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December 17, 2011

From “edutitaL” by Lane B. Esryfle

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They made their way through the “edutitaL” exhibit, with Roger reading the artist’s description from the book as Laurie looked at each artwork.

“What about the empty syringes floating in a bathtub full of urine?” Laurie said.

Roger flipped to the proper page in the exhibit guide. “An indictment of the totalitarianism inherent in unregulated commercial broadcasting.”

“The pile of dead flies on an old record covered in plastic wrap?”

“An attempt to capture the zeitgeist of a morally bankrupt age in its most luxurious form.” Roger said. “Based on a true story.”

Laurie walked to the next one. “The mounted cat skeleton stuffed with gummy worms?”

“Meta-commentary on the failure of the ‘postmodern’ in the face of intercontinental commercialism,” Roger said. “Pretty straightforward, really.”

 

December 16, 2011

From “Sirkka of the Flowers” by Olavi J. Virtanen

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Sirkka Mäkinen-Korhonen had been a rising star at the University of Helsinki, completing a rigorous program of study and qualifying to enter the faculty as a full member before her 22nd birthday. In addition to groundbreaking work on the classification and molecular genetics of vascular plants in the Asteraceae (the daisy family), she was a well-regarded writer and poet. Mäkinen-Korhonen had the rare distinction of having work published in the university’s botany journal at the same time a series of poems appeared in its literary journal.

It wouldn’t be unfair to say that great things were expected of her.

Then, after she had worked at the university for six years, Mäkinen-Korhonen spent a summer at the university field station at Inari, in the north. There, Sirkka undertook a massive project to collect and classify Asteraceae native to Finland, as well as subspecies adapted to several nearby microclimates. It was expected to be three months’ work, resulting in the collection of some interesting specimens, an academic monograph, and another step on the inevitable road to a senior professorship and the departmental chair.

Instead, Sirkka Mäkinen-Korhonen never returned.

She insisted on prolonging her stay, first by taking a sabbatical. When her leave time ran out, she accepted a position overseeing the field station at substantially reduced pay and the loss of academic tenure and all promotions. Eventually, hit hard by a recession, the University of Helsinki closed the field station and reassigned its members to other areas. Mäkinen-Korhonen refused to leave, and was duly terminated from the university altogether. Using her savings, she purchased a small home on the shores of Lake Inari and arranged to have supplies delivered–and mail collected–for the nearest village once every few weeks.

In her hermitage, Sirkka apparently continued her study of daisies as well as her literary pursuits. Letters to family and former colleagues became more infrequent and more disjointed, jumbled masses of paeans to daisies in a variety of meters and styles mixed in with diatribes against the pace of modern life and invitations to join her in a life “outside the graph paper.”

Eventually, Sirkka began claiming that, through intense study, one could experience “asterism.” As far as anyone could discern, “asterism” was a sort of cosmic oneness achieved through daisies–one apparently recognized that the pattern of petals reflected stars in the night sky and the reflections in a polished gemstone, and thereby was able to tap into universal consciousness. Sirkka’s last, disjointed letters urged her friends and family to begin their study of daisies at once, lest they be left behind then all humanity eventually ascended to another plane through unity with flowers.

When the last supplies arrived at her cabin, the villagers found it deserted. A triangle made of three asterisks was painted on one of the walls, and every potted daisy in the house had been uprooted.

 

December 15, 2011

From “Hotel Ambush” by C. G. D. Neumann

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“We’re looking for two men: Claude Rityanne and Pierre Richat. Those may be aliases; we have reports of men matching their description all over the world, working in different capacities for different powers.”

“I can check the registry, detective, but I assure you we have no one by that name staying here,” the desk clerk said. Beneath the desk, be pressed the button installed for the very purpose of announcing police raids. “Perhaps if I were to leave the till open, strictly by accident, you might reconsider your search?”

“Bribery?” the detective laughed. “You’re lucky I don’t haul you before a federal judge for that. I can’t be bribed.”

“And more’s the pity,” a voice said from behind him. The detective gasped as his companion was impaled from behind with a sword, only to stare with fading, unbelieving eyes as a similar swordpoint burst through his own chest.

The man cleaned the blood off his weapon. “Dispose of the bodies in the Alergian part of town,” he said. “Let them spin their wheels for a while.”

“Yes sir, Mr. Richat,” said the clerk.

 

December 14, 2011

From “The N’Truri Interrogation” by Paul G. Oleander

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The colonel was seated at the teacher’s desk. He removed a well-worn Tokarev pistol from his holster and placed it on the desktop. “I am only going to ask you this once,” he said. “Was Captain N’Truri there?”

