Hey there naval listener, it is Jeffrey, cleaner, Co. Writer of this very show, and I'm bringing you some special audio today, so I wrote a novel with my friend and author Janina Mathewson. This book is called, you feel it just below the ribs, and it comes up this Tuesday November sixteenth, you feel it just below the ribs is a fix no autobiography set in an alternate twentieth century timeline, chronicles one woman's unusual life, including the price she pays to survive and the cost her choices. old for the society she's trying to save. We also chose the format of found manuscript that is annotate by an unnamed met, a narrator which was really fun weight play with how truth is perceived. I think a real be cool sigh five drama, and if you love veil or my other fiction podcast within the wires and positive you will love, you feel it just below the ribs. So what follows my voice. Here is an excerpt from the audio book narrative by Kirsten Potter and at apparel, do you you can pre or

The book were ever you get your books are audio books, a do that today, pre orders are huge for us, so good that now it's a gift to your future self. I mean list it comes out November, sixteenth, just four days away, so enjoy this excerpt from you feel it just below the ribs introduction and chapter one introduction. The following manuscript was found under the floorboards of an attic room in the bed, sit in Stockholm in ninety ninety six, the propriety of the bed said being possessed of no small amount of insight, or perhaps greater than usual amount of self importance. Maybe the manuscript to the stands: historical museum at the time Museum did not pay much attention to the manuscript as it seemed to them to be a highly imply,

simple, personal memoir that held no cultural or historical significance. At least none that can be verified. Its author made bold claims, but did not provide sufficient detail. Robbery them. It wasn't until a staff member by chance learned about the body found with the manuscript that the museum began to take the work seriously, whom that body belong to change. The significance of the manuscript. The woman in question had been living under a false name for more than two Many years so uncovering her identity took some time eventually through dental records, it was determined and she was none other amen, Doktor, Miriam Gregory, Doktor Greg. He was a prominent psychologist during her lifetime and her work tribute to the better implementation of some The foundational tenants of the new society her

you're standing of how to examine and manipulate the human mind was truly staggering and impact her work had on the world is impossible to quantify. she was reported missing in nineteen. Seventy five by her wife today, somewhere after she failed to come home from work Teresa, died in nineteen. Eighty two, so we have not been able to terrified, those parts of the manuscript that deal with their relationship. Since the discovery of the authors body, the manuscripts, come under intense scrutiny from a range of sources, including the central government of Western Europe and numerous academic institutions questioning its veracity. If not it's very authenticity, there was much debate about the wisdom, making the document public considering the many unverifiable claims and the outright misinformation it contains ultimately the societal council decided, was best left, unpublished,

we at the European Press disagree, While we appreciate the dangers of certain texts, we are opposed to censorship and we have dedicated ourselves to finding and publishing those documents the society has seen fit to hide. If yours in this. It is because you are familiar with our work and our ethos and have passed through are betting process. You can be trusted to approach this material responsibly. Doktor Gregory manuscript did, however, pose a conundrum fries, given its unreliable bent. Some suggested that we published only the sections that were able to

pass unscathed through our fact checking process or that we simply release a summary of the books claims rather than the entire text. After much discussion, we decided to publish a manuscript as it was written at least almost as written Doktor Gregory sometimes wrote using a typewriter, but large parts were written out by hand. There are places in which the authors writing becomes illegible or otherwise unintelligible and a few pages that appeared to be out of order. We have edited these sections for clarity. Based on what we believe to be her intent. We have noted where any text has been altered. We have also provided additional information to add concepts to some of the author statements. This ranges correcting historical facts, she has related erroneously omitted or even

made up entirely too, including contradicting accounts of some of the personal elements of her story. We did our best to locate and interview people who knew the author. While she was live in order to verify as much of the manuscript as possible. Of course, when alternate version of events are reported by different people, it can be hard to distinguish whose version is closest to the truth. We felt that, having advised readers of conflicting accounts, they could be left to draw their own solutions. Most notably perhaps we have not been able to confirm the existence, let alone the practices of the institute, Doktor Gregory describes. We did manage to track down one or two personal accounts by people who claimed to have spent time there, but they were far from credible and gave few details in an interview with fringe magazine, for example, a musician clean

to have served time in a closed facility somewhere near Providence, Rhode, Island, a patient under going. Psychiatric care in Berlin asserted that they knew of a covert north american hospital. We were unable to verify the queen's so wildly did alter on perception of the text, we felt it would be unethical to include details of them at this stage. they are a little more than rumour. We have refrain. From editing the manuscript other than the small adjustments noted. Readers should be prepared to encounter the following text as alarm we unaltered highly unreliable personal count of a life doktor Gregory has They can no pains to be consistent, stylistic early or even factually she writes at times with clarity and intention, but off lets herself slip into stream of consciousness, it appears that the writing to pay over the course of some years, with bursts of activity, father

