December 23, 2010

From “Gets Mas Than” by Darius Cantu

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Jorge’s note, written in an angry hand and a combination of his native Spanish and English, accused Emile of stealing their parents’ affections, possessions, and just about everything else it was possible for one sibling to steal from another. Jorge insisted that his status as an adoptee, compared to Emile being natural born, was the dark secret behind why the younger brother always “gets mas than” the elder.

Emile wrote a rebuttal in a fine flowing hand, but it was returned unopened–whether because Jorge had refused to accept it or because he no longer lived at that address was never clear. Emile displayed the letter in his home, so that Jorge would see it if he ever deigned to return. Whether the letter–which was magnanimous and understanding to the point of being syrupy–was the actual one that had been mailed or a later invention no one who saw it could say.

When Jorge returned, though, it was through the rear window.

 

December 13, 2010

From “Echoes of Al-Qadmuto” by Gregory T. Danielsson

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“I served at Al-Qadmuto and Al-Babiels,” said Garlick. The lingering scars of tropical disease caused his voice to grow more strained and gravelly the longer he spoke.

“Were…were those on the Western Front?” Samuel said.

Garlick laughed until the bandages across his chest constricted the sound into a painful rattle. “What do they teach you children in school these days? Al-Qadmuto is in Transjordan and Al-Babiels is in Iraq.”

“I’m sorry,” Samuel said. He finished changing the bandages on Garlick’s left leg and moved onto his right. “I wasn’t alive during the war, and we only learned about the Western Front in school.”

“That’s because we won the war there,” Garlick said. “Everywhere else was more or less a miserable failure or sideshow. My unit probed against the Turks in Transjordan–with the way people talk these days, it’s a wonder anyone remembers that we ever fought the Turks alongside the Germans–and got our arses handed to us. Fell back to Al-Babiels and the rutting Turks blasted us with mustard gas until we surrendered. They’d gotten it parcel post from their friends in Berlin.”

“If you surrendered,” Samuel said, “how did you defeat the enemy?”

Garlick gave another dry rattling laugh. “Defeat? We were the ones defeated, lad. My boys and I spent the rest of the war in a prison camp, and our boys didn’t get so much as a spoonful of victory on that front until Allenby.”

 

December 10, 2010

From “The Acrobatic Warmacks” by Sasha Belinda Cruz

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“The problem,” Pilsudski said, chomping on his cigar, “is that people don’t come for the tumbling.”

“You’ve heard the cheering during our act,” Warmack said. “Don’t try and tell me that’s not real.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” Pilsudski continued. “The tumbling’s part of the experience. But people don’t come to the circus for highwire acts anymore. They come for elephants, lions, clowns, and the sideshow. That’s what they remember, and that’s what they ask for by name. Not the tumblers. You hear cheers? Yeah. Listen during the clowns or the critters and tell me which is louder.”

“What are you saying?”

Cigar smoke wreathed Pilsudski’s features. “I’m saying that, if you and your troupe want to continue on, I expect things to be jazzed up. The weakest link breaks the chain, you know. You’ve got my leave to try some new angles as you will, but if things stay as they are…next dry spell, you’re out of here with all the other tumblers and I use the money to get another elephant.”

 

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.

 

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 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 13, 2010

From “Outside the World Beneath” by Sandra Cooke Jameson

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Over time, as their panic faded, the lost sparrows of Clan Oesoedd began to understand that they had been strangely blessed. Although sealed into the home of the giant hawks by the mysterious solid air with no hope of escape, they came to realize that it was a land of abundance.

The great striders moved in large numbers but also dropped vast amounts of food, indifferently leaving it as they strode off to be devoured by the giant hawks. They, unlike the striders in the World Beneath, never sought to harm the Oesoedd–the only danger was their innate clumsiness. Some even fed the sparrows, and all their leavings were carried away by slow, whining strider-piloted behemoths.

Echyd busied himself exploring the vast spaces and found a number of trees. Some were mock trees of the kind old Yn had once spoken of, but others were real and suitable for nesting. Chwi and Awr put a nest together as an experiment, to see whether the great striders would react violently as they sometimes did. Filled with unfertilized eggs, the nest lay undisturbed, and Chwi was granted permission to bring forth a brood.

