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Edition 16: Serial Fiction: The Morland Basking Plain (Book II of III) by Arthur Davis
Logan Drewry flees deeper into the Morland Basking Plain followed by the irascible Marcos Xzen, leader of the deep desert command. But the desert will present its own challenges to the invading force… SY
Edition 16: The Nanofabricated Truth by David Conyers
When anyone can create any technology they require with just a schematic, the threat to civilisation sky-rockets. With security strategies in place, people can rest easy, until those protections are undone. David Conyers’ science fiction follows governmental agent Brian Arctor as he tries to stop a threat from spiralling out of control. SY
Despite his fluency in Mandarin, Brian Arctor couldn’t read the Chinese menu, hacked as it was by a nanovirus.
The spammer was a competing restaurant from across the road. Between roaming lines of white noise, the menu flickered from one dish list to the next, never static long enough to digest either offering.
‘Why eat quality poor establishment you now?’ asked the intruding menu in staccato Engrish. ‘We cook superior noodles. Go ready Ghan Train!’
What the spam could never appreciate was that Arctor had a comfortable seat in this restaurant, the aromas of spices and cigarette smoke weren’t as pungent or offensive as in the Ghan and most important of all, this establishment was discrete. He would remain where he was, thank you very much.
Recognising that he was indeed hungry, Arctor offloaded an anti-spam from his skin screen and watched it crawl onto the menu. It quickly blended with the spam only to have a local brothel exploit a gap in the coding. It offered, instead of food, ‘tasty women’.
Arctor signed as he threw the corrupted sheet onto the pirated IKEA table. Nanotech was everywhere here, and any of it could be spyware. Any item could be bugged, or worse, a chameleon weapon.
Edition 16: Butterfly Knife by Recle Etino Vibal
A hidden spring holds many secrets key to victory, and one old hermit knows where it can be found. But the journey requires the seekers to face many dangers, not least from the ones who protect it. We’re please to feature Recle E. Vibal’s fantasy, with its flavour of the Southeast Asian fable. We’ve included some links to define some of the words our readers may not know. SY
Lightning illuminated the three men outside Ali’s hut. Rain and darkness had hidden their approach.
“Halt. You cannot proceed.” Ali tried to discern their faces from the shadows and silhouettes dancing from the light of his lamp.
“We need your help, hermit.”
A boy on the water buffalo, a kalis hanging by his waist, emerged from the darkness. Beside him were two men. One was as thick as the water buffalo and towered Ali’s hut. The giant had a kampilan tied to his back, the hilt protruding from his waist and the tip of the sheath appearing from his thigh. The boy’s other companion hid in the darkness because of his skin. A headhunter’s axe was lying on his shoulders. They all hid their faces under a salakot.
“What do you want?” Ali asked.
“The spring,” the boy replied. “The Datu said we would see you here, hermit.”
“The datu of what tribe?”
“Pinili.”
“Why does Datu Matayog seek the spring?”
“The Datu dreamt a mist of ghosts emerging from the horizon, from the sea. The Babaylan interpreted it as a threat to his sultanate, a war from across the ocean.”
Edition 15: Webs by Cindy Hernandez
Eric moves to a cabin in the middle of nowhere with his cat, Zombie. In what starts out as a helpful quirk, Zombie’s spider-eating fetish lands her in trouble. Spider rule is returning to the cabin, and Eric may be more than outnumbered…Cindy Hernandez’s story wrapped up the judges and she was named a finalist of the 2013 Story Quest competition. SY
When you live in the middle of nowhere, you’re bound to encounter creepy-crawlies, little creatures that fly, hop, buzz, bite, and chirp. Oh, and spiders. Every cabin in the woods has at least a few. Fortunately, Eric didn’t mind them. Not right away, at least.
Dust filled hammocks of spider webs hung in every corner of the two-room cabin, but he didn’t care. As long as the rent stayed cheap and the roof didn’t leak, the bugs could do whatever they liked. The place was good enough. It was a shabby sanctuary away from the city, away from people, away from everything. His meager belongings sat in the middle of the floor next to the fireplace: his guitar in its battered case, a black plastic trash bag with his clothes inside, and Zombie, his grey and white, battle-scarred cat. Zombie settled herself on the bag of clothes, purring for reasons only known to a cat, and Eric cracked open a lukewarm beer in celebration of their new home.
Zombie developed a real taste for spiders and insects in the days that followed. Entire battalions of them disappeared down her throat. Eric would sit on the front porch in an ancient, splintered rocking chair, drinking beer, while the feline huntress stalked her multi-legged prey. She held no quarter and she took no prisoners.
But she was bound to meet a more formidable foe. Eric was roused from a beer-induced slumber by an odd wailing sound coming from outside. He shielded his eyes from the harsh sun as he opened the door and peered out. Zombie lay next to the rocker, and her growls and hisses were dreadful. She pawed at her face, gurgling and gagging, and Eric caught sight of four inky black, bristly legs protruding from the cat’s mouth. One of Zombie’s victims had decided to fight back.
Edition 15: To Brave the Mountains by David Bowles
When Saran’s little brother is taken as a sacrifice, she is determined to free him. The only way she can is to radically transform her life, and even then, she may be too late. SY
The night they took Saran’s little brother from the ranch was like many other nights on the High Plains: the thin, cold wind keened wildly over the meager yellow grass, herding dark storm clouds in a furious stampede westward across the sky to join the thick mist that shrouded the mountains of Chanor. Only a few fat drops of moisture spattered the stony soil of what Plainsmen called the Zuduls, the badlands, their promised country. In the thirty-five years since they had first settled on this vast altiplano, rain had never fallen. The clouds just streamed tantalizingly overhead, and the ceaseless wind moaned as if mocking the Plainsmen’s travails.
