Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town
An Exclusive Preview Excerpt
Important: The novel excerpted here is a work in progress. As such, the text in these pages is still subject to editing and rewriting, and may even be omitted from the finished novel. Please bear this in mind when reading the excerpt, and do not quote any part of it in reviews without first checking against a published copy.
From Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town, an urban fantasy about wireless networking, dumpster diving, and screwed up families, set in Toronto’s Kensington Market.
The story is about a family spawned by a washing machine and a mountain, in Northern Ontario, whose brothers include among their number a clairvoyant, an island, a corpse, a trio of nesting dolls and Alan, who is variously called Andreas, Albert, Andy and anything else beginning with an “A.” His friend Curt is a dumpster-diver who’s chasing the dream of building a city-wide community wireless networking throughout Toronto.
Alan is being hounded by Davey (Danny, Dilbert, Dougie), a brother whom the other brothers conspired to murder, and who has been stalking them ever since his death. Now, Alan is confronted with him.
—Cory Doctorow
Curt was properly appreciative of Alan’s bookcases and trophies, ran his fingertips over the wood, willingly accepted some iced mint tea sweetened with honey and used a coaster without having to be asked.
“A washing machine and a mountain,” he said.
“Yes,” Alan said. “He kept a roof over our heads and she kept our clothes clean.”
“You’ve told that joke before, right?” Curt’s foot was bouncing, which made the chains on his pants and jacket jangle.
“And now Davey’s after us,” Alan said. “I don’t know why it’s now. I don’t know why Davey does anything. But he always hated me most of all.”
“So why did he snatch your brothers, first?”
“I think he wants me to sweat. He wants me scared, all the time. I’m the eldest. I’m the one who left the mountain. I’m the one who came first, and made all the connections with the outside world. They all looked to me to explain the world, but I never had any explanations that would suit Davey.”
“This is pretty weird,” he said.
Alan cocked his head at Curt. He was about thirty, old for a punk, and had a kind of greasy sheen about him, like he didn’t remember to wash often enough, despite his protestations about his cleanliness. But at thirty, he should have seen enough to let him know that the world was both weirder than he suspected and not so weird as certain mystically inclined people would like to believe.
“I’ve told other people, just a few. They didn’t believe me. You don’t have to. Why don’t you think about it for a while?”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to try to figure out how to find my brothers. I can’t go underground like Davey can. I don’t think I can, anyway. I never have. But Davey’s so… broken... so small and twisted. He’s not smart, but he’s cunning and he’s determined. I’m smarter than he is. So I’ll try to find the smart way. I’ll think about it, too.”
