So I was dredging (the most accurate verb for it) through my Documents folder earlier when I came across a number of short bits of writing I did at various times, most of which are parts of stories that never came to fruition. I've got pretty much no use for them now, so I thought that I might as well post them here and see what people have to say about them.

Timidity and Hatred

Driving through a tropical jungle paradise transplanted into the mountains of central Asia, having just stolen ten ingots of questionable precious metals, listening to actually pretty good Russian pop music on the radio and being chased by a bunch of trigger-happy Spetsnaz lunatics in an SUV, all while armed with nothing but a couple of paintball guns, a fountain pen, a car battery and a lot of expensive vodka. There's a reason I don't use Facebook or Twitter – my naturally honest nature (a throaty guffaw comes from the driver's seat) means I'd have to write stuff like that out in full almost every day. RSI's a bitch. Nice day, though. The sky is purple, the atmospheric oxygen concentration is up to around thirty-five percent and the pterodactyls are out early. Wait, pterodactyls? Are those actually pterodactyls? Is that real? Am I hallucinating? Do I care? No. Hey, do you see those? Yeah, he does. Are they pterodactyls? Seems that way. Oh well. Anyway, they're out. It's a wonderful day to be alive. Living is good. These...these Spetsnaz guys, bunch of half-crazed Russians posted to the middle of nowhere, would do just about anything for kicks, you know the type...they're pretty busy trying to convince me otherwise. I'm, uh, where am I? I'm in the back of our car, a stolen MVD car, big, chunky thing, solid construction. A couple of AK rounds patter into the back. Very solid construction. Did I mention the duct tape? Well, in addition to the paintball guns (plus paintball ammo, forgot to mention that), car battery, fountain pen and vodka, we've got duct tape. These Spetsnaz dudes, highly trained rookie amateur professionals to a man, they've got machine guns, shotguns, handguns, banned guns, the Huns, Gott Mitt Uns, any kind of guns, whatever. You know what? These guys, these Slavic Bolivians to our Caledonian Butch & Sundance, they are so screwed right now it's gone past not even funny and back into funny. It's that much not even funny. Why? I've always wanted to try this. See this? Paintball gun. Take it. Fill the hopper like so. Then, for good measure, get some of that vodka, you know the stuff I mean, it'll make you go blind, boy, ol' buddy ol' friend, could I interest you, yes, no, answer please, not legal for retail outside of former CIS states, try to imagine your liver is a voodoo doll for your ex-girlfriend's brain before drinking it, know what I mean, and you get that vodka, and your pour it over the paintball ammo. Try not to get too high off the fumes. Would that make much difference right now? Bah. Doesn't matter. Then you get the car battery – you gotta be wearing insulating gloves for this, which, lucky me, I am – and you touch the paintball gun to one of the terminals, and you get the fountain pen, and you get some aluminium foil (which there is, forgot to mention that) and you connect the fountain pen to the other terminal with a sort of wire made by twisting up the foil. Now you've got a spark gap. Sweet. Hold the fountain pen out in front of the paintball gun's barrel, just by a few millimetres. Spark. The vodka fumes are gonna ignite now. Take aim, and fire. These pursuers of ours are gonna get a taste of ETERNAL BURNING PAINTBALL FEVER, and my god I just realized that if you take the PAINTBALL out of ETERNAL BURNING PAINTBALL FEVER it sounds like some sort of STD. No matter. What's that? This shouldn't actually be physically possible? Yeah, I know. This place and the laws of physics as we know them have a love-hate relationship. I think. Is that a good metaphor? No? Maybe this. The laws of physics are, like, blatantly, painfully gay for this place, whatever it is, but this place is just not interested. Tragic, really, wouldn't you oh my god that paintball thing actually worked. SUV on fire on the highway, driver loses control and eyebrows simultaneously, tree steps out in front, cleanup on aisle four. You think we should stop and check the car? Not to see if they're OK, dumbass, to steal their stuff. Well, I think it's a good idea. Besides, we're on a mission, man, a mission to the centre of this geographical acid trip, topological sugar rush, quantum-mechanical bipolar disorder, pick your poison. We're cutting a swath from here to Mount Yamantau, then coming back once we check out some of the alleged amazingly cool stuff there, not to mention we have to somehow get rid of all this vodka, the one with the marginally sub-lethal concentration of methanol, and it'd be a shame to waste it. Sure, we gotta get past trigger-happy Spetsnaz, drunk MVD troops, hungry local dinosaurs and the occasional Italian restaurant, airdropped in by imperialist western powers who were hungry. Just as long as we don't run out of fuel. We can't stop here – it's pterodactyl country.

Notes

^ Yeah, I wrote that just after reading Fear & Loathing for the first time. Good book.

The Rad Lads

A little to the north of the Arctic Circle, there's a certain large island, currently part of whatever Russia is calling itself these days. Geologically speaking, it's actually two islands separated by a narrow – six hundred metres at minimum – strait, but that's frozen over for most of the year anyway, so the matter is somewhat academic. Statistically speaking, despite the islands being roughly thirty-eight percent the size of Great Britain by land area, they have a population density somewhere in the vicinity of 0.03 people per square kilometre, presumably because extreme-latitudinal mountainous water frontage does not a tourist attraction make. If you were to look down on the island(s) from a sufficiently high altitude, you'd see a cape on the western side of the northern island, not far from the strait. That cape is called Sukhoy Nos. It's a breathtaking, windswept environment, known both for its harsh beauty and the fact that-

“This place has gotta be damn radioactive.”

