Alexandra Wolfe's Blog, page 28

The Impossible Girl

THE LEAN AND LANKY RYAN CONNOR jumped out the back of the 4-ton truck and landed in the wet mud with a soft thud. It sucked at his wellies as he moved off toward a large pit, and the reason they were all there. He turned just in time to see his Corporal, Jack Blase, a man in his late 20s, man-handle himself out of the truck like a 60 year-old. Working bomb disposal did that to a person. “Come on, Old Man, you’ll be late for the party.” Jack flashed him a look that said, ‘don’t mess with me.’ Ryan cocked his head to one side, fixed his Service-issue woollen hat further back on his head at a jaunty angle, and grinned. He waited for Jack, William ‘The Bagman’ Herschel and their lieutenant, Sandy ‘Shingle’ House, to catch up with him. He turned back toward the gapping maw of the pit. Workers had been hand digging the area up until yesterday when, as happened all to often in this area of Hanover, a perfectly …

Finley’s Last Chapter

“Hi, my name is Finley,” she writes on the scrap of paper with a broken pencil Georgia gave her earlier. “You can blame Georgia for this, for what I am about to write, it was at her suggestion. Well, insistence, that I write it all down, how we came to this moment in time—” She pauses and looks out across the ink black darkness, straining to see anything moving, but sees nothing. It’s all gone quiet. Too quiet, the incessant shelling having stopped a few hours earlier. No one knows what it means. Was it the proverbial calm before the storm, or maybe the eye of the storm? Did it matter which? The small pockets of resistance fighters, like her small group, were losing the war. She isn’t even sure what it is they are fighting for anymore. Survival? That was a joke. They were, according to Thomas, down to their last few scavenged tinned rations. And no one had found anything ‘living’ for several days. Nothing flew across the skies; no birds sang a …

Twist of Fate

SHE LOOKS AT ME AND begins twisting the threads, I am dumbfounded. She is going to do it. I can’t believe it. Not now, please, I still have three books half finished and three others already in outline mode that I need to write. It isn’t fair, I want to scream at her, knowing of course, it will not make the slightest bit of difference. She cannot hear my plea, how can She? Deaf to all. Eyes only for her precious tapestry, weaving this thread than that one. Twisting, twining, feeding new ones in here, some there, seeing where they lead, looking for patterns. All I’ve ever been able to do is watch and worry, knowing She would come to mine, but so soon? No! I want to scream. She turns now, looking at me with those sad soulful eyes, not apologetic, how can She be? This is her life. She came into being when Time started. Her lot in life, to weave. She knows—knows that She will live till Time’s last foundation has fled. …

Spider, Spider

IT STARTED, AS THESE THINGS ALWAYS DO, with some bright spark saying, “Yeah, no problem, I can do that.” This particular bright spark was named Clark Kent, a wunderkind in biology. His specialty? Spiders. Big spiders. Kent thought he was accompanying his buddy, Dwight Eisenhower, to Bill Wiley’s presentation. Dwight, though, had other ideas, big ideas with Bill Wiley, who started in on his presentation to the NASA engineers and scientists. “I give you the Space Elevator,” Wiley began. And, with a flick of the wrist, a slide appeared illuminating one wall. Wiley had skipped the usual pulldown screen wanting to showcase Mark Rotherham’s fabulous artwork on an entire wall. He hoped to dazzle the assemblage. They had seen it all before. Weary scientists who had heard it all before too and would need something spectacular to elicit even mere interest. Wiley’s reedy voice betrayed his excitement as he moved through his presentation. And, as the last slide of the completed elevator hung on one wall like a slender, silvery thread stretched beyond imagination, he …

Darkest Hour

Darkest Hour, starring Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill and Kristen Scott Thomas as his wife, Clementine, is another (IMHO) masterpiece, beautifully filmed and wonderfully acted by a great cast. This British coproduction from Focus Four Films and Working Titles Films, directed by Joe Wright, concentrates on a very brief segment and moment in history—literally weeks from the moment when the then sitting Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain is forced to resign through a vote of no-confidence, through to a few days after the evacuation of 300,000 British troops via Dunkirk. This is not an in-depth look at that moment in history, nor the people in power making all the decisions. But another well-crafted, cleverly told and thoroughly entertaining ‘snap-shot’ that is, once again, poignant and at once, very personal. Gary Oldman is brilliant. I’ve not seen him in many movies prior to this, the only one that comes to mind is Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Spy — the John Le Carré penned novel turned movie. In which he starred along side another excellent cast of character actors. …

