Financial Fallout! 21 Futures Podcast S2 E4 - Tomás de Saavedra and 'Supplying the Slugs'

Yeah. You're still, you're still ingesting words, you know? I mean, it is a little crazy to me that we live in a world where you have to charge your book and your cigarette and, and, Other items that didn't used to need charging, but it's not, it's not mutually exclusive, is it? You can have a Kindle and a book, you know, you could have an e-cigarette and a real cigarette. You can do everything, you know, you don't have to pick one or the other. Uh, audiobooks, obviously very cool. Podcasts, very cool. We're here doing one right now. Uh, and we have a burgeoning little online community. We have a Telegram group that everyone listening should think about joining. But, um, so one of the things we like to talk about is this idea of storytelling, right? That's what we're really talking about. It's not necessarily, uh, whatever medium it's in, uh, it's the telling and sharing of stories that's, that's important, right? So what, what do you think kind of draws you to that? What, what inspires you to want to be a storyteller?

I think it's because writing speaks to me in a way no other medium does. Part of it may be the, like, the privacy, the privacy of it, you know. You got your book, you're kind of there, and like, barring someone reading over my shoulder, I'm kind of going at it alone.

Right, right.

But in a way, I guess I think that's kind of a maybe a negative because it's nice to share stories with people too. You watch a show, you play a video game. Yeah, yeah. Heck, I guess even if you listen to an audiobook, you're doing it together. So it's a very solitary activity, and I spent a a lot of time growing up just in the library reading, right?

Yeah, amazing.

And so I think, I guess it's because writers more than any other medium, uh, wrote things that resonated with me, I suppose, right? And then that just kept evolving and evolving. Like, don't get me wrong, I love video games obviously and other stuff.

Yeah, yeah. Um, but I, I think what you're alluding to there is that there's a choice to do it solo. Right? You can, you can choose to share it or you can choose to have a moment for you. I used to read a lot in the bath. I actually still read a lot in the bath, but possibly with a beer or a glass of wine. It's a tremendous way to relax. But also like reading certainly helps expand the mind, doesn't it? But I used to swim a lot and I find swimming has the same kind of effect. as writing, you end up feeling really clear. And, uh, you know, the mind is like meditating. It feels, it feels great to me. I, I don't know about you, but that's certainly one of the reasons I do it. Uh, that and I start to itch if I don't. If I haven't written for a while, my wife will be like, you need to go and write because you're being, you're being angsty.

Itchy. Nice. I think that's a good way to describe creativity though. There's definitely a point where like you need to write. Yeah,

absolutely,

absolutely. This is half David Lynch and half just myself, but I like differentiating between writing as gardening and writing as fishing. I'm not sure if you're an angler or an avid gardener or anything, right?

Sure, sure.

Sometimes all you can do is show up, water the plants, and wait, right? But there's other times that there's a fish on the line and you're just going at it, right? Like, you have to write it, you have to bring it out.

Yeah. Yeah, I'm, I'm very lucky. Uh, I mean, so personally, I'm, I'm one of 2 editors on the, the new collection, uh, and a writer from the UK. And I've got to go and speak to one of my universities, uh, next week actually, to lots of young writers. And I've got to, I've got to give them some wisdom. And one of the things I want to talk about is similar to what you're talking about. And it's this idea of the million words. I don't know if you've heard of the million words before. But the idea is, um, you've got to get a million words out, right? Because they're going to be bad words. So you have to kind of bleed, bleed the million words, and then everything that comes after that is going to be a lot better. So I, I have this tremendous tool called Grammarly that I'm sure a lot of people would have heard of, and it emails me and it's like, you wrote 13 million words last year. And I'm like, so I'm I'm fine. I've, my million words are well done. Right. But I like your idea of kind of, you know, planting the seed, letting it grow. And you can only do that by, by doing it. Right. And I think, and one of the things I'd like for us to talk about, um, because we have this kind of dystopian element to the collection and what I'm seeing, uh, through even things like Twitter or X as it's called now. You've got more and more people kind of escaping the real world into writing about, um, you know, they say writers write what they know, and I'm— I think, but we're writing about dragons. I don't, I don't know any dragons, you know, and we can kind of escape the real world and we can play out what-if scenarios and we can actually try to think, you know, how do we, how do we fix stuff? Like, you know, think, think Star Trek when it has those things that just materialize food and you never need to worry about creating food anymore.