Basically that. Politically speaking, no-one would be interested in the place in the slightest if, because of the above reasons of isolation and low population density, the Soviet Union hadn't taken a good look at it back in the 1950s and filed it under Weapons, Nuclear, For The Testing Of. Sukhoy Nos used to be known as Zone C of the Novaya Zemlya Test Site, and if you don't like cancer, it's probably best to stay away from it. The owner of the voice which made that comment just now is sitting in the passenger bay of a helicopter, currently hovering over the cape. He's a middle-aged man, dressed in white-and-grey camouflage fatigues and wearing silvered anti-glare sunglasses. For the reflected sunlight off the ice and snow, you see. Sitting in the helicopter's other seats are a number of similarly-dressed men, all armed with assault rifles. In addition to that, there's two other people – a woman in cold-weather gear and sunglasses and a man wearing – of all things – a garish Hawaiian shirt. No, seriously. It's, what, twenty below outside and he looks like he should be sitting by the pool somewhere in the Bahamas. Or Seychelles. Whatever. The woman looks at the man in fatigues.

“Only the ground. We won't be there for long anyway. Your crew are simply insurance in the event that the Russians try to pull something.”

She adjusts her sunglasses.

“Yeah. About that. Why are the Russians sending an escort for their guy? I'm guessing CIA has got to know at least that much.”

“We do. The Russians are sending an escort as insurance in the event that we try to pull something.”

The guy shakes his head. Strategists. Moscow or DC, it's the same species everywhere. He turns to his troops.

“Alright, boys. Here's how this is going to work. We're gonna land on the snow flats up ahead. We drop off Code NOIR, and then we pull back three hundred metres. The Russians'll drop off Code ROUGE, and then they'll pull back three hundred metres. Code NOIR and Code ROUGE will have their fight, and then whoever wins gets picked up by their respective crew. If the Russians try to pull shit during the fight, waste 'em. If the Russians are sore losers and try to take out Code NOIR, waste 'em. Basically, the Russians do anything we don't like, waste 'em. Now, I've got an inkling that the Spetsnaz guys you'll be up against have pretty much the same orders. All goes well, we won't have to fire a shot.”

Notes

^ Something to do with super-powered individuals and the Cold War. Not sure exactly where I was going with this.

Schrodinger's Case

It's far too early in the morning to be this early in the morning. Why am I even awake? I shouldn't be awake. It's...nine o'clock? Is that accurate? Damn. Better question: why was I still asleep?

Ring, ring!

Ah, that was why I woke up.

“What?”

“Hey there, beautiful.”

“Are you drunk?”

“Mmmaybe. Did I wake you?”

“I was having a nice dream.”

“About me?”

“Dream, not nightmare.”

“Brr! So cold. One day I'll melt that icy heart of yours.”

“Every cliché you spout can only lower its temperature.”

“If that were true, you'd have hung up already.”

“I occasionally entertain the notion that your calls may bring me something other than the pressing need to throw the phone out the window.”

“Ah, your windows. Installed blinds yet?”

“Of course not. That would tip off the sun cultists.”

“Them again? Last week it was moon cultists.”

“Same conspiracy, different execution. It's Schrodinger's Cult. I took another look at it.”

“Wouldn't that make it the Conspiracy Zeno Effect?”

“I wonder if I could collapse your wavefunction into someone more tolerable.”

“Party at Eugene Wigner's place, all his friends were invited. Didn't see you there.”

“Funny, I was about to say the same thing.”

“Yes, you were. Anyway, the purpose of my calling you was not to make obscure quantum mechanics jokes but to tell you that you've got a client.”

“I have lots of clients.”

“A new one.”

“My clients come at night.”

“Not this one. He's knocking on your door in twenty-nine minutes and eighteen seconds.”

“How does he know where I live?”

“No idea.”

“How do you know he's a client?”

“Silver metal briefcase. Might as well write a dollar sign on the side.”

“Euro.”

“Hmm?”

“Five hundred Euro note is more valuable than the US one hundred, but roughly the same size. You can fit more cash in the briefcase that way.”

“Isn't that wishful thinking, with you being the probable recipient?”

“I can dream, can't I?”

“Of anything other than myself, it seems.”

“Precisely. I don't suppose you can tell me what he's going to ask me?”

“No such luck. Insufficient resolution.”

“Where'd you meet the guy?”

“I didn't. He's in your future.”

“Which ones?”

“Looking at one hundred percent of all Layer One futures, ninety percent of Layer Two and eighty-nine percent of Layer Three.”

“So it's a dead cert, huh?”

“Seems that way. Want to know what he's going to ask you?”

“What'll it cost me?”

“Dinner for two at a place of my choosing.”

“I can wait.”

“Again, so cold! One day, I tell you...”

“Goodbye, Eliot.”

Click.

Note

^ Experiment into ambiguous dialogue.

Schools, Fools and Fossil Fuels

Click.

“-ward the Nobel Peace Prize to Sir Julian Assange, reclusi-”

Click.

“-ussian energy giant Gazprom announced that the Siberi-”

Click.

“-singer Ken Ashcorp took home the Grammy Award for hi-”

Click.

“-ormer Labour leader will be facing criminal proceedi-”

Click.

“-tervention in Afghanistan a 'nominal success' in a-”

Click.

“-war in Indonesia continues into its sixth mont-”

Click.