“I…I don’t know,” the private stammered. “There were so many people, and it was so confusing…”

“Was…Captain…N’Truri…there?” the colonel repeated, drawing out each word before clipping it off.

“I…I think…”

The colonel picked up the pistol and cocked it. “I’m not going to ask again.”

“Yes,” the private cried, anguished. “I saw Captain N’Truri at the site of the ambush. He was leading the troops that attacked us.”

“Ah,” the colonel said thoughtfully. “Thank you very much, private.” He raised his pistol and shot his man through the head.

“Get that mess cleaned up, and get me more troops. We’re going hunting.”

 

December 13, 2011

From “The Sentence Eater” by Jon G. Flyte-Carris

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“Careful,” Sundel said, pointing to a blurry man-shape in a dark trenchcoat standing on a nearby corner. “Don’t speak to it.”

“Why not?” said Lute. Compared to some of the creatures oozing about openly, a blurry man-shape seemed almost mundane.

“It’s a Sentence Eater. It derives nutrition and pleasure from conversations; the more erudite the vocabulary and complex the syntax, the more nourishing the meal.”

“That doesn’t seem so bad,” said Lute, thinking of how one-sided Sundel’s conversations tended to be.

“Not at first, no,” Sundel replied. “The Sentence Eater will try to goad you into a philosophical discussion, and if you’re nourishing enough it will grab you and permeate between dimensions. You’ll get stuck in its larder in the null space between dimensions, forced to make intelligent conversation.”

“I think I know some people who would really enjoy that. University professors, mostly.”

Sundel scowled. “On pain of torture? And when your mind cracks, the Sentence Eater will give you over to one of its symbiotic roommates. Let’s just say that one of them is the Brain Eater and leave it at that.”

 

December 12, 2011

From “The Endlings” by Trevor N. Glasgow

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No one has seen the Aunorwi in over a hundred years. Decimated by disease, with strong cultural imperatives for isolation from outsiders, and never numbering more than about five thousand in a relatively small area, they were always vulnerable. Contact with European colonists had always been schizophrenic–minor trade and friendly hand signals mixed with violent assault for real or perceived offenses by both sides. There were some scattered efforts to initiate more peaceful contact, including an elaborate plan to raise a young Aunorwi to act as an intermediary that foundered when the subject died of typhoid. But no one was surprised when the Aunorwi stopped emerging from the dense wilderness that had housed them.

Editorial eulogies appeared in local newspapers, a nearby normal school renamed its newsletter “The Aunorwi,” ethnologists and linguists sparred over the few remaining scraps of speech and word list, endlessly debating how the Aunorwi may or may not have been related to other tribes. But they remained an academic pursuit, and an average inhabitant of their lands would be hard-pressed to name the people that had preceded them as stewards of the land.

That is, until a 40-year-old Aunorwi and her 75-year-old grandmother emerged from the wilderness near Janeston.

 

December 11, 2011

From “Jeanine’s Trinkets” by Killy D. Glasgow

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The room had all of Jeanine’s passions on display: flower press still stuffed with orchids and daisies, posters from classic films on the walls, and pots of artist’s sculpting clay and acrylic paints.

Jeanine had always taken a flower from everywhere she’d gone, and pressed it into a scrapbook. She didn’t keep a diary or a blog–her laptop was tucked in a corner too–but her flowers served that purpose and then some. Arthur was tempted to open the press and see if there were any labels, but the light layer of dust that had already accumulated–it was an old house–said that the press had been left unattended for some time.

The classic posters were all reproductions save the one in a place of honor: an original 1941 banner for “The Maltese Falcon”–she had always liked mysteries–yellowed with age, edges ragged and deep crevices crisscrossing Bogart’s face where it had been folded over the years. It wasn’t a particularly attractive poster to begin with, but it was nevertheless lovingly mounted in a brass, archival quality frame.

Jeanine had been trying to take up sculpting as well…most of the paint bottles and sculpting clay cans were unopened, and only a few half-finished turtles and squirrels littered the small work area on her desk. They needed work–a lot of work–but she had been ready to do what it took to master the art.

If she’d gotten the chance.

“I wonder what someone will think when they go through my room, afterwards,” Arthur sighed. “Dead or disappeared, it’s still a clean cut through everything her life used to be.”

 

December 10, 2011

From “Manual for Wishing Upon Stars” by Kelvin Rigel Barnard

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People, especially in the media and entertainment industry, have made wishing upon a star out to be some mystical process. But it’s really quite simple.

Since wishes travel faster than the speed of light, the star so wished upon receives the request instantly if it still exists; many stars in the night sky have gone supernova but we won’t find out until the light from the explosion reaches us. This is, incidentally, why many wishes go unanswered.