You know, there's your Big Mac, boom, the end, right?

Yeah, exactly. I mean, do you think it's possible that the kind of more dystopian elements of, of modernity might be driving us towards creativity, writing, storytelling?

I think so. Consumption, certainly. As for creativity, I think a lot of what humans do is make things that aren't real, real. Let me explain a bit. So we are the only animal that can really make something up that isn't true or isn't real, but then actually make it real after the fact, right?

Right.

I can give an actual, like, an actual example, like the car, right? We made the car. We were thinking about horses and someone was like, this isn't feasible. What's another way? Boom. we think of it, we make it, right?

Yeah.

But I think it can be a lot more simple than that, right? It can just be like a certain part of culture, or it can be, um, like you're saying, a dystopian solution to dystopia that maybe we've only explored in writing.

Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. And a lot of the dystopias we think about, we go right back in time, you know. But before, uh, George Orwell's 1984 or Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, there was Zevgeny Zamyatin's We. I think it's like 100 years old, right? Or possibly older. Somebody fact-check me. But it's interesting. And then you sort of end up thinking, well, how do we fix this? How do the good guys win? You know, is it like Hunger Games where you just shoot everyone? Sorry for the spoiler.

Spoilers.

There's got to be a way. And some of what the stories in our collection talk about is there's a financial angle. But the financial angle feeds into really what we're talking about is freedom, right? How we become free, how we become liberated from, for instance, tyrannical governments or evil banks and corporations. And sometimes people do that through owning things. So, you know, they own things of value. Some people like Bitcoin, but there's also gold, silver. Uh, I know a cool project at the moment that's looking at putting jade on the blockchain, right? Jadeite, very cool resource. Interesting. So when you, when you were thinking about your story, and, you know, I'd love it if you could tell us just a tiny bit about the story, there's, there's an element of that, isn't there? There's an element of let's get this resource so that we can sort of acquire sort of wealth. But the people, they're a little exploitative, maybe. What do you think?

Sure, of course. I mean, maybe that's just in the nature of sci-fi. Yeah, I guess my idea is the original idea for this story kind of came before I saw the contest, right? What the contest did was inspire me to do a final draft, although as one of my professors used to say, a story is never finished, only abandoned, right?

Oh, interesting, interesting. That's very interesting.

So money, money value, right?

Yeah, yeah.

I am excited to read the other stories in the journal so that I can see what else other people did. You even said there was one more fantasy story, which is going to be interesting.

Oh yeah.

Because I figured, yeah, most people would be looking at it from, you know, banknotes and crypto, more, more sci-fi values, right? Rather than what I did, which was kind of go back in time. Like, we've reached a part in the future where money is worthless. Like, we don't need it, right?

Yeah. And it might have been the whole time, right? Money, money as we know it might have been a lie. Uh, paper banknotes, we're told, have value. But for that to work, we have to believe the central banks, don't we?

For sure.

They say you can exchange this for goods and services, but they could change their mind. And therefore, could we change our mind? Who knows, right? So I'm thrilled to hear that you were inspired to do a sort of final draft of the story. And obviously it is a tremendous story, and that is why It's a finalist in the collection. You mentioned, I'd love to talk about your writing process a little bit. Do you draft a lot? Do you have several versions of something? Or are you perhaps moving on to something maybe like a novel now? What are you up to now?

So I can tell you about what's kind of coming in the future. I can also tell you a little bit about like how I wrote even the story in question, if you'd like.

Oh yes, please. Yeah,

sure. So let's start with that then. I originally kind of wanted— have you heard of the movie Lord of War?

Oh yes. Yeah.

All right, proof Nicolas Cage can act, right? It's out there. It's— it's out there.

Nick Cage is amazing. He's just done a Lovecraft adaptation, uh, I think it was The Colour from Outer Space.

Oh yeah, yeah, that came out after Mandy. Yeah,

yeah,

and Mandy was sick too, right? But anyway, I love Lord of War. It's one of my favorite stories ever, in part because of— it's like a character that makes sense, but you can't help but just like wince every decision the guy makes, right?

Yeah.

And he even says it at one point in the movie. He's like a multi-millionaire billionaire, and his wife is like, well, why do you— we don't need the money, right? Why are you doing this? And I guess this is actually very similar to Breaking Bad. He just says Because I'm good at

it. Nice, right? Nice.

