August 14, 2013

From “The Exiled, Impotent, Quickdraw Revolutionary” by Edvard Mamigonyan

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Baris Kolar is not from the general setting area but rather the nearby and contextual land of Noiun (noy-ooh-n), which for many years suffered under the reign of tyrannical bishop-princes. The Kolars were a relatively well-to-do family in Viesot, and Baris’s older brother was expected to inherit their property while Baris was trained as a priest. Unfortunately, the brother was a member of a banned society that attempted to kill the bishop-prince, and as a result he was executed and the family’s property confiscated.

Radicalized, Baris was expelled from the seminary for advocating revolution (though he got a good education out of it beforehand) and was forced into exile after becoming associated with the same rebels. It was during his exile and subsequent work as a mercenary to raise funds for Noiun revolutionaries that he met the other characters back in the day. Eventually he returned to Viesot with his earnings and new skills and paid a small but vital role in the overthrow and execution of he last of the Noiun bishop-princes. The newly-proclaimed Republic of Noiun occupied most of his time over the next decades; Baris served in the government in mostly behind-the-scenes roles, not one of the rulers but at the same time not a nobody either.

The new rulers wound up no less tyrannical than the old, though, and after his faction lost a power struggle Baris was forced into exile once again, and most of his remaining friends and allies were executed or forced to flee abroad. Penniless and regarded with suspicion by those who know his revolutionary past–Duniya is not hospitable to such ideas–Baris has been forced to rejoin his old allies from his first exile. He hopes one day to return triumphantly to Noiun, but for now is content to stay alive.

As with most revolutionaries, Baris has a tale or two to tell, and he does so at length, reminiscing about the glory days of his revolutionary struggle or all the young woman from Viesot for whom power was an aphrodisiac. However, age has rendered him completely impotent, a detail that he is desperate to hide from his companions, and he fears that he may run into children he sired and abandoned during his first exile.

His revolutionary past and long exile coupled with his rejection of traditional Noiun religion and societal norms mean that he is excellent at subterfuge and persuasion and has embraced the technology of firearms. As such, he plays like a rogue/ranger, with emphasis on concealment, diplomacy, and ranged combat with pistols.

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August 13, 2013

From “The Events of September 18, 1927” by Hollister McCook Davies

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The Hopewell Democrat-Tribune newspaper offices kept their back issues in the basement. The county office bound theirs up nicely in cardboard endpapers. The Hopewell District Library paid to have their stock microfilmed once a year. Between the three of them, they had every issue of the paper since the Hopewell Democrat and the Hopewell Tribune had merged in September 1889.

Except one.

Someone, with exacting thoroughness, had made sure that wasn’t the case for September 18, 1927. The Democrat-Tribune bundles, done up with twine and silently disintegrating, were tampered with, the pile for September 1927 tied with a piece of twine much newer than the others. The county office copy had been sliced out, straight and clean with a razor blade, between September 17 and September 19. And the Hopewell District Library microfilm had been cut and taped up professionally, as if in a movieola.

As the Democrat-Tribune was the paper of record for the area, everything that happened on that far-off fall day had been all but wiped from existence. The obituary column was backed up by other records, and some small-town papers nearby picked up a few comings and goings, but for the most part some unknown malefactor had taken considerable pains to erase those papers from history.

To this day, no one can say why.

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August 12, 2013

From “Brewster’s Dictionary of Psychic Phenomena, 18th edition” by Odis Perun

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enosiphrenia – The belief, founded or otherwise, that you are being made part of a gestalt group consciousness.

The term enosiphrenia (“joined mind”), coined in an allusion to schizophrenia (“split mind”), was first reported by parapsychologist Sir John Travers Lexow, writing in 1888 in a bulletin to the Royal Miasmatic Bedlam Society. His report of a person who found their thoughts uncomfortably joined and commingled with those of nearby people is still the typical diagnostic case for the malady. It differs from simple telepathy in that it combines thoughts from multiple people into a single gestalt with aspects of each, where telepathy is generally a simple transmission of information.

Most (65%) of enosiphrenia sufferers only encounter sporadic and low-level incidents of group consciousness, typically with people nearby that have some sensitivity to psychic phenomena. The sensation can range from an uncomfortable annoyance to a debilitating attack which takes months of recovery time as consciousnesses are disentangled. A significant portion (20%) of enosiphrenia patients retreat into themselves and become catatonic; this is thought to be a defense mechanism which works by minimizing conscious thought to suppress the shock of having those thoughts joined by others.

The remaining 15% of enosiphreniacs, sometimes misleadingly called paranoid enosiphreniacs, serve as an unwilling locus for the development of a hive mind. They are generally kept isolated and sedated as the ability to create more enosiphreniacs and instinctively joining with them can spiral out of control with disastrous consequences. The Battle of Saarbrucken in 1917 is believed to be the most serious enosiphrenia outbreak on record; a enosiphreniac conscript in the Imperial German Army had a major episode which led to an entire battalion of heavily-armed troops becoming a gestalt consciousness. Artillery strikes were eventually used to break up the formation, leading to deaths in excess of 2,000.

