Madeline Ashby's Blog, page 3

I’ve said it before, but SNEAKERS told us more about the future than HACKERS did. https://t.co/C6LLXpCH84

— Madeline Ashby (@MadelineAshby) June 18, 2016

I have a deep and abiding love for Sneakers, Phil Alden Robinson’s film, penned in part by Lawrence Lasker, who also wrote War Games. Like that film it’s also a critique of how technology and power intersect. But instead of cute-but-scrawny Matthew Broderick, it has rumpled-but-sexy Robert Redford. I’m not saying that Sneakers is entirely responsible for my sexuality, but, well, I invite you to check out my wedding photos. More importantly, it’s a much better film than its contemporary, Hackers, which is basically about Hot Topic employees fighting computer graphics. I’ve probably watched Sneakers at least twenty times. I was nine when it came out. I probably first saw it around the age of ten, when it appeared on VHS. As a kid, it was one of my favourite movies. And it still is.

The only thing was, I never really identified with Mary McDonnell’s character. She’s The Girl, in case you didn’t know. Because, you know, There Can Be Only One. It’s her job in the story to rope-a-dope an engineer by getting him to say the right word (“I just love the word passport,” she coos) that will allow the guys entry to Playtronics Industries. Also she gives them the use of her townhouse for a while, which quickly becomes more of a treehouse, strewn with computer parts and someone else’s garbage. The point is, she’s basically there to be attractive enough to seduce the mark. Growing up, I knew that would never, and could never, be me.

Which is why I thought about gender-swapping the story.

@hondanhon @rascalking For my part, I’d be 100% here for an all-woman SNEAKERS remake.

— Madeline Ashby (@MadelineAshby) June 18, 2016

And, well, the idea wouldn’t leave me alone. You see where this is going, right? I mean, it’s not like I have too many secrets.

EXT SUBURBAN HOME — NIGHT — 1992

We are deep in the Pacific Northwest. Rain falls steadily but quietly on Douglas Firs and other evergreens. The entire cul-de-sac seems to be asleep, but for a single yellow light, burning brightly in the attic of one home. Credits  begin to spool across the screen.

INT BASEMENT BEDROOM

Wires everywhere. The A-frame room is a tapestry of anime and manga art circa 1992: Dragonball Z, Sailor Moon, Tekkaman Blade, interspersed with posters for Hole and The Fastbacks. THREE TEENAGE GIRLS face each other in the blue glow of multiple CRT monitors. One of them is crying and wiping her eyes. The other is watching her carefully. The third is watching something on a television screen positioned over a VCR. We see only the rhythmic blink of light. We hear tinny laughter.

MEGAN

He left this copy in my mailbox this morning. He says he’s going to show the tape to everyone, if I don’t do what he says.

MARTI

He won’t show it to everyone. He can’t. He raped you. And this is the proof.

LAUREN

(With a Pocky stick between her teeth and shaking her head at the screen)

No, it’s not.

MEGAN

What?

MARTI

Yeah, what?

LAUREN

(Turns to the other girls. She withdraws the Pocky from her mouth and gestures with it, as though it were a cigarette holder)

That’s not how the defence will spin it. I’ve watched this thing three times. You’re drunk. You’re laughing. You’re having fun. And then you sleep with him.

MEGAN

(rocketing to her feet, voice shaking)

That’s not what happened at all! He drugged me!

MARTI

(Holding her hands up, trying to stop a fight)

Hold on, you’ll wake up Lauren’s mom.

(Turns to Lauren)

Come on. He drugged her. Remember what Brandy told us, last year, about what happened at Whistler?

LAUREN

Of course I remember. And of course he drugged Megan. I know that. And you know that. We all know that. But the rest of the world doesn’t know that. And they won’t believe you. Not with this evidence. We need more.

MARTI

Do you think you can get him to admit to it, Megan? Like, over the phone or something? We could record it and show the police.

MEGAN

I’ve tried. But he keeps saying that he didn’t do anything wrong. That I enjoyed it.

(She sits down, in tears. )

I don’t even remember. You know? I woke up in his backyard. In the doghouse. And I don’t even know if he put me there, or I crawled there.

