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November 24, 2010

From “Kubinka” by Glennis D’Arbo

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As the attendant gave Jeremy his ticket and the change from his thousand-ruble note, his hand brushed the cash register. A vision sprang into his head, clear as day: an employee slyly opening the till and pocketing a stack of bills.

Jeremy sighed, and pulled his glove back on. “Always something bad,” he muttered, and pushed through the turnstile into the museum proper.

Bypassing the indoor exhibits, he strolled outside, where an impressive array of armored tanks and fighting vehicles were arrayed along a semicircular path. This was Kubinka, the great tank museum of Russia and the former Soviet Union, and every vehicle here had a story to tell.

“And they’ll all be tragic, horrible, wretched things,” Jeremy muttered. Military things always were. He recalled a visit to the Smithsonian, pressing his palm against the Enola Gay and witnessing a blinding flash and ever-expanding fireball.

There was nothing for it, though. Jeremy reached into his pocket and produced a dog-eared sheaf of photocopies. An article on the top detailed the tragic fate of one Jeroen Schoenborn, accused of disabling his tank at Kursk in an act of cowardice, later tried and executed for the same. Painstaking research had led his grandson to Kubinka, where most survivors of that great battle could be found.

And he’d touch them all, regardless of the pain it’d cause, to learn the truth.

 

November 23, 2010

From “The Beach at Phak Trang” by Zachary F. Victoria

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The secluded beach at Phak Trang was often the star of such expat stories, catering to tourists and thrill-seekers who craved an escape from the commercialized beaches that littered the South China Sea for something pure and undisturbed. Phak Trang was said to be the best-kept secret in the province, a sheltered cove with beautiful gypsum sands, calm waters near the beach, and surfable waves further out. It was a modest hike from the nearest access road, but cabbies in the various resort towns were always ready to arrange dropoffs and pickups, though none of the local guides would go there, forcing seekers to rely on hand-drawn maps circulated by expats.

Many people who had been swore by the place, but it also had a tragic air: swimmers and surfers who went to Phak Trang had a tendency to disappear. Certainly, the deaths–noted as hashmarks on a crude sign near the beach–lent an aura of danger to the place. The US Consulate in Surat Thani held that these accidents–which had accounted for 8 citizens 1960-2010–were due to treacherous features of geography, like the cove’s fierce riptide, and the occasional local banditry.

Ask a local cabbie, though, and a different story would emerge. Not shy about sharing it, with paying fares at least, they maintained that Phak Trang was a point at which spirits could enter the world of the living when the tides were right. People who vanished might sometimes have been killed by the riptide, the cabbies conceded, but more often they were abducted by vengeful spirits or fell through the pale into an otherworld beyond imagining.

 

November 22, 2010

From “The Waning Days of Midwest Air” by Culbertson Jeames

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“Look at that rusted-out piece of garbage,” Neil said, examining the DC-3 hulk with a jaundiced eye. “Why don’t they clear it away?”

“Nostalgia, probably,” Gus replied. “Midwestern Airlines is the reason this airport’s here.”

Neil twirled one of his loader’s gloves. “There comes a time when you just have to let it go.”

“Let it go?” Gus said. “Midwestern Airlines was the first company to fly commercially west of the Smokies, the first company to run airmail to regional airports, and the first company to introduce first-class service!”

“What are you, a tour guide?” Neil sniffed. “Not many tourists out here on the tarmac unless their gate’s full and they need to be walked in. And even then they’re too grumpy to listen.”

“I started out working for Midwestern,” said Gil. “Worked for them for two years before they went bust and were bought up in ’85. They made all of us sit through a training video talking about how the company started with just a single Curtiss Jenny barnstormer and built it into the third-largest airline in the country behind Pan Am and Republic.”

“Two more airlines that have done just as well,” said Neil.

“Bah,” said Gus. “I don’t think forty-five counts as old, but you kids today make me feel it. Don’t think there were any airlines at all before the ones you flew to Disney World on.”

 

November 21, 2010

From “Run on a Rail” by Amy G. Simpson

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Course, the Grand Traverse & Western railroad was as much tied to its time as anybody else. When the tracks were first laid down they stimulated the entire region’s economy by allowing fresh-cut logs another route south other than the river, moving manufactured furniture south to Chicago and bringing tourists north to Grand Traverse Bay. Little cities sprang up where the GT&W crossed other rail lines, with main streets and businesses springing up near rail depots like weeds. The line was at its peak between the wars, with plentiful rolling stock surplussed from the old USRA.