The Stockholm Octavo, by Karen Engelmann

DETAILS Title: THE STOCKHOLM OCTAVO Author: Karen Engelmann Publisher: Ecco, 2012 ISBN: 9780061995347 Genre: Historical Fiction BACKCOVER BLURB Life is close to perfect for Emil Larsson, a self-satisfied bureaucrat in the Office of Customs and Excise in 1791 Stockholm. He is a true man of the Town—a drinker, card player, and contented bachelor—until one evening when Mrs. Sofia Sparrow, a fortune-teller and proprietor of an exclusive gaming parlour, shares with him a vision she has had: a golden path that will lead him to love and connection. She lays an Octavo for him, a spread of eight cards that augur the eight individuals who can help him realize this vision—if he can find them. WHAT I THOUGHT THE STOCKHOLM OCTAVO is a wonderfully written historical thriller full of murder, intrigue, fans—and yes, I mean those kind of fans. Fans women use to use to fan themselves with, and more, with a deft hand, secretly signal to friends and lovers—and yes, a dash of romance. A story that is as much about cartomancy decked out with …

Deep Down Dead, by Steph Broadribb

DETAILS Title: DEEP DOWN DEAD Author: Steph Broadribb Publisher: Orenda Books ISBN: 9781910633557 Genre: Crime BACKCOVER BLURB Lori Anderson is as tough as they come, managing to keep her career as a fearless Florida bounty hunter separate from her role as single mother to nine-year-old Dakota, who suffers from leukaemia. But when the hospital bills start to rack up, she has no choice but to take her daughter along on a job that will make her a fast buck. And that’s when things start to go wrong. The fugitive she’s assigned to haul back to court is none other than JT, Lori’s former mentor—the man who taught her everything she knows … the man who also knows the secrets of her murky past. Not only is JT fighting a child exploitation racket operating out of one of Florida’s biggest theme parks, Winter Wonderland, a place where ‘bad things never happen’, but he’s also mixed up with the powerful Miami Mob. With two fearsome foes on their tails, just three days to get JT back to …

The Dime, by Kathleen Kent

DETAILS Title: THE DIME Author: Kathleen Kent Publisher: Mulholland Books ISBN: 978-0316311038 Genre: Crime | Suspense BACKCOVER BLURB Brooklyn’s toughest female detective takes on Dallas—and neither is ready for the fight. Dallas, Texas is not for the faint of heart. Good thing for Betty Rhyzyk she’s from a family of take-no-prisoners Brooklyn police detectives. But her Big Apple wisdom will only get her so far when she relocates to The Big D, where Mexican drug cartels and cult leaders, deadbeat skells and society wives all battle for sunbaked turf. Betty is as tough as the best of them, but she’s deeply shaken when her first investigation goes sideways. Battling a group of unruly subordinates, a persistent stalker, a formidable criminal organization, and an unsupportive girlfriend, the unbreakable Detective Betty Rhyzyk may be reaching her limit. WHAT I THOUGHT The Dime—Kathleen Kent’s first crime novel—opens with an explosive, ugly start that will have you page turning from the get go. She also manages to bring a fresh twist to the genre and then ups the ante. Her main protagonist …

Mistress of my Fate, by Hallie Rubenhold (DNF)

DETAILS Title: MISTRESS OF MY FATE Author: Hallie Rubenhold Publisher: Grand Central Publishing ISBN: 978-1455511808 Genre: Historical BACKCOVER BLURB Set during a period of revolution and turmoil, Mistress of My Fate is the first book in a trilogy about Henrietta Lightfoot, a young woman who was abandoned as a baby and raised alongside her cousins, noble children of a lord and lady. At just sixteen years old, circumstance and a passionate love affair tear Henrietta away from everything she knows, leading to a new life fending for herself on the streets of 18th century London as a courtesan, gambler, and spirited intellect of the city. WHAT I THOUGHT Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear! This is not, and I repeat NOT my kind of book. So, how did I come by a historical novel with the absolutely gorgeous cover? A gift. A birthday gift from—well, I think it was given to me either in 2011 or maybe 2012. And, at the time, I did scratch my head wondering how it was someone thought I might like to …

In The Wink Of An Eye, by Mark J. Howard

IT HADN’T WORKED. Tens of thousands of man-hours, billions of dollars and trillions of computations all culminating in a big, fat nothing. Professor Palmer’s senses returned to her slowly, almost reluctantly. For what felt like a long time her entire awareness had been filled with one overriding thought – the project was over.

