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December 4, 2010

From “That Present Emptiness” by G. H. D. Covey

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You have been, for the past several weeks, bothered by a restless disquiet. Not a physical malady, but an emotional one, a tight knot in the middle chest, near where one feels a broken heart but felt nowhere near as keenly. It is an empty feeling, dull yet with edges of glass.

Filling it has been difficult. Normally, busywork or strenuous leisure is enough to keep emotional pain of that sort at an arm’s length, but that has had no effect–indeed, the effect of trying to ignore it seems to make the disquiet all the stronger. Neither exercise nor food seems to have an effect, and weekends to not dull the sting as they so often do for doldrums of other sorts.

Asking around, you find that many have experienced the same before, as if in a long-forgotten dream, but are at a loss to describe how it was conquered. All they are sure of is that it’s a malady born of complacency, of stasis, of rut and routine. To break free is to step outside the ordinary.

But the ordinary is all you know.

 

December 3, 2010

From “Journey to the Center of SMU” by Callahan Holmes

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“We’re still waiting for Schoss to turn in his story on the Greek Formal,” said Jamie. “It’s the front page tomorrow.”

“You sent Schoss to cover the formal?” said Pam, incredulous. “The same Schoss that disappeared last finals week and wound up calling his roommate from Munising?”

“The very same. He has connections to the community, and always writes positive articles,” Pam said. “Whenever I send someone like Loam, I get an anti-Greek diatribe the next day, and an avalanche of angry letters from various and sundry Mu Delta Qoppas.”

“Schoss is probably passed out under a beer pong table after throwing up on his camera and/or date,” cried Pam. “Hell, the Greek Formal will just be getting swinging at press time! We’ll have to go with Loam’s story on financial aid or the SMU Times will run with a big white spot where the cover story should be.”

“Hell no,” replied Jamie. “The Greek Formal story is going up tonight . We just need someone to go out and find Schoss: you.”

“What?”

“I need to typset and handle ads,” said Jamie. “If you know how to do that, you’re welcome to take it over.”

 

December 2, 2010

From “Metamorphosis” by Jill O. Garibaldi

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“I don’t get it,” Albert said. “Why can’t you continue to collaborate after he grows up? I thought Neltoq was grown up already.”

“You don’t read much, do ya, kid?” said Gelb. He flicked ash from his cigarette onto the station floor. “For the Ultoq, growing up’s the same as death.”

The Ultoq homeworld was a global mass of structures not unlike mangrove swamps on Earth, with only shallow seas and upland plains in between. Competition was fierce, so Ultoqs had evolved a complex life cycle to prevent their young from competing with adults. Ultoq newborns were planktonic, released in vast numbers with only a few reaching the second stage and moving back to shore. After a metamorphosis, the primate-like Ultoq that most humans were familiar with emerged. With binocular vision, a highly-developed forebrain, and opposable fingers on all seven limbs to facilitate moving and feeding in the vast and complex root structures, the second stage was intelligent enough to develop a civilization and tools if it lasted longer. Evolution, however, had dictated that the second stage existed merely to gather food; once a certain stage of growth was reached, the Ultoq returned to the sea and underwent a final metamorphosis into a sessile, mindless tunicate-like filter feeder, which lived only to send out vast quantities of sperm or eggs into the sea to begin the cycle anew.

It wasn’t until, by chance, a second-stage Ultoq discovered the grinyth plant that their civilization had developed. Grinyth fruit and leaves produced a compound that retarded the onset of the final metamorphosis–as long as there was grinyth in its system, an Ultoq would not proceed to the last stage of its life. Even as Ultoq Civilization developed, though, the need to maintain their numbers was paramount. Thus, after a time, they would all cease intake of grinyth–or its synthesized derivatives–and “grow up,” losing all memory and ability to propagate the species.

“Heavy stuff, man,” said Albert. “Heavy stuff.”

