Blog Archives
Edition 18: Robert Fairweather and the Wrong Ticket by Mark Rookyard
His battles are long over but still Robert Fairweather feels like a relic and out of step with this new world. One chance encounter and Robert ends up on a train in trouble. In this world of steam, Mark Rookyard conjured up some empathetic characters and a dilemma the judges’ could empathise with to take home third place in this year’s Story Quest Competition. SY
The train whistled and steam billowed, great puffing clouds of it spewing all around Robert and the hundreds of others waiting on the platform. A hiss, more steam gasping out, and the steps wound back inside the doors.
Windows glowed golden through the steam, three stories high, and people waved excitedly from the giant brass contraption, looking out for loved ones on the platform.
Friends and family called out, their voices drowned by the hissing and steaming, and then the train was on its way, its brass length sleek and shining in all its glory.
Testament to the glory of man, testament to the glory of one man. A dead man. A beaten man.
The steam and smoke drifted all around Robert now, as idle and lost as those who had been waving farewell to their loved ones. They too drifted about the platform before slipping away into the crowds.
Edition 17: Hunting the Sky Gods by Meryl Stenhouse
It’s do or die for Endless Jones: she’s taken a last chance at finding her past and left the only home she’s ever known. This delightful piece by Meryl Stenhouse should ring a true note with any of us that ever felt that we didn’t belong. SY
Endless Jones shifted her grip on the brickwork and very carefully did not look down. The wind tugged at her woollen tunic with icy fingers and whipped dark hair into her eyes, bringing with it the sharp tang of the ocean. She glanced over her left shoulder, towards the east and the high, cold mountains where the Sky Gods came from. Moonlight shone on the bars of the cage she carried on her back.
“Can’t we discuss this in a logical manner?” said the canary from his cage. “Possibly somewhere closer to the ground?”
“No,” said Endless. The howl of marauding wolves and the frantic bleating of sheep drifted up the valley. Endless felt a pang of guilt for abandoning the sheep. But tomorrow was the first day of spring, the day when the Sky Gods would sweep over the valley on their annual cycle, as regular as the seasons. It had to be tonight.
“I mean, I’m all for someone chasing their dreams, but I’m not sure you’ve considered all the consequences—”
“I know what I’m doing, bird. I’ve got a plan.”
“Oh, well, if you’ve got a plan we’re all fine then, aren’t we?”
Edition 17: Serial Fiction: The Morland Basking Plain (Book III of III) by Arthur Davis
The final straits of the charge through the Moreland Plain are taking their toll on both the pursued and pursuer. It’s a death march to the end, and only one will come out victorious. Will Marcos Xzen and the Sartrap finally run down Logan Drewry? SY
Edition 17: Where None May Pass by Matthew Spence
On a distant world, a gate stands open to the beyond. Perhaps it draws those only seeking to understand it, but the messages are enough reason to resist. An alien worlds sci-fi, this short piece by Matthew Spence touches on the fact that there are some technologies that should never be explored. SY
If you go to the world known as Far Passage and ask its inhabitants about the arch, they’ll tell you to look for the man known as Lehman. He still lives near the arch, out in the Great Desert where he makes a marginal living as a silicate supplier for fabricators.
He lives in a small dome, left over from the original expedition, where he can stay protected from the desert’s thousand-plus degree temperatures. He’ll tell you how his team found the arch, and why he used it only once and never again, and why it’s forbidden now, except for the dead or terminally-ill who don’t want extension treatments or a post-organic existence.
There are words written on the arch in a language that was dead when humans were still carving pictures on rocks. Lehman knows what the words mean, their significance and why they’re both a greeting and a warning.
If you’re smart, you’ll listen, and not try to use the arch yourself while you’re still alive and healthy.
The system that was home to Far Passage wasn’t important in the grand scheme of things. Few outsiders went there, and human deep space telescopes had found it by accident. Those ships that did perform flybys did so mostly because their navigational systems were using Far Passage’s parent star as a reference point while on their way somewhere else. But Far Passage did have its small share of human colonists, who lived in those hemispheres that had climates that were technically tolerable for them, with the aid of pressure domes and suits. They’d made contact with the natives, who had first told them of the arch. Lehman had been one of those who wanted to see it for themselves.
