I quickly realized that instead of writing books to pay off my debt I should have become a real estate agent. Houses in the city were outrageous.

$400,000 was my limit as we needed some cash spare to pay off Astra and Hera's debt. $400,000 sounds like the sort of money people dream of having in their back pocket, but $400,000 was nothing – that was a single bed apartment in the heart of the city, that was a two-bedroom house squished between two malls with weatherboards so rotten you could use them as confetti. Our real estate agent was named Lily. She was really nice and she tried to explain to me that I had to up my offer. I explained back to her that you can’t up your offer if you have no money.

Kauri, Lily and I settled on a kind of grudging stalemate where we went out and looked at houses – some flash, some not so flash and at the end of every viewing she'd tell me how much they cost. They were always too expensive. But one day, weeks after we'd started searching, we finally got our break.

We drove past a dump then past the outer fringes of town – to the place where the country meets the city. Where cows, not cars ruled and there stood a grand old mansion, five times the size of any of the other houses we'd looked at. It was beautiful from far away.

'What do you think?' Lily locked her car.

'I think this is going to be outrageously expensive.' I said, but the closer we got, the less I became concerned about the price. The place was falling apart in most areas. There were rotten boards, a few smashed windows around the back, and puddles on the floor from where the roof had leaked.

'I know it's not what you're looking for,' Lily said, ' But it's going cheap and it will give you room to expand if things go well for you.'

I smiled, 'It's great.' The hardwood floors were still solid and there was a section in the middle there was mostly watertight that we could move into without much work.

The place had two levels, a large bottom level, plus a top loft-like area that was bigger than most homes we'd viewed, 'How much?' I said before I let my imagination run away on me.

'$420,000.'

Kauri pulled at his hair, '$420! Eli we have to do this!'

I rubbed my eyebrows, '$420,000, we're looking for something more in the $400,000 range.

Lily and Kauri rolled their eyes. 'Eli, this is the perfect place,' Kauri said, 'Tell her...'

But Lily shook her head, ‘Okay Eli, best I can do is $410,000, they won't go any lower, and...' she winked, ‘...you're just lucky I like your story.’

Our grins widened, I signed the paperwork and then Kauri and I ran around the place like kids at a playground, screaming and laughing.

Lily shook her head at us, ‘God... if only it was always this easy to sell these things. I’ve got another mansion like this just down the road. You don’t want to buy that one too do you?’

But we were too busy running around to even consider her offer.

****

[ElevatorMusic.mp3]

Beep, beep, beep, beep...

[Call.status= connected.]

'Hello, you're speaking to the Crusher Media debt service. This is Aiden, how can I help?'

'Hi, Aiden. I'd like to pay off a couple of debts please.'

****

'What are Astra and Hera like?' Kauri asked as we sat in the waiting room of Crusher Media's debt service.

I rubbed my ear, how could I describe Astra to him? Astra was like.... Hmmm.... Like all your fictional crushes – Hermione Granger, Hannah Montana, Princess Leia, Padmé, Xiao Ning'er, Gwen Stacy all smashed into one.

This being has ten arms, five heads and a whole bunch of feet. It has magical powers and can sing really well and hold ten swords at once.

Well... Astra could kick that mutant-crush-thingy’s ass and do it with a smile on her face. She looked out for me when I was down and praised me when I was up. I could know her and nobody else in the world and I’d still count myself a lucky guy.

...but perhaps that was too much detail to give Kauri. It had been a long time since I'd seen Astra and more importantly, it had been a long time since she'd seen me. So instead I said, 'She's determined, has a great laugh, writes like a wizard, and sings like an angel.'

'And Hera?'

'Hera?' I laughed, 'Hera's a bit like me, she's got that same fire in her belly that same anger in her eyes, she's lively and lovely and she's gonna make you laugh, I guarantee it.'

Kauri smiled, 'It's cool this, you know... all of us being in it together, like... I've never even met these authors before and I already feel closer to them the most of my friends.

I nodded, 'Hard times make good glue.'

Astra and Hera ran into the observation room in front of us followed by two guards. Astra had a shoe in one hand and started whacking one of the guards over the head with it. Hera kicked the guy in the chest then tied his boots together.

The Crusher Media employee next to us turned to me, 'These are the ones you're bailing out?'

