The Thirtieth Amendment

Someone (was it on one of the Superversive Press roundtables?) suggested that they do an anthology someday named MISTAKES WERE MADE. Even though as far as I know no one has definitely started work on it, this story I just wrote might fit in it.

I actually wrote it after a Tweet I put out last week sometime, describing the general idea at a high level. Jonathan Swift said of GULLIVER'S TRAVELS that once you think of the idea of big men and little men, the story practically wrote itself; this one has the same quality of following rather immediately from the basic concept.

Enjoy!

"The Thirtieth Amendment"

Larry Kellerman gritted his teeth as he listened to the youth sitting in his office. “I just feel like, if there were no guns, like, then everyone would be safe and stuff, you know?” the kid—his name was Nevish, Liam Nevish—said.

“I understand the idea,” the official said patiently. It was a pleasant office, decorated with dark-finished wood furnishings, and a lovely picture window looking over the park. The oil paintings were attractive portraits of famous people, representational art having come back into vogue even in government buildings in the last couple decades. Over his desk, he knew, was a motto of the Thirtieth Amendment in gold letters. Everything was designed to relax, but Kellerman always felt on edge with a client: largely, he thought, because the clients themselves seemed too calm about their purpose in coming for transference.

He drew in breath. “Well then, Mr. Nevish, you can certainly choose any alternity you prefer, and there are many that were founded with the intention of eliminating guns, some where that was the chief motivating principle, others where it was included in a menu of other policy choices. Actually, before we waste any time, let’s make sure of one thing: you are twenty-one, correct?”

“Yeah, I’m 21. Last fall.”

Damn, thought Kellerman. “Very good,” he said aloud. “And you wish to leave our time line, Alternity Zero, for another that was colonized by persons intending to eliminate guns, either entirely or from the citizenry, is that your idea?”

“Umm. Wait a minute, when you say ‘colonized’, does that mean the people already in the other worldline might have guns? How does that work?”

Great heavenly days. “No. There are no people native to any of the worldlines that we have designated for utopian alternity experiments, Mr. Nevish. The parameters our team sets up when we initialize a portal define a worldline that branched from Alternity Zero at a point twenty to thirty million years in the past, and in which human life never evolved. Nor any other intelligent life, nor any life elsewhere in the Solar System…we’ve taken care to avoid any complications, aside from those the colonists take with them. The founders of each alternity are literally colonizing a world of their own, presumably according to the principles they spell out in their charter.”

“Okay, but the way you keep using words like ‘presumably’ and ‘intended’, it sounds like you’re hedging. There’s no catch to this, right? I mean, you guarantee that there won’t be any guns in the alternity I choose?”

“No, Mr. Nevish,” Kellerman said firmly. “There can be no guarantee of what you will find on the other side of the portal. We have no information about the utopian alternities, other than what we knew of the original worldline query that designated it, and the stated intentions of the colonists who have gone there already. The transference is strictly one-way, sir: this is why we keep emphasizing that you should think carefully about your decision before you step through.”

“Oh, I’ve thought carefully, and all that. I mean, a world just like this one, but with no guns, has to be better, right? I mean, that guy in Missouri who shot those three people last week, I just couldn’t believe the vids. I kept thinking, if only he didn’t have a gun!”

Kellerman nodded sympathetically. “Yes, that was certainly horrific. Of course, statistically, the trend in gun violence has been downward—“

“But what if you’re one of those three people?” the young one shot back, with an air of making a conclusive point.

“Yes, then the statistics would hardly be comforting for you,” agreed the official. “However, you might still wish to take some time to study the alternatives available to you. As I say, there are a number of utopian experiments putting various levels of restrictions on guns, so you can also make a selection of other social parameters you prefer. The degree and kind of social safety net provided, versus the level and distribution of taxation required to pay for it, for example; or the toleration or lack of it for various recreational substances, forms of energy, religious practices, et cetera. I could give you some literature for you to study for a few days before you make your final selection.”

But Nevish was shaking his head. “No, I want to get this done today. I just want a place as much like Alternity Zero as possible, but without guns. Isn’t there one like that somewhere? I mean, they’ve founded hundreds and hundreds of these by now, right?”