MARTI

(Reaches into a mini-fridge, pulls out a roll of Thin Mints, rips them open savagely and hands them to Megan. It is literally cold comfort, the smallest thing she can possibly do, and they both know it. They eat in silence.)

LAUREN

You have a choice to make. You can go to the police. It’s too late for a rape kit, but they never run those anyway. But you could show this to them, and see what happens.

MEGAN

What’s my other choice?

MARTI

(Smiling tightly.)

Revenge.

LAUREN

How would you feel about flagging Caleb’s passport?

MEGAN

What?

MARTI

Oh, I think we can do better than that. This calls for something more…personal. Intimate.

LAUREN

You’re right. Let’s take away his scholarship. See ya, Stanford.

MARTI

Caleb got admitted to Stanford?

LAUREN

(Clicking with great flourish)

Not anymore.

…At this point I had to quit, because I had other things to do. (Way too many of them, in fact. This is me procrastinating.) But the work itself was easy. I wasn’t able to complete the scene (which would have had police bursting in on Lauren and Megan after Marti goes down to the basement freezer for a Mountain Dew, and Marti escaping via a basement window), but this little piece didn’t take too long to write. It came very naturally, especially after I re-read some of Lasker and Robinson’s screenplay. The hardest part about it was setting this initial prologue scene in 1992, as a nod to the original.

I also wanted to post this as a kind of proof-of-concept. It’s entirely possible to tell these types of stories about women, technology, and women in technology. In fact, this plotline is ripped directly from an episode of Veronica Mars, a series which frequently made the social engineering hacks in Hackers look like, well, hack-work. You can tell stories that are openly and aggressively political. Hell, Sneakers featured Martin and Cosmo using Richard Nixon’s bank account to donate to the Black Panthers. It’s funny, sure, but it’s also strident. Go back and take a look for yourself:

(Warning: this is among the weirdest trailers ever. It goes from comedy to drama to thriller and back. But it’s worth it for Dan Aykroyd basically playing Dan Aykroyd.)

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While I was away on the Company Tour (which I really need to write up), I received an invitation to participate on a panel on science fiction and futurism at San Diego Comic Con. A friend of mine couldn’t do it, and recommended me, instead.

I know, right? I am a very lucky person. (Very lucky, and very grateful.)

Also lucky: I had enough points racked up through my rewards plan to take the trip, and Comic-Con was willing to sponsor my badge, and, thanks to the interventions of my editor Miriam Weinberg at Tor, I was able to find a roommate. Keeping the costs down is important, because I financed a lot of the Company Tour myself, and the Canadian dollar is worth a wad of gum wrappers against American currency.

I’m nervous, because Comic-Con is huge. Also, it’s my first time. A lot of my friends and colleagues have been in the past, and each of them has informed me that nothing can really prepare me for it. The only thing I’ve been doing to prepare myself is being more resolute about my Atkins diet (so I can at least be a tiny bit more comfortable on the plane), and exercising more often (so I can have some stamina). Also I have a pile of books to read.

So, without further ado, here is my schedule. I hope to see you there!

FRIDAY

Tor Booth Signing

Tor Booth #2707 at 2pm

Panel

4:30p.m. – 5:30p.m., Room 26AB

Science Fiction/Future Now: Science Fiction has ever been the muse of real world advances, but now we live in an age where we achieve it almost as soon as we think it. So how do we, as writers, out-dream the dream makers? How do we handle the truth of real science and the fiction that is needed for writing our stories. Is it a crisis for the writers imagination? Or does it serve to inspire? Join Madeline Ashby (Company Town), Cecil Castellucci (Tin Star), Emily Lakdawalla (The Planetary Society) Javi Grillo-Marxuach (The 100), Sherri L Smith (Orleans), and Greg Van Eekhout (The Boy at the End of the World) in a round table discussion as they take this subject on. Room: 26AB

SATURDAY

Panel

12:00p.m. – 1:00p.m.