“There's never anything good on, is there?” asks Rawlings. He puts down the remote control and stares at the screen in disgust. “Just bloody news.” The light in the prefab dims for a moment, then regains brightness. A reply ambles its way back across the room.

“Don't we have movies?” It's Dom, he of the dark blue shirt and bemused demeanour. He's sitting on one side of a folding coffee table, pondering whether or not to take the white rook.

“Well, yes, several. I meant movies we haven't seen three thousand times.” Rawlings, ever the fidgeter, pulls a ball of lint off the sofa and rolls it between his fingers. “Only twelve films for three months is no way to live.” A click and a clack; Dom's decided to take the rook.

“We could drive into town. Piracy's still big here. I reckon we could get another twelve for, hmm, thirty Australian? Thirty-five?”

Thunder rolls. The rain is a dull roar outside the prefab. A moment's brief calculation on both their parts says that the road to the village is going to be impassible. It's been like this for three straight days now – clouds so thick you can't tell the difference between ten in the morning and five in the afternoon, and rain that's making the brass very pleased that they ordered raised prefabs. Helos can't fly missions due to poor visibility, and the only ground patrols being run are the volunteer ones. Met Office says it'll clear up tomorrow. Until then, the lads at FOB Radius are advised to wait it out and avoid going stir-crazy. Good luck with that. London grunts. He seems to have just registered that he no longer has a rook on the field. Rawlings peels himself off the sofa and pulls a folding chair up to the coffee table. Now that television has forsaken him in his hour of need, he's decided to watch the game. Dom and London have been taking their time about this. When Rawlings entered the Rec Room at seven this morning – funny, the three hours seems like longer – they were already playing. London grasps his chin and leans over, giving him an almost uncanny resemblance to that Rodin sculpture, “The Thinker”. Rawlings can't resist.

“Who's winning?” Nothing can break London's concentration, but Dom half-turns to look at him.

“On what basis?” is the reply. Dom, of course, knows something Rawlings doesn't, and wants to show it off.

“Doesn't bloody matter. Who's more likely to win at this point?” Dom is nonplussed. He tries to work out another way to casually inform Rawlings of his superior knowledge of the game of Chess.

“Depends, really. I've got more material – more pieces, that is – but London here's got a better attacking position.” Haha, top marks to me, thinks Dom, I even got 'material' in there. Rawlings doesn't answer. His brain is still trying to calculate precisely how much of a tosser Dom just sounded like. With a flourish of cheap plastic, London makes his move – a hop, skip and jump by the white knight. He looks up at Dom and grins.

“Check, mate.” Dom looks like the floor's dropped out from underneath him. Too bad Rawlings' phone is on the fritz, or he'd try to get a shot of the priceless “Oh, bollocks” expression Dom is wearing. It's a well-known fact to everyone but him that Dom is really not very good at chess, which is why Kermit London (Froggy to his friends, for obvious reasons) probably won the game before Dom made his first move. Rawlings snickers uncontrollably.

“Nice one, Froggy. We'll make a grandmaster of you yet!” London knocks over the black king with his knight – the standard victory gesture. Dom sighs, pulls a tray out of the board's base, and starts packing up the pieces. The triumphant London's boots click their way across to the mini-fridge, where the body attached to them withdraws a trio of celebratory drinks. Non-alcoholic, of course. This is a combat zone, which means they reserve the hard stuff for guys who've just come back from the field. The rest of the lads have to make do with Coke. Dom accepts one, probably still puzzling out where he went wrong. Rawlings cracks his straight away. Outside it's still bucketing down. A collective sigh of boredom goes round the table. A glance to the right reveals a small kitchen, and next to it, a shelf loosely stocked with a bunch of well-thumbed novels. Mainly thrillers. Emphasis on 'well-thumbed', as most of the lads have read them already. Then there's the TV, which Rawlings discarded earlier. It's a recent model. Not that large, but it's HD and picks up most of the satellite news stations. Trouble is, it only picks up satellite news stations. Suddenly Rawlings pipes up.

“That's it! I just remembered!”

“Good to know that part of your brain's working, Rawls. It's one of the important ones.” comments Dom.

“Up yours. This is important. I think I know where we can get some new movies.”

“Hmm?” Dom takes a sip of his Coke. “I'm listening.” London takes a pack of cards out of his BD Us and starts balancing them into triangles on the formica table.

“Logistics. Those blurays had to come from somewhere, right? My bet is Logistics popped down to Broome months ago and bought a tonne of unsold discs. Got 'em in bulk, so they're cheaper. Then they just handed out a bunch to every platoon. Pound to a penny, Logistics nicked off with a few of the best ones. It'd be easy to get away with, given the volume.”

“I've forgotten. Where does Logistics camp out?”

“Next door to us. They wouldn't keep their stash in the staff rec room, 'cos the head shed would be none too pleased with that sort of behaviour. My guess is it's in the main Logistics tent, and they watch them on the big board.” London starts work on the second level of his card house.

Dom mulls it over for a second.

“So, what, do we ask them nicely?”

“'Course not. What'd you say in their position?”

“I'd tell us to piss off.”

“Exactly. No, we'll have to steal them. You up for it?”

“Sure, why not?”

—-

“Because it's a very stupid idea. Extremely stupid. Monumentally stupid. The sort of stupidity that gets written about in history books, usually immediately preceded by 'Do Not Do This If You Want To Win A War'.”

“We both know that, Hal, but the thing is that the media doesn't. They have a very limited idea on how we're actually fighting this war. We have to sell, to the public, and to the press, two things. First, that we know what we're doing, and second, that Indonesia will not turn into another futile quagmire.”