Kellerman’s heart sank. “Yes, there are over a thousand alternities registered to various groups of utopian founders, to which more than one hundred fifty million people have emigrated. But surely, even on gun policy, you’ll want to give some thought to the exact plan that you prefer? Do you want a place where even the police have no guns? What would you want the government response to be if someone mischievously builds a gun of his own in a metal shop in his basement, or 3D prints a hundred of them and tries to take over the whole place? What if—“

“Okay, the police can have guns, no one else is allowed to. What have you got like that?”

Kellerman turned reluctantly to his keyboard and tapped keys for a few moments. Damn that lunatic in Missouri, anyway. “Well, Alternity 784 would seem to fill the requirements. Would you like specifications?”

“It’s just like here, but there aren’t any guns, right?”

Kellerman made one last try to get through to the boy. “Mr. Nevish. The people who founded Alternity 784 said that they wanted to set up a utopian community in which only the government would have guns. Their project was officially granted a worldline when one hundred thousand individuals agreed to this charter and presented themselves for transference. Robots and provisions were sent through adequate to create the physical infrastructure of the proposed society. Since that time, everyone who has transferred to Alternity 784 has stated the intention to live in such a world and signed an agreement to abide by this charter. Note, however, that their signature is purely a pro forma agreement, carrying no penalty of perjury nor possibility of the slightest repercussions: either for changing their mind later, or for straight-out dishonesty up front, because we will have no way of knowing what they do after their transference.” He put his hands on his desk and leaned forward for emphasis. “That’s all we know, Mr. Nevish.”

Nevish frowned, as if trying to look like he was thinking hard. Perhaps he believed he was thinking hard. At last he said, “Look, Mr. Kellerman, you’ve been doing this a long time, right?”

“Yes,” said Kellerman. “Ever since the program began, right after the Thirtieth Amendment was passed. Nearly forty years, now.”

“Well, the people you’ve sent through—aren’t they mostly just people like me?”

Kellerman looked sadly into the young man’s eyes, and said, “Yes, that would be a fair statement. I think nearly all of them, perhaps every last one, was someone very much like you.”

The boy sat back and nodded his head. “Then print out the forms. I’m ready to sign.”



After the paperwork was completed and young Nevish had gone on to the transference portal for Alternity 784, Kellerman stopped by the office of his supervisor, Jeffrey Waters. “Got a minute?” he asked, with a long face.

“Sure, Larry.” Waters sat back. “You look like you just served another client.”

His office was shaped much like Kellerman’s. The decorations were different, but there was the same gold motto of the Thirtieth Amendment on the wall behind his head. Kellerman sat down and looked bleakly up at it.

Congress shall make no law impeding any person from living under the government of his preference.

“Serving another client,” said Kellerman. “I just can’t think of it that way.”

“Larry, you know we have to do this. Not just by law, but by necessity.”

“Sure, once the alternity portals were invented, it’s inevitable that people would group into like-minded enclaves—“

“Not just the alternity portals, Larry. Even before then, as soon as it became possible to associate electronically with people who thought the same as you, and disassociate from people who thought differently, the centrifugal tendencies of the new age were set up. Think of the chaos before the Second Constitutional Convention, and then the even worse chaos in the fifteen years before the Third. The alternity portal system is the only thing that has finally saved us, and it’s really not so bad, is it?”

“But Jeff, this kid—and there have been others, all over the country, just this week, since that nutcase in Missouri. He has no clue what he’s getting into, just randomly reacting.”

“Well, Larry, that’s his right, isn’t it? Who knows, maybe his alternity will turn out great for him. And meanwhile, as the utopia-seeking tendency boils out of our own worldline, things here where the bulk of humanity lives get pretty good indeed, and each year we have fewer clients requesting transference.”

“True, true,” sighed Kellerman. “And after all, as I tried to point out to him, three homicides, in the entire nation, over the past two years, is really not that bad.”

“Not bad at all. And the figure I’m even happier about: no new alternities set up for four years straight now.” He stretched. “Why don’t you knock off early today, Larry? Beautiful afternoon.”

“Thanks, Jeff, think I will.”



Liam Nevish looked down the portal to Alternity 784. It was a corridor that receded from a large, high-ceilinged area, one of several dozen in this lobby. He found it hard to rest eyes upon, as it flickered and flashed in an irritating way. His escort, having accompanied him to the very foot of the portal, seemed to have no such problem gazing in. Probably long custom had desensitized him to it.

“Last chance to change your mind,” he said with a grin.

