Another journal

Want some more noodling about the writing process of The Audacity Gambit? Like you have a choice. Let’s talk themes. I’ll outline them even.

Trailer parks

I grew up in a double-wide trailer on the outskirts of, what was at the time, a 13,000-ish population town. I lived between there and what could politely be called a township—there was a payphone box, even—of a couple hundred-ish. A good percentage of people I knew lived in trailer parks, which was rather different than the acre of land our mobile home was on. I was jealous of the kids who lived there, with their built-in neighbours and plenty of friends their own age.

There is something wonderful about the old mobile homes from the 1970-1980. The layouts of each are nearly identical, regardless of manufacturer, with only the slightest of add-on variations, depending on what the original owners sprung for (I’ve only known two people who bought brand-new mobile homes and one of them was a lotto winner). So somebody might have a fireplace, or a panelled “feature wall”, or a raised area in the living room to separate it more clearly from the kitchen—but the bedrooms were always at the same end, everybody had a sliding glass door and the bathroom was probably across from the dining room.

It was so noticeably different than actual houses. I mean, you often still pay DMV fees on your home, even if it is never going anywhere. There’s a culture there and though it wasn’t a huge part of the story I was dealing with, it informed the characters’ relationships quite a bit.

The teens of small towns

I’ve found a pervasive misconception about those shitty little towns that line highways, forcing you into one-way grids for a mile or two before spitting cars back out into runways through the fields and forests. You know these towns. They struggle to become a respectable bedroom community after the mill closes.

They’re not backwaters, devoid of culture. The people are not idiots. There’s just less people, so what idiots they have stand out more. Teens tend to suffer under similar pre-judgement—they are, for all their youth, actual people. They feel and think and reason, only with less years to pull their reasoning from. A lot of them still retain hope and impossible dreams, tatters that haven’t been beat out of them by life quite yet. They’re in the process of trying to learn the social dances that make society accept you as an adult who’s opinion is worthy of listening to and possibly respecting.

There’s not much to do as a teen in a small town. The people I grew up with would go on aimless drives, create intricate master plans that could never come to fruition and play videogames in a group—half the people watching the other half play. We were pretty good and boring kids. The other end of the spectrum is Over the Edge. You have to make your own fun and sometimes it isn’t very.

The chosen one trope

In the 80′s and 90′s I think there was a sort of barrage of this trope. I love it, and have looked at it before. What kid doesn’t hope that for realsies they’ll find the creepy shop with the magical whatsit, or meet the goblin king (and stay with him, because seriously), or whatever. Your trials would all have been preparation for your life as a hero. You were chosen.

I’m sure modern YA still carries the banner for this theme, it’s a great trope. But my interest was in a group’s attempt to manipulate it. Fairies like rules, it’s my favourite thing about them. And rules that exist because that’s how things have always been done and told are just as legit as any rule in the book.

From here on out, it might be kind of spoilery, not outright so much, but in feeling

Mirrored from Journal of a Something or Other.

1.

There was a princess.

2.

Prince Frances, stalwart and true, stood before the wall of thorns and contemplated his approach. He looked up, following the thick growth as it twisted and snagged up crenellated walls and towers. There was a castle beneath the briar and, if rumour proved true, a princess in magical sleep, awaiting a kiss.

Frances hadn’t rescued a princess before, though he was familiar with quests and had won a few. The sword he jabbed experimentally at the thorns had been dipped in the blood of a giant magical boar he’d killed in some great wood a few years back. The blade was now tough enough to cut through anything but dragon hide. Killing a dragon and bathing his sword in its blood would come later. After the princess, before any heirs. He had time for quests yet, even after he rescued and married this girl in the castle.

The briar appeared to be nearly solid, growing densely a full stone’s throw from the castle wall. The woody trunks Frances glimpsed in the tangle were as wide around as his mailed torso. He pulled on thick leather gloves and wished he’d thought to bring a helm. It hadn’t seemed necessary when he set out on this quest. There were no beasts to fight, just thorns, which the mail would protect against. It had been picked up on a quest too, one with dwarves. There’d been no killing on that quest either, just a simple find and fetch.

Frances guessed at where a door might be and began to hack at the dense briar, keeping one arm up to protect his face. The sword grew heavy as he worked and he dropped his arm to use both hands to swing. He hawed a respectable swath into the thicket, still far from the castle wall, but a wide enough tunnel that he wasn’t as worried that he’d put an eye out.