Hal Bracken is an unhappy man. In fact, he's been wandering around since breakfast with an attitude of general ill will towards the rest of the planet, mumbling incoherent obscenities about anyone he happens to see and snarling at furniture. He somehow seems to be on his third whiskey while still sober. At least, Piet hopes that he's sober. These traits would be acceptable in another person – a lead singer, perhaps, or a film star – but the sad truth is that Harrison L. Bracken is the CEO of one of the world's largest private military contractors and he has to give an interview to 'some twat from CNN' later tonight. Piet doesn't blame him for being on edge. Bracken's company engages in a line of work that is controversial in some (read: most) spheres, and attracts more second-guessing from the armchair generals in the US and Europe than a pile of rotting meat attracts flies. This interview could, if handled badly, undo a lot of progress they've made recently. That's why Bracken has to-

“-stop pissing about and start looking professional. Jesus, Hal, come on. She's going to be in here in about ten, so you could at least stop looking like a wino in a business suit. Un-ruffle your hair. Shave. Whatever. This is going out on their international station, which means that by tomorrow a lot of people in insurgent-controlled areas will pick it up. You looking like a complete nonce and pontificating is not going to reassure the populace. Remember, this is just as much for the Indonesians than it is for the average guy in the West. They have to know, and believe, that we are not going to drop a bollock, and that we do know what we are doing, and that the Caliphate's days are numbered. That's what you're here for.” The pep talk works, although Piet isn't sure to what extent. Bracken gives an imperceptible nod, gets up, and retreats into the office's en suite bathroom. Turns out the building that Sodalitas bought used to be a fancy hotel – something like the Ritz of Jakarta. Piet still can't get used to the fact that his own office has an adjacent spa bath. There's a bleeping noise. It's Piet's phone – a text from the lobby. The CNN van has just pulled up out the front, and the journo plus crew are getting out. Piet puts the phone back in his pocket.

“She's here. Get yourself presentable, I'm going downstairs to meet her. I'll try stalling her, but call it ten minutes till she's in here, so make sure you're behind that desk in nine.” There's a vocalization of assent from behind the bathroom door, so Piet leaves the office. Twenty metres down the hall, a button pressed, a short wait, a few steps to the front and he's in the elevator heading for the Lobby. Elevator time is important. Piet has been in a lot of elevators in his life – he calculated it once and it came out to over a thousand – and he's liked being in almost all of them. It's a necessary moment of pause in the frenetic confines of your day job. A moment for reflection, as it were. Almost philosophical. However, this is not the time for soliloquising. There is a job to be done, and that job is to stall the journo downstairs for long enough so that Bracken can defoliate his lower jaw. To stall...with extreme prejudice. Piet looks up. Third floor. Double-check time. Turn to face the mirror. (Elevator designers love mirrors. It's probably because they think that infinite-tunnel effect is still a novel idea.) Hair? Dark brown. Alright for formal situations. Tie? Hunter green, because OD ties look preposterous. Suit? Dark. Shirt? White. Glasses? Non-present. Wristwatch? Looks expensive. Sidearm? Back in the office. So what if it's unofficial company policy; Djakarta is pretty safe these days. All systems go. Bing. The doors open. Piet steps out into the lobby, tastefully done in polished pink granite and with a completely useless water feature in the middle of the floor. Ah, there they are. Behold the 21st century news correspondent, all your interviewing and foreign reportage needs managed by just two people. There's the journo, and Jesus Christ, they've sent us the fucking intern. Piet hates dealing with interns. Being mostly fresh out of journalism school, they tend to be too idealistic by half. The idea that a private corporation could get involved (by invitation) in a foreign war and actually turn out to be a beneficial influence simply escapes them. An optimistic estimate on Piet's part says that there's maybe a fifty-fifty chance that she'll paint us as imperialist war profiteers. Oh well, you can't win them all.

“Are you with CNN?” he asks. The Pretty Young Thing(TM) and a taller, bearded man who Piet decides to call Camera Guy (the twenty-five K worth of Panasonic merchandise he's holding is a bit of a giveaway) turn to face him.

“Hi! I'm so sorry if we're late or anything, but the traffic here is just insane! Oh, I forgot, introductions. Uh, I'm Karen Suede, Junior Foreign Correspondent with CNN. This here's Sam who'll be working the camera. And you are...?”

“Pieter Mertenson. I'm Mr. Bracken's PR consultant.” The journo effuses for a few more seconds about a string of tenuously connected subjects, and then asks if Mr. Bracken would be ready for the interview, please?

“Certainly. If you'll follow me...” Back in the elevator, then. Piet takes his phone and surreptitiously hits a pre-prepared hotkey that sends a realtime audio feed from the elevator to Bracken's speakerphone. If he's listening, he might just grab some useful details. Time to start the conversation.

“I understand you'll be mainly focusing on Sodalitas' current operations in Indonesia, correct?

“Oh, yeah, sure, obviously. Couldn't do the interview without mentioning that, could I? Although it's not really the main, main focus, though. The viewers want to know how Harrison Bracken feels about the situation from an ethical standpoint, you know, human rights, laws of war, that sort of thing. It's, uh, an important topic that they reckon has been ignored.”