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August 11, 2013

From “Isolated on Red” by Michael Ryan Gard

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“Why are we here?”

“Because the Todd Mansion is on the Top Ten Most Haunted Locations list in Tobin’s Spirit Guide, and you wanted to start at the top.”

“No, why are we really here? You know Tobin’s is just a bunch of sensationalism masquerading as legitimate parapsychology.”

“What, you’re not convinced by the dozens and dozens of would-be ghost hunters that have come here since the Creativity Channel aired that episode of Spook Sleuths set in the Todd?”

“Yes, their tales of one-degree cold spots, ‘photographic anomalies’ that look more like dust motes, and exhaustive online maps with scary names.”

“You don’t think the name ‘Solarium of Storms’ is compelling?”

“It’s an old lumber baron mansion built back when solariums were trendy. The room doesn’t change the weather, it just has cloudy glass; the name is an excuse for the groundskeeper to charge people an entrance fee.”

“I’d wager that for all their special equipment and fancy degrees that none of them was an actual, factual medium like you are.”

“But there’s no set standard for mediumhood. Getting impressions and feelings like I do…you’ve always been the one who says it makes me a medium. Not me.”

“I wouldn’t have that attitude about your meal ticket–and mine–if I were you.”

“If you were me you wouldn’t need…wait, do you see that?”

“See what?”

“Over there, in the…what was that idiotic name on the map? The Cold Spot Parlor. Wallpaper, blood red wallpaper.”

“There hasn’t been anything that could be called wallpaper in there for a hundred years.”

“But it’s so vibrant! And…look there, in the middle!”

“Where? What?”

It’s something, maybe writing, isolated on red, a different shade…”

“This could be it! I’m filming. What does it say?”

“It says…DIE.”

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August 10, 2013

From “Spambot Poetry” by 192.74.244.97, adapted by Altos Wexan

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Almost for Valentine’s Day, a gift basket
She gives marriage tips just to use famous food quotes
Of far-off movies with stock options
Brought together in estate planning trust
She has his life insurance policy, here
For the bookkeeping service
We all wish for an inflatable escape slide at our jobs
Airplane style out into the street
She thinks 80% of us would quite like that
Anybody out there?
There is an opening for a stockbroker at my job
She is smiling and weeping

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August 9, 2013

From “Sands of Creation” by Fawn Delacroix Pivec

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Near the edge of the canvas that is our world, the Creator’s brushstrokes grow thin, and there are places where the sketched lines that underlie all we see and feel might be seen and felt.

The hushed whispers of poets and madmen tell of one such place, beyond the unfathomable waters with no bottom and the sky-piercing mountains of infinite slope where travelers grow old and die climbing their whole lives away. It has many names in meany tongues: vicārōṁ kā samudra, shikō no umi, okean vdokhnoveniya, ámmo tou idanikoú.

To many, though, it is simply the Sea of Ideas.

The concept is at once simple and profound: what if creativity were a desert, each grain an idea? Endless dunes and windswept grit embody both the beauty and the horror of unspeakable creativity and creation for those daring or foolish enough to seek it out. For to come into contact with a single grain of sand from that impossible expanse is to experience the truest, purest form of an idea that is, was, or someday might be.

That is the reason that many a starstuck loner or struggling creator has sought out the Sea and its sands; to those for whom inspiration and ideas seem like arid wells, it is as a siren song that shakes the heavens. But when has the sand and dust of our world even gone singly? Those who trod those wastes unprepared are overwhelmed from the start, bombarded with ideas that shriek out for release. Many are so alien that they simply cannot be comprehended; the mind crumbles under such an assault. Others are more banal but shatter consciousness with sheer force of numbers.

Only the wisest, the luckiest, the most resourceful and open-minded, avoid the fate of babbling incoherence shared by so many who have sought the Sea and stumbled back from its berms broken and blasted. Wrapped tight against the wind and the scouring force of the Creator’s gifts at their most profuse and elemental, the wisest select only a handful of grains to bear hence; few are their numbers.

Fewer still are those–be they the wisest of the wise or the most foolish of the fools–who realize the deeper secret of that place. For as grains of sand are but the rocks of our world broken apart and worn by the keen edges of eternity, so too are the idea-grains shards from something bigger.

At the furthest and most ragged edge of the Creator’s artwork, the deepest fastness of the Sea, they lie: great stony pillars of creation, from which the sands of ideas, inspiration, and creativity are hewn. To behold them is to feel the inconceivable claw at the ribs like a death rattle. To approach them is to be beset on all sides by the most crystalline of thoughts, thoughts so profound and simple that falsehood and self wither away as tinder in a blaze.

