Hey all,
By posting this here I may be breaking the rules of the 'Sekrit 7' thingy but since mine was a bonus story anyway I'm not too bothered.
I submitted this to Lightspeed Magazine and it was rejected. I'd like to know what you think of the story, why you think it might have been rejected, general feelings about writing style, tone, characters, that sort of thing. I'll post it in several batches over the next couple of months or so - it's a total of 6,800 words.
Here are the first 1,400 or so.
"Magpie"
“So what, you’re a bird? I’m confused.” Ellie furrowed her brow and fiddled with the shiny thing I’d brought back from Earth 1023.
“No. That’s not the only definition of ‘magpie,’ my dear,” I said.
I whipped out my tablet and typed the search in, then passed it to Ellie. “See? Definition two: ‘a person who collects things, especially things of little use or value.’ That’s what I do.”
She nodded, appearing to understand, her child’s mind wrapping itself around the concept. She was finally getting old enough that I could really explain to her where I was going, why I disappeared, why I wasn’t always there for her. Ellie was growing up fast now, and it was getting harder to break away from her. But eventually the Tiding would call me back, get me twisting the dials on the Wing and flitting off to a new dimension.
“So what is this thing?” She handed me the trinket. It was roughly spherical, with toothed gears connecting certain parts, clearly designed for some arcane purpose that I, a mere traveler between worlds, could never fathom. Still, a child’s curiosity demanded satisfaction, so I said this instead:
“It’s a transdimensional interocitor. See these gears? They capacitate the temporal flux of the gravitometric waves that emanate from this bit here.” I pointed at that bit there.
“Oh,” said Ellie. “I see.” She furrowed her brow again, and I could see the toothed gears inside her mind working again.
My phone rang. It was the Tiding.
“What?”
“Earth 2045. Your target is 45.515664 lat, -122.67868 long.” The voice on the phone was male this time, I thought, but the voice modulator made that a difficult determination.
“Alright,” I said, and disconnected.
“New mission?” asked Ellie.
“Yeah. Long trip this time. Have to go far northwest.”
“Where?”
“Don’t know yet.” I walked into the house and sat down at my computer, entering the coordinates into the map software. I put the spherical thing from Earth 1023 in the pile of stuff I still had to deliver to the Tiding. Ellie followed me and looked over my shoulder.
“Boston,” I said. “The west coast one,” I added. Boston was a small, run down nothing of a town. It had once been a major freshwater port, but it had lost that business when the river silted up during the last drought. Thankfully, it had an airship field. I booked myself a first class ticket for the next day.
“When will you be back?”
“Dunno. Soon, I hope.” I stood up from the computer and grabbed my go bag, packing some clothes and necessities.
My sister peeked her head in from the other room. “Next mission?”
“Yep.”
“No worries, we’ll hold the fort here.”
“Thanks.” I hated relying on her, but Ellie still wasn’t old enough to stay home alone.
***
I always had to remind myself that whatever I was looking at was “normal” for the world I was in, that some quirk of history or physics or geology or catastrophe had made this particular world different in specific ways from the world I lived in, and my world would be just as weird for a traveler from this one.
I stared up at a huge statue, an angry metal woman brandishing a trident, perched about twenty feet up on a platform above the front door of a building that looked like it had been designed by an argumentative committee. It was a blue and orange jumble of mismatched windows, a jangle of disjointed masonry, a cacophony of architectural digressions. The building didn’t so much soar majestically as squat insistently over the street, daring passers by to challenge its visual incoherence. I’d seen nothing like it in all of the worlds I’d traveled to.
The building itself sat in the middle of an urban center, all skyscrapers and tree-lined sidewalks, narrow streets where cars and buses competed with cyclists and light rail. The last time I’d been to an iteration of this city was on Earth 1246, and it was a megalopolis that stretched up the Pacific coast to the Canadian border. I hadn’t seen this statue or this hideous building then because I’d been hunting an artifact in a slum elsewhere in the city. And maybe they didn’t exist there.
I looked at the Wing, and it pointed me north along the red brick sidewalk. I heard children laughing and playing, and came across what looked like a day care tucked in a corner of a small covered plaza on the side of the building. The Wing told me my target was in the day care.
I frowned. What in the many earths could be so important that I have to break into a day care and terrorize a bunch of children to steal it?
But there was nothing for it. I’d just have to be quick about it and portal out of there before I was caught.
I stepped over the short wall separating the day care’s outside play area from the street.
“Hey, you can’t be in here,” said someone. I stared at the Wing. My target was a small toy currently being chewed on by a toddler in the corner. Fantastic. I strode over and yanked it out of the kid’s mouth, then turned and started to run, the kid’s screams behind me, and sounds of adults running toward me, yelling at me.
I tripped over something and fell, the breath knocked out of me, the Wing clattering away. Someone grabbed me and yanked me back up.