So anyway, it started there, and I was like, well, how could I make this interesting to my sensibilities? Let's put it in space and let's make it so it's kind of subverted, right? The humans are the advanced sci-fi Star Trek thing, and then the aliens are the more primitive species that we're kind of using to our own ends.

Yeah, yeah. Which, why shouldn't that happen, right? If there are aliens Why wouldn't they be less advanced than us? There's actually, uh, it's like a weird offshoot of the old Battlestar Galactica where they, they kind of go back to Earth and it's back in time and they, they've become advanced. Uh, and I love, man, I love all that stuff. But, uh, yeah, I, I think it's amazing. So look, um, oh, just quickly on the, on the fantasy element, actually, when we talked about money, uh, the other story that You know, we'll tease a tiny bit here. It was about seeds. And instead of a bank, you had central gardeners. And they say, these seeds are good and your seeds are bad. And it's very clever. It's a tremendous story. We've been so lucky as editors and writers to read and work on these stories. We're very grateful to you all for submitting. And on that note, would you be comfortable of maybe reading us a little excerpt of your story?

Sure, yeah, let me pull it up here.

Lovely, thank you.

Yeah, my pleasure. I'll read the first little interaction between the protagonist and the, and the slugs, as— The slugs, I love slugs. All right, so it's about 3 pages, but it is double-spaced and minimalistic writing style, so it should go by pretty quick.

Take your time, there's no rush.

All right. So this is called Supplying the Slugs. Kuovu, kuovu, kuovu, the digital translator flashed. Error in Chinese. Semion smacked the cheap piece of shit and excused himself a moment. The indigene, a bulbous fluorescent orange slug, swiveled its iguana eyes. It was about the size of a large dog and had 3 appendage-like antennae. With sweaty thumbs, Semion swapped the language to basic English and spat Hello, hello, into the receiver. The device whirred and emitted a series of chirps and wet smacking sounds. The slug made similar noises, and the translator said, where did you learn our language? Perfect. Semion squared his shoulders and tightened the Windsor knot on his spacesuit. Friend, he purred, I have been here before. My relations with your people go back centuries. What is centuries? asked the slug. The village folk gathered around them, leaving their twig and moss huts behind, tracking slime into the sacrificial square. A long time. What is time? Semion pointed at the triple sun formation illuminating Ispex 4. Time moves with the suns. Many days then, said the native. Yes, echoed Semion. Many days. He felt butterflies in his stomach. Tell me, do you know of the Bishi tribe? One of the slug's segmented head limbs Only legends. It is said they met with gods. They did. Semion nodded. We taught them the way. We showed them the truth. The very buildings you stand by, a testament to our history. You are a god? The butterflies ignited. Semion swept his arms out in a passionate flourish. Yes, and I have come to raise your people up. Behold. He pushed a button on his lapel and pointed at the sky. The assembled slugs followed his finger and watched as a Calypso space crate broke through the clouds. Trademarked. It careened into their tiny village like a falling throne, landing next to the central gold mound with a satisfying thud. You have done well collecting such treasure, Semion said, but the crate must judge you. The Calypso scanned the atmosphere and, deeming it safe, ejected its top. The deep steel panel flattened a nearby alien shrub. You are worthy, breathed Semion. Time it is for you to take your rightful place as stewards of this land. The villagers leaned forward, stretching themselves thin as Semyon reached in. They gave no sign of having heard him. Worthy, they chanted. You will be rewarded, he continued, with the Avtomat Kalashnikova Model of 1947, the Kalashnikov. With a flourish, he drew the old piece of iron and plywood into sight. Silence. One slug used a cranial limb to moisten its eyeballs. What is it? another finally asked. A gun. What is a gun? An artifact of my people from many, many days ago. Semion pointed at a nearby tree. Observe. The slugs did, bulging in anticipation. Flicking the safety off, Semion fired, gouging out chunks of bark until the trunk cracked and gave way. An Indigene droned. The low note grew harsher as more joined in. Until it quaked along Semyon's diaphragm and deep in his lungs. He threw the AK into the crowd. A slug caught the rifle upside down, engulfing it in its head tendrils. Inquire, they sang, worthy. He emptied the crate and lined them up like fat Gurdia sea anemones, said, aim at those trees and pull the trigger. What is the trigger? Semyon grabbed a nearby slug's antenna and placed it appropriately. grimaced, wiped the chunky slime off on his slacks. Now squeeze, he said, smiling again. The hammering of a dozen assault rifles sounded a lot like ka-ching. Beautiful, Wonsun chirped. How does it work? Ancient magic and fire. He showed them how to reload, gave them a brief lecture on firearm safety, then requested they load up the amassed mineral. In the process, he learned they had no word for it. To them, gold was just shiny rock. They hummed in harmony while filling the crate. The tune raked around Semion's spine, giving him gooseflesh. He likened it to a hearty tribal song. Worthy, they repeated. With business done came the easy part. It pains me to leave so soon. He replaced the calypso's lid and heaved himself on top. But I must go. We will tell stories of you, traveler, promised one slug. Possibly the first he'd talked to. I'm sure you will, Semjon whispered.