Hunger caught up with him after awhile and he backed out carefully. His squire sat under a tree with the horses, juggling pebbles. Frances ate staring at the briar. He looked at the towers and tried to guess which one the princess lay in. His squire chewed his bread and meat silently, gazing into the middle distance. He’d gone with Frances on quests before and was a trusty right-hand man, but not one for conversation.

Frances went back to the thorns, edging closer to the castle wall. His technique began to grow sloppy and as he turned to hack at a particularly twisted branch a thorn as big as his thumb raked down his face. The cut burned from cheekbone to jaw, deep enough to leave a scar. Frances shrugged it off. It would be additional proof of the completed quest, a badge of honour to go with his blushing bride. He kept hacking at the thorns.

Mirrored from Journal of a Something or Other.

I have a year long plan. This month is dedicated to writing.

If he’d had a choice, Dean wouldn’t have gone to old man Gatson’s, but he hated making his own batteries and there was little argument that the codger produced some of the best. Hopping down from the open-sided bus with a wave at the driver, Dean unslung the folding wire cart from his shoulders and wheeled it across buckled pavement that ran like a moat around the strip mall. There was a city project to tear up some of the asphalt and replace it with community greenspaces and strip gardens, but it progressed as slowly as any city improvement plan. There was always the concern about losing parking space, despite obvious evidence that nearly everyone nowadays walked, bicycled or took the bus when it ran. Dean waved at the Hardwicks as they guided their trap down the road. Even the growing four-footed transportation didn’t justify the space.

Gaston’s shop was flanked by a taqueriá on the left and a community workspace on the right. The workspace had been a supermercado once and the interior still bore some of the signs, soaring industrial ceiling and heavy pillars scattered across a vast expanse of sealed concrete floor. In places the wide panes of glass fronting the building had been replaced with pieces of wood composite, cheerily painted by local children. The windows of Gaston’s shop had never been glass in Dean’s memory, the old man blocked out the elements with canvas backed lattice, which still let in some of the light. Dean paused before the door to steel himself before going in and setting a bell tinkling.

The front of the shop was empty, so he wandered between the close shelves of oddments and parts, picking some up and still being unable to determine their purpose. There was a grumble from the back, so he made his way to the counter, putting on a bland face.

“Hullo Gaston.” Dean got a muffled snort for a reply, so he pushed on. “Just here to pick up that battery.” He pushed the cart back and forth on the floor, a wheel squeaking.

“You should oil that.” Gaston took off his glasses to rub at them with a smudged rag he dug from his pocket. “If you let the little things slip past you it all builds up.” He held the lenses up to the light, they looked neither better nor worse for the attempt.

Dean cleared his throat. “It hadn’t bothered me, not that—I mean I haven’t got anything to oil them with.” He stopped pushing at the cart. Gaston said nothing.

“I guess, would melted fat work? It’s oil, isn’t it? Would it go rancid, I suppose that’s what I’d like to avoid.” Resettling his glasses, Gaston rummaged below the counter and brought up a battered can with a spigot top.

“Use a drop of this, its proper machine lubricant.” Dean took the can and ducked down to the wheels of the cart, glad to be out of the old man’s line of sight. “You could use mineral oil, if you’ve any. Though you probably don’t. That you got to even ask about rendering fat to grease a wheel says something awfully depressing about the state of things.”

Dean stood, handing the can back to Gaston. He gave the cart a push and it rolled silently. He cleared his throat again. “That did the trick, eh? So, about that battery I ordered—”

Gaston was looking over Dean’s shoulder, shaking his head. “You could just walk into a store and buy a can. Maybe you’d have two, in case you lost one. Not that so many things had simple wheels, or that you’d keep them about if they kept squeaking, but if you needed oil for ‘em it was either at hand or readily available.”

“Why wouldn’t you keep something about if it squeaked?”

“It would be silly to keep something broken. Why would you do that?”

“But—” Dean sighed. He’d been through this before with Gaston, with minor differences of theme and varying levels of patience. If he played his part right it shouldn’t eat too much of his day, but it was hard to tell. “But you said it squeaked, not that it was broken.”

“As good as.” Gaston leaned chummily on the counter. “That’s what breaks my heart about you kids today. You’ve got to hang on each little thing because you don’t know where the next is coming from.”