Well, shit. No surprise there. She's probably going to try to skewer Bracken on that “the West shouldn't get involved, we'll only make it worse” idiocy. The boss is a smart guy and, if he's listening, is (or should be) preparing some very good rebuttals. Talking about charged issues like this is like walking on the edge of a knife. One of those nice Swedish ones that are etched with lasers. Piet's about to ask another question, but he's misjudged how long the elevator takes to reach the 19th floor. Quickly, he touches the hotkey again and leads the CNN crew up the corridor. Nothing to be done about it now.

Notes

^ Start of an unfinished semi-humorous piece about PM Cs involved in a future civil war in Indonesia. Alternate future history, perhaps?

Monkey C-Consciousness, Monkey Do-Consciousness

I remember it like it was yesterday, which is interesting considering it happened earlier today. The call from Five-Eight-Five came in at some unholy hour of the morning – ten a.m., I believe. The cross-Pacific flight will make anyone into a zombie, and I was finding out the hard way that it works on me as well. After regaining sufficient fine motor control, I picked up the phone.

“'Sup.”

“Authenticate yourself.”

There's only one person who calls my number with this sort of introduction.

“On what slender threads do life and fortune hang.”

“Wait one.” I hoped to god that that was the right phrase for this week. When do we change them again? Sunday? Monday?

“Authentication accepted. Patching you through.”

Sweet.

“Good morning, Agent.”

Ah, the dulcet tones of Five-Eight-Five. He's rarely happy to see me, and today was no exception. The feeling was entirely mutual.

“Give me one good reason why I shouldn't hang up right now.”

“Because I am the one who signs off on your paychecks. In addition, is that any way to speak to a superior officer?”

“Last time I checked, Fivey, neither of us officially work for the military. So I can refer to you however I damn well please.”

“You are not a morning person, are you?”

“I'm absolutely a morning person. It's just that my pineal gland is not of the same opinion.”

“I advise you find a way to change its opinion. I want you in the situation room inside the hour.”

“You're going straight to hell, you know that, right?”

“If so, I shall save you a place.”

And then he hung up. Bastard. The addition of clothing and a couple of kilometres by car later, I was at the office. While our unit covertly draws funding from the military, the office is physically located inside the RG Casey Building, a glass-and-stone monstrosity that is better known as the headquarters of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. You tend to see it on the news every so often, when journalists accost some civil servant at the front door. Incidentally, when I say the office, I mean Five-Eight-Five's office. I have not been deemed worthy of owning one, which suits me just fine because I'd never use it anyway. I got waved past the guards at the door with barely a second look, courtesy of a very useful Special Access ID signed by the incumbent PM. The Situation Room Five-Eight-Five was referring to is a subterranean bunker, accessible only from the ground-floor cleaner's cupboard at the RG Casey Building and the Prime Minister's office. Since the threat of nuclear annihilation is no longer present in the foreseeable future, our unit appropriated the bunker. A brief look around confirmed that no-one was watching. I walked into the cupboard, stood near the edge of the (rather small) floor and whispered this month's door code. There was a hiss as a square crack appeared in the previously seamless concrete floor. A section of the floor opened upwards to reveal a descending spiral of stairs. I've heard that the entrance from the PM's office is far more spacious, although I've never been able to use that way. Then I had to get authenticated again – annoying, but probably necessary – and before I knew it, I was in the Situation Room.

“You are late, Agent.” What a humourless git. Was I not there inside the hour, as requested? The call came in only forty minutes ago! Having that sort of response time given my current condition deserves a medal, preferably one of the shiny ones. I explained this to Five-Eight-Five, albeit not in so many words.

“I suppose it cannot be helped. I apologise for interrupting your recuperation period following the return from the United States. As you have probably guessed, something has come up.”

Part of the wall behind him pulled back to reveal a very large LCD screen. I do mean very large. The size was comparable to that of a home theatre, and those screens are projected. I've got no idea how he justified our expenditure to The Lady Upstairs – presumably he told her the commas in the price tag are decimal points.

“In a routine sweep of South-East Asia, our module on USA-216 – one of the Key Hole Thirteen satellites belonging to the American National Reconaissance Office – detected this.”

The needlessly expensive LCD blinked to life, revealing a large false-colour image with a map of the Philippines superimposed on it. The scene was awash in dark blue.

“Well, that looks perfectly normal to me. Where's the problem?”

Five-Eight-Five tapped the screen with an index finger. So not only is the screen needlessly huge, it's also touch-sensitive? Just how much did he spend on this?

“That is the problem.”

We zoomed in on a small island to the north of the main Philippines cluster. Whereas everything around it was dark blue, around this island there was a perfect circle of red. Bright red. Uh-oh.

“Please tell me that's not what I think it is.”

“I am afraid so. The noosphere has been critically weakened inside a spherical volume of diameter three kilometres, plus or minus fifty metres. Within the sphere, field readings are down to less than one tenth of one percent of Baseline Noosphere Density. In addition, notice the shape.”

“It's artificial.”

“Precisely. While we have had an abnormally high number of noosphere anomalies this year, possibly due to increased sunspot activity, they have all been larger, more irregular in shape and significantly weaker. I asked our colleagues at JESG to double-check my analysis. They agreed that this event is, without a doubt, man-made.”

“You brought JESG in on this? Don't you need The Lady Upstairs to sign off on that?”

I thought I saw a glimpse of a wince on his face, lingering somewhere at the limit of perception.

“As it happens, JESG were already monitoring the anomaly. Director Ibara seemed to be very concerned. It was in fact him who asked for our assistance. More to the point, it was three o'clock in the morning. It would have been inconvenient to wake the Prime Minister.”

“Inconvenient for you or for her?”