Tremendous, tremendous, and beautifully read, by the way. There's a bit, I think, where he talks about a land shanty, and one of the things I love so much about your story, because, you know, we have over 20 in the collection, and a lot of them are deeply dark, evil, distressing things. Uh, some of them are quite, quite frightening actually. But yours provides, I think, uh, there's a little bit of comic relief, isn't there? There's some quite funny moments. Um, and I also found it quite touching because I, I really empathize with, with the slugs because they're, they're getting a really bad deal, aren't they? There's, uh, you know, gonna have quite a shocking, uh, quite a shocking climax to the story that I won't, I won't spoil, obviously. Um, but wow, you know, it's, it's kind of profoundly sad, sort of the Prometheus bringing fire to man. But then also you've got, um, some quite funny interactions between Simeon and not just the slugs, but also, um, there's kind of an entity on his ship, isn't there? Yeah. Uh, the, you know, again, I won't say too much, but the dialogue, um, the way you write dialogue, and I, I know a lot of writers sometimes struggle with dialogue and they lean more heavily on description and exposition. But your dialogue makes this story an absolute joy to read and indeed to hear. So thank you. Thank you for reading that to us. And I am so excited about everyone getting a chance to read it. I feel very privileged that I've been able to, and I actually just went through all the stories again today. And, um, you know, there's going to be, uh, some quite cool surprises for everyone, I think, when the book comes out, uh, which is really exciting. Um, so we've talked about the story. Um, tell us, Tom, what, what, what is next for you? Um, if, if we were to do a hypothetical, uh, 3rd collection, would we be lucky enough to perhaps receive another story from you?

Potentially. It's tricky because I don't tend to delve into sci-fi too hard. As you see, like, yeah, it's in space, but it's almost fantasy-esque more than sci-fi.

Yep.

So it would depend on the prompt. This one just happened to work out flawlessly because I already had the idea started, right? And this idea of gold as useful currency again after our real currency becomes a real social construct, it becomes worthless, like the equator. It's just Right?

Yeah.

So I thought of ways in which I could play with that. So yeah, I would like to do that. I am currently working on a novel, but it's slow going because it just turned into 2 novels, and it's about the afterlife of sex addicts and junkies.

Amazing. Amazing. So when we were, when we were getting to know each other, you, you mentioned, um, Chuck— I'm going to pronounce his last name incorrectly— Palahniuk.

That's right. Uh, I think it's Paul and Nick or something, but yeah, I only know that because of— he'd get teased as a kid.

So Fight Club, but also the Fight Club of sex, Choke, right? Which a lot of people haven't necessarily read. I have read it. I've also seen the film. Uh, both, both are good. Um, he's a very unusual writer, isn't he? Because he's, he's, he's quite, um, a bit like, uh, myself and I suppose yourself as well, uh, as an inspiration, uh, is he can be quite minimalist and quite brutal. So is that a— in a perfect world, would your name be associated with his and say, this is the next thing?

Yeah, I think so. So it's funny you bring up Choke because Choke is actually one of my favorite examples of Chuck's work, even though it probably shouldn't be, right? I actually didn't like it going in. I thought it was mundane and pedestrian and weird. And then I just started reading it and suddenly I was done. I was just like, what?

Interesting. Yeah.

And Chuck talks about this a lot. He says basically you need to hook people at the beginning so that no matter how bad it gets, they just can't stop reading.