Room 7AB

The Female Geek: Women as Fans and Creators: There’s more to being a geek girl than meets the eye. From Princess Leia, to Katniss Everdeen, to Hermione Granger, fandom is full of awesome female characters—but what about the women who create these iconic individuals? Join Leigh Bardugo (The Grisha Trilogy), Sabaa Tahir (A Torch Against the Night), Kiersten White (And I Darken), Sarah Kuhn (Heroine Complex), Kathleen Smith (The Fangirl Life), and Margaret Stohl (Black Widow: Forever Red) as they discuss feminism and fandom in a panel moderated by Madeline Ashby (Company Town).

Autograph Area (Under the Sails) signing:

Saturday AA 09 1:30 PM – 2:30 PM

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Yeah, I said it.

Oh, I’m sorry, did you think that Robocop was a piece of satire? No. As this New York Post piece points out, it got some things right. And now it’s time to add automated use of force in policing to that list.

This is when we’re at. We are in the time when the Dallas police force uses bomb drones to eliminate snipers firing on police officers and protesters. This may indeed be unprecedented, but that doesn’t make it unexpected, or impossible to predict. This moment in time, like all others, takes place at the intersection of several trends.

Think of trends as billiard balls on a pool table. Like all objects in motion, they proceed until they’re interrupted by another trend of equal or greater mass. The force driving those trends is more elemental. Sometimes the driver putting the trend in motion really is a hand — the invisible hand of capitalism. Sometimes the thing directing the trend’s course is the slant of the pool table — systemic inequality. But no matter the trend or the driver, they hit each other in ways that we can model and plan for. The game is never over. The game is constantly changing. Each time the game changes, you have to plan your next move.

And that’s what strategic foresight is. It is the process of discussing the game, modelling possible outcomes, and deciding on the next move that will lead you to your goal. Like all types of strategy, it means having a good picture of all the elements in play, a good understanding of how they interact, and all the angles involved. For this reason, some skeptics like to describe foresighters and futurists as hustlers.

Because “hustler” is another word for “person who won the game in a way you didn’t anticipate.” Are some futurists charlatans? Yes. There are charlatans in every field. And as in every field, the way to avoid charlatans is to find the people who tell you things you don’t want to hear.

Which is why I’m about to tell you that the moment to re-train American police officers has already passed.

Let’s look at some trends bouncing off each other in this moment:

Now, when you look at those trends, a police force under fire reverse-engineering a bomb drone once used in a military capacity to deliver a bomb to a man who once served in that same military may seem like contrapasso worthy of Dante. But it’s not exactly unimaginable. And now that it’s happened once, it’ll happen again. In fact, the process is going to get even more refined and, dare I say it, procedural.

Take a look at Silicon Valley venture capitalist Shervin Peshevar’s idea for app-based policing:

The mobile app would start a FaceTime-like call or, for someone who does not have a smartphone, a phone call between the police officer and the citizen. His theory is that exchanging information such as driver’s license and registration over the mobile app, rather than face to face, could keep tensions from escalating during a traffic stop.

Now, there are a lot of things wrong with this idea. Smarter people than I am have picked it apart. But there are plenty of successful bad ideas out there. Mr. Peshevar is also an investor in Uber, and Uber is a terrible idea. It’s terrible for drivers (who get paid pennies), it’s terrible for passengers (who pay more on rainy nights for the possibility of being sexually assaulted by an uninsured contractor), and it’s terrible for the environment (because it perpetuates the existence of fossil-driven cars at the expense of public transit). But you know what Uber is? It’s convenient.

And you know what drones are? They’re convenient. That’s why we use them abroad. Because they’re more convenient than sending human beings abroad. Because they’re more convenient than using HUMINT. It’s more convenient than teaching operatives to speak the four different languages and their associated dialects that might be spoken in a given region. It’s more convenient than sending SEAL teams with years of extremely expensive training to assassinate small fry before they become big fish. So what just happened in Dallas?

Well, it’s like Uber, but for killing. And it’s been happening in Afghanistan and elsewhere for fifteen years. And the same robots used there are sold to police departments in the US for a cut rate. Because how else do you justify the massive amounts of spending and procurement associated with these programs? By telling Congress that the machines will find a good home somewhere, after the war. A farm. Upstate. Where they can run and play and shoot the shit out of active shooters. They that sow the wind, shall reap the whirlwind.