“What the hell, lady?” It was a tall man in a blue uniform. I guessed him to be police. “I’m going to have to take you in.”
I punched him in the throat. He gagged and fell to his knees. I scooped up the Wing and the artifact, vaulted over the low wall, and ran.
It was the middle of the day and the sidewalks were busy with pedestrians, and I found myself elbowing and shoving people out of my way as I ran, trying to get to a safe spot where I could portal out of there.
I risked a glance down at the Wing. It was cracked along the front display, and I prayed that it was still functional. Probably not a repair shop for it around here.
I ducked into a parking garage on a less busy side street and pressed myself against a wall, catching my breath. The voices of my pursuers were too close. I ran upwards, spiraling around the garage looking for a dark corner. I dropped to the ground and crawled underneath a vehicle, willing myself to become invisible.
The Wing’s display flickered on, and I tried to initiate a portal. It fizzled. One of the contacts had bent and wouldn’t make the connection. I couldn’t make a portal here anyway; I was two stories above ground and the fall on the other side would hurt.
My pursuers had entered the parking garage. I heard shouts of “In here!” and “Get a flashlight!”
I held my breath, hearing the footsteps approach. I thought of Ellie, of my world, of just how far away I was, about how many times I’d come close to being caught. What could be so important about a child’s toy?
My pursuers were only a few feet away, shining a light under all the cars.
Screw this. I crawled out from under the car and ran for it. There was a set of stairs on the other side of the garage. I shouldered the door open and jumped down them two at a time, my pursuers chasing me, having heard my rather dramatic exit. I pointed the Wing in front of me and willed it to portal. It fizzled.
“sh*t!” I shoved it in a pocket and kept running. A car screeched to a stop in an intersection in front of me, colored lights flashing, siren on. A voice told me to stop. I closed my eyes and vaulted over the vehicle, landing hard on the other side and sprinting away. This kind of escape was way beyond my pay grade.
A screeching of brakes and sirens – multiple cop cars surrounded me. A narrow window of escape into an alley. I took it, hoping it wasn’t a dead end. I ducked behind a dumpster, tried the Wing again. It fizzled. I fiddled with the contacts, working them back into position, and tried again. The voices were right behind me now, way too close. I had seconds.
Finally. A shimmer appeared in front of me, and I jumped through it.
By posting this here I may be breaking the rules of the 'Sekrit 7' thingy but since mine was a bonus story anyway I'm not too bothered.
I submitted this to Lightspeed Magazine and it was rejected. I'd like to know what you think of the story, why you think it might have been rejected, general feelings about writing style, tone, characters, that sort of thing. I'll post it in several batches over the next couple of months or so - it's a total of 6,800 words.
Here are the first 1,400 or so.
"Magpie"
“So what, you’re a bird? I’m confused.” Ellie furrowed her brow and fiddled with the shiny thing I’d brought back from Earth 1023.
“No. That’s not the only definition of ‘magpie,’ my dear,” I said.
I whipped out my tablet and typed the search in, then passed it to Ellie. “See? Definition two: ‘a person who collects things, especially things of little use or value.’ That’s what I do.”
She nodded, appearing to understand, her child’s mind wrapping itself around the concept. She was finally getting old enough that I could really explain to her where I was going, why I disappeared, why I wasn’t always there for her. Ellie was growing up fast now, and it was getting harder to break away from her. But eventually the Tiding would call me back, get me twisting the dials on the Wing and flitting off to a new dimension.
“So what is this thing?” She handed me the trinket. It was roughly spherical, with toothed gears connecting certain parts, clearly designed for some arcane purpose that I, a mere traveler between worlds, could never fathom. Still, a child’s curiosity demanded satisfaction, so I said this instead:
“It’s a transdimensional interocitor. See these gears? They capacitate the temporal flux of the gravitometric waves that emanate from this bit here.” I pointed at that bit there.
“Oh,” said Ellie. “I see.” She furrowed her brow again, and I could see the toothed gears inside her mind working again.
My phone rang. It was the Tiding.
“What?”
“Earth 2045. Your target is 45.515664 lat, -122.67868 long.” The voice on the phone was male this time, I thought, but the voice modulator made that a difficult determination.
“Alright,” I said, and disconnected.
“New mission?” asked Ellie.
“Yeah. Long trip this time. Have to go far northwest.”
“Where?”
“Don’t know yet.” I walked into the house and sat down at my computer, entering the coordinates into the map software. I put the spherical thing from Earth 1023 in the pile of stuff I still had to deliver to the Tiding. Ellie followed me and looked over my shoulder.
“Boston,” I said. “The west coast one,” I added. Boston was a small, run down nothing of a town. It had once been a major freshwater port, but it had lost that business when the river silted up during the last drought. Thankfully, it had an airship field. I booked myself a first class ticket for the next day.