He scowled for a moment, then lapsed back into his usual unreadable face. It occurred to me, not for the first time, that he would be very good at poker. Perhaps that's how he bought the screen?

“That is not relevant. The Prime Minister will, of course, be informed of the situation at an appropriate time.”

So...tomorrow, then? Or maybe next week?

“In any event, Agent, we are cooperating with JESG on this matter. I understand they have arranged transport for you.”

“For me? Why aren't they handling the wetwork, if they've been monitoring the situation already?”

“They believe that the severe degree to which the noosphere has been compromised will place their operators at risk. Your unique skills make you, in their eyes, an ideal operative.”

“Do they want me to sit up and bark, too?”

Five-Eight-Five's eyes narrowed.

“What they want, Agent, is to discover the origin of this anomaly, and to shut it down. We want the same thing. So you will go along with them, because it is in the interest of both our nations. Am I clear?”

“Serendipitously.”

“Excellent. There is a JESG plane waiting for you at the airport. The restricted airstrip. You will not need clearance from customs, it has all been arranged. However, do not bring back any fruit or vegetables. You know how they get about that sort of thing. Good day.”

<SHALLOW AND THOUGHTLESS TWADDLE OMITTED>

Even for someone who does what I do for a living, this has got to be a first. The room I'm standing in now is filled with gold. Yes, gold, as in actual gold, the metallic yellow stuff that brings out the magpie in all of us. And I do mean filled. I'd say the room is about the size of a small garage. Ingots are stacked up on either side of the room, stretching up to the ceiling. The gap between the two stacks is barely wide enough for one person to walk down it. If I had a lot of free time and a boat or two, I could make off with the lot of it. Ship it off the island, sell it anonymously, retire young. Well, in a manner of speaking. Trouble is, I can't. It's not because of any ethical code I might have – hell, even that's a bit of a liability in this line of work. It's not because the whole stash weighs somewhere in the region of fifty metric tonnes. None of that. I can't run off with this gold because I know something the other treasure hunters – the ones I'm being paid to locate with extreme prejudice – have not considered. Let me show you what I mean. I'll pick up an ingot. On the top of it, there's something imprinted. It's in Japanese (which I can't read today), but underneath that there's a small insignia. The traditional symbol of the Japanese Imperial Family. And judging by the amount of dust that's accumulated here, I'd say that these bars appear to have been here for a long time. Almost seventy years, in fact. If you've worked it out already, congratulations. This is the fabled long-lost treasure of General Tomoyuki Yamashita, the Tiger of Malaya, the man behind the surprising Japanese conquest of Singapore back in World War Two. The story goes that Yamashita organized large-scale looting of Japanese-occupied territories back when it looked like the IJN were rolling up Asia much like the Wehrmacht were rolling up Europe at the same time. He then stashed all this treasure on an island in the Philippines for safekeeping, from where it would be shipped back to the Home Islands after the Japanese victory was complete. Unfortunately for him, things didn't quite work out that way. Hirohito put pen to paper on the USS Missouri, and Yamashita was executed for war crimes, taking the secret of his treasure to the grave. It's a nice story which has had people with metal detectors combing the Philippines for years. So now it turns out it actually exists. Awesome, right? Wrong. Pay close attention. These are all ingots. They are almost filling the room. A reasonably-sized room. Assuming Yamashita melted down everything he found that was remotely shiny, even a generous estimate will tell you that there is simply too much gold here. A lot of the loot would have been in the form of things like precious stones, cash or other artefacts. But there is nothing but gold here. Which brings you to another, more disturbing question. If this room has not been disturbed since World War Two, and there is significantly more gold in here than logic would dictate, where did all this gold come from?

Notes

^ STALKER crossed with James Bond, as run by the Australian Government. Don't know WHAT I was on when I came up with this.

Most likely, none of these will ever be finished unless I find the time and/or motivation at some later date. This is basically all going out here so I can get pointers and criticism on my writing style, which (I'll be the first to admit) is far more annoying to read than it is to write.

edited 27th Apr '11 11:11:16 AM by RiotousRascal

Well, I suppose I should have known better than to call them 'shallow and thoughtless' in the thread description .

The bigger issue is the amount of material, really.

Swordsman Troper — Reclaiming The Blade — Watch

These are actually pretty good. Not necessarily published-work quality (well, they're better then some published work - I'm talking about the good stuff here) but not at all "shallow and thoughtless". I'd chalk up your doubts to another case of writers being their own worst critics.

Signature-worthy.

You may be right about that first piece showing its age, but in fact, pretty much all of it is that quotable.

edited 29th Apr '11 1:00:54 AM by SPACETRAVEL

whoever wrote this shit needs to step on a rake in a comedic fashion

...+LOLZ+

Thanks for the input, guys. Here's some more stuff I managed to dig up. The first one here I'm actually considering expanding somewhat, so I'd like to hear your opinions.

My Girlfriend Is An Eldritch Abomination

It's A Bad End

I can't quite describe it, even now. There was something slightly wrong about her, but I simply couldn't put a name to it. Just looking at her normally, casually glancing, you wouldn't notice anything out of the ordinary. But take a closer look. Her eyes are just slightly off-centre with respect to the rest of her face. Her nose is just slightly crooked to one side. Her legs...one was longer than the other, only by a few millimetres, but enough to give her a permanent lean to one side. But here's the thing: which side? Look at her through one eye, then the other. See that? Her eyes aren't just off-centre, they're off-centre in both directions. Same with the nose. And the lean. Symmetrical asymmetry. And it's not just her body. Look at her clothes. The pleating on her skirt – those should all be straight lines. But they're not. Look at them for a while, and they're curved, distorted, warped even. Take another look, and they're straight again. Look at the pattern on that woollen sweater. It should be a set of parallel horizontal lines. And it is. But why do they all intersect with each other, even though if you traced the lines with your finger, you'd find them to be straight all the way? And that shirt she's got on under the sweater – it's got this pattern on it, like a reverse optical illusion. It only stops moving once you stare at it for a while. Just fast enough to almost convince you it's not real.

