by Kay Williams
Taking over wasn't a duty that I relished but that had to be done after my director had to rush to hospital the day before to be with her daughter who had suffered a riding accident.
I took a deep breath and told myself to relax.
I might have run Heronsgate Industries, and it might have been my family’s name on the logo but with sponsors, stocks and shareholders to report to it wasn't just my company.
Heronsgate Industries had been started by my grandfather and had been one of the first companies in the US to begin making parts for Fusion Drives. When my father had run it he had made kitchen white goods making a large profit from the ever expanding demand for Fusion powered devices. I had only really become interested when the Drives had been installed in karts and cars, when I was given the company it was in cars and motor sport where I had planted the company flag.
I took another sip of my drink, in all things were looking comfortable, my stock was high, the company was in a solid place for the future and I had already noticed up and coming business leadership in three board members I was keen to test; one of them I was sure would make a suitable replacement to run the British branch should Adams find anything that warranted severe action.
Sometimes it felt too fast that all of this should have happened before I was thirty and in other ways it was perfect. It did, however, make relaxing difficult, but I had learnt that the best way to relax was to not waste time on activity, places or people that didn’t help. A view that did limit my social circle, things I enjoyed doing and places I was happy to been seen in but I wasn’t bothered by it; as in business, my father had always taught me to choose quality over quantity.
If the few free pages of stories I had read were anything to go by I wouldn't be looking to relax with these budding authors. It was true that the Pause had limited the avenues of original fiction but that wasn't any excuse for rehashing the same tired themes as authors had been working to death on Post Pause Earth.
The Pause, I snorted softly as I strayed from the pages in front of me again, I hadn’t lived before the upheaval but it was still recent history. When the ribbon of magical energy that was the Nexus had broken through the two worlds, its power had been devastating. Tearing through buildings and acting as a vortex sucking things that got in its path through and on to the opposite sides of the line.
In the neighbourhood my great-grandparents had lived in, a stray ribbon had sliced through the family home. It lacked the power to drag my ancestors on to Favlas but its energy had left its mark on my family and the changes had only grown stronger over the generations.
For my part, I was surface psychic. I couldn’t read people's deepest darkest thoughts and fantasies, magic users or Wildlings, but there were enough Humans around that when the power had first surfaced in my late teens I had battled constant headaches until I had learnt how to harness it like a radio receiver; tuning people in and out at will. I had a super strength that I still hadn’t tested to its full limit, and the ability to fly, which I secretly admitted never got boring.
To the magical community the general term for those like myself was Abstract. At first glance it looked as though we were able to Cast Spells, but Abstracts had power without the need for any Essence. I had never told anyone of my Abstract abilities, the few that had come forward over the years ended up being the subject of intense magical and medical scrutiny and that was something I wasn't keen to happen to myself or my family.
I finished my water as one of the event organisers gave us speakers the three minute warning. I put the paperwork into my pocket, straightened my suit and tested myself to see how much I could remember of what I was supposed to say.
It would make a better impression if I could manage without the prompts.
I just had to get this speech out of the way and then I could concentrate on more important things.
# # #
Harriet South
‘Your tracker is up.’
I smiled at the text message and followed the links taking me to a plain but encrypted website. It had a very simple set-up of weekly sales and weekly royalties for both the digital copies and the paperback books. Beneath that were my monthly and my yearly sales, with the refunds last on the list.
I didn’t think that Lemon Grove Publishing would take advantage of me, but Lucy had been adamant about having my own sales book separate to their figures and as she was willing to do all the work to set it up I didn’t mind letting her have her way. It was kind of fun that I would be able to see them in real time without having to rely on Rosemary for an update, and it was going to be a comfort to be able to keep track just in case I did end up with a minus figure at the end of the week.
‘Thanks, Lucy. Now I just need to sell one.’
‘More than one, you promised me a bottle of champagne when you hit one thousand sales. What’s the plan today?’
‘I am on my way to a new author function. Meeting people in the same boat as me.’
‘Sounds exciting.’
‘I just hope none of them wrote a better book.’
‘Have some confidence. Even Burton liked your one.’
I smiled at the comment.
