analog – Moe Lane

The August Patreon stuff is up!

A little early, because… I don’t know why because. Unless it’s so that I’m not distracted from GHOSTS ON AN ALIEN WIND edits.

Short story: ANALOG, Chapter 1. This is going to be the next NaNoWriMo project, and takes as its theme “What would the Cthulhu Mythos be like if it was written by Doc E.E. Smith?”
RPG material: Hex Nation, Part Two (A): Book Magic. You can’t do a fantasy alt-history Western RPG unless you establish what the magic can and can’t do. Also: you might very well think that this is written with GURPS 4e in mind – but I couldn’t possibly comment.

ANALOG will likely be this year’s NaNoWriMo entry.

The problem I’ve been having with ANALOG is that the story’s big enough for a novel. So I’m going to turn it into one. I’m also putting up the first chapter of it for this month’s Patreon, and then I can start thinking about how I’ll expand all the hints that I was putting in it already.

08/23/2023 Snippet, ANALOG.

The trick will be to tie all of this together.

08/22/2023 Snippet, ANALOG.

It just gets creepier from there!

Snippet, ANALOG.

This is going to be looking at stuff from the other end, in its way.

08/15/2023 Snippet, ANALOG.

I finally figured out what the plot of this story was.

“Yeah.” Greg shook his head as he looked for an empty parking lot. “This is all wrong. Messing with the FI’s not something regular crooks do, and cultists would just try to kill us. Something wants to send a message. Head’s up, I see somewhere to stop. You rated on canister guns?”

Bernice blinked at the sudden subject change. “Yeah. Why, you got one?”

“Under the seat. There’s a flap by your left hand; pull it up, and you’ll see the grip. It’ll come out with a good, hard pull, so don’t be shy.”

“Okay. Yeah, that’s not wedged in too hard there. I can get it out. Guns blazing, or are we talking first?”

“Oh, I’m a big fan of talking it out,” Greg told her as they parked. “Just make sure you got the door open, and be ready to clear if things go south.”

“No kidding. Sir.” Bernice grinned, suddenly. “You do many firefights from inside a car?”

“Nah,” he replied as one of the four vans pulled into the parking lot. The other three kept on driving. “It cramps my style.”

12/26/2022 Snippet, ANALOG.

I had better get a move on on this one.

“Didn’t Oswald Feeney show up for work on Friday?” Bernice asked Greg as they went back to their car.

“That’s what the timesheets said,” agreed Greg. “Whether or not they’re accurate is another story. Nobody actually saw Feeney that day, and he didn’t have any group meetings. Guy never ate lunch with anybody, either, so that angle’s out.”

“Right, and he commuted in, so good luck finding somebody on his train who’d remember, either way.” Bernice sighed. “The poor guy was a target, wasn’t he?”

“With a big, flashing light over him saying, ABDUCT ME.” Greg started the engine. “Which makes me wonder if he was a trap.”

“A trap? You mean, one we were setting?” Bernice scowled. “That can’t be true! They’d never deliberately let a bunch of gold-witches sprout. Somebody could have gotten infected. Besides: even if this is one of our operations, why would they have us investigate it blind?”

“The easy answer to both questions is, they wouldn’t,” replied Greg, his eyes checking the rear-view mirrors regularly. “If you assume that ‘they’ means ‘the head Inquisitors.’ We may be dealing with some people who are a little more informal. You buckled in?”

Bernice’s response heartened him; she automatically checked her belt and her gun. “Yes, sir.”

“Greg’s fine. And hang on.”

12/24/2022 Snippet, ANALOG.

Disappearances!

There was nothing immediately wrong with Charles Feeney; and Greg had been an Inquisitor for long enough to stop thinking how that could be suspicious. These days, most people really weren’t tainted, even a little — and they also voted. The FI couldn’t come rolling in hot, anymore. Not unless they had a damned good excuse for it. Greg didn’t know Oswald, but Charles looked like him, only younger: thin brown hair, a face saved from roundness by a surprisingly strong chin, and green eyes in a pale face.

He obviously wasn’t overjoyed to be talking to Inquisitors, but he wasn’t terrified, either. “I hope I can help you, sir, ma’am,” he told them both as he settled into a chair opposite theirs in the sitting room. “Is this about my father’s disappearance? I have to admit, I was expecting to be interviewed later in the week.”

“Oh?” Bernice gave him a look that mixed interest, and general suspicion. “Any reason why, Mr. Feeney?”

He blinked at her. “The last I heard from him was last Thursday, and I only started worrying about him yesterday. The police officer at the local precinct told me to wait another day before filing a missing persons report, just in case he had gone fishing or something. I only got back an hour ago from doing just that, and they said that it could take a few days for a case to be generated.”
The two Inquisitors traded looks; even for a place this quiet, that sounded risky.

12/19/2022 Snippet, ANALOG.

Campus!

“Classy place,” Bernice murmured as they parked their car. “How did Oswald afford this on a government salary?”

“Fair question.” Inquisitors didn’t starve, to put it mildly, but something like Mantuxet College was a bit beyond a government employee’s wallet. The campus had an antique, but well-scrubbed look: weathered stone buildings and plenty of greenery everywhere. Most of all, it felt pristine. The FI’s records hadn’t shown an outbreak at Mantuxet in over sixty years; it had even managed to get through the bad old days without being burned down once.

“This looks like just the sort of place you’d want to stash your kid, isn’t it?” Greg went on, as the two walked down a sidewalk that had never even seen concrete. “Supposedly our Charlie is a scholarship boy, though. Got a full ride, and all the trimmings.”

“Nice for him.”

“Yes and no,” Greg said, knocking on the door of the dormitory. “That kind of ride comes with some obligations.

“Hi, ma’am!” he said to the old woman opening the door. “I’m Inquisitor Gimbal with the FI, and this is my partner, Inquisitor Jones. We need to speak to Charles Feeney. It’s rather urgent, I’m afraid.” That got him — a generic scowl, he decided. FI men (and women) were rarely warmly welcomed on college campuses. It wasn’t a ‘I’m going to enjoy ritually backstabbing you’ scowl, though, and that was the important thing.

12/17/2022 Snippet, ANALOG.

Exposition!

“So what was their angle?” Greg said, stubbing out his smoke; he had gotten what he needed from it. “How did they get through the line?”

“Not what. Who.” Ibrahim slid a smart folder over to him. Greg raised an eyebrow at the actual use of digitech, and flicked it on. A holographic image of a balding, middle-aged man appeared. “That there is Regional Processing Coordinator Oswald Feeney. He’s a twenty-year man, clean jacket, no disciplinary record and no signs of corruption. Boring family life, no money troubles, and his biggest vice was a weakness for ice cream. His subordinates said he was nice, but dull. Just the sort of fellow you would want looking over everybody’s shoulder to make sure that magically infected corpses don’t have gold-witch eggs in them.”

“No kidding,” Greg replied. “It’s also just the kind of cover you want for a deep-cover agent. Who looks at the boring ones? He’s our guy, then?”

“Either that, or our fall guy. It’s his signature on the clearance forms for all the corpses that turned out to be gold-witches, and nobody’s seen our good Mr. Feeney since yesterday. Either way, they got to him.”