September 27, 2011

From “A Series of Surreal Mammals” by Levi Paris Schroeder

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Quantum Marmoset
Mustempus peregrinationis

This relative of the common marmoset lives its life in a nonlinear fashion. To the observer they appear to fade in and out at random intervals during their 8-10 year lifespan, but from the perspective of the marmoset it is living its life in a straight line with surroundings that randomly jump about. Exceedingly rare, as the likelihood of any two marmosets of breeding age in the same area at the same time is vanishingly small.

“Natives in Brazil’s Rio Grande do Norte state will try and lasso a quantum marmoset when they find one. If done correctly, they will be taken with during the next nonlinear tree swing. Tradition holds that if the passenger goes back in time and prevents themselves from lassoing the marmoset, the universe will cease to exist.” – Dr. Phineas Phable

Hammer’s Space Wallaby
Malleuspatium desultor

Named after Hammer’s Space, the ranch where it was discovered in Australia’s Northern Territories, the Hammer’s Space wallaby differs from ordinary wallabies in that its pouch has infinite capacity through a link to an interdimensional space. The wallaby will often store items that strike its fancy in its infinite pouch, and will throw them at pursuers or competing wallabies. Joeys enter the pouch from the interdimensional space; the exact method by which the wallabies reproduce is unknown but of extreme interest to particle physicists.

“The pouch is too small to fit a human, but settlers have been known to go ‘wallaby fishing’ by catching a Hammer’s Space wallaby and pulling items from its pouch; occasionally valuable items like gold and jewels are found. One witness describes a Hammer’s Space wallaby evading pursuers by throwing a wooden mallet, an airplane propeller, the left wheel of a 1930 Holden sedan, and a human tibia at them.” – Dr. Phineas Phable

Sigh Bat
Vespertilio suspiransugere

The sigh bat is related to the vampire bat, but unlike its more famous relative it subsists on the sighs of the brokenhearted rather than blood. It has evolved a number of abilities that allow it to generate brokenhearted sighs in generally happy times, from mimicking human voices and penmanship to excreting a compound that resembles lipstick that they smear on collars and napkins.

“If for all your indiscretions
a sigh bat ye’ve blamed
Beware that thru ye inhibitions
a sigh bat ye’ve not gain’d.” – Traditional

 

September 26, 2011

From “The Loading Dock Detective” by Aimee Courtniee Everett

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The easy chumminess of the Web 2.0 social media Millenial me generation world had utterly spoiled Blake. She was used to learning the bare minimum of personal information about someone, looking them up online, and learning everything from their taste in music to their relationship status to shoe size.

That’s why Renny (or was it Rennie?) in the loading dock was such a pain.

Blake saw him every few days when they brought in a new shipment. They chatted, though it was mostly Blake talking and trying not to get caught admiring the finer parts of Renny (René?)’s anatomy. Lad was chiseled.

His first name and the fact that he was a student at SMU should have been enough, but to Blake’s frustration Renny (Ranie?) seemed to be the only person in the world without a Facebook profile, a Twitter feed, or even a MySpace. No iteration of his name came up with any (male) hits in the campus directory, and Blake was too shy (or was that intimidated? God, those abs) to ask him directly. She even tried pumping the accounts receivable manager for information only to have the thing blow up in her face.

 

September 25, 2011

From “Fall of the City of Brass” by Carlos Juvenal Schmidt

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Estaban appeared in the subtle way people appear in dreams: one moment he wasn’t there, had never been there, could never be there.

The next, he was and had always been.

“You can’t fool me, Esteban,” Jan whispered, fighting whatever sorcerous glamor suffused the area. “I know what will happen if I shatter the crystal, if I read the spell.”

“Yes, you do.” His hands were on her shoulders now, a gentle caress. “You’ll have the power that you’ve always dreamed of, from your first days in that Latónian gutter to your appearance at court mere weeks ago. The power to reshape the world, to remake it in your own image–a more compassionate, more just image.”

Even as the rational part of her mind cried out that Esteban was employing his most powerful sorcery, Jan felt her instincts move in the opposite direction. Esteban was a snake, a traitor…but even treacherous serpents could be right once in a while.

