Flash! Fiction: Around the Block
by Peter McMillan
Free ebook download: Flash! Fiction: Around the Block by Peter McMillan, legally licensed and available in PDF, and ePub formats.
This collection of 34 flash fictions was written, with the assistance of random writing prompts, to overcome a summer writing drought. Download free in PDF and ePub formats.
This collection of 34 flash fictions was written, with the assistance of random writing prompts, to overcome a summer writing drought.
For example, the 2nd story in the collection started with the prompt to write a 200-word epic set 200 years in the future about a fanatic and a microscope with the following bit of dialogue, "You have my permission." The 5th story followed the suggestion to write a story in three sections, each section recounting the same event from a different character’s point of view. The 14th story was written from the perspective of a minor character in a previously written story ('The Funeral' in Flash! Fiction). The 29th story was written as a dialogue, with an interior dialogue embedded. And, well you get the idea.
A story from the book:
Lost in Transit
"Eureka!" Dr. Bloomwhistle unlocked the door to the lab and ran down the steps of Parker Hall, jumped in her car and sped off to the warehouse down by the docks. Her assistant met her at the back of the building with an excited hug and very nearly screamed in celebration himself but was quickly stifled by the hand of the professor who covered his mouth and shushed him as she looked furtively about the dimly lit alleyway. "You've done, it Professor," the assistant whispered rather more loudly than was called for as he half carried his mentor into the warehouse and their secret room in the basement.
Once inside with the doors closed, the two paraded soundlessly around the table, gesticulating gleefully and grinning from ear to ear as they took in the small wire cage that contained an ordinary but healthy looking white mouse connected by numerous wires to a monitor that tracked its vital signs.
"He's been stable since you initiated the teleportation, and that was exactly 14 minutes ago. I think this one is a success, too, Professor."
"It may be too early yet to proclaim success. From here on, every attempt must be successful even as we vary some of the more complex initial conditions, but let's say that we have a working prototype. I'll phone our friends who can arrange for a quiet transfer of our equipment to the team in Geneva."
Two hours later an unmarked black van pulled into the underground parking garage of Parker Hall. The CCTV cameras on the west side had been reprogrammed two minutes earlier. It had to be a dark op because of the sensitivity of the technology housed in the Physics labs, though this was by no means to the standards of security found in some of the government's clandestine labs. The research conducted on the nation's public university campuses was typically early-stage and carefully managed in silos separate from end-use research centers. Ambiguity and deniability were woven into the most promising projects in the event that the they needed to be migrated to the high-security silos where all traces to the university research community had to be 'sanitized.'
Two agents, unobserved and unidentifiable, using the multifactor authentication credentials they had been given, entered Dr. Bloomwhistle's lab, disassembled the teleportation equipment and had it all safely packed away in the van in under two-and-a-half minutes ... on schedule. Once the van had emerged street level and was two blocks away, the CCTV cameras that had been temporarily programmed into an endless loop returned to their live feeds.
The van pulled into a strip mall in suburban Baltimore where the cargo was switched to a gun metal blue SUV, which traveled down I-95 to Miami and arrived at the docks where the cruise ships were quayside. It was mid-morning, and the man and woman in the SUV unloaded the box—approximately one cubic meter in size—and arranged for it to be placed in climate-controlled storage and checked it through to Barcelona, where it would be then shipped by rail to its final destination in Geneva.
Meanwhile, in the wee hours of the morning, there had been a five-alarm fire in a warehouse dockside in Baltimore. There were no fatalities but an older woman was pulled from the burning building and reportedly suffered 3rd-degree burns over her entire body. She mouthed the words, "Irving, I can't see you," but lost consciousness until she reached a Level 1 trauma center. On hearing these words, a firefighter called to two of his buddies to join him for re-entry to see whether 'Irving' was still in there.
No one was found and no other bodies were recovered. The Office of the Fire Marshal conducted an investigation and concluded that the cause of the fire was faulty wiring. There was no evidence of foul play, and nothing was found in the fire debris that wouldn't be expected in an old, abandoned warehouse. Nevertheless, a professor's presence at that location at that time of night did prompt a police investigation, which was terminated before a report could be issued. 'Irving' remained a mystery, as the university had no record of an 'Irving' working in the Physics labs in Parker Hall. Dr. Bloomwhistle went into cardiac arrest at the hospital. She never regained consciousness and never spoke another word.
Days later, police in Marseilles confiscated a large box of scientific equipment collected in a raid on one of the mafia organizations with an extensive network in the Mediterranean. Shortly afterwards, the box disappeared while in police custody and the loss was written off without further questions as authorized by the Superintendent himself.
