvine, and then by Miranda not being able to get past the new DARPA security—because you know they’d never admit it, but DARPA knew right away what happened—and then I had no idea the building would be more or less empty, which I think was more Williams voodoo–”

“You just say voodoo, girl?”

“No offense to voodoo or even hoodoo, luv,” Kate said pacifically. “I didn’t know what kind of resistance to expect, so organizing the Samoan girls held me up a bit.”

“Your girl ganstas weren’t much help?” Helena asked. She preferred to work alone and looked askance at Kate’s teambuilding efforts. Of course Kate’s team members didn’t get to live very long after the mission, but it was still too many variables, too many trails to follow, for Helena’s taste.

“Oh, they’re appropriately vicious and they can shoot straight enough, but they have to see it coming at them.” Kate tapped on the steering wheel and stared into the middle distance. “But Williams has nearly the same training that we have,” she continued. “He hunted us through the building, picked the girls off one by one. It went pear-shaped. I couldn’t get a bloody thing done in there. But Russek’s too-smart-for-his-own-good boy-toy stashed the data he’d stolen somewhere and could screw us all if Russek gets it.”

“Why you think Russek ain’t got it already?”

“We’re still a going concern, aren’t we?” Kate said.

Helena sighed, drew her Mauser and screwed a silencer on it. “So, here we are. Let’s just kill ‘em both and get it over with,” she said, her voice softening in anticipation of action. “You know that’s what Titania will want eventually.”

“Ah, but Titania wants us to wait,” Kate said, sorry to disappoint Helena, who, like herself, was at her best when killing people. “She and Miranda don’t quite know what they’ve lost and the only way to get it is from Ryan. We might have to beat it out of the little beast.”

“Oh. Well, that might be fun.” Helena stared at a rectangle of light in the garden across the street from them.

“Thanks for coming to help,” Kate said, also watching the garden.

“It’s my pleasure to drop everything and come out to this hellhole for you, sugar.”

“Sorry things are so cocked up,” Kate continued, still watching at the garden. “Isabella might join us.” A medium-sized dog trotted to the fence and stared at their borrowed car, perhaps smelling the decaying owner in the trunk with its superior canine olfactory bulbs.

“It’s not a massacre without Isabella,” Helena observed. “Sit back a bit, hon,” she said when the dog began to bark. Leaning across Kate she shot the dog, which dropped without a sound. “I hate dogs. Let’s go.”

Part 1 of 7; Part 2 of 7; Part 3 of 7; Part 4 of 7; Part 5 of 7; Part 6 of 7; Part 7 of 7

For those of who’d rather read this as a pdf, it’s here: Electricland_by_Mayerson_Serialization_Pages. Ain’t I nice?

Where to buy: Electricland and here’s a 10% off code if you do: 3QWVR4FT; Amazon, eligible for free shipping; Barnes & Noble, discounted online price; IndieBound.com, support those indy bookstores; Everywhere else; and as a pdf (see sidebar).

“Electricland is a satirical novel about organized terrorism; it is an illustration of a group of middle-aged women turning a man’s world upside down. Electricland is a story about a young man exploring his sexuality. It is about a young hacker too smart for his own good; but more than anything, Electricland is an account of damage control.”
Electricland Reviewed, by John Alleman, Bookpleasures.com, October 14, 2010

“Sorry,” Russek said, leaning back to put a little space between them and get a good look at Drew’s face.

Drew closed the distance and nestled in his arms, face buried in Russek’s shoulder. “I’m not.”

They moved to the couch to make out and talk a little before anything irrevocable happened. The kid was practically a virgin; he’d only made love a couple of times, and that was with some older guy in Baku. “Baku? Where’s that?” Russek asked.

“Azerbaijan,” Drew said. “On the Caspian Sea,” he continued when he got a blank look. “Kind of between the Middle East and Russia.”

“Oh, what were you doing there?” Russek asked, nibbling on Drew’s earlobe. “Don’t tell me, ” he whispered. “IT consulting.” He smiled against Drew’s nod. “That’s a long way from here. How’d you get there?”

“My mom was a secretary with the Embassy in Prague,” Drew said, tilting his head to give Russek better access to his neck. “She brought me over when I finished college, but we didn’t get along so well, so I split and wandered around until I landed a job in Baku.”

“How old are you, Drew?” Russek asked, holding him closer.

“Twenty-four.”

“Girlfriends?”

“Just this older lady once,” Drew said. “In Baku.”

“You didn’t get a lot of action in Baku,” Russek observed.