 

September 24, 2011

From “The Sualize Seven” by Marcian DuClare

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The soldiers had merely gone home for a few hours–they were all conscripts from the village of Sualize in the Ardennes, which was only a short distance from the front lines. Not only that, they had left the line on November 13, two days after the armistice which had ended the shooting war.

Nevertheless, the French Army arrested each of the seven men as soon as they could be tracked down, and they were sentenced to execution by firing squad by a military tribunal. The order was personally countersigned by Marshal Foch. With mutinies throughout the German armed forces, and unrest and agitation throughout the soldier, sailors, and workers of the Continent, the marshal probably hoped to forestall any similar actions by his own troops with a firm show of force.

The action backfired. By November 20, demonstrations had been organized in Paris and provincial centers demanding the release of the “Sualize Seven.” Their cause became fashionable among French and British socialists, especially in the face of the continuing compromises and disappointments coming out of Versailles. For a time, it looked like the men might be spared, but events in Russia, Hungary, and elsewhere eventually overtook the demonstrators.

With events of world-changing importance afoot all over the globe, interest in the Seven waned. Eventually, three men were picked at random as “ringleaders” and executed, with the other four sentences to long prison terms. Two of them were imprisoned long enough to see the swastika flying over their prison yards in 1940.

 

September 23, 2011

From “Interview with a Retired Game Designer” by Paul Y. Declan

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We called ourselves ‘Supprimerlesens,’ which was a bit of an in-joke. Pierre, the lead developer, liked to say that video games subsumed and deleted the senses, so we slapped together the French phrase ‘supprimer le sens’ with no spaces.

It was a very innovative game, and a special processor in the arcade board allowed it to do amazing things with vector graphics…scaling and motion unlike anything else at the time, and more vectors on the screen at once than even dedicated vector systems. We combined it with a series of sophisticated, high-resolution sprites that formed the title, backgrounds, and some gameplay elements. It was all very abstract and geometrical, which is why we called it ‘Pythagoras.’

Of course we were our own testers at first. Everything was going well, and we had a working mocked-up arcade cabinet with schematics for mass-production and several interested arcade companies. Then we brought in outside testers from a local university. One of them had a grand mal epileptic seizure after just a few moments of gameplay. All those flashing lights and spinning colors…

The testers who weren’t susceptible to seizures loved the game, so we modified it and removed the backgrounds. We thought that was enough, but within a month the testers began suffering from a variety of neurological side-effects. Amnesia, insomnia, nightmares, night terrors…even a suicide. That should have been the end of things, but the French DGSE signals intelligence unit learned of this and bought us out. We produced a limited run of 10-12 machines, which were each modified by the DGSE before being distributed to ‘test markets’ in the United States.

Washington State, Maine, Montana, the upper peninsula of Michigan…we were told that the DGSE was going to iron out the bugs while using the game cabinets as dead drops for field agents. We beleived them, or told ourselves that we did…we were young, and ambitious, remember. The first murder-suicides put an end to all that.

 

September 22, 2011

From “The Other Mr. Hangpa” by Kevin C. Sadowsky

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“It’s not the same book. Not even close.” Maya said. “What were you thinking?”

“It was awful,” Arthur blurted. “They brought it to me…a great book, they said, a bestseller by a Thai author just waiting for an international audience. But the book was terrible. Half of it was untranslatable, laced with popular idiom and depending on cultural factors for relevance…something American readers wouldn’t understand!”

“That’s no reason to rewrite Mr. Hangpa’s book.”

“It’s every reason,” Arthur snarled. “I never could get published, you know. Never could make it or get anyone interested. But with that book…someone else’s name, the skeleton of their plot…”

 

September 21, 2011

From “The Inland Manifest” by Taylor A. Brindee

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“T. T. Viol,” Max read. “1780.”

“Sounds like an Italian name or something,” Carlson said. “You sure the parchment’s authentic to the Revolutionary War?”

“Near as I can tell,” Max said. “I’d have to cut it up to be sure.”

“Can you make out anything else?”

Max squinted and moved the paper around more under the ultraviolet light. “There’s a list of some kind. I see the phrase ‘port of’ here, and I think this is ‘rope’ or ‘barrel.'”

“Ship’s manifest,” Carlson said. “Signed by the captain or quartermaster.”

