June 4, 2011

From “The Motive” by Sara C. H. F. Meyl

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As she opened the door to her friend Logan’s apartment, Cora Edwards was in a great mood. She wasn’t usually a night person, but now, as the clock approached twelve, her emerald-green eyes shone with life.
Cora and Logan had been close friends since high school—just friends, nothing more. In the two years since she and Logan had come to Northeastern University, Cora had dropped by so often to study or just to hang out that Logan had finally given her a key.

She’d used that key just now, and as the door swung open, Cora smoothly removed it from the lock and placed it in her pocket. All the apartment’s lights were off; the only illumination was dim slivers of yellow filtering through the window blinds, probably from the parking lot below.

Logan wasn’t home; he and Cora had arranged to meet at the Midtown Café, as they often did, at 3:00 AM for a quick study session. Cora had been halfway to the café before she’d realized that her textbooks were still at Logan’s. A quick turn and ten minutes’ travel had brought her here.

Cora let the door slam shut behind her, catching a glimpse of herself in the hall mirror, with the one silver earring and light brown hair cut boyishly short, before the light streaming in from the outside hall was cut off. Not wanting to waste electricity, Cora felt her way towards the kitchen. The books should just be lying there on the table.

A shape, dark and indistinct, rose up against the blinds. Cora turned to face it, soft, dim light spilling across her head and shoulders. Cora opened her mouth, intending to say “Logan, is that you?”

Three short, staccato explosions that echoed through the apartment cut her off. Instantly, Cora felt a dreadful numbness spread throughout her body, stumbled, and collapsed. She didn’t feel any pain, just a warm, soft sense of well-being as her world went black forever.

 

May 24, 2011

From “50° S 100° W” by Jeanette C. Delgado

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The men conferred. “Says her name is Sei Iwashi, but the prints match one Joanna Suzuki from the Bay Area.”

“An alias?”

“Makes sense considering the reports we had of illicit activity. Let’s give it a go.”

Reynolds and Melick entered the room again. Sei still nervously fingered the smoldering cigarette in her hand but seemed to have composed herself. “I heard what you were saying,” she muttered. “It’s a nickname, not an alias. It’s very funny if you speak both Norwegian and Japanese.”

Reynolds glanced at Melick. “I see,” he said. “Good to know. You feeling a bit more cooperative now?”

“It’s like I said when they brought me in,” said Sei, lighting a fresh coffin nail with the butt of another. “My team hired the boat out of San Francisco. We went out to test ultra-sensitive hydrophones and a custom-made deep-sea ROV we’d developed in association with the University of Baja California Sur and Pelagica Corporation. They underwrote it, but it was an entirely independent, private venture in international waters.”

Melick made a show of taking notes on his pad, even though Reynolds could see he was only tracing a series of loopy lines. “And how exactly were you going to test your headphones and robot slave?” he asked.

“Deficiencies in your terminology aside,” said Sei, “we were going to test them by searching for the source of the Bloop.”

Reynolds put on his bad-cop face. “Are you making fun of us, Ms. Iwashi-Suzuki-whatever? Because if you are, I strongly advise you to reconsider. You are here because we have universal jurisdiction in this matter, and we can hold you almost indefinitely as a pirate if we’ve a mind to.”

Sei glared at her interrogators. “It’s NOAA’s term, not mine. They detected an underwater sound in 1997, one so loud it could be heard clearly over 5000 klicks away, with hydrophones they installed to detect Soviet submarines. They traced it to about 50° S 100° W and took to calling it the Bloop, since that’s more or less what it sounds like. It’s been heard a few times since then, but NOAA and the Navy were never interested in investigating. It was an opportunity to test our equipment and maybe make the headlines, and we took it.”

“Mmm-hmm,” Reynolds said, still in bad-cop mode. “And you expect us to believe that poking around with a microphone and a robot led to the disappearance of your entire crew?”

 

May 16, 2011

From “Recluse’s Riddle” by Harry Knut Freiheim

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“We can’t make anything of it, and maybe you can.”