 

December 1, 2010

From “Rejected!” by Calvin Higgins Joachimthal

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The film was rubbish, to be sure, but nevertheless had offered Geraldstein a broad canvas. He’d written several long-lined cues for the battle sequences, basing them on a pair of contrasting themes: an oboe-led five-note phrase for the heroes and snarling brass sixteenth notes for the villains. There was a tacked-on romantic subplot as well, so Geraldstein wrote a string love theme that was interpolated into many of the action sequences, taken up by brass or woodwinds depending on which side possessed the utterly helpless heroine, football-like, at any given time.

Of course, in that era of CGI, Geraldstein had worked mostly from storyboards and a print with green screen where major special effects would still be added. The director and producers demanded daily updates, as well, so the orchestrators converted whatever DAT tapes were finished at the end of each session on the scoring stage to CD and mailed them across the lot to the admin offices. In retrospect, the comments that came back–“scale it back,” “less noise,” “too old-fashioned”–should have been warning signs.

Then, one day, Geraldstein and his orchestrators had arrived for a scoring session to find the orchestra already warming up, with Calvin Zukovsky conducting it. Geraldstein liked Zukovsky; the boy was classically trained and had apprenticed under Konstantin at MGM. But he had a tendency to cave into whatever the producers wanted for a film, musically, and had been typecast in urban thrillers and romantic comedies as a result. He was apologetic to a fault, even offering to take Geraldstein to dinner, but the message was loud and clear.

His music had been rejected from the picture because it didn’t match a focus group’s impression for a movie starring a rapper, and Zukovsky had been brought in to give it a “contemporary” sound.

 

November 30, 2010

From “Not Quite to China” by Nokin Kobayashi, translated and adapted by Irene York

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Charles Voortrekker had lived his entire life in the small towns of the Alberta-Saskatchewan-Montana border; few could recall any family members (and even then it was a dim recollection at best) and he was known to react violently to intruders and any suggestion that he leave his hometown. Needless to say, the man’s sudden appearance–famished and sunburned–to the crew of a survey station on remote Kerguelen Island in the southern Indian Ocean was a cause for some puzzlement to many, Smithson most of all.

As Smithson delved deeper into the records, similar cases emerged. A gentleman who lived in and refused to leave the village of Gatteville-le-Phare, near Cherbourg in France, who was known to disappear for months at a time. Rescued by a New Zealand navy cruiser from a castaway hut on the desolate Antipode Islands; died before he could give an account of how he came to be there.

A Vietnamese woman who refused to travel inland or to visit relatives in America vanished, only for her body to be found in the Peruvian Andes.

A Hawaiian man who reacted violently when family tried to convince him to move off the Big Island. Vanished, only for some of his personal effects to turn up in Botswana’s Okavango Delta.

The only thing they had in common? They were all antipodal points, on opposite sides of the globe.

 

November 29, 2010

From “Heart of the Silphium” by Todd Anderson Ortell

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“It’s just a plant with heart-shaped seeds,” Clyton said. “Nothing to get excited over.”

“Clyton, since when do I tell you how to pilot your boat?” Ash said. “I know my herbs and my history. Heart-shaped seeds, structure similar to asafetida and fennels, resin with a rich odor…no living plant has those properties.”

“Congrats, then,” Clyton said. “New species. Give you twenty bucks to name it after me.”

“No!” cried Ash. “This isn’t a time to be funny, Clyton; it’s a time to be awed. It’s not a new species. It can only be silphium, the miracle plant known to the Greeks and Romans…and it’s been extinct for 2500 years.”

 

November 28, 2010

From “The Ever-Winding Watch” by Sam Hobert Callis

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Dennis Baily had purchased the watch in 1920. He’d come into five dollars as a reward for alerting a farmer that his barn door had broken and helping to round up the scattered animals before a thunderstorm. His parents had urged him to save the money, but Dennis had his eye on a young lady in town, and spent the money on the watch and other bits and pieces needed to make a presentable, if cheap and plebeian, outfit to wear when calling on her.