This is not to say that I want a future where police officers don’t know how to speak to human beings. In fact, that’s the opposite of what I want. But I’ve also gone on the record as saying that automation can eliminate a great deal of fear — that dealing with a machine is often easier and less fraught than dealing with a person. (For example, I love dealing with the kiosk at Canadian customs. It’s fast, it’s easy, and I spend less time with people holding weaponry.) And I have been naive in my trust of those machines. Sure, getting a computer to be racist means programming in the racism. But that hasn’t stopped people, so far. Why? Because existing structures of power work to perpetuate themselves, and that means perpetuating the existing culture, including bias.

Is it possible to change a policing culture? Yes. In fact, Dallas was on its way to doing exactly this. Individual police departments can (and sometimes should) do a complete overhaul of staff and policy to change their cultures. There are police officers out there who want this, who want to be safe and want to do a good job and want to protect people, all people, but who are hamstrung by existing policies and procedures. Guidelines and rules alone can’t make that change. Designers have a saying: Culture eats strategy for breakfast. If you want to change a culture, you have to go beyond re-training. You have to disrupt. You have to take away jobs, and give them to robots. You have to say, “We are afraid you’re going to turn into a godless killing machine, so we’ve hired a godless killing machine to replace you, because at least it doesn’t expect a pension.”

Because somehow that disruption is easier than the cultural one. Somehow buying robots is easier than disarming police officers, as they have in Ireland and Britain — countries with long histories of terrorism and violence.

So if you’re interested in the future of policing, or if you want police officers to have jobs in the future, you have some options. You can train police officers to stop shooting unarmed people, even when they happen to be black (or homeless, or mentally ill, or trans, or sex workers). You can hire police officers to patrol their own neighbourhoods, to enact true community policing where officers are also friends and neighbours who understand the needs and tensions of their beat. You can train them how to be human beings for the benefit of other human beings. Or you can train them to be robots, for the benefit of other robots.

Which is cheaper? Which is more convenient? Which do you think the voters in your district will pass a levy for?

What time is it, where you are?

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About three weeks ago, my friends at the ASU Center for Science and the Imagination asked me to join them at the annual meeting of the Society for Scholarly Publishing for a “book sprint.” I’ve done similar sprints with them before — in collaboration with the WorldBank’s EVOKE project, I wrote a complete 10-page comic book script on the future of human trafficking. But knowing that my airfare would be paid for, I started to wonder if I could turn this into visit to my parents, who live about four hours away from Vancouver in Twin Peaks country.

And then I started to wonder: could I see more people? Could I finally hang out with some of the collaborators and clients and friends who had invited me out to the West Coast after our various engagements?

As it turns out, I couldn’t. Not quite. In fact, I had to cut out an event at the XOXO Outpost in Portland, because it conflicted with my other commitments and the Amtrak schedule. (They had invited me and everything! I’m still glum about it.) But if I jiggered my Amtrak schedule just right, I could hang out with friends and family, and make some (but not all) of the appearances and meetings I wanted. Why Amtrak? Well, because aside from airfare in Vancouver and some very gracious family and friends who are letting me stay with them, I’m paying for this myself. And currently, the Canadian dollar is only worth 77 cents on the American one. This exchange rate is what’s keeping me (and David) from attending more conventions this year. Because for every American dollar we spend, we’re really spending about $1.30. So that four-city Amtrak ticket that cost $250.00 US? Really cost me about $330.00. Which is still less than the cost of a plane ticket, and doesn’t include a three-hour line for the TSA.

So! The “tour” dates:

June 1-3: Vancouver. Society for Scholarly Publishing book sprint

June 7: Seattle. University Bookstore, Event with Adam Rakunas and Brenda Cooper, reading from Company Town.

June 9: San Francisco. Visit the Electronic Frontier Foundation, to talk about both Company Town and Licence Expired: The Unauthorized James Bond.

June 10: Los Angeles. Attend meetings, say hi to foresight clients.

After that, David will be joining me in Los Angeles, and will finally be meeting some of my family there. I’m incredibly excited about it. The last time I was in LA, it was because my wallet was stolen in San Francisco, and I spent two weeks on my friend’s couch waiting for new documents. It feels wonderful to return to the city of my birth in triumph. Watch this space for updates.