I long stretches of rest or this interest all this makes for somewhat confusing reading at times, but we have endeavoured to bring clarity where we can As the author is now dead and due to the lack of firm corrupt rating evidence for her story. We are somewhat reluctant. Even to label this text a memoir. Perhaps it is simply fiction set against the backdrop of reality. We leave it to the listener to judge part one. The end. one I was born into the apocalypse, it's probably unhelpful, to throw around a word like apocalypse To be honest, I couldn't tell you whether its even apt, it looks like an apocalypse from here or from now from

distance, it looks like the world ended. Maybe I did but- and I suspect that this isn't something people like to admit I've seen a lot of people who lived through that time. Not admitting this. It didn't feel like an apocalypse. It just felt like life for the most part. Anyway, I'm sure there were since you know, I'm sure there were times when the constant pressure of catastrophes shook my bones, but for the most part, went unnoticed, familiar like a near by train that passes everyday moments passed. and it's hard to focus on the chaos about you wore and disease for miles around when what's in front of you is so close. I grew up end of the world and all that mattered was what was for dinner, the generations who did not experience the great reckoning, think of it as a cataclysm with a clear beginning and end like a curtain

opening and closing on a forty year long epic tragedy, but the end of the world comes with either whimper nor bang. It unfurled its blossom slowly majestically One moist black petrol. At a time when I was in it and the reckoning was merely a war born of allies, treaties of mine. uprisings leading to fists pounding podium across continents. As with any of her generation. Doktor Gregory's birthday is unknown due to the widespread bombing it took place during the great reckoning. Many documents were lost, New Society Records Department was established in nineteen forty three several months after the official day of first piece

it attempted to re key documents to survivors but dependent on personal recollections of the individuals themselves, which were not always reliable records list, Doktor Gregory's birthday as the tenth of January with no year. It seems likely that she was born some time between nineteen o. in nineteen eleven, the official start, great reckoning is now considered too. see the July Riots in Ghent in nineteen twelve. The war was messy and sprawling, having nothing to do with land or resources or acquisition. It driven by nationalist identity crises and temper tantrums. It was way each by vast families with hurt feelings and destructive weapons standing under flags. I was Blue one into war and I who up in something much much worse, people too

to look at events of mass eradication as if their simple finite a pandemic kills hundred thousand an earthquake, kills five thousand, and then it's done. We tend not to look too closely, so we missed the fact, that disease wars and storms linger long after they're gone the tornado. Passes is, and you are unscathed only you die weeks later because of dehydration malnutrition. You fall ill and seek assistance, but what medical facilities remain are overwhelmed by those with missing limbs or shattered bones. The idea of an apocalypse is a comfort because it makes death seem like something we can all experience together. In a single moment, a colorful firework burst, but mostly death is something you keep to yourself In reality, the apocalypse is most likely to be you alone.

In a room with the flu. I have known death all my life. I fear it of course, but it is for Tell her. Death is a stray dog I have taken in and FED, not because I love it, but because I dont wanted biting me out of hunger. I had a family one these days. No one has family. So when I tell people about mine is all they want to talk about that and what the war was like. I suppose I can't help them, though at this distance. All I remember of my family is their deaths. Mary did you love your family, no matter. What is one question people ask me, even if you didn't like your family, did you still care for and protect them is another is it true that families are tribes and tribalism is inherently violent? Is another edited for clarity. Honestly. I do not know it has been decades. It's my family was alive