Burton Kalians was her partner of three years, he was Favlian and he didn't have the kind of imagination that would let him believe in life on other worlds. Science-fiction was something he rolled his eyes at the general sense of the word, but he was also a violent crimes detective and after systematically needling his professional ego, we had managed to get him to read my manuscript. I had been surprised that he got to the end, I was even more surprised that he liked it, and that he brought into and complimented my own created system of law enforcement and forensics procedures. I hadn't been surprised that he had solved it, but he had admitted that my complicated plot had thrown him a couple of times.
Looking out of the bus window I realised I was approaching my stop and hit the bell.
'Call you later.'
'Good luck.'
I stepped off the bus into the damp March air, hurried up the street and ducked into the hotel. The lobby was buzzing with activity, along with the easily identified staff, there were several people with cameras over their shoulders. I approached the desk with the printed invitation that Rosemary had given me and was shown the way to a conference suite. The room was lined with chairs that had US school style tables on the arms for people to rest a tablet or paper to make notes. At the front of the room was a line of chairs set up behind a microphone attached to a podium.
A small group of people stood chatting while they waited for the presentations to start.
I have never been very good in crowds, I wouldn’t have called myself shy but nerves did sometimes get the better of me. Seeing a woman close to my own age not talking to anyone else I took a deep breath and told myself to enjoy the experience because once I was back in full-time work in a couple of weeks’ time opportunities like this were going to be hard to come by.
“Hi,”
“Morning,” she smiled.
“Harriet South,” I introduced myself.
“Alana Darrow.” We shook hands. “You see all the nonsense in the lobby?”
“Yeah, looks a bit extreme for a new author function.”
“It’s for Henry Heronsgate.”
I was the first to admit that the movements of the rich and famous of the two worlds had no interest for me. I didn’t care who was dating whom, who was pregnant and who was trying to hide their cellulite, but even I knew who Henry Heronsgate was. He had topped the Earthling rich list for three years in a row and had steadily climbed the Favlian one since taking command of Heronsgate Industries, a family run business now firmly settled into its third generation of ownership.
“He is going to be here? Seriously?” I couldn’t help but feel I was being teased.
“That’s what they say. We were supposed to be getting a marketing pitch from one of his directors, but they couldn’t make it, so he has stepped in last minute to do it instead. The p
ress are having a field day that he would come and cover for his staff at this nothing event and isn’t he amazing for doing it.”
“Should I say something cynical?” I asked and it made Alana chuckle.
We ended up grabbing chairs next to each other as a member of the hotel staff called us to order and introduced the line-up of speakers giving their presentations to a round of applause.
Lucy was going to be green when I told her I had been in the same room as Heronsgate, he was the youngest on the stage but easily the most expensively dressed. He was just as handsome as his photos with short brown hair and unusually bright green eyes, he was trim and fit without looking over exercised or excessively muscular. Though they all looked relaxed and comfortable, unlike the others he carried no cue cards or prompts.
The talks didn’t turn out to be as mind-numbing as I thought they would be, though most of the information was dedicated to the self-publishing market and I only made few notes over the sessions. Given the number of people that looked to be copying the presentations word for word it didn’t look as though many had been lucky enough to secure a publisher.
One lady gave an active demonstration on using the free library advertising stands, Lemon Grove, as a company, couldn’t use the stands but we were going to a few libraries over the next week to do readings and hand out flyers. Another gave advice on approaching social media and how to use blogs and discussion boards, all of which Lemon Grove would run on my behalf, but I made notes on a few ideas they offered. More advice on free advertising services, taped interviews, public forums and discussion groups and new author websites followed until, eventually, it was the turn of Heronsgate to take the podium.
He started by apologising on behalf of his director of advertising who couldn’t be there and by giving a short speech on how aware he was that the magazines his company published were in the factual sphere and not in the same imaginative field as our stories but how good advertising techniques were universal. He wasn't kidding either, his company sold sports cars and raced in every kind of driving discipline there was.
He then did something that none of the others had and engaged his captive audience.
“Why don’t you tell me what you think makes a good advertising campaign?”
As a collective the room froze; everyone had been so spellbound by his smooth American tones and held reverently silent by the sheer force of his reputation that none had assumed they would be required to talk to him. I felt a little sorry for him, he had obviously prepared something special for us and it wasn’t working because we were falling short as we were intimidated by his global brand.
If I was going to make Lucy envious that I had been in the same room as Heronsgate I might as well make her laugh by admitting I had answered his question in the most cynical way I had in that moment. I could see him thinking, reassessing his situation and getting ready to try again, so I took a breath and answered his first question.
