Commonwealth: A Novel of Utopia, part 2, chapter 1
Author’s Note: This is an excerpt from my novel Commonwealth. The rest of today’s installment is free, but only on my Patreon site. If you want to read the next part today, it’s already up on Patreon as well. You can sign up for as little as $1/month, or $2 for exclusive author’s notes and behind-the-scenes material. There’s also a table of contents for all published chapters.
“How did you know I was here?” Rae asked her friends.
“I saw your plane crash on the news!” Elaina said. “There was an emergency alert about an unidentified plane entering our airspace. They had a live feed from a lookout station in the mountains.”
“I didn’t need to watch it on the news,” Sophia added. “I saw the smoke from my window.”
“So you have news networks here?” Rae asked.
“Of course,” Jane said. “Better than the ones you’re used to, I dare say. Imagine how much better journalism can be when reporters are truly fearless – when they don’t have to answer to advertisers they might otherwise worry about displeasing.”
“They broadcast your distress call,” Elaina said. “Imagine what it was like to hear your voice!”
“You must have thought I was dead,” Rae said, feeling a pang.
“There was an update after the crash, saying one survivor had been rescued in critical condition,” Sophia said. “Then nothing. We were sick with worry until we realized you must have survived, because if you’d died, the news would have said so. No news meant a living person whose privacy had to be protected.”
“We take the smart ones here, you see,” Jane said wryly.