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The reviews are in! (At least, some of them are.) In addition to blurbs from Charlie Stross, Seanan McGuire, and Chuck Wendig, here are some other reviews for Company Town, which is finally out today! So if you were thinking about picking the book up but wanted to wait for some professional opinions on the matter, here you are:

io9: “We’re a good decade past the heyday of upbeat, or semi-upbeat, looks at a future of cybernetic enhancement, artificial intelligence, endless plenty, and perfect information. (Along with some skeptical, gritty takes, like Richard K. Morgan’s Kovacs novels.) Ashby is part of a new wave of authors who are getting some dirt on the unrealistic sheen of the Singularity, in part by focusing on a protagonist who’s left out of all the shiny progress, and in part by showing her torn between her working-class friends and her new employers, the masters of the universe.

The result is a book that keeps you thinking about what it means to be human in a posthuman world—even as it also keeps you entertained with action, serial killers, and crazy plot twists.”

Chicago Tribune: “Hwa is offered a position protecting the teenage family heir apparent, which could either be a dream job or a nightmare, as she uncovers a series of murders that seem directed more at her own friends — and maybe herself — than at the mysterious wealthy family. The plot is a fairly familiar one of the streetwise but vulnerable kid versus corporate conspiracies, but Ashby deftly introduces an escalating series of solid hard science-fiction ideas, ranging from global warming to cyborgs, spaceships and even possible multiple timelines — and of course the dark secrets hidden by the wealthy family patriarch turn out to be a lot darker and more consequential than we at first suspect.”

Seattle Review of Books: “Hwa has all the gumption and character of a William Gibson heroine, but her underbelly is better written — without being a victim, she’s more vulnerable. She’s better rounded, less cartoonish, and much more nuanced than many “tough girl” characters we encounter in modern genre fiction…If you want to know what the future will look like, reading Madeline Ashby is a good bet.”

Kirkus: “A futuristic murder-mystery thriller that mixes singularity, time travel, romance, and science fiction, Madeline Ashby’s Company Town is a heady, exciting novel that balances well the deeply humane and the futuristic setting. The latter is well realized: it’s easy to imagine a future such as this, with the bio-enhancements, the technology, the growth of power that is connected with those as well as the marked differences in how one interacts with the world. The head of the Lynch family, for example, wants to live forever, believes deeply that the Singularity is going to happen, and this is part and parcel of this story, and wholly believable too.

…I truly loved this book and remain enamoured with Hwa—I fell hard for her, and felt every blow she received, celebrated every victory she had. Company Town is well worth a read just for her.”

Publisher’s Weekly: “Ashby smoothly brings mass market noir detective fiction into the near future, but she struggles to resolve her story satisfactorily. Hwa does pretty well for herself as a bodyguard for the sex workers who populate a self-contained community/oil rig off the eastern coast of Canada. She wants cybernetic enhancements, but her uncaring mother won’t let her get them. When an obscenely rich family with unusual views buys the entire town, Hwa’s brought into their family affairs, which include multiple murders. Hwa is an immediately likable protagonist who isn’t afraid to shatter rules—or bones. The world is an updated version of Raymond Chandler’s, with gray morals and broken characters, and Hwa’s internal monologue has just the right balance of introspection and wit.”

Barnes & Noble’s Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog: “The plot swerves radically as it races to a climax, but Ashby never loses control, even when Hwa’s personal journey seems in danger of being swallowed by events far larger than even the toughest woman in company town. We’re left with a strange hybrid of near-future noir and lawless western future that’s equal parts noir and western, with Hwa as our femme fatale, tragic hero, and frontier gunslinger. If she’s not standing against the future, precisely, the foot planted in her too-human past leaves her in a singular, powerful position: she may be the only one who can fight the future.”

Omnivoracious: “Subtle, tense, and complex, Company Town masterfully straddles the line between science fiction, thriller, and romance.”

Or, hey, you could just go check out the Goodreads comments.

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Company Town comes out next week, (although Chapters Indigo in Canada seems to be shelving it already!), and so I thought it was time for me to put up some of the music I listened to while I was writing it (and re-writing it, and re-writing it yet again).