“Could be,” Max allowed, “but if what Nesbith told you was true, that trunk has been in her family for generations. And I’m sure you know that in 1780 this was all wilderness, with no port for a hundred miles in any direction!”

 

September 20, 2011

From “Bitter Tannen” by Melodie P. Phelps

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It’s safe to say nobody cared much for Edward “Bitter” Tannen. When he’d first come aboard at Delacroix & Masterson the office wags had taken to calling him “Biff” after the character from “Back to the Future.” But it soon emerged that this Tannen was anything but the swaggering, aggressive fictional character. He was a morose man, face always lined in worry rather than age, and any conversation with him tended to turn quickly to recrimination–against unnamed persecutors, Tannen’s ex-wife, his grown daughter, Canadian society at large, and so on.

So to his back he was “Bitter” Tannen. He’d have been fired long ago if he hadn’t been, in addition to all that, a stellar researcher, brief writer, clerk, and all-around workaholic. Tannen took on jobs that people with an eye on making partner wouldn’t, and he did them well. That was enough for Mme. Delacroix and Mr. Masterson to overlook any complaints about his behavior in the office. He was, in the words of a co-worker, a cog who needed twice the grease for three times the work.

When he died at his desk late last July, no one noticed until a brief wasn’t handed to the right person nearly two days later.

 

September 19, 2011

From “The Pseudo-Hoc” by Harold H. Harrow

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Arthur “Hoc” Hocker Jr. was arrested for embezzlement on June 19. His gambling debts were such that he didn’t have the money to post bail, and the arrest came at the tail end of a long, slow slide from grace that had ultimately driven away any friends or relatives that could have helped him out. Even the local bail bondsmen refused, as several had been clients of Hoc’s accounting firm and therefore defrauded.

That much is clear: Hoc, undone, rotted in the city lockup until his trial. CCTV recordings, affidavits from attending officers, and interviews with myriad cellmates confirm this beyond a shadow of a doubt.

What, then, are we to make of Hoc appearing at his ex-wife’s house on June 21? Or his partner’s summer cottage the next day? In all, police counted seventeen appearances of Hoc in the outside world while he was incarcerated. Witnesses attest to this, but more concrete proof is offered in the form of voicemails (Hoc made no phone calls from prison) camera footage (Hoc’s wife lived in a gated and monitored community) and, most convincingly, fingerprints. The latter were found at the partner’s summer house, where Hoc had never been as a free man.

Strangest of all, witnesses report that Hoc explicitly apologized for his behavior to the people that he had harmed the most, and that he urged them to go on with their lives without regard for him or his fate. Indeed, at his trial Hoc expressed just such a sentiment, and bemoaned the lost opportunity to deliver it. He was, in point of fact, sentenced without ever leaving jail save trips to the courtroom.

But what, then, are we to make of that strange psuedo-Hoc?

 

September 18, 2011

From “A Galician Jabberwock” by M. D. McDaniels

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“Miguel Villaponte is one of the most important authors that nobody knows about,” said Meghan. “His inventiveness and facility for the whimsical and the bizarre makes him easily the equal of Carrol, Borges, or any number of other literary luminaries.”

Danielle cast a wary glance over the disheveled pile of manuscripts on her sister’s desk. “So what’s the problem? Have your college put out a book of his stuff.”

“Why do you think he’s still so obscure?” Meghan barked. “It’s not just because people are lazy. Villaponte wrote in Galician, a language related to Portuguese, and it’s never been translated into English.”

“So translate it. That’s what all this is for, isn’t it?” Danielle thrust a finger at the degrees, honors and other shingles decorating the study wall.

“That’s not the only problem,” Meghan sighed. “A lot of Villaponte’s work is laced with nonce–er, with nonsense–words. How do you translate something like pageretal that has no meaning in Galacian or any other language? Worse, his nonsense words follow Galacian syntax precisely and lend a certain cadence to the language–in addition to being used, modified, references, and reinvented throughout the text!”

Danielle shrugged. “Make up your own nonsense.”

“I can’t just make up my own words–I need to settle on something that’s nonsense but fits the text, in English. If I do it wrong, the whole translation comes tumbling down like a house of cards.” Meghan cradled her head in her hands. “Did you understand any of that?”

“‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves / Did gyre and gimble in the wabe,” Danielle said. “Does that answer your question?”

 

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