After the war, though, things took a turn for the worse. The interstate and highways began to link together many of the destination previously served by rail; thousands of trucks chugged along the route, each stealing a little more from the GT&W’s coffers. Passengers increasingly drove or flew to their destination, leaving the passenger cars GT&W was required by law to maintain mostly empty. Many rail lines reacted to the pressure by consolidating, but no one was particularly interested in merging with or acquiring the GT&W, viewing it as an unprofitable spur. The last train thundered down those tracks in 1980.

Most of the rail depots were torn down in the years that followed, and the downtowns around them withered as the commercial nuclei moved toward the highways. Rusting and overgrown rail lines came to be seen as an eyesore, and were pulled up for scrap. The ties were sold as building materials; it wasn’t unusual to see them lining gardens or even fashioned into toolsheds. In time, the graded rail areas were turned into paved trails.

Decades later, with diesel prices on the rise and an increasing number of Osborn and SMU students picketing against “anti-green” policies, the decision appeared particularly shortsighted.

 

November 20, 2010

From “Altman Industries Fall Catalog” by Kerry L. Joneson

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AI-15882: Exorcism.
Many, through no fault of their own, find themselves with haunted real estate due to fraudulent nondisclosure of haunting by sellers. Let Altman Industries clean house with one of our patented exorcisms. Using extensively cross-trained Unitarian ministers, Altman guarantees that the invocation will be found which drives the spirits away, and backs that up with a 10-year assurance plan.

AI-40834: Possession
Want to get ahead in your career or vocation of choice? Want to sabotage a rival? An Altman Short-Term Possession Contract (STPC) may just be the thing for you. Let a tireless Rage Demon inhabit your mortal husk to undercut the others on the trading floor, or send a wailing Insanity Demon into the body of that young turk who’s stealing all your contracts. Like what you see? Extend the offer with a Long-Term Possession Contract at no additional charge!*

*No additional monetary charge. Other conditions such as the forfeiture of your eternal soul and plunges into lakes of fire may occur. Altman Industries is not responsible for these conditions and will not offer refunds. Contact your local AI representative for details.

 

November 19, 2010

From “The Dungeon Becomes Reality” by Jim U. Kelladon

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Keagan valued his online privacy, and valued it heavily. People that knew him personally attributed this to a variety of factors, but all were impressed by the lengths he was willing to go to maintain e-anonymity in an age when it was increasingly easy to strip such away.

All his interactions were carried out through an elaborate proxy system, using server information from as far away as the Philippines and Egypt. He used a specially sanitized computer to interact with the outside, one which had never contained any personal information in any form, and was religious about not bringing over content from his personal machine, which was totally unconnected to any network at all. The entire setup was run off a university server as well, adding yet another buffer.

The reason for all this? A game.

Keagen was, unbeknownst to most, one of the world’s top-ranked players of the Dungeons of Krull MMORPG. He’d one been the number eight player worldwide based on experience points, instanced boss kills, and elite equipment but had slipped to fifteen after a number of Korean players made unexpected headway.

As the world’s most popular MMORPG, with a fanatical following at home and abroad, Dungeons of Krull could be legitimately dangerous. A player in Seoul had been killed by a guildmate who stood to inherit control of a vast amount of treasure in 2007; another had died in Seattle a year later after humiliating a much lower-ranked player in a duel. Radiant Gauntlets of the Seraphim might confer resistance to all missile attacks inside Dungeons of Krull, but they offered no protection against a Beretta.

 

November 18, 2010

From “Maryann of the Pillars” by Cam Devonshire

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It might seem an odd thing that Maryann Steinman was the last heir to the long-dead city of Iram of the Pillars, but as is so often the case what seems odd at first appears less so on further examination.

Iram of the Pillars had been the key oasis that made travel across the vast Rub’ al Khali desert possible. But as more trade came and went, the water table had fallen and the spring collapsed in 190 AD, leaving the vast and unforgiving desert with no water to sustain travel. The royal family and all those who could do so fled north to Parthian Ctesiphon, for they had long been vassals of the king there. Shortly thereafter, Emperor Severus of Rome had sacked the city. The king of Iram and all his sons died in the defense of the city, with his daughter carried off to Rome in chains.