I am sure I felt something for them, but I can only reply offer you my experiences, I remain her being with my family. I remain her huddling under the broken lumber of our home, hiding german soldiers, or maybe they were english. Maybe they were french. They were men with guns. That's all that really matters I remember foraging in open fields, crouching in tall grass, my mother slapping my mouth, if I spoke to loudly I remember entering our neighbours home through a shattered window. After learning they had all succumbed to illness. I remember eating their food and wearing their clothes and reading their books. Remember the books were mostly medical journals. I remember my other forbidding us from speaking to anyone? I remember hiding mostly in silence, I remember remembering them over and over again

many times? Can you filter a memory before it's really just a fiction? How can you tell how many times your memories have been filtered a strange thing consider when you ve, sat down to write out your own memories. What is the point of view as memory, is so unreliable, but there is a point I have to tell someone. I have two not confess exactly cause confession, doesn't require action and I need someone to take action. I have wanted to get the truth out for years. I have tried once or twice not as hard as I should. I don't have much time left, so I pose I'm using the time. I have to write out the truth so that someone can read it and do something, but I'm selfish. and I want to be understood so I'm starting here at the beginning with my earliest memories, I'm starting here. So I can trace the entire path. Tat led to my greatest accomplishment, my greatest crime.

Maybe none of this is relevant but its mind to tell em there's no one, stopping me telling it. However, I want so. This is what happened there. is everything I remember happening, and you can judge me if you like, but whoever reads this: I have left pain in this world. Someone needs to fix it I had a sister ones, her name was Elizabeth. My parents were named Keith and ever I do not remember, loving them or being loved by them. I remember being disciplined and fed and taught so in that I remember familial love, my father knew how to grow things from the earth even after the earth was poisoned. My mother knew how to manipulate things into other things into whatever you needed. She could crab two tent out of sofa upholstery. She could make a bit out of gas. Heather and shopping bags, I'm

they could do more than that, of course, I'm sure they, Add more to them, but time reduces memories to their least complex forms. What do you remember about your parents Miriam? I remember that groupings. I remember they made things. I remember they made us survive for awhile Elizabeth and I used to play together she had a dull that I wanted, I had a dull, too but I had played with it too hard. It was battered, broken and early doll anymore. My sister kept her doll, perfect, protecting it from dirt and rough play. She cleaned its ace and restrict loose threads along its body. Sometimes she would hold her doll out to me as, if to let me take it, but at the last minute she would snatch it away and run off and her long fast legs the doll held tightly to her chest laughing at me ass. I tried to keep up with her

I remember crying, as I ran after her gasping for air, my cheeks red in the cold. My legs aching, I, we're going inside and curling into a pile of blankets. I guess we didn't have heat that year and watching my mother cook dinner. I remember, I think. my sister coming inside and sitting beside me. I remain for her reading me a story and then braiding my hair, I Her giving me some of her meat at dinner, it place like a film in my head. It plays get happened all in one day. Maybe it didn't happen at all. It doesn't really matter. One day Elisabeth got sick. Hundreds of thousands of people got sick than in my sister was one of them. The age for into Influenza virus don't colloquially, as the cobblers flew due to early an erroneous rumours that it was caused by a foot. Fungus was first reported in Salzburg

former United Kingdom in the autumn of nineteen. Sixteen within six months it had spread across the globe. The spread was estimated by the movements of the world's armies and the virus in turn worsened. The growing conflict the pandemic, adding to the wars burden on hospitals, medical equipment became a precious resource. This flu outbreak had largely died down by the end of nineteen seventeen, although there were smaller resurgences in nineteen, twenty one and nineteen twenty four. We took her to a hospital in there weren't any bed, so she lay on a mattress on the floor and she died sadness. Overtook me. I presume I remember a period of inactivity, but I do not exactly remember the sadness that caused this. Perhaps those feelings evaporated under the heat of time. I got Elizabeth dull. After all,.

but I do not remember playing with it. I was selfish to be sure, but I was raised in the apocalypse and selfishness helps you, survive. I was my only concern if my parents could grow food food and make shelter and keep me occupied with games. That was helpful to me. I remember moving somewhere else after my sister died. I don't remember why. I suppose the fighting came to close. Doktor Gregory never spoke publicly about her early life and never dared where she was born or where she lived as a child, we know that she eventually entered North America, New York, former United States on a ship from Trieste, but she never related how she got there. It seems likely she was from former Poland, but as infrastructure broke down in her family moved around, it is possible. They lost track of their own location. They may have.