And then she walks up to me. And, if you look at her feet, you can almost – almost – see the tiled floor distort as she passes over it, somehow turning squares into pentagons without making a gap-

“Worked it out yet?”

And this beautiful, crooked girl, with her beautiful, crooked smile takes out a beautiful, crooked knife – both curved and not curved, serrated and not serrated, lighter than air and yet somehow more solid than everything else in the room.

“...the colour...” Is all I manage to say. Even speaking is difficult, for some reason.

“Very good.” She does something with the knife – rotating it not in one, nor in two, but in three different directions all along the same axis. And then she cuts me. It takes less than a tenth of a second. I gasp. It's not deep. It doesn't even hurt that much. I can see the blood soaking through my sleeve – but there's no gash in the fabric.

“That's why...your eyes...”

She brings her face close to mine, uncomfortably close, with her lips, newly frosted in carbon dioxide crystals frozen straight out of the ambient air, almost touching mine. They wouldn't even be the coldest part of her; under that shirt, she's sweating liquid air, the nitrogen and oxygen droplets sliding down her legs and flash-boiling on the tiles below. A faint cloud of condensed water vapour starts to congeal around her. And her eyes, those maddeningly, paradoxically misaligned eyes, are the colour that reveals this girl's true nature. The colour she used to wear contact lenses to hide.

“It's a strange colour, isn't it? You see,” she begins, her eyes, unblinking, staring into mine, the knife millimetres from my chest, “Any other colour, if you were to stare at it for a while, would burn into your retina and form an after-image, at the exact opposite hue to what you were staring at. This applies to all colours. Except for one.”

“...magenta...” Don't think about what happens if she touches you, don't think about what happens if she touches you-

“That's right. Magenta will not form an after-image. And the reason for this is that magenta, as a colour, does not exist. It's something made up by your brain to fill a gap in your perception. When you see magenta, you aren't really seeing magenta. You're seeing your brain's approximation of a colour that exists outside of your perception. It's removed from your comprehension. You cannot grasp its true form.”

“Heh...” I mumble. “...Just...like...you...”

She smiles innocently. Her forehead's started to sweat as well. Rivulets of liquid air are running down her cheeks, and dripping off her chin. A droplet falls on my leg. I gasp in pain as the double-digit-Kelvin liquid hits my exposed skin, even though it boils less than a second later.

“Don't worry.” Says a voice. It's hers. But her lips weren't moving- “This won't take a minute.”

It doesn't. She just does something with the knife again. The glossy, silver blade rotates around and through itself, turning inside-out in two different directions like a sharpened Mobius strip. And then-

She stabs me in the chest.

No, that's not what happened.

The knife had always been in there. Even while she was holding it. But how?

The corridor dims, and eventually vision cuts out altogether. Then, touch (the tiled floor, frosted in dry ice), taste (coughed-up blood in my mouth), smell (ozone, like from a thunderstorm), and finally hearing.

“Only three dimensions...pitiful. I've no idea how you put up with it...”

Note

This actually began as an attempt to write a Through the Eyes of Madness scene involving a Yandere, but the phrase 'sweating liquid air' got involved somehow and...well. This happened.

Trigger Happy

From the same setting as 'Pterodactyl Country'

Now here's a story for you guys. You know how I went on a research trip to the Yamantau Quarantine Area six months ago? Stop me if you've heard this one before. Alright. Oh, you guys don't know it? Can't give you details, but here's the general idea. Yamantau used to be a Soviet nuclear bunker, like the American one in Colorado. Cayenne Mountain. Cheyenne. Something like that. 'Round five years back, some crazy stuff went down at the bunker, don't ask me for details, the Russians themselves don't know exactly what happened. Basically, a spherical volume formed around the bunker. It extends out around fifty kilometres in every direction. Inside that sphere, reality is out to lunch. It's a jungle in there. Like, literally, it's a rainforest. In Russia. The climate inside the sphere is way messed up. The oxygen concentration is, what, like fifteen percent higher than normal? Get this: there are dinosaurs in there. No big ones – you won't find old T-Rex stomping around – but the smaller ones, like pterodactyls, procompsognathuses. No velociraptors, thank god. Nobody knows why they're there, but they are anyway. But that's the least weird stuff you get in there. I haven't seen these first-hand, but there are stories of stuff like fruitcake raining from the sky, time travelling faster underwater, fighter jets (the Russians have an air base at Totskoye, and they do flyover recon of the sphere from there) turning inside-out in mid-air. But the weirdest thing about that place is what I'm about to tell you. There's the main research base, Base Newton, which is near the sphere's outer perimeter. That one's run by a joint Russian-American effort. Then, scattered around the place, you've got smaller bases, some of which only focus on a single area of study. When I did my research there, 'cause I'm a theoretical physicist, I got sent out to a place called Camp Tomonaga, which is run by Cambridge and Tokyo University. Yeah, they're all named after famous scientists. Anyway, the moment I got off the helicopter, I was greeted by the camp's leader, guy named Yoshimizu. He showed me around the place for a while, and when I think he's about to wrap up, he says, dead serious, “By the way, have you died yet?”.