Purchased by a wealthy family, she was eventually emancipated and married into a powerful family of freedmen and Christian converts. They ran afoul of the later emperor Diocletian, who ordered the family wiped out in 305 AD. Only a single child survived the massacre, hidden by family friends and eventually smuggled to Gaul, where he raised a small family in an isolated village. In time, the village came to be part of France, but during the Great War it was totally razed; those that survived suffered terribly from dysentery and typhus. In the end, the entire town perished–save one man, Marcel Durand, who had left for Paris and later emigrated to New York City.

Before perishing in a typhoid outbreak, Durand managed to conceive a child, to the scandal of many, with one Gloria Feldman in the Bronx. Marrying George Steinman provided some stability for the child, who grew to father one child of his own before a heart attack felled him: Maryann.

A long path, yes, and one beset by the tragedies great and small which determine the fate of all peoples. But it led, inexorably, to Maryann.

 

November 17, 2010

From “The Thousand-Year Orbit” by Felicia Murphi

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“You said the external hull had suffered catastrophic damage, and couldn’t be reliably identified through long range scans due to radiointerference from the black hole,” Cassowary said softly. “Are you sure about that?”

“I have the data right here,” said Burke.

“Are you sure about that?” Cassowary cried, the speaker in her suit’s helmet crackling.

“Yes, I’m sure,” Burke said, startled. “Simmons said that the time dilation this vessel experienced during its orbit has allowed some systems to stay online, but that the damage and interference made it impossible to identify. You were there.”

“I know,” said Cassowary. “He thought it was the result of a trip through a wormhole beyond the event horizon.”

“If you know, then why ask me? Why all the shouting?” Burke said.

Cassowary sank to her knees. “I was hoping that I’d made a mistake, that I’d overlooked something. But it’s all there in the computer.”

“We ought to be concentrating on reestablishing contact with the Perihelion and finding where Grant’s team went.”

“There’s no point!” moaned Cassowary. “This is a Helios-class exploration craft, and the chronometer has been running for three thousand years. Don’t you see. Burke? It’s our ship. It’s us. We just haven’t realized it yet.”

 

November 16, 2010

From “Spectral Wildlife of Middle America” by Lona Juliette

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Not even the peyadh spirits themselves could say for sure from whence they came, in the very rare instances that they deigned to communicate with the “slow folk,” who they considered inestimable bores. This mystery didn’t much perplex the peyadh, for they lived very much in the moment and were concerned primarily with entertaining themselves. An eternity of near incorporeality and nigh invisibility to the slow folk made entertainment a must for these restless beings, usually in the form of impish pranks.

One peyadh, who would have called itself a him and called himself Squout if pressed, enjoyed tweaking the patrons of a Great Plains Greyhound bus station. When Squout had first arrived in the area in the 1920’s, he had tweaked the buses’ engines so they failed in interesting and unpredictable ways–the highlight of which had been a Tulsa-bound International Harvester bus whose engine had simply dropped out a hundred miles into its trip.

Squout had eventually come to sympathize with the mechanics who were forced to remedy his tinkering, especially once they, being a superstitious lot, began leaving him small gifts, and turned his mischief on passengers. Swapping luggage tags on similar suitcases was a favorite, as was swapping suitcase contents between cases and between buses. The mill worker, headed to Topeka, was as confused at finding a set of garters in his suitcase as one Miss Anders, bound for the shady side of St. Louis, was when discovering Oshkosh overalls among her unmentionables.

 

November 15, 2010

From “Technicals on the Bangui Road” by Ndoyo Mgumbe

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“They have taken the road to Bangassou,” said Gbaya. “And they say that Mbomou is about to fall. Then men we will face today are but the first drops in a rainstorm.”

“That is why we have been placed here,” said Boganda. He stroked the heavy DShK machine gun mounted in the bed of the army Toyota. “If they come, we will kill them.”

“You are not listening,” Gbaya said, pounding the truck’s side. “The rebels are overwhelming at every point. If Bangassou is cut off, it will soon fall–it cannot be supplied by river or air, not with petrol rationed as it is. And if they take Mbomou…can Bangui be far behind?”

Boganda continued staring down the road.

“By next week, they could be sitting on the lawn of the National Assembly in Bangui. We’d be the rebels then, and they the government. Rather than a bulwark against a flood we would be an island in a sea.”

“Are you trying to get yourself shot for treason?” Boganda growled. “If the lieutenant hears that sort of talk you’ll be up against a wall.”

“No,” said Gbaya. “I’m just wondering what the hell it is we’re doing out here, expecting to stop the rising tide of a revolution with fifteen men and a technical.”

 

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