“No, thanks,” said Nevish. “So I just walk in?”

“Yep. Good luck.”

“Okay,” he said, feeling a bit nervous. “Here I go.” The escort nodded and turned to go back.

Nevish started into the flickering haze. As he walked, the part close to him stayed normal, and the zone of turbulence always seemed about five feet ahead of him. He looked back and saw that the same was true behind him. Swallowing, he continued into the portal. After a few more steps, he found it seemed to be pulling him forward, as if he were walking down an increasingly sloped hill.

At last he felt a rushing suction and almost lost his balance, then at once found himself standing on perfectly firm ground. He looked around at his new worldline, and his jaw slowly dropped open.

“Oh, no,” he whispered. “Oh, nooooooo!”

Writing progress

I’ve written another story and submitted it for one of the Superversive Press Planetary anthologies: so I have my fingers crossed. It may need some more work including a title change but I think the basic story is pretty good. I’ll post an update when I know more.

Meanwhile I’m picking a next project from my notebooks: there are several I’d like to work on. One is a superhero/supervillain tale set in a major city that hasn’t been built yet, on the Gulf coast in Texas, with a futuristic dome over the city-center and the tallest building in the world (4000 feet) rising up at its center. It might grow into a short novel.

I also have a couple ideas for some other tales of Sir Sagredur, the Knight of the Round Table introduced in my first story. If I write a half dozen more of them perhaps I could do a collection one day.

Then I have an idea still at a very early stage of an old-style pulpy SF tale where a small team of adventurers in the near future set off for a planet orbiting a dwarf star that orbits Sol at about 40,000 AU, discovered by themselves and not yet revealed to the public.

Decisions, decisions...

Jordan Peterson interview: Chess vs Kriegspiel

If you’re interested in seeing how a mature, intelligent, professional scholar deals with a jingoistic liberal who thinks in platitudes, and you haven’t seen this yet, you’re in for a treat. It’s half an hour long and Peterson shows great aplomb and grace under fire. The most delicious part is after he’s endured about 20 minutes of the “interviewer’s” hostility, when he flummoxes her by referencing her own supposed principles ... you can see her sluggish mind creaking around to the idea she had never considered before: Oh! He means that if I apply this standard to him, then I should also apply it to myself! Huh! 

There is a delightful chess variant called Kriegspiel , where each player plays without being able to see the other player’s moves. Usually they sit at separate boards, back to back or with a barrier, while a third person referees by rejecting moves that are illegal. It’s actually a fun game even for spectators to watch, which is a rarity for chess variants.

Anyway, what struck me watching that interview/debate was that while he was playing chess, she was playing Kriegspiel: flailing about making moves that had nothing to do with what was actually going on in the discussion. Such a handicap naturally turned out to be insurmountable.

Sunday, Fun Day (#2)

Sundays I like to post something fun in a puzzle or recreational math line. This starts a little slowly but I do get to some numerological relevance after a build-up, so bear with me if you like that sort of thing ...

The past week saw the United States finally and belatedly coming into compliance with the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995, with President Trump’s order to move the American Embassy in Israel to that country’s capital in Jerusalem. 

The aforementioned law, which stipulated that half the State Department’s funding should be forfeited starting in 1999 until they moved our embassy to Israel’s capital, in accordance with usual custom and common sense. In spite of the Act’s passage by wide margins (374-37 in the House, 93-5 in the Senate), the embassy remained unmoved and the State Department saw no inconvenience as a result.

The last of the five Senators who had voted Nay departed the Senate in 2010. That was Robert Byrd, the notorious former Klansman Democrat from West Virginia, who left the Senate upon his death that year, R.I.P.

The date of the Trump announcement is foretold numerologically in the cube root of the year, 2010, when the last Senate opponent to the 1995 bill left office. That cube root is 12.6 2017.

Soon it will be 2018 A.D., but the Hebrew calendar has a different numbering system for the year that started in September. To find it, write 2018. On the next line, copy the 8 below:

2  0  1  8

__ __ __ 8

Then take the digit you just wrote (8) subtract the digit above and to the left, and write that in the next spot. Eight minus one is seven:

2  0  1  8

__ __ 7  8

Continue. Seven minus zero is seven. Seven minus two is five.

2  0  1  8

5  7  7  8

And the Hebrew calendar year is 5778.