Indeed. Indeed. And he's famous for doing tours of US universities and asking people to hold their breath whilst he reads it. Right. And he's got some really quite grim stuff. Uh, and I write sort of gothic horror and he's, he's much more grim, much more grim than I am. But I am very excited to hear that, uh, you're working on not one but two novels. That's fantastic. And I, I understand that novels can take, can take time. Uh, one thing I, you know, I would say is with the community that we've built around 21 Futures, there are a lot of writers, editors, uh, myself and Phil, uh, coaches. And, you know, we will offer you all the support in your endeavors. I think I've written 5 fiction novels and a couple of nonfiction. And what I've found— and there's another episode of this podcast with TJ Bodden, one of our prize winners, and we talk about getting things finished. Which is interesting when you say a story is never done, it's abandoned, because Perhaps he would disagree with that. He would say, no, it's done. It's done when it's done. And you move on.

I don't want any more to do with it. Go away.

Yeah. Yeah. And with the first one, certainly myself, I had to learn you can't keep going back. Um, I have a thing called DNF. Uh, some people see that as did not finish. Uh, but mine is, I'm going to get a rude word now, but we've decided we're allowed to swear, haven't we? So it's DNF is do not fuck. Uh, so once you, once you get to a point, the story will be worse the more you edit it, right? It will get to its zenith, uh, and then you must not fuck with it again. So that's why I call it the DNF, the do not fuck. And I, I have had probably 150 writing students at this point in time. And when we're, when we're there, when we're ready, I say to them, right now you're getting to the stage where you have to not fuck with this anymore. It can be. It can be very difficult. It can be very hard for people.

That's true though. If you over-edit as well, your story can suffer for sure.

Yes,

right.

Yes, absolutely.

I suppose if I were to add a caveat to what I was saying, it would require time, right?

Yes.

So between the first draft of Supplying the Slugs and the last draft of Supplying the Slugs, there are years, right?

Really?

Yeah, yeah. Meaning I would see new experiences, I'd think of new ideas, I would grow. Right? I'd see other stories and stuff. And so one thing that is really interesting to me is what is coming out of Supplying the Slugs for me now, because originally this was a standalone piece, right? Oh, I see a cat.

Yep, this is Rufus.

Oh, Rufus!

He's the Russian Blue. He's come to say hello.

Love it, love it.

Yeah,

yeah. So it's like you stopped writing it for a bit you learn, you grow, you change, you travel, what have you, you come back and then you see other things in the story, right?

OK.

Or someone else reads it and gives you an idea and it unlocks a piece of the story too. David Lynch talks a lot about happy accidents, right? While you're writing, these weird serendipitous things will happen. In his case, one example was Someone picked up like a light bulb on a cord and used it like a microphone. Apparently wasn't supposed to be there. Nobody knew what the heck the deal was. They took a shot, it was great, they kept it.

Amazing. Yeah,

total accident. And so, but that'll happen, I find, in writing a lot.

Yeah, yeah. I have something I talk to— talk about with students when I talk about listening, because I believe that writers are great listeners. Um, and a lot of writers, especially, uh, perhaps less experienced ones, try to have total control over everything. And what that does is it robs your characters of agency. Um, and they become quite one-dimensional because they're just following instructions. Whereas if you're able to really envisage them, and you know, you know, this idea of, well, we've imagined it, therefore it exists. If you've imagined your character, your character exists. You can imagine a conversation with them, listen to them, and receive what they would say. That's how I finish stuff, and I finish it quickly. I used to do this NaNoWriMo thing where you write a novel in November. I did that 3 years in a row. I took a break to do an album this year. And I'm able to do that. And that's based entirely of, you know, the 2 ears, 1 mouth thing. So I really kind of try to open myself up to hear what those characters were going to say. And I suspect, having read your story and now spoken to you, I think there are probably some characters living in your head that you could listen to, right? And they're going to help you. They're going to help drag you through those novels, and they'll actually be telling you what to do instead of the other way around.

So if I can give you a moment that I'm actually very excited for is that I have kind of, let's say, a Yahweh-Jesus situation in my novel, right?

Okay.

But I just accidentally came to the realization that the Godhead would actually be doing something in spite of the original thing. So it's not so much as like the Father and the Son, it's more like, you know, the Father and I guess the bastard, for lack of a better term.

Sure, sure.

Which makes a lot of things really interesting for me.

Yeah, that's exciting. It's nice I can sort of tell that, um, you don't dread going off to write, uh, and that's, that's always a joy to see because sometimes people are quite afraid of the blank page, uh, whereas really what the blank page represents is opportunity, right? Right. And it's to be seized or squandered. Um, so I, I, I think with an attitude like yours, uh, there's going to be some really tremendous stuff coming from you. And if, if people wanted to stay in touch with you or learn more about you, how would you recommend that they're able to do that?