Saran had just been lulled to sleep by the banshee crying of that wind when a pounding at the door jerked her awake. Only tragedy could bring someone to our family’s parcel at this late hour, she reflected. And her heart ached with a sudden prescience. For there was a registered skinwalker in her family, one whose ability had just manifested as he reached his twelfth year.
Edition 15: How Far Will You Go by Carl Alves
Entertainment television has much to answer for, but when Brad Billington heads up a new show, How Far Will You Go, all the rules of civilised society are left by the wayside. SY
“Forget about Survivor and American Idol and prepare yourself for the new frontier in reality television. Get ready for the most extreme, insane game show ever. This is Brad Billington, and tonight you will witness television history as our seven contestants risk it all to win the grand prize of five, you heard me, five million dollars. This is the richest prize in game show history, but it will come at a steep price. Join me, America, as we ask our contestants, How Far Will You Go.”
The camera stopped rolling. The television screen streamed bios of the seven contestants for the national audience. After commercials, the cameras rolled live at the set in Burbank, California where Brad Billington stood in front of the contestants. Brad, a former quarterback at USC, was tall, solidly built, and still in good shape. Before going on the set, he had meticulously made sure his face was clean-shaven and flawless, and his head did not have a hair out of place.
Edition 15: It’s Only Going To End Badly by John Claude Smith
To hear violence night after night is a torment, and most neighbours will seek to stop it before someone gets hurt. What if protecting someone else meant you had to put yourself in the direct line of violence? A finalist from the 2013 Story Quest competition, John Claude Smith chilled the judges with this horror piece. SY
Screams crashed the shore of slumber, sonic flotsam that abruptly awakened Jesse for the fourth time in a week. He pressed his palms to his temples, audibly groaning. The screams, originating from the house behind the apartment complex he lived in, had been escalating over the last few months, but in the last week, the needle had been pushed into the red.
It’s only going to end badly, he thought.
He paused to gauge everything, the language not always clear, just the bulldozing audacity of the two voices that ripped him from his sheets. Two voices: Lisa, the wife or girlfriend (he only knew this because her husband’s or boyfriend’s bleats wrapped her name within the delicate embrace of “you fuckin’ whore, Lisa, fuckin’ twat”), and her throat wrenching cries, sounding like a rocket about to lift off; and Mike, the husband or boyfriend (only known because his name was hurled with equal ferocity by the loving wife or girlfriend, Lisa, she of the “fuckin’ whore, fuckin’ twat” designations), growling like the world’s meanest pit bull, slobbering and rabid.
Christ, this was getting ridiculous. He called the police on two of the three previous occasions this week, beaten to the punch once when police sirens derailed his dialing, much to his delight.
Edition 15: Serial Fiction: The Morland Basking Plain (Book I of III) by Arthur Davis
Logan Drewry begins his escape into the desolate Morland Basking Plain in a desperate bid to outrace the troops of the Grand Satrap. His foolhardy decision may not only cost him is life, but the cause of the people he is trying to flee. Old enemies and new will attempt to take their shot at the famous warrior, but will it be the desert that finally claims victory over him? SY
Edition 15: Exponential Growth by Justin Short
Justin Short’s story is not for the squeamish or arachnophobic. Just how many bites are too many? What will it take to be accepted into a new world? Finalist in the 2013 Story Quest competition, this story gets under your skin. SY
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When I first came to the valley, the elders gave me a tick. I didn’t think too much of the gift, especially since there was nowhere to return it. The place, as you know, is fairly inaccessible. A big, greenish space surrounded by acres of nearly vertical hayfields, natural silt traps, and the thorniest woods imaginable. No realistic possibility of escape. No company except that lone chair in the exact center of said valley.
The gray-haired bug-bearers arrived shortly after I took my seat. Their tick was a gray one, small and unthreatening. His tiny feet circumnavigated my torso a couple times before he injected his teeth into my shoulder. It hurt at first, but I gradually got used to the tight discomfort there.
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Within the hour, one of the old men brought me my second one. This time it was a seed tick. Almost microscopic. When he released it on my skin and wished it luck, I could scarcely distinguish it from my freckles.
Edition 15: Metempsychosis by Jason Franks
When problem solver and amateur cryptographer Layne becomes involved with translating an ancient druidic diary, it looks like a hopeless case. But when the cadences start to create rhythm, Layne starts to connect with the work in a way he couldn’t have predicted. SY
Layne had spent the entire morning hunched over the pinned-out vellum leaves and all he had to show for it was a crick in his neck.
He’d filled two pages of his notebook with beautiful cursive, but that was entirely because he enjoyed exercising his fountain pen. He had produced little more than a continuous ink line. There was no greater meaning in it than there was in the old manuscript.
Layne put the pen down and let out a long breath. “This isn’t prose.” The insight surprised him as he said it.
“What?” Trimby looked up from his workstation, across the lab and near to the window.
“It’s not prose.”
“Of course it’s prose,” said Trimby, pushing at the cuffs of his tweed jacket as if ready to engage in fisticuffs. Layne wanted to laugh almost as much as he wanted to punch him. “The wallet clearly states that it’s a diary.”
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