Muriel Donegal, impressed, agreed to marry him. Dennis then wore the watch on special occasions until 1947, when he died of a heart attack while trying to start a tractor. His son, James, took the watch as a memento and wore it daily even as the farm was sold and the family moved into Cascadia. It became such an element of his daily routine that James refused to leave the house without his father’s watch on his wrist. That same watch, left on a nightstand, was also the first indication that he’d suffered a stroke in 1980. His only child, Henrietta Baily, was left the watch and wore it on special occasions like family gatherings. When she married in 1984, it was on her wrist.

Much wrangling went on among her children about who would obtain the cherished heirloom afterwards. Henrietta maintained that it ought to be shared, but the family valued it too much for such a solution to stick; the squabbling intensified to a fever pitch in 2010 when Henrietta was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.

Not bad for a trinket that was mass-produced and retailed for a dollar…

 

November 27, 2010

From “Varta River Symphony” by Tobias Engelbert

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Imię Nazwisko was obviously not the man’s real name, but the one that had been used to publish and record his music in Wilhelmine Germany. Rave reviews of concerts had appeared in music publications before the war, but the number of surviving works by Nazwisko was vanishingly small due to the tumultuous 20th century history of the region in which he lived and worked. Most of his sheet music was burned during the battles for Poland, leaving just a few player piano rolls, wax cylinders, and gramophone records that had been shipped to audiophiles elsewhere.

Orris had painstakingly tracked down and transcribed–by ear–all Nazwisko’s surviving recordings save one. He’d also digitally reproduced and distributed what recordings he could, on the grounds that Nazwisko had unfairly been denied a place in musical history due to the privations of history. But that last recording…

The Vartafluß Symphonie had been recorded in Posen in October 1918 for distribution on gramophone record. Due to the war, only a handful of master copies were made with an eye toward postwar distribution, but the dismembering of Germany after the war and Nazwisko’s death or disappearance after 1919 meant that this never came to pass. The composer had carried the sheet music with him to an uncertain fate, leaving just a single copy of the work: a master belonging to a reclusive audio antiquarian.

Orris was determined to see it recovered, pirated, and shared with the world. Even if it meant bending the law.

 

November 26, 2010

From “Dusk and Dreaming” by Katrina P. Sunderlund

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“That’s not what I heard,” Kellie said. “I heard that if you’re in Sunset Park at sunset, it lasts for hours. Way longer than it should. But you can only see it if you’re there and never leave.”

“No way,” Randy said. “That wouldn’t work. The earth’s going ’round the sun, so sunset can’t last longer in the park than at school. Doesn’t make sense!”

“I heard it from eighth graders,” Kellie asserted proudly. That put the information firmly into the realm of possibility, if not certainty.

The others whispered among each other.

“Well?” Kellie demanded.

“We’re gonna go check it out,” Randy said. “Tonight. And if it lasts longer than my dad says it should, you win.”

 

November 25, 2010

From “Subway Rhapsody” by Kent Duggrell

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People often camped out in the tunnel between the two stations, often panhandler but occasionally musicians. Sandy’s ears had been trained by years of darkness and frequent trips to Carnegie to pick up on the players’ skill level in a heartbeat. The tunnel’s acoustics required careful placing and phrasing to make the music fill the space and not get drowned out by crowd noises or its own echo. Even the tap of Sandy’s cane could affect the entire venue.

Most of the time, sadly, the music wasn’t terribly good. The panhandler players tended to set up near the middle of the tunnel, where there was a lot of foot traffic but an overhead alcove ruined the acoustics. Many played out of tune instruments, which was understandable given their circumstances; what was less forgivable was the lack of skill too many of the players demonstrated. It was clear the Sandy that they’d come into the instruments without an idea of how to play them, and while aimless saxophone noodling was enough to part a few islanders from their quarters he held to a higher standard. Only the players that knew what they were doing had a go at his wallet.

Today, though…the violinist was divine. They were located in the acoustic sweet spot, allowing rich, resonant music to flow over the passersby (who, from the sound of it, ignored this rare privilege). The player had been essaying Bach at first, but then broke into a much more contemporary, lilting melody as Sandy approached. It wasn’t a classical piece, or even a contemporary piece…no, it was an original. An original he’d heard once before.

“Jessie…is that you?” he cried.

 

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