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.

 

November 24, 2011

From “Ruse of the Colonized” by P. K. M. McGrey

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You see, Britain and France both claim the totality of the area, and further claims had been advanced by Germany, Italy, and other countries late to the colonization game. King Xmube, you see, was no fool; he negotiated the treaty in front of representatives of every interested nation, declining to reveal his choice until the end. Furthermore, he added that it was to be renegotiated every year before agreeing to sign.

Xmube had the treaty text translated by a missionary, and signed the mineral rights in the Mdogo Triangle to Britain, the seaport and trade rights to the French, and the protectorate status jointly to the Germans and Italians. It was a morass, a mess, and Xmube took great delight in the confusion it caused.

Eventually, of course, the Europeans colluded with one another to settle their affairs and put Xmube out of the picture courtesy of an ambitious nephew. But his legacy was such fierce wrangling over such a tiny area that even today no one is sure who owns the Triangle and Xmube’s people live much as they always have–for now.

 

November 20, 2011

From “Gregg’s Hubris” by Rosetta May Dobson

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The makeshift cross was nailed home with a resounding certainty. Ferris stood back, mallet in hand. “Would anyone like to say a few words?” he said softly.

“May Gregg Thurliss rot in his grave and twice as fast in Hell,” Nancy said. She spat tobacco juice over the freshly turned earth. “It was his hubris that led us out here to die on the frontier.”

“Nancy, that’s not-”

“May he wander these hills as a specter for seventy times seventy days longer than he led us,” Corbin growled, interrupting. “May the injuns dig him up and use his bones to line their sewer pits.”

“I really think-”

“May his name be an insult for generations to come in English and injun…” Currie began.

“I meant something from the Good Book,” Ferris cried. “Something like you’d hear in a church.”

 

November 18, 2011

From “The Tale of Nfashō in the Illustrious North” by Nokin Kobayashi, translated and adapted by Irene York

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In the region of the Illustrious North, where the rule of the Son of Heaven was not yet universally acknowledged, many arrived seeking to gain favor with the imperial court through the subjugation of rebels and barbarians.

One such traveler was Nfashō, a man of modest birth who had once enjoyed a position of considerable influence thanks to his silver tongue and gift for unabashed toadying. A change in daimyo had gone ill for him; the nephew of the deceased lord was a coarse man with no need for flattering courtiers.

In order to make a name for himself and to provide another comfortable position with another daimyo–or perhaps even the Son of Heaven himself–Nfashō spent his savings to outfit an expedition to the Illustrious North. He hoped that by hiring skillful yet disgraced men at arms, he could reap glory for himself against the barbarians with little cost.

He was wrong.

 

November 13, 2011

From “Fragment 127: The Buried Secret” by Abd al-Nitypt

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The Caliph, further, cautioned me thus: “I have always known you to be a good man, Abu Abd, wise and reverent to Allāh. I will therefore interpret your words in that context, and send you from here to recover your wits. However, should you ever speak of this in my presence again, or should I learn that you have mentioned it to another living soul, I shall be forced to intervene.”

I was thus confronted with a dilemma: the information that I had uncovered through my research was such great importance that I could not consign it to the flames of memory and time. But to broach the topic again, even to reveal it to my heirs, was to invite the appearance of apostasy and a terrible retribution upon myself and my family. I had to record the information in such a way that it could not be traced to me, and yet would be of use to some future scholar.

My solution was to gather together a group of sages and learned men with whom I often discussed astronomy, and put to them the following question: “How can one write a hymn of praise to Allāh such that it will survive and be readable in ten thousand years’ time?”

One suggested I carve it in a stone. “But what if the carving is worn off by sand or water?” I replied. “And how do we know the men ten thousand years hence will be able to read our script?”

A second recommended that I write the message in pictograms and bury it in the furthest reaches of the dry and desolate Rub’ al Khali, with its location inscribed, also in pictograms, in secret places throughout the Caliphate. My response: “But an item buried may be exposed or moved by the shifting of wind and sand, and pictograms are simple enough to be misunderstood and the information thereby lost.

The third sage suggested that I encode the message in an oral legend, an adventure story, which in its structure would include both the message and the key to decoding it. “But,” said I, “the tongues of men are easily corrupted. How are we to know that the story will endure as written when spoken by one man, let alone generations?”

Finally, one of the sages spoke to me thus: “It seems that we can devise no solution that will satisfy you, Abu Abd. Will you tell us your own solution?” I had been listening carefully and within moments proposed my own plan, which all present applauded as remarkably prescient.

Only time will tell if they are correct.

 

November 4, 2011

“Tunguska Butterfly Back Cover Blurb” by Altos Wexan

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This post is part of the November 2011 Blog Chain at Absolute Write. This month’s challenge is a back cover blurb from a book you have written or would like to write.

The early 1980’s: the depths of the Cold War. The Soviet Union has never been stronger.

Yet there are cracks in its monolithic facade in the form of a group of young anti-nuclear activists. Roman Korovin: the brains, a dedicated revolutionary with very personal reasons for acting against the “demon atom.” Mirya Meloa: the beauty, a deadly fighter and skilled propagandist inflamed with passion for the cause. Vasily Albanov: the brawn, and ex-KGB forger with a penchant for bad jokes. Together, they seek to create a Soviet utopia free of nuclear power…through sabotage.