“Well, I mean, yes I do. I get my things from folks like you.” Dean played with the wire cart, rocking it onto its back wheels. “And you make things well enough, more or less, that I only need one. And you’ll fix it if I can’t.”

Gaston gestured angrily at the canvas covered windows, which looked quilted by the brads that held them to the lattice. “Ah, but I wouldn’t have had to, when I was your age. I wouldn’t have had to go rigging something that wasn’t glass for windows. That’s what makes them windows, being able to look through. Or, it’s supposed to be.” He huffed, getting worked up. “I would have just picked up the phone, called for replacements and they would have been delivered.”

“Just like that.”

“Yes, dammit, just like that. It’s not like now, with trucks reserved for food and government transport. Delivering to me would be just one small stop on a much longer route of other places in need of windows.”

There was a pause as Gaston geared up for more about windows. Quickly Dean threw in something to move the lecture closer to the end. “That still seems like a waste of transport.” And glass, he thought. The canvas and lattice had held up with minor fixes and refurbishing for nearly two decades. Big pieces of glass seemed silly. “Besides, delivering all over the place would be awful with all the checkpoints.”

Like a tape program, the old man clicked onto the next topic, extolling road trips and public beaches. Dean agreed with this bit of Gaston’s issues, but he’d learned that saying so was worse than trying to convince him he was romanticising the past. Nodding at the right points, Dean daydreamed about what it would be like to drive a car.

“—It used to be ten times better when I was your age, when it comes down to it. I used to swear I’d never say that, but it’s true.” The old man leaned heavy on the counter, head in his fists.

Dean looked down at the short fringe of hair left on the back of Gaston’s head. “Well, I still think that you’re exaggerating. Not like, I mean you’re not lying. It’s just—remembering how things were isn’t the same as how they were, you know?” He patted the old man’s arm. “The world changes. Just ’cause it’s not like it was when you were my age doesn’t make it worse, or less plentiful or anything. It’s just different.” Dean tried to read the Gaston’s watch upside down, guessing at how long he’d been in the shop. He sighed. “Besides, back in la dia you wouldn’t have had a shop like this, or made and fixed things. I bet when you were my age you never knew you’d make the best batteries in the township.”

Gaston looked up at Dean, a lifetime of tiredness pouching around his eyes. “But I wouldn’t have had—” he shook his head. “I’ll get your battery, you’ll want to get going before the bus stops running.” The old man shuffled to the back.

Dean wheeled the cart idly while he waited. He could smell the taqueriá next door through the canvas of the windows. Gaston was rummaging about the back room, boxing up the battery. Poor old man, didn’t realise how good he had it.

Mirrored from Journal of a Something or Other.

I have a year long plan. This month is dedicated to writing.
This is set in the same world as The Devil’s Music, it’s longer, but there’s no good middle point so I’m doing a jump instead of posting it in two bits.

“Shove over Mags, it’s a blasted mirror, not your lover, share it.”

“Ah Torrie, I’d share both, you know that.”

The two girls kissed at the air and giggled, turning in unison to the vanity, lit perfectly on all sides by a spectrum of bulbs. A third girl, older by a couple months—enough to be eighteen already, which she did not let the others forget—lay back on a divan and slowly rolled a dove grey stocking down her raised leg, fussing with the seam. She admired her silk-covered foot as she spoke.

“Mags, have I told you how jealous I am that your father wired your dressing room? I’ve only got gas in mine, it’s horrible. I might as well dress in a fire-lit cave.” Satisfied that the stocking was plumb, she clipped it to a chartreuse garter and brought up the other leg to repeat the operation. Gold-red hair on her thighs glinted in the bright electric light.

“Oh, is that the only reason you’re here then, Eva, to bask in my technological mastery?” Mags met the older girl’s eyes through the mirror, smiling.

Eva dropped her leg dramatically, splaying her arms off the sides of the couch. “Hang it all, you’ve caught me. I’m simply a beast, using you like this. But, as you have discovered that secret, let me now confess another.” She rolled to her side, facing the vanity, her unclipped stocking dropping below the knee. “I’m here to borrow your crimson petticoat too.”

“Oh no Eva, not with your hair!”

“Oh yes with my hair, the colours will all go together when I’m done, you’ll be in absolute awe.”