“I got all my action in Baku,” Drew said wryly.

Here’s the rest of this scene, including the sex scene: ElectriclandSerializationPart6of7withSexScene.pdf. No, no idea why I’m being so shy. Just am. GM

Part 1 of 7; Part 2 of 7; Part 3 of 7; Part 4 of 7; Part 5 of 7; Part 6 of 7; Part 7 of 7

For those of who’d rather read this as a pdf, it’s here: Electricland_by_Mayerson_Serialization_Pages. Ain’t I nice?

Where to buy: Electricland and here’s a 10% off code if you do: 3QWVR4FT; Amazon, eligible for free shipping; Barnes & Noble, discounted online price; IndieBound.com, support those indy bookstores; Everywhere else; and as a pdf (see sidebar).

However, I’m not sure where this came from:

“Electricland follows Agent Titania as she is faced with a series of female terrorists, and is tasked with figuring out their motivations and understanding how to fight back against them.”

Titania is the leader of the Seven Sirens, not their nemesis or something.

Part 1 of 7; Part 2 of 7; Part 3 of 7; Part 4 of 7; Part 5 of 7; Part 6 of 7; Part 7 of 7

For those of who’d rather read this as a pdf, it’s here: Electricland_by_Mayerson_Serialization_Pages. Ain’t I nice?

“At what point did you lose control of Williams, Titania?” The Department Manager looked at his notes in his own numeric code.

“I never had control of him,” she said, looking at her perfectly manicured nails. “He was the CIA’s problem, but even they couldn’t control him. He was a loose cannon all the way around.”

“How the hell did he end up in the DARPA building?” her Section Manager asked. His voice was squeaky with suppressed rage, bordering on panic; that had always annoyed her about him.

“Williams was smart, in a crude sort of way. He picked up Viola’s trail in Afghanistan and followed her to Baku, where she was making contact with that damn Ryan child.”

“What was Ryan doing in Baku?” the Department Manager asked. He had it in his notes but he wanted some elaboration. “Other than playing computer games with your team?”

“He was running drugs on the internet,” Titania said. They stared at her. “I’m hardly an expert, but I understand that that’s how it’s done these days,” she went on when they continued to stare at her. “It’s all online logistics now,” Titania said with a sigh. Running drugs had never appealed to her. There were too many variables in each transaction for her team to get a successful revenue stream from it. They could barely cope with Hermia’s modest weapons-and-drug operation in Laos. “Point to point arrangements, heavily scrambled on all ends, so only the little people and mules get caught, which is surprisingly seldom. The parts of Central and Southeast Asia the drugs run in are in such chaos, there’s really no such thing as law enforcement anymore. Of course, getting the drugs into the U.S. is trickier if you don’t have a contact in the military or a big contractor to bring them in.”

“I suppose you mean like your organization?” her Section Manager practically sneered at her.

“Ah, no, we’re a very small shop compared to those kinds of organizations. Not big enough at all for that kind of thing,” she said, mentally adding, “And you’re not big enough to manage the big extramural drug operations.” Keeping the country slightly destabilized through terror was one set of skills; keeping it messed up, but functional on drugs, was another set. Titania knew well enough one should play to one’s strengths and not dwell on, but be aware of, one’s weaknesses.

“What was Ryan’s involvement in the Los Angeles incident?” the Department Manager asked bringing the conversation back to the issue at hand.

Titania took a deep breath so she would say what needed to be said and not a word more or less. The last thing she wanted to admit was that Miranda, her internet specialist, had been stupid and arrogant, which was partly why they’d been in such a mess in Los Angeles. “Although we have enhanced access to networks through our paton, Mr. Cheney, my cyber operative likes to use gamers as cyberterrorists in what’s called Electricland,” she said carefully. “They think it’s a game, but it’s not. We only use gamers in obscure parts of the world where they won’t see the effects of what they’re doing. These gamers are mostly idiots, but occasionally you get a smart one, a hacker–”

“Like Ryan in Baku?” the Department Manager asked.

“Yes and no. Ryan was a gamer in Baku, which is pretty obscure. But, no, unlike Ryan because Ryan is even smarter than the usual smart hacker/gamer we like to run online,” Titania said patiently. “He was smart enough or stupid enough to hack into our network and–”

“I thought that couldn’t be done!” the Section Manager squeaked.

“So did we,” Titania said coolly. “But one learns something new every day.”

Part 1 of 7; Part 2 of 7; Part 3 of 7; Part 4 of 7; Part 5 of 7; Part 6 of 7; Part 7 of 7

For those of who’d rather read this as a pdf, it’s here: Electricland_by_Mayerson_Serialization_Pages. Ain’t I nice?