I nodded, as Hera held up her middle finger to the one-way mirror, 'They sure are.'

Somehow the guards managed to make it out of that room alive, Astra and Hera paced, occasionally yelling things at the door.

Kauri took a deep breath as I walked to the door on our side. I turned to him, 'Scared?'

He rocked his head side to side, 'A little pee may have come out just then.'

With a laugh, I threw the door open. The girls had their fists and shoes raised. Slowly their expressions changed from frowns to wide eyes and open mouths and then finally giddy disbelief, 'What the hell?' Hera shouted, 'What the bloody hell?! The prodigal son returns.'

I laughed, 'It's not so much me returning... it's more...' I smiled at Kauri, 'It's more you guys are getting out of here.'

Their faces changed again. Hera just started shaking her head, 'NO, NO, NO WAY.' Astra started to cry.

I took a step closer to them and they both rushed me and pulled me into a hug, 'No way, Hera said, 'No way.' Astra was full-on crying now, 'Are you sure Eli? are you sure?'

I rubbed their backs, ' Yeah, Crusher Media paid me out, and well... we need a couple of star writers on our side to help us to bring them down.'

Hera took a step back and gestured to herself, 'Well, you sure came to the right place.'

We all cracked up laughing – particularly Kauri who still looked a little frightened.

I took step towards Kauri and put a hand on his back. 'This is Kauri. I was on the street, writing on stolen pieces of paper when I met him. He's the reason I'm no longer on the street and he's the reason you're gonna be free.'

The girls threw their arms around Kauri while he protested, 'I-I didn't do that much.'

'And here I was thinking he was one of Balls' minions,' Hera laughed.

'Oh no...' I said, 'This guy hates Balls about as much as we do, perhaps more. Kauri can't work as a lawyer anymore because of that suit wearing-freak.'

Hera scrunched her nose, and then cracked her fingers, 'Well, the sooner we start kicking his ass, the better.'

Astra and I laughed and we looked at each other and smiled and I swear, nothing in the world felt better than that feeling of laughing with her.

****

‘Eli, Can I remind you once again that we are blindfolded and therefore we can't see.' said Astra.

'I know.' I laughed. 'That's the whole point.'

‘But... you idiot,' added Hera, 'It also means why are you leading us through every single hole, shrub and mud pit in the entire city?!'

I laughed, and led Hera into a tree stump, 'It's worth it.'

'It’ll be worth it for what we see?' said Astra.

'No, not worth it for you.' I said 'It's worth it for me and Kauri to laugh at.'

The girls lunged for me. Fortunately, they still had the blindfolds on. So they tripped over each other and landed on their asses. As they struggled to get up I grabbed Esther's hands and pulled her to her feet.

Kauri tried to help Hera but got kicked in the shin instead. 'We're nearly there,' Kauri said as he rubbed his leg, 'Honestly, the blindfold wasn't my idea.'

'Where did you meet this guy? Eli,' Astra said, 'Everything he's been saying is just...'

I laughed, '... yeah. He's too nice. He hasn't been jaded the way we have.' I winked at Kauri, 'but we'll have you cursing and wailing soon enough...'

We stopped walking. In the distance in front of us was the mansion. 'You can take your blindfolds off.' I said.

My fellow authors lifted up the blindfold and then blinked in the sun, 'My god,' Hera said, 'What in the world?'

Esther's mouth was just agape, 'This this is our home?'

Kauri and I laughed, 'Don't get your hopes up too much. It's far more decrepit up close.'

'Decrepit or not, it's beautiful. You're not joking are you?'

I walked towards the mansion, 'No, this is it.'

They started to explore the space, Hera decided she was going to knock down most of the walls on the bottom floor, 'Then I'll build a halfpipe and a roller skate rink.'

Astra volunteered to paint the half pipe and then turned her attention to the fact we had no beds, no kitchen apart from an old sink, and the biggest problem...

'The stairs are gone,' she said, There's no way to get from the top floor to the bottom floor, without jumping or standing on someone's shoulders.'

'Yeah, we talked to a builder. Stairs would be pretty expensive... But...' I tilted my head that little, 'I've got an idea.'