Torrie made a rude noise and the girls all burst into laughter. They’d more or less composed themselves and Eva had secured her other stocking when Mags’ maid came in, carrying a tray of hot chocolate.

Jumping up from the divan, Eva took the tray from the maid and brought it to the vanity, distributing cups to the other girls. “Veronica, has your task-master Margaret given you the evening off, or are we going to have to sneak you out with us under our cloaks?”

Carefully applying cut feathers to her eyelashes with gum, Mags spoke into the mirror. “Oh, Ronnie’s done—if you’ve checked in with Mrs. Albert?” The maid nodded. “Well then, start getting dressed, Torrie looks about done, she’ll help.”

“You’re presumptuous, Mags, but correct.” Torrie stood and spun to face the others dramatically framing her face with her hands. “How do you like the look of your escort tonight, ladies?” Her fresh face now wore an artistically narrow moustache running like a pencil line across her full upper lip. The same artifice had been worked just before her ears, giving the impression of a full beard kept at bay by the most careful shave. With bobbed hair pinned back and the arches of her eyebrows delicately filled in, Torrie was the perfect impression of a young gentleman.

The others applauded, Eva and Veronica returning Torrie’s grateful bow. A tall girl, with broad shoulders and willowy frame, the illusion was spoiled only by the curve of breasts hinted at beneath her chemise. Acknowledging the evidence of her femininity with a casual wave of her hand, she added, “A strip of muslin and a well-starched shirt front should be enough take care of this.” Taking her cup of chocolate and sipping it carefully to avoid her moustache, she hooked Veronica’s arm in her own and the two began sorting through the presses against the wall.

Mirrored from Journal of a Something or Other.

I have a year long plan. This month is dedicated to writing.
Part 1 of Morningstar here.

The problem, Babe was finding, was that she was hiding too well.  Her plan for this round of their macabre game of tag involved enticing Allenie onto her chosen ground.  Which was going to be difficult if she couldn’t be found.

Their release had been staggered.  After Babe’s coffin unsealed she checked Allenie’s.  The observation port was opaqued.  The other woman could still be in the cryodoc, sleeping or listening to the machine’s briefing.  Babe barely hesitated as she entered the commands to euthanise and recycle.  The display flashed an error.  There was no body inside.

“Oh, hey.  I didn’t try that on you.”  Babe’s shoulders tensed, fists at her sides.  Allenie stood across the room, leaning causally against the wall.

Clearing commands, Babe shook her head.  “I always played for different reasons than you.”  The two women regarded each other for a while in silence.

Allenie spoke first.  “I’m glad you picked these forms.  It takes me back.  You as a woman is a sight for sore eyes, but I can’t remember if this is what we looked like, originally.”

“The ship might know.”

“I’d rather go on believing it’s true.  That’s why I didn’t handicap your reincarnation this time and why I’m going to give you a hundred count head start, even though you just tried to kill me.”  Babe didn’t move.  Allenie pushed herself off the wall, her eyes sparkling.  “I’m not armed.”  She twirled, showing herself as ship-standard nude as Babe.  “I suggest you start running, honey-babe.  As much as I like looking at you, I can do it all I want once I catch you.  And right now?  You don’t want me catching you.”

Babe waited a moment longer, looking at the other woman.  She turned and ran.  Allenie hadn’t come after her.

For that, Babe was grateful.  She’d been hiding the ‘personal effects’ her cryodoc had set aside and did not want to risk revealing them.  Now, breasts bound and hips slung with a toolbelt full of pockets, Babe needed to be found.

She checked her position against a pod evacuation map on the wall.  The least elegant way would probably be the most effective.

Thumbing an intercom, she called.  “Olly olly oxen free.”

There was no way Allenie wasn’t monitoring the ship’s communication system, at least remotely.  She either knew where Babe was or would soon.  Babe took a better grip on the belaying pin she’d grabbed as a makeshift weapon and jogged down the corridor.

She was ambushed, of course.  Allenie found her at a junction of corridors by the ladder to the next deck.  Babe had just enough notice from the corner of her eye to stop the blow from being incapacitating.  They weren’t exactly where Babe wanted to be, but it would do.

Allenie darted at her again, swinging a heavy mallet.  Babe rolled away, her back and ribs aching.  She really did not want her arm broken.  The mallet smashed into the floor, sending Babe scuttling back as she tried to stand, fumbling at her tool belt.  She had to dodge another mad swing before she could raise the little tube to her mouth.  Closer than she wanted to be to Allenie’s laughing face, she blew.