Where to buy: Electricland and here’s a 10% off code if you do: 3QWVR4FT; Amazon, eligible for free shipping; Barnes & Noble, discounted online price; IndieBound.com, support those indy bookstores; Everywhere else; and as a pdf (see sidebar).

It was more than odd, it was an ambush. Arriving at the deserted industrial park, Russek and the local cops were driven into the boxy glass and stucco building by gunfire. More gunfire inside; Russek dove into an office where he found a skinny young guy with long brown hair and big brown eyes working frantically on a laptop under a desk.

“Oh, my God, who are you?” the kid asked in a panicked whisper and white as a sheet.

“LAPD, who–?”

“Can you get me out of here?”

“Yeah, if I can get myself out of here,” Russek hissed back.

They made their way into other offices; every corridor led to a dead end, or worse, shots out of nowhere. At one point, the boy picked up a stray gun and shot one of the shadows about to shoot Russek. “Thanks, kid,” Russek said, genuinely touched.

“You’re welcome, just– let’s go!” The kid was very quietly having a nervous breakdown.

Russek’s cop-hearing picked up the sirens before the kid did. He huddled with him behind some file cabinets and knew they’d be okay in a few minutes. “What’s your name, kid?”

“It’s not kid, it’s Drew, Drew Ryan. Let’s get–”

“Drew? What’s that short for?” Russek whispered, pulling the fidgety, shaking kid into his arms, mainly to keep him quiet.

“Andrew.” Drew calmed down a little once Russek had his arms around him. “This is a weird time for introductions, but, you? Who are you?”

“Paul Russek. Detective. Hear those sirens?” Russek asked, his lips very close to Drew’s ear. “We’re gonna be okay. What were you doing in here?”

“I’m an IT consultant–”

“A what?”

“Computers. I work on computers,” Drew said barely audibly under the gunfire around them and the heavy boots of the LAPD SWAT team storming the building. Russek got out his cell phone and called headquarters to tell them to relay his presence, location, and to not shoot him or the witness with him.

At the precinct, Russek waited until Drew made his statement, which was simply that he was supposed to meet his friend John Reid at the building to discuss a computer job, and then hid from the burglars when the shooting started. Except, as Russek learned while making his own statement, they weren’t garden variety burglars, they were heavily armed Samoan girls. At least the dead ones they found when the smoke cleared were. And what they were after in an inconspicuous office building that he later learned was a DARPA front was still a mystery.

“I know your lock-up is jammed with terrorists,” Russek explained to the precinct captain. “So I’m taking him home with me. If that’s a problem, then I’ll arrest him and he’ll be in my custody.”

“Shit, Russek, he’s a witness, not a suspect,” the captain spat at him. “Take him to Disneyland for all I care. I couldn’t get him in our lock-up with a shoehorn anyway. Go home, go away. But he stays where he can be questioned. You know the drill.”

“Yeah, I do,” Russek thought as he collected Drew and drove home in his unmarked police car. His private car had been impounded, which was annoying, but not the end of the world.

“Wh-where are we going?” Drew asked in the car.

“My place.”

“Why?”

“You wanna go to your place?” Russek asked, slowing the car down.

“No, I…I’m in a hotel, I just have a few things…”

“New in town? Okay, let’s get your stuff,” Russek said, sounding like he was in charge and this was the best possible idea. Drew didn’t argue; soon he had his suitcase, was checked out and on his way to Russek’s tiny house on a Silverlake hillside.

“You can sleep on the couch, which isn’t so comfortable,” Russek said when they arrived. “Or you can sleep with me. You still look a little freaked out.”

“I feel very freaked out,” Drew admitted, following Russek into his bedroom.

They didn’t become lovers that night, but it was inevitable from the moment Russek put his arms around the shaking kid to calm him down in the shoot-out. Russek had fallen deeply in love with Drew.

Part 1 of 7; Part 2 of 7; Part 3 of 7; Part 4 of 7; Part 5 of 7; Part 6 of 7; Part 7 of 7

For those of who’d rather read this as a pdf, it’s here: Electricland_by_Mayerson_Serialization_Pages. Ain’t I nice?

Where to buy: Electricland and here’s a 10% off code if you do: 3QWVR4FT; Amazon, eligible for free shipping; Barnes & Noble, discounted online price; IndieBound.com, support those indy bookstores; Everywhere else; and as a pdf (see sidebar).