“When will you be back?”
“Dunno. Soon, I hope.” I stood up from the computer and grabbed my go bag, packing some clothes and necessities.
My sister peeked her head in from the other room. “Next mission?”
“Yep.”
“No worries, we’ll hold the fort here.”
“Thanks.” I hated relying on her, but Ellie still wasn’t old enough to stay home alone.
***
I always had to remind myself that whatever I was looking at was “normal” for the world I was in, that some quirk of history or physics or geology or catastrophe had made this particular world different in specific ways from the world I lived in, and my world would be just as weird for a traveler from this one.
I stared up at a huge statue, an angry metal woman brandishing a trident, perched about twenty feet up on a platform above the front door of a building that looked like it had been designed by an argumentative committee. It was a blue and orange jumble of mismatched windows, a jangle of disjointed masonry, a cacophony of architectural digressions. The building didn’t so much soar majestically as squat insistently over the street, daring passers by to challenge its visual incoherence. I’d seen nothing like it in all of the worlds I’d traveled to.
The building itself sat in the middle of an urban center, all skyscrapers and tree-lined sidewalks, narrow streets where cars and buses competed with cyclists and light rail. The last time I’d been to an iteration of this city was on Earth 1246, and it was a megalopolis that stretched up the Pacific coast to the Canadian border. I hadn’t seen this statue or this hideous building then because I’d been hunting an artifact in a slum elsewhere in the city. And maybe they didn’t exist there.
I looked at the Wing, and it pointed me north along the red brick sidewalk. I heard children laughing and playing, and came across what looked like a day care tucked in a corner of a small covered plaza on the side of the building. The Wing told me my target was in the day care.
I frowned. What in the many earths could be so important that I have to break into a day care and terrorize a bunch of children to steal it?
But there was nothing for it. I’d just have to be quick about it and portal out of there before I was caught.
I stepped over the short wall separating the day care’s outside play area from the street.
“Hey, you can’t be in here,” said someone. I stared at the Wing. My target was a small toy currently being chewed on by a toddler in the corner. Fantastic. I strode over and yanked it out of the kid’s mouth, then turned and started to run, the kid’s screams behind me, and sounds of adults running toward me, yelling at me.
I tripped over something and fell, the breath knocked out of me, the Wing clattering away. Someone grabbed me and yanked me back up.
“What the hell, lady?” It was a tall man in a blue uniform. I guessed him to be police. “I’m going to have to take you in.”
I punched him in the throat. He gagged and fell to his knees. I scooped up the Wing and the artifact, vaulted over the low wall, and ran.
It was the middle of the day and the sidewalks were busy with pedestrians, and I found myself elbowing and shoving people out of my way as I ran, trying to get to a safe spot where I could portal out of there.
I risked a glance down at the Wing. It was cracked along the front display, and I prayed that it was still functional. Probably not a repair shop for it around here.
I ducked into a parking garage on a less busy side street and pressed myself against a wall, catching my breath. The voices of my pursuers were too close. I ran upwards, spiraling around the garage looking for a dark corner. I dropped to the ground and crawled underneath a vehicle, willing myself to become invisible.
The Wing’s display flickered on, and I tried to initiate a portal. It fizzled. One of the contacts had bent and wouldn’t make the connection. I couldn’t make a portal here anyway; I was two stories above ground and the fall on the other side would hurt.
My pursuers had entered the parking garage. I heard shouts of “In here!” and “Get a flashlight!”
I held my breath, hearing the footsteps approach. I thought of Ellie, of my world, of just how far away I was, about how many times I’d come close to being caught. What could be so important about a child’s toy?
My pursuers were only a few feet away, shining a light under all the cars.
Screw this. I crawled out from under the car and ran for it. There was a set of stairs on the other side of the garage. I shouldered the door open and jumped down them two at a time, my pursuers chasing me, having heard my rather dramatic exit. I pointed the Wing in front of me and willed it to portal. It fizzled.
“sh*t!” I shoved it in a pocket and kept running. A car screeched to a stop in an intersection in front of me, colored lights flashing, siren on. A voice told me to stop. I closed my eyes and vaulted over the vehicle, landing hard on the other side and sprinting away. This kind of escape was way beyond my pay grade.
A screeching of brakes and sirens – multiple cop cars surrounded me. A narrow window of escape into an alley. I took it, hoping it wasn’t a dead end. I ducked behind a dumpster, tried the Wing again. It fizzled. I fiddled with the contacts, working them back into position, and tried again. The voices were right behind me now, way too close. I had seconds.
Finally. A shimmer appeared in front of me, and I jumped through it.
and typed the search in, then passed it to Ellie. “See? Definition two: ‘a person who collects things, especially things of little use or value.’ That’s what I do.”as an opening, it's not very grabby. If the important thing is the object we need to be interested in it - or know why they are. 