Even cross borders. Unknowingly. Member of the new place was broken. The war had been through and left nothing behind nothing, but battered houses and empty people My father made a garden there ass. He made a garden everywhere. He worked in the earth, with his hands and the earth delivered life to him, and eventually it turned out death. My father cut his fingers on shrapnel left behind in the poisoned soil, a deep scratch that blood for days. You bet the debt and went on working, but we saw dark veins, like oak limbs, grow across his hand and up his forearm during his sleep he gasped and clutched his breast my mother and I burned his body in accordance with the new laws. It's not clear which laws she's referring to each country has its own methods of preventing the spread of disease,

I remember being alone with my mother, and I remember holding her. She had lost her huh. Send and her oldest daughter, and she cried most days. She could not cook anymore, and neither of us could grow vegetables as well or is consistently is my father had been able to she stopped crafting and she seemed to find contentment in her sorrow, something like contentment despair, maybe I held her whenever she felt sad and soon I was holding her every night morning was her escape reason not to do anything she regressed toward. infancy and she turned to me and to her mother. We were alike. Together for long enough for it to feel normal in all this war She was the only one of my family to die through violence. Although the war didn't kill her not directly She was outside our home, praying to a guy,

and she had either recently discovered or invented altogether. When a man approached her and asked for food, she said she could not spare any food. He asked for money and she said she no money. He asked for shelter, but my mother grew upset at being so needed. She was the with needs. She no longer knew how to give, and she told him to leave this man was a desperate man, one of the many someone who had seen horrible things happened to those he loved. And who, like my mother, was too broken to help himself bereft of any one to help him. He was also to broken to grieve his terrible circumstances. All he had left was rage. He struck her and she fell. She did not cry out because she was confused

He hit her again and kicked her, and eventually she did not cry out because she was unconscious edited for clarity. I remember their deaths if memory is ever true, that is how my family died. Keith ever Elizabeth, I did not say their names again for a long time. But I don't remember, is how it felt to be alone. I don't remember my first moment of being just me just Mary all alone, I remembered disciplining myself, feeding myself and teaching myself. I think I was only twelve them, maybe younger, eleven, maybe being or ten. So I must have been afraid. Where should I sleep? How should I get food? How do I protect myself from those who have nothing left but rage there were still shops operating at that point I think, but how

I get money. My parents had never seem to use money, but they must have traded something their skills. Perhaps things they had grown nor made. They had taught me to do those things, but I couldn't do them as well. I couldn't do them quickly. I dont know how long I tried to survive, like this tried to survive like my family, without my family to survive If I dont know how long I tried to use their tools to keep my own life going, probably not law. Well, no amount of time seems long to me now. Sometimes you get to the point where surviving take so much work that you begin to ask yourself if it's worth it or you would, if you have the energy, I'm not talking about oppression, really, though I suppose there are similarities, I mean simply that sometimes for some people, the amount of labor it takes to accrue the supply.

eyes, you need to live through a day, outweighs the value of the day itself. You spend each day working striving fighting to live only to wake up. Faced with another day you have to survive. Can we blame a person for trying to lessen the burden for two to redress the imbalance for trying to make sure that the labour is worth it. I suspect there, one child in a million who wouldn't end up doing what I did to survive in the end? if you're alone at that age, if you have to look out for yourself if you're in the middle of a war and there's no one around to care for a loan children. You go a bit feral, you have. Two manners are for peace, a conscience is for peace. It started small, of course, which started cowardly. A stolen loaf of bread, Allied told to claim shelter, promises broken the gullible manipulated. I got better at it. It got easier, both practically and morally,

I found weapons? I grew bold, ruthless. Sometimes in war it comes down to you or someone else in both of you are innocent, or neither of you are, The same thing really the word what was ending. So what good were values? What good neighbor sentiment, you're, probably shocked. Reading this, I'm not even telling you details and you're, probably judging me, in times of strife that our true goodness can shine through you're, probably thinking I've heard people say that countless times I've heard. That said a youngsters who have never seen so much as a backyard brawl by idiots whether on the battle Field or in the aftermath, no one comes out of a war with their hands clean, not a war like that you're the best you can and the only morality you have to cling to is the knowledge that you didn't choose to be there: a set of powerful men, never even knew you existed, puts you there and why for power,

for a bit more land, they likely never even walk over my since, if I have since can be cast at their feet, at least in part those men and their nations destroyed the world. All I did was survive. It. Thanks again for listening to this audio book, excerpt from you feel it just below the ribs written by me, Jeffrey Kramer and Tina Mathewson pre order were Were you get your books and audio books?