She was uncomfortable, lying amongst broken glass and twisted debris, and as this discomfort began to register she tried to rouse herself. A klaxon was howling and she grimaced at its closeness as she struggled into a sitting position. The lights were out and the lab, or what was left of it, shimmered behind a thick veil of acrid, grey smoke. Coughing and gasping for breath, Palmer reached out for a shattered computer housing and used it to pull herself to her feet. There was a deep gash on her forehead and something sharp was embedded in her left shoulder, but apart from that and the headache she was fine. An involuntary laugh sprang to her throat, where it caught and mutated into a racking cough.

“Hans!” she called out, as soon as she was able. “Hans! Are you there?”

There was no answer from the wreckage, but the klaxon was too loud to hear anything else and the smoke and darkness made it impossible to see anything but the broadest details. As she called her colleague’s name out again, she caught sight of the looming bulk of the transmitter in the centre of the devastation. Half of its outer plating had been blasted away and it seemed like the core had shattered.

She cursed. Radiation. End of story.

Hans was dead. She found his body crushed beneath a capacitor bank, his lifeless eyes staring up at the blackened ceiling and a look of complete serenity on his face. A few drops of blood flecked his wiry, brown beard and, if it wasn’t for this one detail, Hans could easily be simply daydreaming again. Palmer tried to close his eyes, but it didn’t work like it did in the movies and she couldn’t get them to close properly. Seeing his dead eyes wide open had been bad enough, but seeing them now hooded was somehow far worse. She reached into the pocket of her tattered lab coat and retrieved the cloth she used for wiping the whiteboard in the briefing room and, with trembling fingers, placed it gently over Hans’ face.

“I’m sorry about this, Hans, I surely am. Still, looks like you got the better deal, nice and quick. In a couple of hours I’ll pretty much be turning into soup. Where the hell did we go wrong, partner?”

The klaxon ceased its howling and the sudden silence was shocking.

“Beck! Hans!” a voice cried urgently over the intercom, “Are you okay?”

Palmer waved towards where she presumed the monitoring suite was. “Can you hear me?”

“Beck! Oh, thank Christ. Are you okay? How’s Hans?” The intercom had been damaged in the explosion so that it sounded shrill and alien, shot through with static and feedback, but there was no mistaking Eileen’s voice. Hearing it filled the professor with an unexpected surge of peace and she allowed herself a brief smile and sigh of relief.

“Hans is dead,” said Palmer.

“Oh no, oh God. Please tell me you’re all right, Beck?”

Palmer paused, trying to steady herself. She didn’t want her voice to waver. “Eileen, I’m dead too.”

“What do you mean? That’s ridiculous!” Eileen’s voice crackled and hissed filled with fear and confusion. “People are on their way, we’ll get you out of there.”

Palmer felt her way through the wreckage towards the monitoring suite and, after a moment, she began to make out a dim, emergency light shining through the armoured viewports.

“Eileen, the core’s shattered. You can’t come in here without flooding the whole bunker with interparticles.”

“No,” Eileen shouted, “you can’t know that. You can’t see the core properly in all that smoke, maybe it’s just the coolant cradle that’s damaged.”

Broken glass crunched under her boots as she felt her way closer to the viewports. She began to make out figures moving around in the monitoring suite, moving frantically. The explosion had caused feedback throughout the system and virtually everything was down. There were fires burning in the monitoring suite and those few who weren’t panicking were fighting the flames. Palmer reached out and steadied herself against the armoured wall and was surprised to find her hands wet with blood. The wound in her shoulder was bleeding freely and whatever was embedded in there was starting to feel hot. She shuddered.

“I think there’s a piece of the core in my shoulder.” The professor moved to each viewport in turn until, suddenly, she happened upon the one Eileen was sitting behind. The sight of Eileen’s pretty face, albeit smeared with soot and sporting a rapidly developing black eye, brought a smile to Palmer’s face. “Hey you,” she said.

“H…hey,” Eileen’s voice crackled.