This is a triangular number, by the way. (The spirit of Dr. Matrix explained those in this post.) Perhaps President Trump is moved to support Israel’s capital this way because of an affinity with the current Jewish calendar year, since Trump is the 45th President, elected in 2016, and 45 and 2016 are also triangular numbers.

There is a simple test for whether a given number is triangular, which I “discovered”. (It’s not deep mathematics or anything, but I’ve never seen it published.) Take the number, double it, add 0.25, take the square root, and subtract 0.5. If the result is a whole number, the original number was triangular. Applying this to 5778 gives 107, so 5778 is the 107th triangular number: it is 1+2+3+...+105+106+107.

I’ll close with an original seasonal puzzle for the stout-hearted: if you’ve read this far you’re probably a mathie like me. The letters in MERRY CHRISTMAS each stand for a digit, the same letter for the same digit throughout. So MERRY is a five-digit number and CHRISTMAS is a nine-digit number, and the R’s stand for the same digit wherever they appear, as do the S’s and so on. (The word for this kind of puzzle is "cryptarithm".) So here is the puzzle, and it's a tough one: If MERRY is a perfect square and CHRISTMAS is a triangular number, what are the numbers?

“The Kings of the Corona”

My first story, or anyway my first “real” story (with, you know, plot and characters with motivations and all), is “The Kings of the Corona”, and appears in the anthology TALES OF THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING, along with about 20 other stories by other authors. I’ve read the collection with pleasure.

But for me, the experience of doing something I'd always wanted but never managed was thrilling. I’d wanted to write fiction, either science fiction or fantasy, for a long time, and in the past four or five years I've begun thinking more seriously about it. I had started reading John C. Wright's blog about how the culture wars are playing out in SF/F circles and the idea of contributing something to "building our own culture" attracted me. It was the fracas over the 2015 Hugos that stirred me into making preparations—like Mauregal, the hero of my story, I’m very big on methodical preparations—jotting down story notions that randomly occurred to me, and in a few months I had a list of ideas that could form the bases of many stories—but still no actual story begun. 

About this time I read Anthony Marchetta's anthology, GOD, ROBOT. The theme of this anthology—a line of sentient robots that muse on matters of faith and take up religion, and the interactions they have with humanity over the centuries—intrigued me as much as the stories themselves (which are delightful and thought-provoking—if you haven’t read it yet, go get it), and got me thinking more seriously than ever about buckling down and writing.

Then, spring 2016, Declan Finn had Anthony Marchetta and several of the GOD, ROBOT authors on his Catholic Geek podcast, and I made sure to listen. The whole podcast had me enthralled: these were the writers of the stories I’d just read, some of them experienced authors, some (unless my memory is tricking me) only a little further along than I was—except that they’d actually done it while I was still only thinking about it! 

But I was most excited when Anthony remarked that his next project would be an "Arthurian juvenile" anthology: tales of King Arthur and the knights of Camelot, but in any settings the author might like: they could be pirates, cavemen, as wild as you please: or even in the traditional Old England. He planned to invite submissions and make his selections that summer.

As soon as I heard about it, I knew I wanted to be in that anthology. I turned to my "story notions" notebook and looked at all the ideas I’d jotted down. Most of them I couldn’t imagine fitting into an Arthurian frame, even with the wide latitude Anthony had suggested, but there was just one that had possibilities. I still have it, exactly as I wrote it down when it had first occurred to me—please pardon the informality:

Fantasy world: the people are ruled by a king, who had a kind of halo. When king dies, halo moves to someone else, not predictable. If king orders someone to do something, and they don't do it, misfortune befalls them. 

Alternative: world has magic, but con men tell that story to stranger when all they really have is the halo.

Alternative: Kingship transfers to a reluctant peasant. POV his brother? friend?

What other magic enters into the story?

Is the story about the end of the halo spell? Learning something about it? The effect it has on characters?

That was all. If you read "The Kings of the Corona", as I hope you will, you'll see that the final story differs from the original germ in many ways: the "alternatives" I played with in the note fell by the wayside, and I settled on "Corona" (Latin for "crown") as the preferred name for the thing, avoiding the religious charge of "halo". This was because, as I began to work on the story seriously, I realized that the power to make someone do something just by issuing a command would be so overwhelming that it had to be the bad guy who wielded it. If the good guy had the Corona, there'd be no story. The story has to be about fighting against the King of the Corona, and somehow winning, which meant I had to work out a back-story for the Corona, and then show how a Knight of King Arthur defeats it.