But when a mission goes awry the three find the full resources of the Soviet state arrayed against them, from an aging despotic general secretary to a ruthlessly efficient KGB major. When one of the revolutionaries inexplicably goes wild and begins cutting a bloody path to the heart of the regime’s terrible secrets, the activists are caught up in an unfolding plot which threatens not only the survival of their country but the future of the human race. The stage is set for a confrontation that will shake the state to its foundations.

“Tunguska Butterfly” is a tale of the Weird East, mixing a dash of real history with intrigue and science fiction in an adventure that stretches from the dreary heart of the USSR to the poisoned steppes of Central Asia.

Check out this month’s other bloggers, all of whom have posted or will post their own responses:
Ralph Pines
MysteryRiter
AuburnAssassin
Jarrah Dale
SinisterCola
dolores haze
pyrosama
Alynza
anarchicq
writingismypassion
CScottMorris

 

November 2, 2011

From “Island of Souls” by Joe Kull

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“That’s right. This peninsula–this island–was designed as a massive conductor of spirit energy. It attracts, traps, harnesses. Murder births the power, makes it grow, taints living souls to spread death and destruction.” The Cajun tightened the noose around his own neck.

“But why?” Vincent cried. His words should have been drowned out by the storm, but somehow they carried. “What could you possibly hope to gain?”

“Immortality,” the Cajun said. “That was the plan, at least at first. But things have reached a tipping point, now. The massacre, the bombings, the war…it was too much. The ritual, if performed now, would result in soulstorm, in annihilation! The only hope is to join the flow and hope to direct it.”

“You’re insane!” Schiller cried from below. He tried to train his machine pistol on the Cajun, but the church’s architecture prevented a clean shot.

“Remain among the living much longer and you’ll see exactly what I mean,” the Cajun cackled. “Only the act of self-sacrifice will-”

He was cut short. Two massive, red stains were blossoming out on his white shirt; the Cajun barely had time to regard them with shock before plummeting. Caught in the noose, he swung freely in the church atrium.

Cobh appeared behind him, revolver in hand. “…deliver the power to one who can use it,” he finished.

 

November 1, 2011

From “Bilbao Toms” by Enrique G. Ramirez

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Toms had been a trade-union organizer in Luton when the war broke out, and he chartered the first ship to Spain he could find once news reached him: a tramp steamer from Southampton to Bilbao. On arrival, he found that the advancing Nationalists had cut Bilbao and the Basque Country off from the rest of the Spanish Republic. Denied the ability to join up with the International Brigades, Toms fought and organized as best he could.

As a trained surveyor and architect, Toms was given a position building the Iron Ring–fortifications intended to protect Bilbao from Nationalist assault until Republican troops could break through and link up with the isolated Basque Country. He did this with gusto, developing the laborers under his leadership into an effective and politically active unit known as “los topos de Tomás”–Toms’ Moles.

The local Republican commanders eventually became unsure of Iron Ring architect Alejandro Goicoechea’s loyalty. They therefore contacted Toms and had his men construct a bunker separate from the rest of the fortifications, into which the precious metal holdings of the local Bank of Spain and other valuables were placed to protect them from bombardment.

When, as feared, Goicoechea defected to the Nationalists with the complete blueprints of the fortifications, Toms and his men sealed their vault with explosives. None of them survived the retreat from Bilbao or disastrous Battle of Santander.

The bunker? It remains sealed until today, its exact location a mystery taken to Toms’ grave.

Or is it?

 

October 26, 2011

From “The Earl’s Anarchy” by Frederic S. Gras

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During Stephen’s Anarchy, the power of the Earl grew tremendously. It happened that the Second Earl, who had ruled under King Henry, died shortly after Stephen’s accession.

The Third Earl was the first who was “born to the purple,” as it were, as his great-grandfather the First Earl had been elevated by William the Conqueror and his grandfather the Second Earl had known early years of hardship in Normandy before the Conquest.

The Third Earl, though, had long been the favored and only scion of the line, and doted upon by relatives after the early and consumptive death of his father, who would have been the Third Earl had he lived. When he acceded in 1137, his personal popularity among his vassals and serfs was high.

That soon changes as the Third Earl revealed himself to be of a vainglorious temperament, obsessed with the idea of his divine right to rule and the absolute autocracy such right provided him over vassals. Ordinarily such a noble would have had their power swiftly checked by the Crown, but Stephen was a weak ruler and distracted by war and intrigue.

By 1153, the situation was such that the earldom had begun to resemble a personal cult in the Eastern mold, with everything that was “of the Earl” celebrated in word and song and anything deemed “not of the Earl” scorned and attacked.

 

October 22, 2011

From “The Fededis Plan” by Valeria Z. Dorsey

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Federal Electric Distribution had no ties to the government; its founder C. Earl Chapterhouse simply felt the name bespoke a certain strength and reliability. It’s no coincidence that as public trust in government bottomed out during the 1960’s and 1970’s, the company was renamed Fededis after the acronym that appeared on its service trucks.

In time, it became a virtual monopoly in the eastern half of the state, gathering up the rural districts and smaller towns that Detroit Edison evinced little interest in. By the time of Fededis’ spectacular collapse and acquisition by DTE in 1981, it had electrified nearly two thirds of the state’s land area–or at least taken over management of the grids there. Its collapse, coming on the heels of summer brownouts and a general malaise on Wall Street, didn’t attract much notice.

It should have. Fededis has come within a whisker’s breadth of complete control over the national power infrastructure, a complete nationwide blackout, or–most chillingly–both.

 

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