Update Out reac sort story - Title: Stalls and Code
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Title: Stalls and Code
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# Title: Stalls and Code
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A DRAFT YA novel about markets, misfits, and taking back the commons
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(Tagline: “They came for the avocados. They left with the revolution.”)
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Outline
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## Outline
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THE MARKET STIRS
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### THE MARKET STIRS
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1. Chatsworth Rhythms
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###### 1. Chatsworth Rhythms
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Setting the scene: It’s a Saturday in East London. The smell of jerk chicken, sourdough, and incense wafts over Chatsworth Road. A young stallholder, Luna (17), sells upcycled clothes and zines with radical poetry. Her best mate Jaz (18) roasts coffee in a converted horse trailer.
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The street market has always been the soul of the area, but rent hikes, council interference, and #NGO co-option have worn everyone down. Traders are being squeezed. Street teams from the council show up to enforce arbitrary rules. One old vendor has a panic attack and is carted off.
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A new app quietly arrives via a local anarcho-sysadmin named Mo, who says: “If you don’t write the rules, someone else will. Time to fork society.”
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2. Enter the #OGB
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######
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###### 2. Enter the #OGB
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The Open Governance Body app isn't flashy - it’s command-line chic - but it gives people a voice and power through consensus-based decision-making.
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@ -24,9 +24,9 @@ At first, Luna is sceptical, more tech? More admin? But when she sees how trader
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They tag the system with #OGB, calling their movement “Open Trader Network” #OTN.
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A new energy flows. People start collaborating across stalls. Rota for clean-up? Done via the app. Newcomer priority stalls? Voted in. It works. It’s messy, but it’s theirs.
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THE SPRAWL
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3. Nodes Spread
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###
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### THE SPRAWL
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###### 3. Nodes Spread
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Other markets - Brixton, Ridley Road, Chapel - start installing OGB instances. Local flavours, same base. Word spreads via the Fediverse. A hashtag storm of #OMN blossoms across PeerTube vlogs and Mobilizon events.
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@ -34,7 +34,7 @@ Local food traders begin direct-networking across markets. No middlemen. No rent
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They aren’t waiting for permission any-more.
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4. Media Panic
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###### 4. Media Panic
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A Murdoch-owned paper runs a headline: “Markets Hijacked by Extremist App: ‘Digital Anarchists’ Threaten City Order.”
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@ -44,9 +44,9 @@ The mayor calls it “a dangerous precedent for public space management.” A go
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Luna gets doxxed. Her hacked Instagram DMs are read out on GB News. Jaz’s trailer is graffitied. Mo is arrested during a dawn raid.
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THE STALLS STRIKE BACK
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### THE STALLS STRIKE BACK
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5. The Communing
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###### 5. The Communing
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Traders unite across London. “We are the stewards of the street. We built this with our hands, our sweat, and our beans.” They go on strike, not by stopping, but by refusing to recognise council control.
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@ -56,30 +56,30 @@ Instead of retreating, people start federating public spaces. Parks, squats, ska
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Councils panic. The government attempts a DNS take down of #OGB. They don’t understand federation. Nothing central to ban.
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6. Trust vs Control
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###### 6. Trust vs Control
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Luna speaks at a huge public forum, “The Town Hall of the Streets,” organised via Mobilizon.
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“You can’t run a market on fear. You can’t govern people who trust each other. You can only try to sell them back what they already own.”
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Jaz releases a viral zine: ‘We the Traders’ – a manifesto of federated life. It's printed in three languages by Somali aunties on Ridley Road.
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THE SHIFT
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7. The Fall of the Gatekeepers
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######
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###### THE SHIFT
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###
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### 7. The Fall of the Gatekeepers
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The mayor resigns after a leaked email shows collusion with private surveillance firms. A public audit reveals widespread misused funds and fake community consultations.
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Instead of chaos, the federated markets flourish. An emerging culture of trust, transparency, and local flair grows to replaces the back peddling NGO management class.
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Luna and Mo help to push the #OGB into schools and libraries. Jaz co-founds a hand to hand USB key decentralized delivery network using bike couriers.
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8. New Normals
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######
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###### 8. New Normals
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Final scene: Luna is now 21. She runs a stall at the market she helped free. The OGB screen is mounted next to her zines - open to everyone. A group of teenagers crowd around to vote on that week’s theme: Fruits, Freedom, or Future?
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She smiles. The market hums. The commons holds.
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Themes
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###
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### Themes
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#StupidIndividualism vs #4opens #CollectivePower
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@ -91,8 +91,8 @@ Power is not seized, it is federated
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If you can federate it, you can free it
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--------------------------
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Chapter One: Market Day
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##
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## Chapter One: Market Day
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Luna arrived just after nine. Her stall was already half set up, two folding tables, a clothes rail, a crate of homemade zines, and a sign that read: Upcycled. Unowned. Unapologetic.
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@ -114,8 +114,8 @@ Luna didn’t say anything. But she noticed. Something had shifted.
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-----------------
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Chapter Two: Something New
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##
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## Chapter Two: Something New
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The next morning, Luna opened the stall before ten. Rain had passed in the night, and the tarmac still held patches of damp. She unzipped the plastic cover from her rail and checked the #OGB app on her phone. Six new proposals. Someone wanted to trial a shared delivery scheme. Someone else suggested swapping stalls once a month to mix things up. The waste rota from yesterday now had over thirty names. She didn’t say it out loud, but something felt different.