The effect was immediate.  Allenie’s eyes teared from the irritant and started to swell.  Dropping the mallet, she shoved blindly at Babe, throwing her against the ladder.  Pulling herself up, Babe wiped at the blood stinging her eyes from a cut in her brow.  Allenie slumped against an open doorway, her back to Babe.

Her voice choked with snot and pain from the irritant, Allenie spat over her shoulder.  “Dirty play, Babe.  Where’d that little trick come from, anyway?”  Babe opened a pocket in her tool belt, raising her voice to mask the sound.

“Implanted in a sealed packet under the ribs before I ended up at the butcher’s.  The cryodoc retrieved it for me.”

Allenie chuckled.  “Smart girl.  Of course, you’ve set a precedent for what ‘found weapons’ means.”  There was a clinking as Allenie turned, the weapon from the butcher’s shop in her hand.  “I ‘found’ this in my cabin, for instance.”

Latent electricity hummed as Allenie dragged the ball lightly along the floor at the end of its chain.  There wasn’t enough room in the corridors for her to build up a full swing.  But with an electric charge backing the spikes that much physical force wouldn’t be necessary.

Babe backed away.  The ladder was too close to the wall to squeeze behind, so she stood exposed, measuring the distance as Allenie drew closer.

“Don’t you like my mace?  I think it’s a beautiful fusion of history and technology.”  She began to swing it lightly in an arc not yet parallel to the floor.

Swallowing her fear, Babe sneered.  “You’re a fool.”

Allenie broke stride.  “What?”

Babe triggered the control in her hand.  The ball stopped mid-swing, hovering at hip height, mindless of centrifugal force.  The other woman gaped.  Babe fiddled with the control and the spiked head rose to the ceiling, hanging above Allenie’s upturned face.

“You always said how good I am at tempting you, Allenie.  It was very easy to tempt you to this.”

Allenie threw the haft from her hand.  It swung like a pendulum from the mass of spikes that remained fixed above her.  She tore her gaze away, eyes pleading

“But, like I said, you’re a fool.  That’s not a mace, you idiot.  It’s a flail.”  With a final twist of the controls, the spikes came crashing down in a hiss of burning flesh.  “Where do you think the butcher got this thing, anyway?”

Mirrored from Journal of a Something or Other.

I have a year long plan. This month is dedicated to writing.

Allenie took a practice swing with the mace and wondered again if the whole thing was going to be worth it.  Shaking off her doubt, she turned to the shopkeeper.

“Have you got anything I can test it with?”  Oily with smiles, he directed Allenie to a back room hung full of carcases.  Idly twirling the mace she strolled between bodies, looking for a target.  She called over her shoulder.  “Any prime rib you want me to leave alone?”  The shopkeeper shook his head and Allenie landed a blow on something uncured and six-legged.

There was a flash spikes bit into flesh.  Following the swing through, Allenie left a track of blisters.  The primary point of impact was deeply charred and white on the edges.  The shopkeeper sidled closer.

“It holds a charge for 36 standard hours with no use.  There’s a charging station that comes with, but it also charges kinetically—every time you swing it stores up a little more energy.”  Allenie smiled at the weapon appreciatively.

“Not bad.  Over the course of a battle how well does it stay charged?”  She listened to the rambling sales-pitch answer while taking in the motley assortment of forms swaying lightly in the refrigerated breeze.  The shopkeeper rolled to a stop and she grunted.  “I’ll take it.  You have a nice selection here.”  She handed him the money and waited until he was mid-way through counting before she hit him carefully in the temple with the butt of the mace.

Before he’d fully settled into an unconscious heap, Allenie was weaving between carcasses to one she’d noted earlier.  It was humanoid, though that didn’t make it particularly distinctive.  Lots of food walked on two legs.  Squatting on her heels, Allenie peered into the milky eyes.  She grinned.

Getting a body out of a butchers-cum-black market shop was enjoyably simple.  Allenie added to the scattered pile of money around the still unconscious and now-bound shopkeeper for the carcass and a van to transport it.  She found the charger for the mace, packed everything up and trundled merrily to the docks.  Customs disinterestedly waved Allenie through with what they presumed were her groceries.