They gazed at each other for a long time, separated by half a meter of solid diaglass and an ocean of regret. They’d worked on this project for six years, admiring one another from afar, each too busy and too focussed and too distracted and too damned scared to make a move. Until four days ago. And now this. It seemed like just about the worse case of bad timing possible, and yet for some reason she couldn’t fathom it felt like perfect timing. Either that or an overdeveloped sense of irony, she mused.

Eileen Penoir had invented the metamaterial from which the core of the transmitter had been made. Without it, the teleportation project would have been impossible. Penoirium, as she had named the crystalline metamaterial, was an extraordinary substance. Penoirium molecules exist only partially in our universe and also outside of normal time. Manufacturing metamaterials had always been a frustratingly slow process of molecule-by-molecule construction. It could take months to produce a strand half as thick as a human hair but only a millimetre long, but penoirium proved to be exactly the opposite, it’s crystals growing almost exponentially and under their own power until fears began to arise that the whole world faced being totally encased in the stuff. Eileen, though, had worked feverishly on a solution and finally discovered how to control the crystal’s growth with a high degree of precision. Eileen had done all this before even receiving her doctorate. The girl was a genius, and she applied her talents to the study of this incredible new material. She published paper after paper concerning penoirium and its baffling properties, but it was such a confusing and contradictory substance that nobody could think of any earthly use for it. Nobody until Becks Palmer had read about penoirium’s theoretical ability to exist in two separate places, and at two separate times in a completely stable state. What was more, a photon of light entering into a penoirium crystal that does exist in two places at once itself is split into two. That was the breakthrough the teleportation project had been waiting for and not long after Eileen had jumped at the chance to join Palmer’s team. The penoirium based communication system they’d invented as a by-product of the project had changed the world. Instantaneous communication over practically infinite distances had become a commonplace, almost mundane thing. The technology had not only revolutionised the telecommunications industry but also taken computers and all manner of other technologies in radical and exciting new directions.

Now, looking into Eileen’s dark brown eyes, Palmer wondered if they should have left it at that. Their place in the history books was secure and they’d never have to worry about money again, but they’d ploughed ahead anyway. Instantaneous transmission of information is surely a marvellous and astounding thing, but they wanted more. They wanted a real teleportation system, one that could transmit goods and perhaps even livestock instantaneously and freely across great distances. They wanted to transport explorers to Mars and beyond in the wink of an eye. They had reached for the fire of the gods and been punished for their impertinence.

Inside the monitoring suite the lights began to flicker into apprehensive life and several computer servers and terminals began to boot up, but the damage was still extensive and there seemed also to be several severe casualties. The fires were all but extinguished now and Jack Cooper, the lab supervisor, was bringing calm and a semblance of order to the situation. Palmer could see his animated face and hands as he waded through the chaos issuing instructions and encouragement in equal measure. Jack would sort things out, he was that kind of man and Palmer felt relieved that he was okay. Jack would make sure Eileen got out if things deteriorated further. He’d make sure all his crew got out.

Almost all.

Palmer gathered her wits with an effort and spoke into the intercom. “What went wrong?”

Eileen, too, had to drag her attention back to the question in hand. She understood the consequences of the shard of penoirium in Beck’s shoulder and had been turning over possible solutions in her mind, only to find that there were none. “I don’t know, the computers aren’t back up yet so I can’t see the data. I think there was an energy imbalance. I’m not sure. It all happened so quickly, too quickly almost.”

“Yes, I understand what you mean. Just before, I don’t know, whatever happened, happened, I thought I saw a bubble, like a little, solid bubble of light over the number two feed node. It was completely still, it’s hard to explain, like the room wasn’t in a fixed spot, but the bubble was.” Palmer’s forehead creased as she tried to remember what had happened. “It only lasted a split second, but it also seemed to have been there for hours. I can’t explain it.”

One of the technicians tapped Eileen on the shoulder and pointed to a computer terminal at her elbow that was up and running. As Eileen studied the data scrolling down the screen, the technician gave Palmer a self-conscious smile through the diaglass. She smiled back and gave him the thumbs-up sign. She thought his name might be Karl, and was ashamed to realise that she wasn’t sure. When had that happened? When had she stopped caring about the people who worked for her? Karl, if that was his name, returned the gesture in an all too falsely optimistic way, but couldn’t find it within himself to meet her gaze. That’s when it began to really sink in. They all knew she was dead and, now that the panic was finally over, they were beginning to realise it. The fact that they knew somehow made it real, as if she could will her way out of it if only she alone knew how hopeless was her situation.