The note, handwritten, was composed on a page of the Gibson family bible–blank on one side with the family name in gold leaf on the other:

To all of my children,

Read this and remember: all will be well in the end. Those who are with us and those who have already left are all threads in the same tapestry. I know that someday you will read what I have written and rejoice.

“Seems like an ordinary enough note,” Dr. Amberton said. “What did his children say? And what about ‘what he has written?'”

“That’s just the thing. He had no children. Never married, never even left the city. And his writing? Close to eight thousand pages of jumbled manuscript pages. Not a single clue.”

 

April 25, 2011

From “Pearlsea In Pieces” by Carolyn Riley

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“We don’t expect you to understand, but it was necessary to perform the test under those conditions. Anything more controlled or closer to your experience would have invalidated the point.”

“So that’s it, then?” Rich snarled. “What would have happened if I wasn’t so lucky?”

“The experiment would have been a failure, and a different subject procured.”

“And Marie? What about her?” Rich demanded. His cheeks were burning and he found it hard to see the form of his accusers through welling tears.

“Ms. Cullen was a necessary incentive. You will find her in her apartment, asleep, though we must stress that she was never more than a template.”

Rich gritted his teeth, thinking of Marie at Pearlsea Fortress, at the Rift, and on that stack of hay in the Endlands. “Bait,” he sighed. “Cheese for the mouse in the maze.”

“An inelegant metaphor, but one not without some primitive merit. Are we done here, Mr. Richmond? Or must we persist in lowering ourselves to your base questions?”

“I just have one more,” Rich said. “Why me?”

The lights of his accusers modulated, with the answer in quizzical, almost mocking tones: “Why not?”

 

April 14, 2011

From “Edenstein’s Flourish” by K. C. G. Oatesly

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“Edenstein’s finished.” Crowley said.

Behind him in the corridor, Franke jostled for a better view, blocked as the doorframe was by his partner’s bulk. “What makes you say that?”

Crowley stepped aside, and Franke tumbled into the study. Edenstein was face-down on his desk, blood spilled like ink over his papers, with a small neat hole in the glass behind him.

“Do you think I’m wrong?” said Crowley. “Shall we take him to a hospital?”

Franke glared, then approached the desk. Removing a fountain pen from a tweed pocket, he poked at the man’s body. It was stiff. “Three to twelve hours since death,” he muttered. “Locked up, alone, unarmed, no pistol, and yet, if we believe the exit wound, self-inflicted.”

“How’s that?”

“The gun had to have been inside his mouth,” said Franke.

 

March 29, 2011

From “Word Salad Comes to Deerton” by Patricia Andersen

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Heyburne rubbed the bridge of his nose with tobacco-stained fingers. “One of the conductors at the station, Sam Wireve, saw the guy first. Says he ran up in a huff, said something to him, and then ran away.”

“Huh,” Griffith said between po’boy bites. “What’d he say?”

“According to Sam, ‘the ootheca.’ His words, not mine.”

“The hell’s that supposed to mean?

“It gets better,” Heyburne continued, fingers still pressing and eyes closed. “Ed Sporgene in the 7/11 says he saw the same thing: old guy, worn-out clothes, ran in and said something to him before making a quick exit.”

“Same thing?”

“Ed claims the guy said ‘he serves newsprint.'”

 

March 21, 2011

From “Nitypt Numbers” by Y. T. McClayne

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Perfect numbers–that is, positive integers that are the sum of their proper positive divisors–had fascinated mathematicians since the days of the great Greek mathematician Nicomachus. Only four were known in those days, and relatively few have been uncovered since, none of them odd–something certain figures consider an impossibility.

In 1456, Abd al-Nitypt, an astronomer in the court of Mehmed II at Constantinople, discovered and proved the existence of a fifth perfect number, 33,550,336. He further set forth a complex formula for identifying further perfect numbers, a refinement of Euclid’s formula, and identified a list of values for n which he claimed would, when applied to his formula, reveal all odd perfect numbers between 0 and 10^1500.