Once received, the wish is sent off for central processing. How efficiently that happens depends on the volume of requests; popular stars like Sirius and Polaris are much more likely to be backlogged. Processing takes place in the heart of the universe, where the wishes are sorted by length, complexity, and deservedness. Whether or not any previous wishes have been granted, and whether the granting of a wish might reveal too much about the process are taken into account as well.

From there, tweaks are made directly to the fabric of the universe, as it is a convenient location for doing so. Unlike the act of wishing, the act of granting a wish does *not* happen faster than the speed of light, hence a delay of minutes to years. If someone dies before their scheduled wish is fulfilled, this is duly noted and forwarded to the next life for compensation.

Difficulties arise when people wish on things that are not, strictly speaking, stars in the night sky. Wishing on a planet, like Venus, or a shooting star may coincidentally reach a star in that general direction, or it may hurtle into the void. As much as they enjoy hearing from you, neither planets nor meteorites have any pull with the celestial bureaucracy. Wishing on the Sun is not done very often anymore, even though it is technically a star. In the old days of sun worship it was more common, but strict tradition keeps stars from forwarding wishes from within their own orbits. Some kinder stars have been known to forward the wishes anyway (our Sun sends them through Alpha Centauri B).

 

December 9, 2011

From “Convergence at the Bar” by Phil “Stonewall” Pixa

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With a sigh, I slid into the comfortable embrace of my booth. It was really ‘my’ booth for two reasons. First, I’d never seen anyone sit there but me. Second, I was there so often that I’d worn a groove into the thinly padded seat and knew the stains on the table not only by size, color, age, and substance, but also by name. My glass was sitting in ‘Bob’, which it should have considered holy ground–countless other glasses had met their fate on that spot.

I sank back into my groove, and leisurely took in the surroundings. Not much to see–Chum’s wasn’t known for its romantic atmosphere, but there were worse places. Aside from Chum himself, the bar was populated with the usual human flotsam–pilots and crew of various spaceships docked at the station, mostly. Guys who had been across the galaxy and back twice but had only seen the insides of a bar at each stop. At least I had seen some of those sights before choosing to haunt the bars.

A moment later, I heard laughter and shouting at the other end of the room. There isn’t ordinarily a lot of noise in Chum’s–anyone who gets too rowdy is usually politely asked to leave at the point of Chum’s gun. I turned my head and craned my neck to see what the commotion was about.

An older man was up against the far wall, surrounded by a group of drunken bar patrons. The crowd was so large that Chum’s usual method of crowd control would have been ineffective; he just slumped behind the bar, eying the group warily. The man in the middle of the bunch was speaking, but the barflies buzzing around him drowned his words out.

“Tell another ‘un!” one said.

The older man’s lips moved, but I still couldn’t make out what he said.

“Listen to him–the bum’s out of his gourd!” a second barfly slurred. He deftly reached out and tweaked the surrounded man’s nose.

“Denial…expected…face of hard truth…” I was able to catch snatches of the reply.

This seemed to rile the crowd even more. “Deenyle?” The first drunken mariner replied “What the hell izzat?”

I snorted to myself. Pickled space trash. Then again, I only knew what the state of denial was because I spent so much time there I could claim it as a second residence on my taxes.

“The geezer’s freakin’ crazy, man.” the second guy said.

The older man spoke again, but was overpowered out by the rising wave of insults and profanity.

 

December 8, 2011

From “The Mstumpuan” by Henry Grieg Hartmann

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The Mstumpuan was the great oral epic of the kingdom, telling of the exploits of the legendary founding god-king Mstumpu of the Quri kingdom. It was passed down for generations, largely unaltered–the penalty for failing to recite it properly was amputation or death, depending on the severity of the mistake.

When the Quri kingdom was cast down in defeat by the Segumbi, who did not have such a strong oral tradition, the penalty was inverted: amputation or death were now penalties for speaking the Mstumpuan, depending on the length of the recitation.

By the time Europeans arrived and cast down what remained of the Segumbi, only fragments of the Mstumpuan remained in folk memory or diaries kept by a few explorers and missionaries. Many of the oral traditions in that part of the world were castigated, but legend had it that the Mstumpuan contained vital clues and references to the land of Prester John.

It was therefore the object of obsessive study by European mystics, alchemists, and speculum-seekers. They interviewed the eldest Quri and Segumbi they could find for fragments of the tale. Rumors persisted that a Portuguese missionary named João of Amareleja had transcribed the entire epic in Latin shortly before he was stoned to death by the Segumbi, and many of the adventurers drawn to the region sought that manuscript instead.

 

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