So I'm there thinking, “What the hell is this guy on about?”, when suddenly, these two guys run up to him. One was British, the other was Japanese. They're both, get this, holding swords. Actual swords. Katanas, I think they were using. The Japanese guy says something to Yoshimizu which I can't quite make out (my Japanese is pretty good. The guy was talking really fast.) and while he's talking, the British guy raises his sword and cuts his head off. No, seriously! He was talking and then, WHAP, headless. Body falls to the ground. So now I'm freaking out, there's a psycho killer on the loose with a sword, but then, and on this I shit you not, I blink and the guy comes back to life! He's standing, just where he was, as if nothing had happened! Then, the two guys are just laughing their heads off about it. Yoshimizu joins in as well. I pull Yoshimizu aside and ask him precisely what the fuck that was, not in so many words, and he says this:

“You can't die in here, you know?”

I must have had a disbelieving look on my face, because then he says,

“Look, I'll show you.”

And he pulls out a pistol, racks the slide, and shoots me in the face. Next thing I know, I'm standing right where I was, and he's putting away the gun. He makes a point of showing me the spent shell casing to prove that he fired. I believed him after that. Inside the Quarantine Area, it's impossible to die. From anything. That's why a lot of scientists spend half their time doing extreme sports or, in the case of the two guys, learning kendo without safety equipment. Don't ask me to explain how that works. It just does. And you know what? I am one of the few people in the world who can truthfully say that I have been shot in the face with a nine-millimeter pistol at point blank range, and came out smiling. Try asking any of your other professors if they can claim that! Although I think Dr. Rawlings can claim something similar. He and his arch-nemesis Professor Tomlinson had to stay in the same room, and as a result they poisoned each other at every single meal. Different poisons every time. They must have killed each other at least fifty times. Great stress reliever. We had a drinking game going. Every time Rawlings kills Tomlinson or vice versa, take a sip. It's an incredible place. And you know what? I'm going back next year.

The General's Decision

Also, also, in the same setting as 'Pterodactyl Country'

“An artifact, you say?”

“Yes, sir. Recovered from the remains of the Yamantau facility. To be more precise, it was found near the ruined entrance.”

General Kalinin turned to the wiry FSB man in the chair opposite.

“And what does the Security Bureau think about this, Mikhail Fyodorovich?” The FSB man adjusted his glasses. He spoke slowly, carefully, as if measuring every word.

“In the judgment of the Federal Security Bureau, the existence of this artifact or artifacts, should more be found, in conjunction with the current deregulated status of the Quarantine Zone, poses a severe threat to the internal security of the Russian Federation. The most efficacious course of action, in our view, would be the thorough suppression of any knowledge pertaining to the artifact or artifacts. In addition to this, steps should be taken to prevent persons in the Quarantine Zone from penetrating closer than three kilometres from the former Yamantau facility.”

Konstantin Nikolayevich snorted.

“Surely you're not supposing that we cordon off that area too? General, my men in the field are over-stretched as it is, maintaining the Quarantine Perimeter. MVD can't commit to a further deployment. Especially not that deep inside the Quarantine Zone.”

The General put out his cigarette.

“Knowing you, Mikhail Fyodorovich, you predicted that response. I assume you have a contingency plan?”

“Certainly, General. In the event that creation of a physical cordon becomes impossible or impractical, operational procedure will be to render the area surrounding the Yamantau facility impassible. In the judgement of the FSB, this could be best achieved by the irradiation of the surrounding area.”

“You're not suggesting-”

“A tactical nuclear warhead, rated for thirty kilotonnes, to be detonated at low altitude over the former Yamantau facility. The payload would be carried by cruise missile, delivered via a Mi G-35 out of Totskoye Air Base.”

“Hmmm. And there is no other alternative?”

“Our analysts at the FSB ran through a number of scenarios – biological, radiological and chemical agents – and a straightforward nuclear detonation proved to be the best. The fission products will render the area surrounding Yamantau prohibitively radioactive for the next century, and the Quarantine Zone's unique climactic conditions will ensure that any additional fallout is contained. Further artifact recovery will be nearly impossible.”

“General, I must protest this. Management of the Quarantine Zone falls under the jurisdiction of the Ministry for Internal Affairs, not the Federal Security Bureau. Doing this would not only break several long-standing nuclear security agreements, but also potentially endanger the lives of thousands of scientists. Besides, there's very little evidence to suggest that these artifacts are as dangerous as the FSB makes them out to be.”

“There is plenty of evidence.”

“Which you won't let us see.”

“It is highly sensitive information. It has not been deemed necessary for MVD to be informed just yet.”

“And when were you planning on informing us? After you nuked Yamantau?”

General Kalinin cleared his throat.

“Gentlemen. Regardless of what inter-service rivalries you may have, I have seen the evidence. I assure you, Konstantin Nikolayevich, it is very real. In the absence of any alternatives, the plan suggested by Mikhail Pavlovich will be executed at noon, Moscow time, tomorrow. The MVD will coordinate the withdrawal of scientific teams from areas potentially at risk of blast damage. FSB will be placed in temporary command of 109th Composite Aviation Regiment at Totskoye. I'll work with the Foreign Ministry on how this will be handled internationally. Dismissed.”

edited 7th May '11 9:44:13 AM by RiotousRascal