Perhaps the greatest benefit Echyd and the Oesoedd sparrows came to recognize was the lack of llew, predators. The giant hawks came and went, devouring striders and regurgitating them for some unseen young, but seemed to take no notice of tiny sparrows, and certainly did not hunt them as the llew hawks did in the World Beneath. Dai and Ac even took to watching the hawks’ inscrutable movements, claiming that it inspired them. And there were no llew cats or llew dogs of any kind, save the very occasional one in a cage–a situation Echyd found devastatingly funny, given Yn’s tales of sparrows held captive by the striders in such cages.

 

November 6, 2010

From “Schuylkill News and Convenience” by Janet Avery Joliet

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The worst part wasn’t that people were always in a hurry and often in a bad mood. Janelle was used to that; such was the tempo of modern life when the outside world had finally caught up to what had long been the airport norm.

No, the worst part was people’s tendency to select an item, pay for it, and then leave it on the counter.

Janelle’s superiors at Schuylkill News and Convenience were very clear on one point: save on one of her 15’s or lunch, there was no leaving the store, no exploring Metro Airport.. So there was never any chance of reuniting an item with its departed owner, who had probably long since departed for another continent. Be it water bottle, Coke, cell phone power cord, or James Patterson page-turner, it would sit forlornly behind the counter for two days before being released for resale.

Sometimes the person would come back, often livid with recrimination. “Why didn’t you tell me I left my water bottle here? I paid $2.50 for it!”

“They don’t let me leave the store,” Janelle would reply. People would usually mistake her honesty for sass.

 

October 28, 2010

From “Mercenary’s Folly” by Cull Featherton

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Sarcosi examined the equipment, lined up and labeled on a table. “Amateurish. You would think that someone with the audacity to steal from me would be better armed and trained.”

“Tell us, for the class, what it is that makes this man an amateur,” Hodgkin said. “Enlighten them while showing that you are not to be trifled with.”

Sarcosi hefted the mercenary’s pistol, a Desert Eagle. “Take this sidearm. A ridiculous toy, nearly three kilograms heavy when fully loaded. It is loud, it cannot be concealed properly, and cannot be drawn quickly. Won’t take a proper suppressor. Fires heavy, bulky rifle ammunition.”

The students nodded murmuring among themselves.

“Quite right,” Hodgkin said. “This man has forgotten our maxim: the right tool for the right job. A pistol should be small, easily concealed, and used as a backup weapon or close-in wetwork tool only. Anything else ought to be done with a proper rifle from a distance.”

“This man has evidently seen too many Hollywood movies, where men carry this weapon because it looks impressive,” Sarcosi added. “The appearance of a weapon is irrelevent. Anti-material rifles are ugly to a one but nothing is better suited to taking out a target in an armored and bombproof limousine. Furthermore, by allowing himself to be influenced by fantasy, this man has revealed himself to be an amateur who only deludes himself into thinking he’s a professional.”

“You heard the man,” Hodgkin said to the students. “Release this amateur into the live-fire range.”

 

October 20, 2010

From “Capric Conundrum” by P. Lacy Holdermann

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Political movements in Deerton had a way of being triggered by the oddest occurrences. There was the time Angus McPherson took his S-10 through the Deerton Wash & Wax without removing his rod and tackle from the bed, for example. The gear had been plucked out by the washer arm and tangled in it, so the next three cars through the wash were scratched and pummeled by whirling hooks and sticks. The Wash & Wax’s owner refused to pay damages, and her husband was the mayor; before long the entire administration was swept out of office.

The turmoil of ’05 began when a ram escaped from Casey Winterburn’s goat farm on US 313 and made its way into the Mountaintop and Pinewood apartment complexes. Both were cul-de-sacs surrounded by drainage ditches, leaving the animal with no way out, and were peopled by commuter students from Osborn University. Most of the students were out-of-staters or from one of the big east state cities–not the sort to take meeting a ram in social settings well.

At the time, Tecumseh County Animal Control was run by Mayor Routon’s brother-in-law. They received dozens of calls from Mountaintop and Pinewood, some from panicked big-city folk who’d barricaded themselves inside, but took their sweet time responding. TCAC claimed overwork at the time; scuttlebutt later had it that the truck was being used to move furniture between houses and wasn’t dispatched until that task was done. Even then, the situation was handled in a way guaranteed to provoke the complex residents: rather than using a tranquilizer (which would have cost $10 per shot), the TCAC used a .22 caliber rifle and took three shots to down the ram. Residents emerging afterward found bullet marks in the wood exteriors of their buildings.

The mayor refused to force TCAC to issue an apology, despite the fact that Casey Winterburn had made the rounds the next day doing just that. And the stage was set for confrontation.

 

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