We drove down to the dump, found the slide I’d spotted earlier plus a couple of lengths of anchor rope from a deep-sea fishing trawler. We got them both for 100 bucks all up, tossed them on the back of a trailer and drove back. By that afternoon we were able to get upstairs by climbing a rope ladder and downstairs via a slide. It was pretty sick.

We used $40,000 to deck out the area – I'm talking beds, an old sofa, sheets, linen, towels, gas cookers, pots, pans, knives, forks plates, all those modern conveniences that we'd somehow done without through most of our time in the four dorms.

Between them, the girls bought two drills, a bunch of screws, a heap of plywood, two skateboards and a Banksy's worth of spray paint. Then when the skateboard ramp had taken its proud place at the centre of our new home, we kicked back on our couches and beanbags and got to business.

'Here's the thing.' I said, 'we've got $100,000 left and, I'm not good at maths, that's Kauri's job, but...'

'...but we're going to run out of money.' Kauri said, 'Unless we start earning it.'

'We want to utilize our strengths.' I said, ‘We want to take Crusher on at its own game. We want to create a way forward for writers and readers that will be better and fairer than anything we've seen before.'

Astra nodded, 'That's exactly what this world needs. What's the plan so far?'

Kauri and I looked at each other 'Well. So far. We're thinking of creating a website similar to Crusher. But every author gets a large percentage of revenue from ads and user donations. We're not going to charge per chapter for most stories but for some premium stories, we'll charge people.'

I looked at Kauri, 'That's the plan right?' He nodded.

'That's good,' Hera said, then looked at Astra...

'But,' Astra said, 'By owning the platform that authors are going to work on, you're still holding power in your hands, you know it's kind of like authors are the farmers – they're doing the work and they're getting paid for it but because the land belongs to you or us or anyone the ultimate control lies with us.'

Hera nodded, 'We gotta be different.'

I scratched the side of my face, ‘Okay, good points. Very good points. How can we make it so that authors get paid properly, readers don't get shafted, and at the same time we kick Crusher Media in the Balls?'

We sat there for a while, sipping cans of soda. Then Hera got up and did a couple of 360s on the ramp in front of us. Astra joined her for a bit. They had two very different styles of skating. Astra's was smooth and flowy, like water on the ramp. Hera's skateboard almost attacked the ramp. She went higher, faster, and spun more like a chipmunk on caffeine.

'I've been thinking,' Kauri said as we watched them spin, 'As Hera said... it all comes down to control. Whoever controls the website, the platform, the algorithms, are the ones that control where the readers are looking, where they're spending their money, and...' he pointed at me, '...can block anyone they choose. Instead, we need to build something that no one controls.’

I nodded, 'Hey, back to the idea of websites...'

Kauri frowned, 'We talked about websites, one website for everyone, that's that's not going to cut it.'

I shook my head, ‘What about, everyone owns their own website, their own little slice of the internet? It'd be like the early days when everyone had a website, you can build what you want to build, draw, write, say what you want to say.'

Kauri nodded slowly. 'Yeah. Hell. That could work. But how would readers find people?'

Astra was standing in front of us. She nodded her head, 'They'd find each other via other people's websites, it'd be authors recommending authors or readers recommending readers. You can include patron links wherever you want and every dollar spent on advertising goes back to you.

'Could it really work?' said Hera 'Like we'd get beaten by the algorithms recommending the best possible story for people.'

Kauri shook his head. I've been a reader for a long time and algorithms work maybe 10% of the time – only once in a while will a solid story will get recommended. I tell you the good stories are buried and the only way to find them is via other readers. Someone tells you about this hidden gem story that's so different from anything you've read before.'

He pointed at me, 'Your story, for instance, I found that on a forum. I think this, this idea of everyone having their own site could extend through the readers. Imagine that, readers, or groups of readers having their own curated little sites, they run their own ads, they get paid. Everyone wins.'

It seemed brilliant. And kind of hard, but brilliant. 'Okay,' I said, 'I think the hardest part will be getting started. Crusher has the dollars, they've got the investors, they've bought out all their competition. I'll keep this space free for anyone who wants to write and we'll buy some equipment servers to host our stories.'

There are web companies that do that for you,' Kauri said, but the three of us just shook our heads.

'Anything done by someone else is something that can be bought by Crusher. We need to keep this independent. Grassroots.' Astra said, 'Who knows? We might even stand a chance.'