I started writing, first describing the little isolated kingdom of Palavel, ruled by a man made king by the Corona, from the point of view of a young man, a brewer's apprentice, named Mauregal. Then I would have the Knight, whom I named Sir Sagradur, arrive ... but as I wrote, I realized I was telling a different kind of Arthurian story.

Pardon me for a digression. A formula that many stories have used, from the Knights of King Arthur all the way to Star Trek, consists of presenting a place with a problem, and a good guy rides up in his horse or spaceship or whatever, solves the problem, basks momentarily in the gratitude of the people, makes a nice speech that shows how he's finer and better than they are, and rides off into the sunset, warp factor 6. Granted, I'm parodying here to make a point—the point that this formula is actually pretty anti-libertarian, anti-dignity-of-the-common-folk in its philosophical implications—but I think you will recognize this formula. 

The Lone Ranger used it. Have Gun, Will Travel used it. James Bond used it, only without the "gratitude of the people" part because in the 007 adventures the general population is so benighted they never even know they've been rescued, or that they were in danger in the first place.

But, as I wrote, it turned out that I wasn't using it. I didn't really set out to write the anti-Paladin story, but somehow that's exactly what I did. Sir Sagradur is a noble character, he’s a much-needed inspiration for Mauregal, and he’s crucial for the plot: if he and his dipsomaniac squire Kincarius hadn't arrived, Christians among pagans, but totally focused on the mission King Arthur had given them, nothing would have happened to save Palavel. But in the end ... well, I’m trying to give up my bad habit of blurting spoilers, so enough already. 

Another thing I didn't set out to do, but did anyway, was write a story that went over Anthony's length-suggestion (well, length-limit, originally). It was supposed to be up to 10,000 words, or not much more. I had started by writing a rough outline, like a detailed plot summary, and then working from that. The summary was about 2,000 words, and as I went along it seemed to be "inflating" at a good ratio of about five finished-words to one summary-word, so I figured I'd be fine. Then I got to the last quarter, and something happened to the ratio ... somehow, that last quarter of the outline took a whole lot more words to turn into final story than the rest of my outline did, and my first draft of the story weighed in at about 15,000 words, if I remember correctly. However, it was 11 PM of the last day of the submission period, so I sent it off with an apologetic cover note. I figured the worst Anthony could say was no, and if that was the decision maybe I could find some other use for it.

But to my great gratification, he liked it! He decided to forgive me the extra few thousand words. I did further revisions, and struck out some of the excess verbiage in that original version over the following few months, but also added others, so that the final version was, I think, around 17,000. As with the periodic attempts to cut the federal budget, somehow the net result of each round of cutting was to make it a little bigger. Oh well, as an e-book it hardly matters, I hope.

As I say, I hope you'll read "The Kings of the Corona", in TALES OF THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING. In the process of revising it I’ve read it many times myself and I still like it. Now that I’ve read the other stories in the anthology I have to say that it may not be the best story in the book, but it is still the longest. So any way you look at it, this is a book you should get.

And, if you've been giving any thought to doing some writing of your own, I hope you'll be as inspired by this anthology as I was by GOD, ROBOT, and start jotting down your own story ideas. I found writing to be a lot of work, but also great fun, and highly satisfying when you finish.

The Awful Truth About Forgetting

L. Jagi Lamplighter has done it again: the fourth of the Rachel Griffin books is out, as of yesterday. This is a delightful series, based on a storyline devised by Mark Whipple, about a girl whose memory is supposedly perfect—she forgets nothing, and can bring to her mind anything she’s ever seen and replay it like a recording, even slowing it down as needed. This quirk, even more than the fact that she’s British nobility or that she’s a magic user at a school for sorcery, drives the plot. What brings it into high relief is that she lives in a world much like our own a few years in the future, but suffering from a strange sort of amnesia: no one (Rachel included) remembers anything about the great monotheistic religions of the world. (The polytheistic ones are still going strong, however.) Perhaps it’s a parallel world where the monotheistic religions were never invented; that would almost make sense, except there are certain details that don’t fit...