There are some odd combinations here. Waylon Jennings and Portishead. The Irrepressibles and Lucinda Williams. Nine Inch Nails and Carly Simon. Smatterings of the Manhunter soundtrack. (I watched Manhunter at least once a night for a solid month, during one particular re-write.) Reviewers have been saying that Company Town straddles a lot of genres, and so does this playlist.

One thing there isn’t: a whole lot of Newfoundland jigs or reels or chanteys, even though the novel takes place there. There also isn’t any K-pop, although one character is a former K-pop idol. (Fun fact: Hwa abhors K-pop, mostly because her mother used to make her learn all her old dance routines.) If you have recommendations for either of those genres, let me know.

The playlist happens in roughly chronological order. If you notice a shift in tone as the set plays out, it’s because the tone of the novel is changing. And if you read quickly, you’ll probably be able to feel these tones shifting both in the air and on the page. There’s over four hours of music, here. And while the book isn’t what I’d call slim, it’s also not exactly a doorstop. You can probably manage some synchronicity if you have a comfy chair, a locked door, and a well-stocked bar. Enjoy!

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A while back, the amazing people at FuturEverything invited me to Manchester to give a talk at their festival. I had watched the festival from afar via Twitter for years, and I felt like the cool kids (Goth-cool, not preppie-cool) had finally invited me to their lunch table.

Only their lunch table was Manchester Town Hall, which is a Victorian neo-Gothic cathedral to municipal goings-on, complete with gargoyles, crenellations, murals, stained glass, brass chandeliers, and odd little mosaics depicting bees. “It’s a worker bee,” one of the volunteers told me, in a very helpful tone that was not all reminiscent of an extra in The Wicker Man.*

I had a wonderful time. FuturEverything is a first-rate event that hops between multiple locations within Manchester. The main event is a series of curated talks that become panel discussions, with appropriate breaks in between and the ability to leave whenever you like. (I watched a bunch of people check out of a talk about climate change, for example. I guess the despair was too real. Pansies.) But you could also just check out some of the art installations that are happening all over town. For example, this piece, “Smoke Signals,” translates data streams from seven different arts organizations into smoke and music. That is Anthony Burgess’ piano.

I left revived and excited — at least until I caught whatever bug was oozing its way through English airports that month. (Some friends who visited London a few weeks earlier came home with exactly the same thing.) But the talks and discussions — and the research that they stemmed from — were genuinely fascinating. Plus it was wonderful to hang out with my Twitter friends in the foresight/arts/materials science/bot/data science fields. Every minute I wasn’t at the conference, or staying up through jet-lag watching old Elastica performances on my hotel tv, I was with them. It felt like going to my home SF convention, only with a different crowd. We even made sure to have breakfast together on the last day (thanks to Natalie Kane’s organizational skills). This is the point at which I’d show you the smoked haddock rarebit I had with extra sausage and baked beans at the Dangerous to those who profit from the way things are.

Here it is!

I developed the story and concept, wrote the script, and had frame approval on this project, which means that while I didn’t do the shooting, I stood behind the monitor and worked collaboratively with our brilliant and talented videographer, Scott Hamilton. The film stars ALB, who was a delight to work with. The project was photographed by Paul Hillier, who somehow managed to tell a cool story despite our hectic shooting schedule. And I was very lucky to work with Angela Keeley and Jessica Langer, who helped me bring this vision to life, from wafting smoke to listening to me rant and telling me it would all be okay.

Now, you tell me: what is this film about? Who is the real main character?

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Just before the Christmas of 2015, a friend got in touch and said she had a really interesting opportunity for me. Early on Christmas Eve morning, she brought me to a location in the suburbs of Toronto, and introduced me to someone. This someone was warm and welcoming and gracious, and the location she’d brought me to was obviously very special to him. The task, I was told, was to communicate that specialness to other people. To find someone who might understand it.

The more time I spent at the location, the more I loved it. I’m a science fiction writer married to a horror writer. My mother’s paperback copy of Night Shift was punctured by my fresh-grown baby teeth. And much of horror fiction dwells (pun intended) on the energy of spaces, the unique harmonic resonance generated by a certain set of walls in a certain configuration. The things that happened there. The intentions that built it. The dreams it represents.

