I very much enjoyed the story! Nice magical blending of past & present thru agency of psychedelic bone rum, and the lightly rendered sex felt authentic, integral to the story, and so easily and comfortably slipped into by author and characters. Something not often done so well or so fluidly.
I did feel midway thru story that computer hacker component, qualifying it for sci fi, was maybe grafted on unnecessarily, but by 2/3 or 3/4 way thru, changed my opinion. I think it worked well, especially as that element built & its viral nature was revealed, spreading ever further through the global population. I liked that.
And good that it was just sketched in without too much detail, cuz consideration of the unfortunate gender balance that would likely be present in such a population of hacker nerds, i.e. 10 to 1 male to female, would kinda spoil the fantasy & burst the bubble.
Better as it was, eliding that harsh toke of reality & instead focussing on depicting more the *feeling* of such a mass liberation, which would involve as many girls as boys (child & adult) if broken out of computer nerdville. Cuz girls are rebellious & anarchic creatures at heart, even more than boys.
Story was also the subliminal inspiration, I realized while in line to pay, for my purchase of a bottle of the darkest dark rum I could find in liquor store tonight. The brand: Captain Morgan, of course, with the date 1680 enigmatically emblazoned on neck of bottle.
Have to confess to disappointment at not being able to see a piece of bone in the bottom of bottle, but maybe it's there. Resisted strong urge to swig heavily & directly from bottle like in the story, only because I'm still fighting off a sore throat. But maybe I should for that very reason....
in related news, mininova surrendered to international galleons the same day that this was posted. so that's half an hour of redirecting bitorrent rss feeds ahead of me. congratulations to the industry luddites on winning your battle.
Garrrr. (Angry pirate noise, combining Grr w Arrr) But take heart, mateys, in wise closing paragraphs from linked-to CBC article:
The website (mininova) also made efforts to remove links to copyrighted material, unlike The Pirate Bay, another big torrent site, which has taunted entertainment companies by posting their takedown requests and mocking them.
The Pirate Bay itself recently removed its tracker links, replacing with them with a more decentralized kind of peer-to-peer network that will be harder for copyright holders to pin down. The Pirate Bay's founders were found guilty of promoting copyright infringement earlier this year by a Swedish court.
Peer-to-peer users are expected to migrate to the new technology, which uses magnet links to find files, and to other torrent sites that will inevitably spring up as the big ones gradually shut down.