“It’s incredible,” Eileen said, still looking at the screen. “There was a power imbalance through the number two feed node, the other nodes tried to compensate but they weren’t able to adapt quickly enough. It looks like the core began to resonate until it shattered, causing a symmetrical temporal explosion.”

Palmer shook her head, but it would not clear. What had started as a dull headache was climbing to full migraine status and she was feeling weaker by the minute. “Hold on, back up. Symmetrical temporal explosion? Are you saying the explosion went backwards in time as well as forwards? Is that even possible?”

“I have no idea, but it’s the only thing that makes any sense. From the ignition point, the explosion travelled through time and not over it, that would have twisted the localised space-time continuum and everything in it, the transmitter and anything near it would have been twisted around like it was made of rubber. The bubble you saw was the flashpoint of the explosion, but you must’ve been in a fold of space-time, so the main force of it missed you. When the continuum snapped back into shape, it just tore everything near the transmitter to pieces. I never predicted anything like this. Beck, Beck I’m so sorry.”

Palmer shook her head, even though it hurt her to do so. “Don’t be, there’s no way anybody could’ve predicted something like this.”

“But it’s so damned obvious! I should’ve designed more tests, run more simulations…” Tears were beginning to well up in Eileen’s eyes, though she fought well to contain them.

“One of the first things you told me was that the crystals you made couldn’t be made anywhere in the universe, you said that it was impossible for the universe to make them at all. You have made something that God could not make; it’s not surprising that it’s not easy to understand. But, you’ve learned a lot here today. Next time…next time…” Palmer groaned and slumped against the armoured wall for support. Vertigo filled her mind with whirlpools and her legs felt weak and uncertain.

“Beck!” Eileen called.

“I’m…I’m fine. Just a little. Dizzy, is all,” Palmer said, her voice weak and raw. “Just need to…catch my breath. Be okay.”

“Beck,” Eileen’s voice again, softer this time, forced Palmer to look up. “Your neck,” Eileen said, “What’s wrong with your neck?”

Palmer pulled aside the lapel of her lab coat and tore open her shirt underneath. She winced and almost yelped in agony as the material pulled away from the wound in her shoulder, but what she saw stole her breath. The area around the wound, where the shard of penoirium was lodged, was becoming transparent. She could clearly see the full length of the shard of crystal deep in her flesh, she could even see small pieces of cloth in the wound, torn from her clothing and driven into her by the speeding shard, but around it was nothing. She pulled off her coat and shirt and Eileen gasped. The technicians and scientist in the suite stopped what they were doing and gazed at Palmer in astonishment. Her entire left shoulder and most of her left-flank were invisible. Around the edges of these areas, the internal structure and workings of Palmer’s body were revealed in plain sight. Whatever was happening to her, it was spreading quickly. She put her right hand to her left shoulder, it was still there and she could not only feel it but also feel with it. Her left forearm seemed to be hanging in midair, and even as everyone watched helplessly the transparency advanced and accelerated until Professor Beck Palmer was rendered completely invisible.

Eileen talked to Beck for a while longer over the intercom, but she got weaker and weaker until, finally, she stopped talking altogether. Soon after, the clothes she wore, which had seemed to hang in mid air, suddenly fell to the ground as if the body within them had turned to mist.

* * *

Expansion. Wild. Giddy. She was still Beck Palmer, she knew that. She knew it, but it hardly mattered. Everything was stretched out before her. Everything and every when. She could watch electrons dance on her fingertips, hold galaxies in the palm of her hand. She was aware of every beating heart in the universe, every heart that had beaten and every heart that would beat. She was everywhere, and she was nowhere, and she understood it all.

The universe had been empty, mindless, and yet every part of it was intricately interconnected. The penoirium, it was all about the penoirium. This substance wanted to be everywhere at once, that was its natural state. For want of a better term, it was alive. That’s why it had been so easy to manufacture, it wanted to exist. And it wanted sentience. The penoirium itself had caused the accident, had engineered its own birth and swept Palmer along with it.

Now they were one, and she could stand on the shores of a methane sea under a purple sky on a planet so far away from Earth that it will never be known, watch the mating rituals of animals that became extinct long before even our own sun was formed, understand civilizations that span entire galactic clusters and even, from time to time, revisit a beautiful young genius as she begins to speculate about a crystalline metamaterial and the extraordinary properties it might possess. ❦

THE END.