This list, the Nitypt Numbers, was eventually lost in the quagmire of the Ottoman archives. They, alongside Fermat’s Last Theorem, were long regarded as some of the most tantalizing mysteries in mathematics.

And Harvery was staring at a copy in al-Nitypt’s own flowing calligraphy.

 

February 20, 2011

From “The Baroness in Winter” by Altos Wexan

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This post is part of the February Blog Chain at Absolute Write. This month’s challenge is to describe your antagonist in 50 words or less and then to answer the question “what would you say to your antagonist if you met them in real life” in 100 words or less.

Estranged and partially disinherited for her political views, industrial scion Allison Durant is enormously ambitious with far-ranging designs to ascend in political, social, and economic circles. Her vivaciousness and intelligence conceal the fact that she’s willing to betray people and principles to further herself, content to rationalize after the fact.

“Do the industrialists like my brother and Mr. Berkley still bribe citizens like yourself to ignore their dirty work, or is it just part of your tax refund by his point?” said Allison.

“Being apathetic’s damn hard work,” I said. “Take it seriously. If you’re hot and bothered about it, your trust-funded scions of industry can make a better offer.”

“Are you trying to goad me?” Allison said. “Get me to cause a scene? If so, you’re badly out of practice at provoking people. I hear more offensive tripe from my brother whenever we meet; would you like some tips?”

Check out this month’s other bloggers, all of whom have posted or will post their own responses:
Proach (direct link to the relevant post)
Steam&Ink (direct link to the relevant post)
AuburnAssassin (direct link to the relevant post)
Dolores Haze (direct link to the relevant post)
xcomplex (direct link to the relevant post)
LadyMage (direct link to the relevant post)
aimeelain (direct link to the relevant post)
jonbon.benjamin (direct link to the relevant post)
Ralph Pines (direct link to the relevant post)
Forbidden Snowflake (direct link to the relevant post)
knotane (direct link to the relevant post)
JerseyGirl1962 (direct link to the relevant post)
ElizaFaith13 (direct link to the relevant post)
yoghurtelf (direct link to the relevant post)
Amanda McDonald (direct link to the relevant post)
FranYoakumVeal (direct link to the relevant post)

 

January 27, 2011

From “Huron Secrets” by Ann A. Muncie

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Carronce took the entire complement of the ferry hostage. A veteran of the war, he’d come home laden with booty from foreign battlefields–machine pistols, rifles, and even a precision scope–that put him far and away above the local Cheboygan County police armed with surplus revolvers. By the time the call went out into the surrounding countryside for able-bodied men willing to lend their own firepower, the ferry had moved too far offshore to be hit.

Forcing the crew to operate the radio for him, Carronce demanded that his seized assets be restored and that his wife and child be tracked down and reunited with him “at taxpayer expense.” The designated negotiator, trying to stall for time as proper boats and equipment were rounded up for a rescue, asked why Carronce was so adamant about the last point.

“I served my country for five years and killed ten men for it. It’s the least she can do.” was his reply. It was the last communication anyone would ever have with the ferry.

Five hours later, a Coast Guard launch approached the ferry under cover of darkness to attempt a boarding. The maneuver was botched, though, and Carronce opened fire even as he lowered the ferry’s car ramps, rapidly swamping the craft. A few bedraggled survivors were hauled out of the water, but the rest slipped beneath the oily-smooth Huron waters with their captor.

 

January 21, 2011

From “Lady Milvy and the Riddle of the Garden” by Katrina P. Sunderlund

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Lady Milvy vanced with flowers crowned
And trighted through the dale
No harlop nor gumsy spilky sound
Did johten with a wail

And when to a punzley lock she came
No lyr was she to nace
She slorried two times and with no blame
Did she holvoo that place

Harvard lowered the paper and glanced at his tired and broken comrades, caked with the grime of a fortnight’s march through garden and stream.

“That’s supposed to set us free?”

 

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