To touch them is to touch the original inspiration that led to the creation of our world, of all worlds. To touch them is to touch the Creator’s brush and palette.

To touch them is to Know, and in all of the wonder and horror that represents, to Cease.

From an idea by breylee.

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August 8, 2013

From “Hun Day” by Eugene Tishler

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In 1917, war weariness and conscription had taken their tool on the morale of the British home front. As such, the Home Undersecretary beneath Sir George Cave hit on the idea of using wounded, furloughed, and reserve troops to stage a mock German invasion of the modest-sized city of Lowemouth in Yorkshire. The Undersecretary believed that such an exercise would help raise morale and generate the sale of war bonds, since the 1917 War Loan had performed only sluggishly.

The Undersecretary’s idea was to cover an “invasion” of Lowemouth by “Imperial German” troops dressed in uniforms borrowed and rented from filmmakers and theaters. The British public would be informed of the “invasion” through news coverage–which would focus on the brutality of the “occupation”–and could then “liberate” sectors of the town through the targeted purchase of War Bonds. It would, in short, serve as a cautionary tale of a Hohenzollern-occupied Britain and a powerful way to involve the home front in buying desperately-needed bonds more directly.

Preparations included a unit of “defenders,” mock entrenchments, and plans for staged battles in and around Lowemouth. Since most of the resources were under government control, and most of the personnel involved soldiers or auxiliaries, the projected costs were quite low, less than a thousand pounds to cover the expenses of printing propaganda materials and retaining journalists to cover the event. The innovative and frugal nature of the Undersecretary’s plan appealed to Winnipeg businessman J. D. Perrin years later, who organized the Greater Winnipeg Victory Loan organization to hold “If Day,” a similar event, during World War II.

Scheduled for 30 July 1917, “Hun Day” was hastily canceled by the Undersecretary on 28 July, less than 48 hours before it was scheduled to begin. All official mention of it disappeared from official news sources, propaganda materials which had been prepared were destroyed, and the soldiers gathered as both “defenders” and “occupiers” of Lowemouth were dispersed. Indeed, the Undersecretary tendered his resignation on 1 August–dated 30 July–and was remanded to a low-level job in the Foreign Office thereafter.

The aborted “Hun Day” and the mystery of its abrupt termination remained an obscure mystery for many years until a cache of Imperial German records was discovered in Berlin around June 1945. The Supreme Army Command of the Imperial German Army had been aware of the exercise at the highest echelons of command, as it happened; a frustratingly incomplete memo, damaged by fire, indicated an ambitious plan to take advantage of the situation:

An invasion at this point, and at this time…would provide an unprecedented opportunity…to seize and control…to draw out and destroy them piecemeal.

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August 7, 2013

From “Suicide Monks” by Yamada Tarō

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“It’s not my fault if you don’t like what you find,” Sōgen wheezed from his chair. “I told you not to contact me in person.”

“Well, what else was I supposed to do?” I snapped. “You’re the only person who has the data I need, and I’m being tracked online.”

“I let you in, didn’t I?” said Sōgen, throwing his pale and tubby arms wide. “You’re the first person who’s been in here aside from me in 15 years. Don’t abuse my hospitality.”

I glanced out the half-drawn shade at the vast empty streets and apartment buildings below, each with only a few dozen tenants thanks to Japan’s decades-old and increasing sub-replacement fertility. “How do you manage that?” I asked. “Surely you must have a job, and need to go out for food.”

“I have food delivered and trash collected,” replied Sōgen. “People practically beg for my business so they can keep their credit, since their companies were founded in the 1960s when the country hadn’t lost 50 million people to geezerhood without descendents.”

I looked at the massive bank of computer equipment that filled 90% of the apartment, and the disarrayed twin-size mattress parked under the window.

“Well, I can see that’s not enough for you,” Sōgen said. “You’re wondering how I pay for the electric bill and everything else despite no job and making a career out of giving away things online for free.”

“More or less.”

“If you’re sure you want to know, the answer is in the bedroom,” said Sōgen. “But if I hear one word of judgement or complaint from you, I’ll erase that data and make you watch before throwing you out on your ass.”

Another odd look from me.

“Information wants to be free. That’s the creed I live by, and I’m too fat and lazy to try and stop you. But freeing information means living with its consequences. I practice what I preach.”

There was no letting the thing go, not after a speech like that. I approached the bedroom door, its knob coated with dust, and opened it. Second later, I slammed it shut and stumbled backwards, retching. “What the hell?” I cried. “Are those…?”

“Yes, of course they are,” Sōgen said dismissively. “There are no jobs for someone like me in this country anymore, so I lived off my grandfather’s pension, and my parents’. When they fell ill…well, they had always talked about becoming Sokushinbutsu, suicide monks, practicing holy self-mummification. So I let them do it.”