Edition 17: Results by Denise Robarge Tanaka
Lara Clarke offers another service that stays off her business cards. Not everyone is ready to have the darkness of their past stirred up. But for those special customers, Lara has a special skill, and sometimes they come looking for her help. The touch of the seedy underside of Hollywood in this paranormal psychic adventure leaves you feeling like a dirty deal has been done. SY
“So how does it work?” the client asked, not even taking off his sunglasses.
I get that question every time. People expect lots of chanting gibberish, incense that smells like burning a hippie’s sandals, furniture thumping, lights going out…You know, all that poltergeist crap. My specialty services are not listed in my front office brochure. Lara Diane Clarke, clinical physical therapist, can get you back on the team after that sports injury or back to work after that fender bender.
Not many people know about my paranormal services. He only found me by word of mouth, and even through his sunglasses, I could tell he didn’t believe.
I told him, “You just need to sign the waiver and I’ll prick your finger with a sterile needle. That’s it.”
“That’s it?” he asked skeptically.
“Yep.”
He scanned around the room like he was searching for the hidden camera. I couldn’t blame him for being suspicious. What I do is pretty strange.
“Shouldn’t I fill out a questionnaire or tell you something about my—”
“No,” I said. “That’s what you pay me for. I don’t do interviews. I get results.”
I deliberately used that word, interview, knowing the impact it would have on an actor.
Edition 17: Shutterblind by Jackie Neel
Dani’s vids are getting cut by a new guy, Bialystock, and he’s making her look bad, dragging her down all over the metanet. It spells disaster until suddenly, Dani finds a little perspective. Science fiction ruled by some cyberpunk, Jackie Neel’s tale is an acerbic comment on how connectedness hurts us in the digital age. SY
[Hey], I graff to the guy sitting at the bar. He’s cute, maybe a little shorter than the guys I would normally go for, but my standards are low lately.
[Hey, yourself.] His graff appears to float in white just off the center of my vision. He flashes me a bad boy grin, the type my dad used to warn me about. His name, floating by his graff, is Hunter.
I open a fresh frame in my MindsEye. I snap in a new cam and set it to check him out from the back. Nice toosh.
My main frame glows blue, letting me know someone new has set a cam on me. I pop a new frame and clone the cam—it’s his, and he’s returning the favor. From his smile I suppose those hours on the stair stepper must have done some good.
The game is alive in me, the give and take of pulling. I can almost feel his fingers brushing my neck already, warm and soft and urgent. And I can see already how I’ll cut my vids—a months-long dry spell, a disastrous failed hookup with that Chad guy, and then fade to black as we slip into my apartment. A clean little narrative.
But his smile fades when my frame turns green. He’s looking at my main page, flipping through my vids, checking out the comments and votes. He picks up his beer and turns away.
Edition 17: Riding the Tiger By Thomas Canfield
Sorcerer Jusan and servant Asrai travel to Irushtan, purporting to seek diamonds from the miners who toil in the deepest, darkest shafts. What they seek is much more important: the prevention of a war that would destroy them all. Thomas Canfield’s mythological quest is a great example of the great world building of sword and sorcery epics. SY
The mines of Irushtan were the richest ever discovered. They burrowed into the hard red clay of the Laramie outback, cut through layers of sediment and rock and opened virgin earth which no man had heretofore thought to plunder. They honeycombed the land with an elaborate array of shafts and tunnels. No one individual could attest to the full extent of the mines or profess to a complete knowledge of them. They yielded more precious stones and claimed more lives, bred more misery and incited greater greed, than any operation ever had. It was here that the sorcerer Jusan came, announcing that he wished to purchase diamonds.
For seven days the miners flocked to the cottage Jusan had rented. They waited in line, clutching knotted handkerchiefs in which they carried their hoards, eyeing one another warily. They were admitted one at a time, bid to enter by Jusan’s servant, Asrai. Asrai was a supple-limbed youth of nineteen who bore the dusky complexion and dark eyes of those who dwelt far to the East.