So I started to think. How could I communicate the energy of this space to the world? How could I share what made it special in a way that wasn’t just a list of its attributes? The man I’d met had led me into its depths. Into the server room and under the pool and down the lane. He’d let me see beyond the trees, where only the cameras could see. How could I describe all those things, without exhausting someone?

The answer was to find a spirit to inhabit the house. A character whose whimsy matched its own.

But then I had to do something with this character. I had to take her to this place. I had to explore why she was there, and why the location was special to her. In short, I had to write a story. Which meant not only designing a frame story around the campaign, but writing a film script to go with it. And sticking around while that script — with many serious adjustments — came to life. It meant having frame approval on every single shot. It meant pulling 14-hour days. It meant developing a shorthand with everyone on the set: “Hey, can we be more Michael Mann in the gym, but more Ridley Scott in the elevator?”

Ironically, I had just finished teaching a genre film course for the Digital Futures Initiative program at OCADU. So maybe I was just a bit more ready to collaborate with our videographer, and our model, and our photographer, and the man behind the location. Certainly, I had done enough community theatre in my youth to understand at least some of the the demands of a production: no, you don’t leave the set; yes, you do the grunt work; yes, you need to coordinate schedules and catering and available light; yes, you build in time for costume and makeup changes. As a kid, I thought theatre was helping me build my confidence and my extra-curriculars. Now I know it was building me into someone who could become the lead creative on a project. I can safely say that I was more challenged — and far more fulfilled — by this project than I ever expected to be.

And I wasn’t alone in this. I had two other people, Jessica Langer and Angela Keeley, helping me stay sane, waft smoke, stir water, order sandwiches, look out for talent, and make key decisions on what content to use and how to use it. Moreover, our model ALB, videographer, and photographer pulled hours equal to, in fact greater than, my own. And the man who loved this place enough to share it with us was as supportive as humanly possible. He was gracious and patient throughout, even though our presence was cumbersome and intrusive. I was always the last one to leave, but he saw me out the door each time. Very few people who execute this type of campaign ever have that quality of experience with their clients.

The film we made has yet to go live. I’m hoping to share it with you, soon. And I’m hoping it still communicates the wonder of the place. Actually, I had wanted to go even further: Puzzles in personals ads! Clues hidden in photographic meta-data! Mystery phone numbers! But in the end, even without all those bells and whistles (which, frankly, only certain audiences have the time or patience for) I think we managed to create something very special. Almost as special as the place that inspired it. Where is this place? You should find out.

Note: All photographs within this post should be credited to Paul Hillier.

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In the small hours of yesterday morning, I felt my heart squeezing inside my chest. It thudded, like in a comic book. I felt it pulsing down into my fingers. Each time I rolled over, I felt it there, leaden, like a ball bearing sliding up and down the walls of my body. Eventually I was able to go back to sleep.

When I woke up, I felt like I had run a marathon.

The pain was tight across my chest and shoulders. When I stood up, my heart squeezed. It hurt to breathe, and as a result, I felt that I couldn’t quite catch my breath. Well aware that signs and symptoms of heart attack are different for women than they are for men, I looked them up, and then called Telehealth. For those of you who are unaware, Telehealth is a free service offered by the province of Ontario that connects patients with registered nurses. If you’re sick but uncertain how to proceed, Telehealth can help you make a decision.

Yesterday, the nurse on the other end of the line called an ambulance for me.

“You’re exhibiting classic symptoms of a heart attack,” she said.

“But I don’t have the nausea or clamminess,” I said. “And I’m 32.”

“Unlock the doors for the crew,” she said. “Do you have any pets? You might need to lock them up.”

We just had a major snowstorm here in Toronto, and so the ambulance had a bit of trouble getting to our place. “Does your street just never get plowed at all?” the driver asked later, once I was in Triage.

“Only by the late afternoon,” I told him.

The EMTs were awesome. They were patient with me, and with our cat Claudius, who was very curious about the 12-lead sensors they applied to me, and all their other tools. They were upfront with the fact that I wasn’t presenting as a normal heart attack patient. “Does that mean I don’t have to go to the hospital?” I asked, hopefully.

“Oh, no. We’re still going.”