So at the moment, I don't have a website or any of that kind of thing set up. I mean, I've got a couple blogs, but y'all ain't reading those. On Twitch, probably. I stream video games mainly as a narrative gamer. I'm very intrigued in how video games as an interactive medium change storytelling.

Oh,

cool. Yeah, that's very cool. So look me up on Twitch as Capybaras FM, like a radio station.

No way. Capybara is one of my favorite animals.

There you go. Well, we're all of them.

People in the UK are like, are they the giant guinea pigs? And I'm like, oh, you know about them now? Because whoever does the marketing for capybaras has done a great job. Because when I was growing up, yeah, people didn't know what they were and now they're everywhere.

Yeah, 100%.

Fantastic. So I have to ask out of personal interest, what are you playing at the moment?

So I actually just finished something last night called Echo, which was— I loved the overarching world around Echo, but then the story itself of the characters was kind of mediocre. It ended up just being, oh, equivalent exchange. I have to die so this person can live. I will make my sacrifice, right? Meh. I've read that before, right? But the world is really cool. Essentially, humanity got to the point where everybody just had too much money. And we fractured. We became many different humanities.

Oh, wow. That is interesting.

And so one of them decided that, oh, I'm going to find a way to translate the body into a cube of iron and back. Right?

Right. Right.

For whatever reason, it starts talking about the soul and getting a little cultish, but it's really neat. And so you are going with an AI to try to revive somebody, and the AI does not believe it's possible. It's all BS fairy tales, right? And the protagonist ends up actually being smarter than the AI because it's an old AI.

Right. Well, I suspect that there are humans today smarter than some of the AIs on the market. Amazing. Amazing. When I think of narrative-driven video games, recently God of War Ragnarok. Ragnarok.

Wow. I haven't played it.

Those guys, so good. So good. I've always been a huge Dragon Age fan, just played through the most recent Dragon Age. Um, but yeah, we're not here to talk about video games, sadly. Yeah. It's a whole other conversation to be had there. Um, but it is relevant to what we're talking about, which is, which is storytelling and how people engage with storytelling. Um, so look, you know, at this point, I would love to say, uh, I'm not going to take any more of your time. Instead, I'm going to thank you. for coming on and sharing some of your wisdom and inspiration for the story with us. Uh, I am hugely excited for the, um, for the collection to come out because it's not that far away now. We've been working on— we've been beavering away on this for some time, uh, and it's all coming together. It's gonna be awesome. I'm absolutely chuffed. Uh, and also, you know, we've got the best job in the world, man, being, being writers and, and People can say whatever they like about AI. Like, there's always going to be a need for us, always, because we can put that human element back in. And it's like you're talking about with a video game, you know, AI lacks soul. You know, we bring the soul, right? And that's such a wonderful thing to kind of do in your day job, you know. So before I let you go, have you got any— sort of passing thoughts or feedback or anything to share with the team and our own?

I suppose, yeah, there's one thing. It was a question I was going to ask you, but I think it might be useful for anybody who's writing or thinking about it, and it's pay attention to whether your story is growing out of an idea or falling into an idea.

Okay,

okay. They're both good in their own way. but it's very easy to get tricked into, oh, this is how I want my story to end, so now I need the characters to do this so they can end that way. You talked a bit about this before, right? Yeah, that is a way of writing, but like you said, it's more you than your characters in a way.

That's right, you're removing their agency. So my professional opinion on that would be, uh, the word scope's very useful. You can look at your scope of the story and you can decide what's within and without the scope. And the scope can rapidly expand. So being disciplined and saying, well, I'd love to do all of these things, but actually I have to just do these things and then maybe shift some stuff sideways or into another project. That's how you end up with 5 books instead of 1, right? Yeah. But yeah, I mean, how great to be in a position where we don't just have 1 We have an infinite source of, uh, sort of stories to, to tell. Uh, fantastic. But look, Tom, it's been a real pleasure. Uh, thank you for coming on. It's been tremendous meeting you. I hope we'll get to speak again, and we will all look forward to reading Supplying the Slugs when 21 Futures Financial Fallout is published this year. So for now, we will say good day. And we'll speak soon. Okay, take care, my friend.

Venga, cuidate. Ciao.