“Welcome,” Jusan greeted each miner in turn. “I see that you are a veteran of many years hard labor in the mines. It resides in your face and in your eyes. A difficult life by any measure, and one which none but the stout of heart dare to venture. Perhaps it is you for whom I have been searching. Come, let us see what you bring me.”
Edition 16: Internal Exile by Jim Lee
What if your worst memory or your most regretted action was replayed for you over and over again. Welcome to corrective therapy, the capital punishment under the current planetary government. Jim Lee’s science fiction world shows us that it is our ideas which can be dangerous to the powers-that-be. SY
They roused Sidi Mohamed Daoud from a very old nightmare—one he once dared imagine he’d left behind with his troubled and far-distant adolescence. Ironically enough, it was the one that had driven him into social activism in the first place. And now, with a secret and shameful certitude, he knew it would be used against him.
And the ones who were about to do this unspeakable thing to him had no idea, no conception what he faced. If they did, perhaps they would understand his attempted suicide. But would they care—even if they knew?
He looked at the Senior Attending Physician’s impassive face and doubted it.
Two brawny orderlies, one of either gender, deactivated the restraints. They slipped his naked form into one of the new ‘smart’ hospital gowns—one that would detach itself and slither away upon the Senior Attending Physician’s order.
With the SAP, the orderlies escorted Daoud from the temporary holding cell. They ushered him down one final hallway to Corrective Therapy Room D427.
“That many?” Daoud blinked, turned to the SAP. “Doctor Sayem? Each inmate does require a separate room?”
Edition 16: Running Shoes by Ken Liu
Giang works in a sweatshop in Vietnam, making running shoes on a production line. When the unthinkable happens, Giang goes on to see a different world to the one she’s known. This magical realism story by Ken Liu is one to make you stop and think about our consumeristic society and what exploitation is worth. SY
“You’re under quota again!” Foreman Vuong shouted. “Why are you so slow?”
Fourteen-year old Giang’s face flushed with shame. She stared at the angry veins on the foreman’s sweaty neck, pulsing like fat slugs on a ripe tomato. She hated Vuong even more than she hated the shoe factory’s Taiwanese owners and managers. One expected the foreigners to treat the Vietnamese badly, but Vuong was from right here in Yên Châu District.
“Sixteen hours is a long shift,” Giang mumbled. She lowered her eyes. “I get tired.”
“You’re lazy!” Vuong went on to spew a stream of curses.
Giang flinched, anticipating a flurry of strikes and blows. She tried desperately to look contrite.
Vuong considered her, his lips curling up in a cruel smile. “I’ll have to make you stronger through punishment. Run five laps around the factory, right now, and you’ll stay as long as you have to tonight to make up your quota.”
Edition 16: Libri de Atrum Divum by Travis Burnham
Ackerley Brumlow is dead, and the jokester’s long-time friend Ezra still doesn’t know if Ackerley managed to dispose of the sensitive material he’d given him. Other unlikely happenings open Ezra’s eyes to more sinister signs that all is not right in Tendry Spire. Travis Burnham’s supernatural horror is a question of who is strong enough… SY
The evening they buried Ackerley Brumlow the sky was a bloody bruise. Steely storm clouds menaced the north and the air was charged and heavy; the threat of lightning making every breath laborious and wheezy for those attending the funeral.
Though Ackerley had no family to speak of, many of the residents of Tendry Spire were arranged about the coffin, some to pay their respects, some to truly mourn, and some simply at a loss for activity after a Monday’s work.
Many were children, with which Ackerley had an affinity; no surprise as they comprised a majority of his clientele.
At the presiding priest’s last words, Ezra Calogero stepped forward and, scratching his short, shaggy beard, hesitated at the edge of the grave, “Somber words for our resident trickster, wouldn’t you say, Father Robert?”
A cold stare was Father Robert’s reply.
SQ Mag 