A couple days later, hanging in a comfortable, low-gravity orbit around some moon, Allenie was notified by the cryodoc that the carcass was awake.  She leaned over the steel coffin and waved through a tiny, thick-glassed observation port.  Feeling sociable, she thumbed the intercom.  A river of curses flowed forth and Allenie started laughing.  Her patient was restrained and weak, but she could see the cords of its neck straining in rage under translucent skin.  Allenie held up her hand and the torrent mumbled to a stop.

“Now, is that any way to speak to your saviour?”  When there was no reply, Allenie tapped on the glass.  “Did you hear me in there?  You were in line to be cold cuts and sausage when I picked you up.”

The voice from the coffin answered dryly.  “But at least I was dead.”  Allenie laughed again, slapping the side of the cryodoc.

“That’s true, you got me.  We’ll have to call this round a draw.  I’ll even cede you some winner’s benefits.”  She moved beyond the port’s view and fiddled with controls.  The temperature in the coffin dropped, wringing a new string of curses from the intercom.  Allenie shook her head.  “Now, now.  This next round is the match point and you’ve earned a say in the gameplay.  If you’d rather I set this thing on randomise, just tell me.”

The voice on the intercom was weak, but clear.  “If this is actually the deciding round—”

“It is.”

“Then let’s make it poetic.  Set both our coffins for un-enhanced human, female, randomised time.”

Allenie smirked.  “Ooh, catfight.  What’s the field?”

“This ship, found weapons only.”  With an appreciative nod, Allenie finished entering the commands.  Before sliding into her own coffin she glanced through the observation port again.

“See you in the next life, honey.”  She got no reply.

The person who’d been dead struggled into consciousness at the sound of the cryodoc’s voice.

“Welcome, Babe, procedures complete.  Time to release has been randomised and is unknown to me.”  Cautiously stretching within the confines of the coffin, the person yawned.

“Why did you call me Babe?”

Cheerfully, the cryodoc answered.  “It was the name assigned to you for this reincarnation.”  The newly christened Babe sighed.

“Did the other retain the name ‘Allenie’?”

“Yes.  Would you like me to brief you?”  Babe rubbed her eyes and stretched again, taking an inventory of herself.  By not limiting her reincarnation request beyond enhancement scale, race and gender she’d left Allenie an opening to play monkey’s paw.  All the toes and fingers seemed to be there.  Her hearing appeared fine and her eyes worked, even in the dim coffin light.  She tried to recall how it had felt the last time she was a human female, but it was too long ago to remember.

Her hand knocked against a tray set into the coffin above her head.  The cryodoc anticipated her question.

“Your personal effects have been gathered for you.  Would you like a stronger light to examine them?”  Craning awkwardly, Babe emptied the tray.

“Yes, please.  And do go ahead and brief me in the time we have left.”

Mirrored from Journal of a Something or Other.

I have a year long plan. This month is dedicated to writing.

Ellis fidgeted at her desk, trying to concentrate on her report.  Touch-typing, she watched the door of the break room while keying out familiar phrases.

“Inventory ordered automatically, acknowledged and charged to company following S.O.P. for . . . .”

There, Doyle was finally going to lunch.  Empty tea mug in hand, he sauntered through the swinging door.  Ellis continued typing, fingers firm on the keys.

“When received, stock was found to be a mis-ship.  The supplier’s packing slips indicate stock was destined for a competitor, raising the issue . . . .”

Ellis strained to hear over the hum of the surrounding cubes.  Was that the icebox opening and a gasp of surprise?  Was someone sorting files, or was it furious rummaging through containers of microwaveable meals and yesterday’s lasagne?  The break room door heaved open and Ellis’ face relaxed to innocence, eyes focusing on her monitor.

“It is recommended that the mis-sent stock be kept, both to inconvenience the competitor and as data in analysing their business plan.”

When Doyle swung into view, Ellis was carefully proofreading the report, her face still composed.  Doyle draped himself too casually against a partition of Ellis’ cube, waiting to be noticed.  She paused half a beat before looking up.

“Doyle! Aren’t you on lunch?  How can I help you?”  Doyle shifted like a compressed spring.

“Ah yes, Ellis, about that.  I was heating up some of the missus’ split pea when I discovered that my last can of super-caff was missing.”  Ellis nodded interestedly and punched the print button on her console.  Ignoring the whirring, Doyle continued.  “The case was still there, mind you, but it was empty.”  With a small murmur of sympathy, Ellis ejected a miniature cassette of the report and rubberbanded a destination slip around it.