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@ -130,8 +130,8 @@ By midday, the market felt different. Not louder, not busier. Just… more conne
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Later, they held a loose meeting near the benches outside the community hall. Jaz made coffee. Someone brought leftover samosas. Luna recognised a dozen faces, but others were new, people from other markets who’d heard what was happening and wanted to learn more. “We tried this in Tower Hamlets,” said one, a woman named Grace who sold second-hand electronics. “Council shut it down in three weeks. Said it was ‘disruptive to existing partnerships.’” “We’re not asking this time,” Mo replied.
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-------------------
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Chapter Three: federate and Spread
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##
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## Chapter Three: federate and Spread
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By the third weekend, the idea had started to move. It began with a quiet message from a stallholder at Ridley Road, posted in the OGB working group: “Could we copy this setup? Our traders are fed up too. Same rules. Same threats. We want in.” No one said no. That was the point. Mo added a note in the main thread: “Just install it. Each market’s a node. Connect when you’re ready. Shared values, local control.”
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@ -155,7 +155,7 @@ Even a quiet email arrived, from a .gov.uk address. A policy advisor, asking for
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---------------------
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Chapter Four: We Write the Story
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## Chapter Four: We Write the Story
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The storm didn’t slow them down. If anything, it made things clearer. At the next open meeting - hosted outside the old library building - over 40 people showed up. Stallholders, musicians, artists, teachers, kids. Even two students who said they were “just here to help document.” Luna stood at the edge, watching as Nari connected her laptop to the projector powered by a battered solar rig.
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@ -206,7 +206,7 @@ She tapped yes.
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-----------------------------------
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Chapter Five: Dirty Hands in Clean Suits
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## Chapter Five: Dirty Hands in Clean Suits
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They should have seen it coming. The tabloids had been circling for weeks, sniffing for a headline. But nothing prepared them for the full-page hit in the Daily Spectacle:
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@ -247,7 +247,7 @@ The Tottenham node suggested creating a #OMN redundancy both client server and p
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--------------------------
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Chapter Six: The Glitch Spreads
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## Chapter Six: The Glitch Spreads
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At first, it was silence. Jaz closed her stall for the first time in four years. Said it was "temporary." Said she needed to repaint the sign. But the truth was - she couldn’t face the constant stream of customers, each one asking with cautious eyes, "What’s going on with the market thing?"
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@ -289,9 +289,9 @@ Then the signal app buzzed. An unlisted call. Luna answered. A voice whispered:
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Luna didn’t speak. Just listened. And when the call ended, she turned to the crew, breath shallow. “They’re going to break us tomorrow.”
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------------------------------
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Chapter Seven: The Turning Tide
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## Chapter Seven: The Turning Tide
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##
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The broadcast hit at 9am sharp. Every major news channel, every tabloid site. The Mayor, flanked by top advisors, stepped up to the mic. Behind them: the seal of the City of London and a projection of the OGB interface - screen-grabbed and labelled like a crime scene.
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"These so-called 'commons apps' are a threat to public safety, economic stability, and national cohesion. We are initiating emergency take down procedures effective immediately."
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@ -330,7 +330,7 @@ Luna posted a new message: "You cant kill the spirit. She is like a mountain. Sh
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--------------------------
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Chapter Eight: The Open Reboot
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## Chapter Eight: The Open Reboot
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Nari was the first to notice it. She had left her node monitor running overnight, expecting another flatline. But by morning, the logs were scrolling too fast to read. Not just London. Not even just the UK.
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@ -362,7 +362,7 @@ Zey closed their laptop and stood up. "We need a new stall. Not for food. For on
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---------------------------
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Chapter Nine: The Grasping Hand
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## Chapter Nine: The Grasping Hand
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It began with meetings. Lots of them. Invitations rolled in - some polite, some not. Government task forces. EU think tanks. UN tech forums. Ministry of Culture round tables. Suddenly everyone wanted a word with the crew, or with whoever they could scrape up as a "representative" of the OGB network.
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@ -404,7 +404,7 @@ Nari smiled, voice low but clear.
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------------------------
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Chapter Ten: Patterns of the Possible
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## Chapter Ten: Patterns of the Possible
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The election came and went, but this time, something stuck. Not just new parties in power or familiar faces in different suits. What stuck was the refusal to return to the old rules. A hung Parliament forced new coalitions, but the Fediverse didn’t wait for permission.
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@ -430,7 +430,7 @@ Nari’s phone beeped, an alert from the assembly. Over 200 cities now federated
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-----------------------
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Chapter Eleven: Friends in Strange Places
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## Chapter Eleven: Friends in Strange Places
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The billionaires didn’t know what to do with themselves. After a decade of preaching disruption, they now found themselves disrupted. No more keynote spots at summits that mattered. No new killer app - no app at all. Instead: a patchwork of community servers running software they couldn’t monetise, speaking in languages they hadn’t designed, powered by motivations they couldn’t understand.
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@ -454,7 +454,7 @@ And the tech bros? They tried to fork the culture. They built metaverse shells w
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-------------------------------
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Chapter Twelve: Boring is Beautiful
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## Chapter Twelve: Boring is Beautiful
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By the third year, the #OGB was no longer a revolution. It was plumbing. Most people didn’t even think about it anymore, the same way they didn’t think about water or traffic lights - until they failed. But the #OGB rarely did. It became infrastructure, boring in the best possible way.
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@ -488,7 +488,7 @@ Jaz had stepped back from the frantic coordination. She now ran a community gard
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Even the language had changed. Words like 'user' and 'citizen' blurred into 'participant.' Budgets weren’t funding lines; they were care trails. And no one talked about overthrowing power anymore. They just… rerouted it.
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Epilogue: A Timeline of Change
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# Epilogue: A Timeline of Change
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2025 — First informal test of the #OGB prototype at Chatsworth Road Market. It works. People notice.
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