A Concerned Citizen Writes Re: The Dissappearance of Dr. Mallory

ReConstituted Press (RP)

London – August 4th, 1859

A Concerned Citizen Writes Re: The Dissappearance of Dr. Mallory and What it May Mean for Society at Large!

Dear Reader,

You will doubtless know that we at the London Reconstituted Press normally only publish public letters in our “Letters to the Editor” column that won awards at the International Printing Awards last year for advances in the field of publishing.  It was a close run with the french daily “L’Esprit National” – though fine British ingenuity topped the scale.

But I digress.

Recently we were telegraphed a letter which we will print here in it’s original entirety.  We believe that the public may find it illuminating.  This letter is regarding the disappearance of Dr. Mallory, the Esteemed Physicist, just over a month ago.

TO RECON PRESS STOP I AM A CONCERNED CITIZEN COMMA AND I WISH TO SHED LIGHT ON THE DISAPPEARANCE OF DR MALLORY STOP I WRITE YOU FROM NEW ORLEANS STOP DR MALLORY WAS RECENTLY HERE SPEAKING WITH THE BRITISH AMBASSADOR TO THE SPANISH COLONIES STOP RUMOUR HAS IT THAT HE IS PLANNING AN EXPEDITION TO CAPTURE LIGHTNING IN A BOTTLE TO POWER A MACHINE THAT WILL HAVE MORE COMPUTATIONAL POWER THAN A CURRENT STEAM DRIVEN MACHINE COMMA A MACHINE HE PLANS TO USE FOR THE PROPER CALCULATION OF THE NUMBER OF ALTERNATE WORLDS AND TO CREATE A BETTER METHOD FOR VIEWING THEM STOP THIS WOULD EVENTUALLY LEAD TO THE POSSIBLITY FOR REGULAR PEOPLE TO SEE THE ARTIFACTS OF THESE ALTERNATE WORLD COMMA PERHAPS EVEN TRAVEL TO THEM STOP

As you can see, if we are to believe the authenticity of this letter, Dr. Mallory is safe in the Spanish North Americas, and is working on a discovery of epic proportions.  Whether he succeeds or not, he works to further the cause of science and discovery for Britain and all Her Subjects.

Yrs Humble and Obedient Servent & etc,

Horatio Fedgewick, Grand Editor

####

This is a story written for a game I play, called PMOG.  I’ve written about PMOG before, and if you would like to experience the narrative in it’s entirety I encourage you to go to pmog.com and get started on the game.  Then come back here and you will be able to follow the mission.

You can find other snippets at ficlets and my PMOG guild site at guildlaunch.

Ficlets

A while ago I was turned on to ficlets by John Scalzi, an author and blogger I admire.

I just recently went there again to read a story posted by Wil Wheaton. (yeah, that Star Trek guy I like, who is an hawesome author) Wil’s story was basically amazing – the kind of thing I wish I could come up with. It was also inspirational, because I resurrected my ficlets username and wrote a few ficlets.

I wrote a disasterbation piece about someone in my line of work being taken hostage by an angry gun toting customer. I wrote a very vague piece about the world ending, and someone counting down the minutes. This one has inspired a few people to write sequels and prequels – one of the neatest aspects of ficlets.

Actually, I’ll let Wil sum it up, as he already did so well here.

“What does “collaborative short fiction” mean in this case? Simple: You, as a writer, post a very short (not more than 1,024 characters [Jeff’s note: If you get 1024 characters exactly it marks your ficlet as “ficlet nirvana”]) piece of fiction or a fiction fragment on the Ficlets site. People come to Ficlets to read what you’ve written, and to comment on your piece. If they want to, they can also write a “sequel” to your story or story fragment, carrying the story forward from where you left it. Or, alternately, they can write a “prequel,” explaining how you got to where you are in the story. All sorts of people can write all sorts of sequels and prequels — and of course, other people can write sequels and prequels to those. What you end up with is a story with multiple authors and multiple branchings — lots of possibilities and surprises.”

I am amazed at how a story I wrote can inspire 6 other people to write short stories based on it, and how I can surf between the prequels and sequels, and end up reading alternative “dimensions” on my story. It’s hard to describe, but say someone writes two prequels to my story. Someone else comes along and writes one sequel, and someone writes a sequel to that. In the hierarchy it is in the same point as my story, but is different.

Just for fun I tossed the RSS feed of my stories into the sidebar – you can go click on them and read them. If you sign up you can post comments on them, continue them, prequel them, or just write your own.

If you do sign up, send me your username so I can add you to my watchlist.