“But I feel like an asshole, dragging you all the way out here.”

This became a common refrain for me, throughout the day.

I was asked if I had shoveled snow. (I hadn’t.) I was asked if I had done any heavy lifting. (I hadn’t.) Had I taken any OTC cold medicine/was I a smoker/was I on the pill? (No.)

“Have you been under any stress?”

I graciously decided not to deliver a lecture on the perils of freelancing.

“Yesterday was a bad day, yeah,” I said.

I stayed so long that they gave me lunch. It was the “heart healthy” menu, which meant press-formed chicken breast, diced carrots, cream of leek soup, and this pink stuff. I’m still not sure what this pink stuff was. It tasted like Marshmallow Fluff whipped with Kool-Aid crystals. By the time I was finished eating it, I was told my reports had come in.

My EKG was fine. My bloodwork was fine. My blood pressure was low. My X-rays looked normal. The heart monitor I’d spent a half hour attached to hadn’t picked up anything unusual. The doctor I spoke to said he couldn’t find anything wrong, but also that what I’d experienced didn’t present like a panic attack, or an asthma attack related to the renovation. Having visited the hospital for acid reflux a couple of years ago when I was heavier, I knew it wasn’t that — there was no sensation of a xenomorph incubating in my solar plexus.

And yet. Every time I stand up, or bend over to pick something up, my heart races and squeezes. My chest still hurts. I can’t take a deep breath without feeling a vise close around my chest. I hear my blood rushing in my ears. When I asked my ER doctor what it could be, he shrugged. “Sometimes this just happens,” he said. “Sometimes we’re more aware of our heart than at other times. Sometimes our hearts just feel heavier.”

And then he sent me home.

“I feel so stupid, because nothing’s wrong with me,” I told my husband.

“Well I feel great, because nothing’s wrong with you,” he said, and hugged me.

I felt like an asshole for wasting everyone’s time. My husband’s, the EMT’s, the doctor’s and nurses’. But at no point did anyone make me feel like an asshole about it. Literally everyone I spoke to said that I’d made the right call, coming in. Nobody shamed me or made me feel stupid. If anything, they felt bad for being stumped. Keep this in mind, the next time you think about not seeing a doctor. They wanted me to be okay. Someday I won’t be okay, but I also won’t be intimidated.

Keep this other thing in mind, too: aside from the delivery we ordered later on (remember that kitchen reno?), and the cab home, the total cost of the day was $45.00. That’s the cost of an ambulance once you have an OHIP card. Otherwise, it would be about $250.00. But that was all we paid. We didn’t pay for tests. We didn’t pay for exams. If I’d received a prescription, I’d have had to pay for that, and then file a claim later with our drug plan. But I was happy with the care I received. So, Americans: keep that in mind the next time a candidate says the words “socialized medicine” or “universal healthcare” this election year. Ontario’s healthcare system is not fully universalized; it’s not truly “single-payer.” But fully privatized care is a business plan that exploits the Protestant work ethic and its interpretation of poverty as a moral failing. It says that the poor doesn’t deserve to be healthy because they didn’t work hard or smart enough, conveniently forgetting the fact that we are all born into bodies, all of which will fail. Personal responsibility has no bearing on whether someone has depression, or a seizure disorder, or congenital heart failure. Even asking people to pay for their prescriptions is too much — it’s asking people to pay for having bodies, to pay for having been born, as though they had any choice in the matter.

The difference between Canada and the US is not that one country is kinder, it’s that one country sees human health a national resource, and the other sees human fear as a revenue stream. Private care is a scam. It’s a shakedown. It’s quite literally protection money. The fact that you have to pay to stay alive is proof of that — any system that holds a gun to your head doesn’t really care about you, no matter how nice the iPads in the waiting room are.

I still have no idea what happened to me, yesterday. It’s sort of a medical mystery. But as that mystery unfolds, I know I’m not alone in trying to solve it. The fact that people here feel free to make appointments and do yearly check-ups and visit the ER when they think something’s wrong, that’s huge. The fact that my province supports my breast check-ups, and that in a few weeks I’ll get to see if my lump is any bigger? That’s huge. Socialized healthcare is better when we call it what it is: care.

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