Doyle waited while it was fitted into a canister and dropped down a pneumatic tube in the desk.  “Well, you got anything to say about it?”

Ellis remained impassive.  “About what?”

“You damned know about what.  Did you take my last can of super-caff?”  The surrounding cubes fell silent.  Ellis straightened her back and answered.

“Yes.  I took your last can of super-caff.”  There was an intake of breath among the cubes.  Doyle sputtered.

“It had my name on it.  The case had my name on it and each can did too.  There was a note!”  Ellis didn’t blink.  She sat poised, marvelling at her own calmness.  The next move was all Doyle’s.  His fingers twitched where they gripped the partition.  He didn’t want to do it.  Holding Doyle’s gaze, Ellis pushed.

“Despite your note and intra-office policy, not to mention proper neighbourliness, I drank your last super-caff and I do not plan to buy you more.”  A muffled cry sounded from a cube down the row.

Doyle swallowed hard.  Policy and convention demanded the next step, but he hesitated.  There was something in Ellis’ eyes he did not like.  This was about more than the super-caff.  Staring at the industrial carpet, Doyle forced out his words with painful clarity.

“For the ignominy of stealing my last can of super-caff and refusing to replace it; I, Hardwick Doyle, challenge you, Ellis Montgomery, to a duel.  You will receive a memo from my second and we will resolve this like gentlemen at the end of the workday on the company’s field of honour.”

Ellis relaxed.  The difficult part was done.  With a new assurance she answered, “Your second needn’t bother, Doyle.  Just send me the paperwork by tube and I’ll fill in the weapon choice and sign.”

Doyle nodded and took himself back to the breakroom to finish lunch.

Ellis waited on a bench in the locker room, playing with the cuffs of her red duelling uniform.  Her second, Frances, a girl from the typing pool who shared Ellis’ commute, was pacing in front of her. Frances broke stride and wrung her hands, looking down at Ellis.

“This won’t prove anything.”  Her voice rang sharply against the bare walls.

“I know.”  Ellis’ words were calm.  It inflamed Frances.

“It’s absolutely pointless Ellie!”

Ellis didn’t change her tone, “I know, kid, but it’s a matter of honour.”  Frances’ reply was cut short by the autocom.

“COMBATANTS TAKE PLACES.”

The two women moved down the hall.  Ellis, with an easy smile, laid her hand on Frances’ shoulder.  “Hey, it’s for the best I never got that promotion, huh?  We’re only going to first blood.”  Frances didn’t laugh as she followed Ellis to the field.

The company grounds were clearly laid out.  A small pedestal stood at each end to hold the second’s control panel and the weapons of choice.  Ellis had picked the default duelling pistols.  While Frances loaded and checked the lightweight little firearm, Ellis squinted at Doyle across the grounds.  He did not look happy.

Both seconds signalled readiness.  The autocom sounded again.

“ARM COMBATANTS, STAND AT READY.”

She took the pistol from Frances and relaxed into a waiting stance.  The autocom whirled to the correct program.

“COMBATANTS FIRE AT WILL AFTER MY MARK, TO HIT OR FIRST BLOOD.  SECONDS STAND ASIDE.”

Ellis watched Frances leave the field from the corner of her eye, keeping her focus on Doyle.

“READY.” Doyle cursed being pushed to defend his honour.  He should have just ignored the missing super-caff.

“AIM.” Ellis raised her arm smoothly and she smiled.

“FIRE.”

The projectiles for their rank were low velocity and designed to penetrate no more than one centimetre into flesh when used on regulation grounds.  They were perfectly capable, however, of punching a hole through anything thinner than that.

Ellis got her shot off first and the side of Doyle’s face exploded into blood.  His shot went wild as he dropped to his knees, grabbing at his ear.

Setting her weapon on the pedestal, Ellis crossed the grounds to Doyle, who was mewling inarticulately.  She leaned into his undamaged ear, enunciating her words carefully.

“That is for sleeping with my wife.”  Doyle grabbed at Ellis, but she dodged his bloody hands.  He choked out,

“Why this way?”

“Rather than branding myself a cuckold?”  Ellis shook her head.  “I love my wife, Doyle.  Besides, I have a sense of honour.”

Mirrored from Journal of a Something or Other.