“You mean you…you locked them up in there when they were dying?”

“I cared for them in their final illness like any dutiful son would,” snapped Sōgen. “And I have let their pension checks keep coming in to pay the bills. Don’t think I’m the only one who’s done this, either. The government can’t handle the record keeping of a nation of geezers, and they’re 50% of the electorate so tampering with benefits is a good way to exit the Diet in a hurry. Grandpa will be 123 this January, and nobody cares. My friend down the block has a 215-year-old still collection a pension.”

Struggling to avoid laying into the disgusting blob in front of me for his vile rationalizations, I instead found myself retching.

“Toilet’s down the hall,” Sōgen said drily, turning back toward his monitors. “We’ll talk after you’ve composed yourself.”

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August 6, 2013

From “Last Flight of the Dalien D-270” by Abram Sharan

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That’s what Ryder loved about the aircraft. They hadn’t made many Dalien D-270s, but that was just because the world wasn’t ready for something with that much maneuverability and cargo capacity (whilst sipping fuel) that could take off and land on a shaved dime.

“Get the tower on the horn,” Ryder said softly. “Tell them we just need to buy fuel for a mail run. Nobody knows which aircraft that took off from the Capital Aerodrome they’re looking for, and nobody knows where we came from. Let’s keep it that way.”

Orlov nodded as Ryder idled the twin engines and taxied the Dalien over toward the fuel trucks. He could see Revolutionary Guards stationed all over the compound, many of them wearing pieces of government uniforms they’d captured in their most recent lightning advance. There didn’t seem to be any antiaircraft guns or fighters–the royal air force hadn’t been an organized force for months before the capital fell.

“Attention unidentified aircraft,” the tower squawked through the radio. “Please state your origin, cargo, destination, and purpose for landing.”

“Returning empty after a milk run, headed for Southport,” Orlov said. “Just need to buy a little fuel.”

“Come on, come on,” Ryder whispered under his breath.

“Why didn’t you request permission to land?” It sounded like a kid on the other end, probably an ideologically reliable rebel rather than whoever had run it before.

“Have you seen what’s going on out there?” Orlov said. “We haven’t requested permission to land in months. And we’re willing to pay for fuel in gold.”

A pause. “Someone will be out to meet you with a fuel truck. Don’t try to take off before you pay, or the Guards will blast you out of the sky.”

Ryder patted Orlov on the back. “Good going,” he said.

And to the member of the royal family shivering in the cargo hold–the contents of the “package” they had been hired to deliver to Southport right before the capital city had fallen…Ryder put a hand to his lips.

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August 5, 2013

From “Xinyidali” by Mike P. Sove

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Xinyidali was the brainchild of Chinese resource developers at the beginning of the property boom that gripped the country in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Built in an inland area with good road and rail connections to major population centers, it was the site of several major heavy industry plants built astride major trunk lines during the crash industrialization program of the Great Leap Forward.

Like most industrial sites from that era, the old settlement–which had no official name, only a post office address–was rapidly being rustbelted out of existence in favor of much better-built facilities closer to the coast. Sensing an opportunity, developers from Shanghai entered into an agreement to purchase the land as the industrial plants wound down one by one and were dismantled. In exchange for the burden of tearing down the old structures and assuming liability, the investors got the land practically for free.

A grandiose plan emerged to develop the area into a mixed-use shopping area, theme park, and retirement village catering to Westerners and the wealthy. Renamed Xinyidali–roughly “New Italy” in Mandarin–the owners built a concrete half-scale replica of the Colosseum as a centerpiece and arts venue while surrounding it with blocks of flats with shops on the first floor in the Mediterranean style. Broad parks were laid out in between the blocks, radiating out like spokes, to be filled with light amusements and food stands.

The site was roughly 40% complete and some early tenants had already moved in when one of the industrial plants being demolished nearby suffered a major accident. A pesticide plant, it produced carbaryl for agriculture but had not been properly decommissioned before demolition started. Several large holding tanks that were assumed to be empty were instead full, and when breached released large quantities of phosgene and methylamine into the air and soil.

Phosgene had been used as a biological weapon in the First World War, while methylamine is a flammable toxin in its own right. The resulting explosions and leakage killed 27 people and forced a hasty abandonment of the site. Further testing confirmed dangerously high levels of chemical waste in the surrounding environment, even in places uncontaminated by the phosgene or methylamine. The investors, it seemed, had simply thrown a layer of topsoil over the industrial sites and hoped for the best–a hope buttressed by lavish bribes.

With the site contaminated, the investors bankrupt or in jail, and a government embarrassed by the negative attention the incident, the site was simply fenced off and abandoned. Xinyidali remains in a broken state even today, attracting a small trickle of photographers, urban explorers, and other thrill-seekers drawn by its stark decay despite the danger.

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