The explanation for the mystery is still elusive, but readers do get some more hints in THE AWFUL TRUTH ABOUT FORGETTING. I had the privilege to read a draft of it awhile back. As I recall, besides dealing with danger and intrigue, Rachel has some more usual schoolgirl fun and anxieties in this book: but lacking Rachel’s perfect memory I’m going to read it again this winter. The cover picture is of a particularly gorgeous and magical scene.

There are also five black and white illustrations in the book, drawn by John C. Wright himself! They ought to be in the table of contents too. If you want to turn to them, I found them in chapters 2, 5, 12, 22, and 37, either the beginning or end of each of these chapters. They also appear in this terrific trailer by Ben Zwycky (music by Gilbert and Sullivan, can’t go wrong!).

Another good installment in Rachel’s story. I hope we don’t have so long to wait for book five!

Pulpy Titles as Starting Points

I've always wanted to write science fiction and fantasy, but only recently had my first success at conceiving of a real story with plot and characters and everything, finishing it, and getting it accepted in an anthology. The story is "Kings of the Corona" and you can (and should!) read it in the anthology TALES OF THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING, edited by Anthony Marchetta. A friend who doesn't use Kindle bought the print edition and showed it to me, and it's very handsome. I was struck by what an excellent gift it would make to some book-lover for Christmas or any other holiday of your choice.

Okay, enough promotion for today. I'm currently working on several writing projects. One is a short story with a working title "The Stowaways" (I hope to rename it eventually) whose first draft I've finished. I'm taking my mind off of that for awhile so I can come back to review and revise it later with a fresh mind: based on how my work went on "Kings of the Corona", it seems to me that a lot of the magic comes in the revising and polishing stage. Meanwhile, I'm also about ready to start manuscript work on a story for Superversive Press's Luna anthology, and I have a pretty long line of other ideas I'm anxious to get cracking on after that.

Then there's this concept from Brad Walker on the Superversive website, of writing serialized fiction on one's blog. I've actually been considering that for awhile, and I'd like to do that too: I hope it would spur me to increase the regularity of both my blogging and my writing.

Where do ideas for good, pulpy SFF stories come from? There's lots of advice out there. One idea is to start with a title and make up a story for it. I decided to experiment with that, and loaded a database with a vocabulary taken from titles of Doc Savage stories, with a few I added myself that I thought had a similar flavor, and set up a routine to combine these at random (though with a few rules) and randomly interspersed with numbers and "of" and "of the". Then I let it crank out some titles.

Most of them were just nonsense, but I kept track of some that seemed interesting:

• The Swords of Saturn
• The Undersea Manhunt
• The Six Magic Moons
• The Poison War
• The Deadly Shadow
• The Mysterious Dimension
• The Two Fantastic Quests
• The Sky Tournaments
• The Disaster Comet
• The Child of Europa
• The Fearsome Labyrinth
• The Future Eagle
• The Crystal Dragon
• The Goblin Star
• The Green Portal
• The Caverns of Io
• The Avenging Pirates
• The Meteors of the Sargasso
• The Midas Ogre
• The Cloud Wizards
• The Fiery Castle
• The Encrypted Arenas
• The Four Suns of Mercury
• The Ocean Ambassadors

There are a lot here that seem suggestive enough that I'd pick them off the stand and thumb through them. "The Four Suns of Mercury"--what's that about? Does some evildoer create a space warp and swipe the whole planet out of the solar system to a new sun, where our heroes give chase and force him to flee to yet another sun, and another? Or could there be miniature artificial suns created to orbit the planet--and for what purpose? Perhaps some extra suns are INSIDE the (surprisingly hollow) planet of Mercury?

Or "The Undersea Manhunt": your fugitive flees in a submarine, in the dark and still mostly-unsettled three-quarters of the globe in the near future. How does the hero catch up with him? What's "The Goblin Star"? Perhaps a tiny white dwarf that's been approaching Sol without our noticing for centuries, and due to pass by shortly--but will the brutish inhabitants of its orbiting planet be content to pass along with it? How the heck can "The Encrypted Arenas" be a thing? Perhaps they're virtual? What's the point of encrypting them? Is something going on in them that the participants need to remain secret?

My evaluation: this is not a bad way to stimulate story ideas. As I say, I already have a longish list of "to-be-worked-ons", but please feel free to take on anything here that strikes your fancy. Maybe leave a comment if you do so I know the title has been done, when I look back on this years later.