I have a year long plan. This month is dedicated to writing.

They could follow the stag’s path with infrared and sonic trackers.  Spy eyes ran regular sweeps, sending data of what little movement filtered through the dense forest.  Nonetheless, they had yet to come within an arrow’s distance of the animal.  There was considerable worry, bordering on panic, in the upper levels of the administration.  Everything had been tried, and it kept eluding them.

The newly-wed, newly-widowed queen was distraught.  If there had been an argument that precipitated the current troubles, tongues kept still.

They kept hunting.

The queen grew used to the spy eye that hung just above head height a pace behind her.  There were no euphemisms about protection, the thing was there to monitor her activities.  The queen, between attending matters of state, did nothing of interest but cry.  She cried with such regularity and pathos that the men and women monitoring her fell in love.  They traced the shaking lines of her shoulders on their monitors with gentle fingers.  They watched and she knew they watched, but the queen remained an island.

Sympathy dulled their reactions sufficiently when the time came.  The queen met the stag as she wandered the edge of the estate, against a black wall of trees.  They were alone for less than a minute, but it was long enough for the queen to slip her bracelet over one of the stag’s antlers.

Guards spilled across the grounds.  A squad split off, gently forcing the queen to her locked chambers.  The rest gathered spy eyes, stun guns and infrared and entered the woods.  They followed the tracer in the queen’s bracelet.  A valuable part of the kingdom, the queen carried at least a dozen tracers on her person, none of which she knew about.

The stag was trapped when they found it, the bracelet hooking its rack to a tree branch.  They gathered the beast and brought it back to a room in the estate.  That night, guards found the room empty, the stag’s pelt neatly folded on a chair, the antlers set on top.  Following procedure, the guards put them into the incinerator until there was nothing but hot coals behind cold iron.

In the morning the attendants drew back the curtains of the bed to find they had failed.  The queen lay there, the same queen who they spied on and loved, who had been closeted in her rooms since the final hunt for the stag.

When both women stood next to each other the only difference was that one wore the queen’s bracelet as her only jewellery.  The two held hands and felt part of a whole.  Disappointed, the guards shot the woman with the bracelet, adding her body to the incinerator.

The administration began searching the woods for another stag.  The queen continued ruling.  The men and women monitoring her, having found no room in their hearts to love two such beings, watched just above head height a pace behind her.

Mirrored from Journal of a Something or Other.

The two girls, even if they’d saved their pin money for months, couldn’t have afforded the box seats.  Elaine—the oldest of the two, having just turned seventeen—turned to their chaperone and benefactor, her grey eyes shining.  “Oh Doña Absalom, thank you again for bringing us with you. I think Gillian and I will be grateful to you absolutely until the end of time.”  The older girl applied a gentle elbow to the ribs of her friend, bringing Gillian’s awestruck gaze from the opera hall to the bemused carmine smile of the Doña.

Abstractedly pushing back loose curls, Gillian licked her lips before chiming in.  “I honestly think I may faint. Or be sick.”

“Jilly!” Elaine spat, embarrassed but feeling the same way herself.

“It’s true.  I am so terribly a bundle of nerves that I cannot bear it.” She smiled weakly, though her eyes blazed. “I will try to choose fainting, if it comes to a choice.”

Mirrored from Journal of a Something or Other.

Johnnie stood in his garden and tried to see the hills. The fog was up, making the western boundary a towering dark smear in a light grey wall. Between him and the hills were a hell of a lot of other buildings, but his family’s place was taller than most and the hulking view from the rooftop garden was good—in better weather.

Ignoring the misting damp, Johnnie sat, straddling a bench. Though the garden was food-producing enough to justify their solar voucher, it was mostly ornamental. Greenery swarmed in arbours and grottoes, sheltering tables and benches that filled on warmer days.

With the view from the roof, the luxury of the solar inside and privacy for both, the Tip-Top Teahouse wooed customers and did brisk business. Johnnie’s grandfather had seen the need for pleasure spots even in the Five Cities’ infancy, beating most of his competitors to the punch by half a decade. When his daughter took over she refined the business, getting her fingers in the spreading trade.

Unlike most of the buildings in their nook of the Hound, Tip-Top, now technically a hostel and café, used all their floors; each themed and designed for different purposes and clientèle. Though, of course, each served tea.

Mirrored from Journal of a Something or Other.