“A good advertising campaign makes me spend more than I wanted to on something I might not actually need.”
I suddenly had a whole room of people staring at me, it took Heronsgate no time at all to find me and for a moment as our eyes met I had the feeling he was wishing for my instantaneous and painful death, while looking calm, amused and unruffled.
“Put that way it makes an advertising campaign sound like exploitation. Can you explain what you mean for me, Miss?”
“Harriet South,” I said, giving him my name when I knew he wasn't really asking for it, before pushing on with my explanation. “I mean that I think that everyone has a comfort zone. It doesn't matter if you are buying a chocolate bar, a pair of shoes, a car or a house. You have an idea of what you want it to taste like, feel like or drive like. You know the area you want to be in and the price you are willing to settle at. A good advertising campaign meets you in your comfort zone, giving you what you want and slowly draws you towards the edge of it and then tempts you just beyond it with something new.”
“Expanding your comfort zone.” Heronsgate nodded.
“And more crucially building brand trust, I am more likely to step out of my comfort zone with a brand that hasn't let down my commercial expectations.”
“Pitch me your brand, Miss South, what are you looking to publish?”
“It is a crime thriller. My protagonist is a detective who retires after a gunshot wound leaves him in poor health. He takes over an out of the way gas station trying for a more peaceful way of life with his daughter and his son while trying to reconnect with his estranged wife. He fails miserably when there is brutal stabbing at his station and he is drawn into the thick of the crime.”
“At the moment, Miss South, you are dead centre in my comfort zone, what makes yours different from any other detective novel I could pick up?”
“I write science-fiction,” I said.
The laugher that rippled through the rest of the authors wasn't exactly kind.
“That is a big step out my comfort zone,” Heronsgate admitted, but he at least was diplomatic about it. “How did you start with such an unusual genre?”
“It started in my teens when a family across the street from us was burgled. I always wondered how the police would have caught the criminals if they hadn't left fingerprints, DNA or fibres. I began inventing techniques to solve those questions. And then inventing places when those techniques would never work with modern policing. Eventually those places ended up being hundreds of light years from Earth.”
“Life on the two worlds came into be the moment that the Old Gods died,” one of the authors scowled at me.
“Defend your brand, Miss South,” Heronsgate encouraged when he realised that I wasn't going to rise to the bait.
“There was once a God of Above who was Light and Life, and a God of Below who was Darkness and Death, they fought for rule of the Earth with the Race of Man below.” I began with a quote and a correction. “People were not created by God. Life was not created by God. We were already here when They took possession of the Earth and began to fight over it. If people can evolve without divine intervention here I don't find thinking of life on other worlds outside my comfort zone.”
“It is out of mine, how would you convince me to try your story?” Heronsgate asked.
I found myself frowning, I wasn't sure when this had become just about him and me but even he seemed to have forgotten about the rest of the room for the most part, he hadn't looked anywhere else since I had answered his first question.
“To go forward, we have to look back,” I began. “Three hundred years ago science-fiction authors wrote about flying cars that people believed would never be created, one hundred years later they were an actuality; if only for a short time before the fossil fuel crisis when there wasn't enough oil to keep them in the air. We had aerial shields that blanketed entire countries and protected the residents from war and nuclear radiation. We had trains that could travel over the speed of sound and the United Earth Alliance had three space stations orbiting the Earth along with projects for colonising the moon. Two hundred years ago what was the previous generation’s science-fiction, became science-fact. The Pause brought what Earthlings had considered fantasy home to roost and the resonance of magic stalled technological science. In some respects it is still reeling and we haven't caught up with Pre-Pause science yet. Just because it is out of the comfort zone you have developed with modern Post-Pause teaching, doesn't mean that it is not possible for science to catch up with the gift that magic has given us. Fusion Drives are getting more powerful all the time. You have only got to look at the size of ones that power the super cars your company races to see a remarkable year on year progression into smaller, lighter but more powerful engines. One hundred years from now, maybe there will be a Drive that will allow our cars to fly again, or get a shuttle to the moon. One hundred years from then maybe we would have colonised the moon, or other planets in the solar system.”
“If I am still not swayed to reach out of my comfo
rt zone?”
I reshuffled my argument. The nice thing about my hobby was that more than one 'friend' had tried to belittle it when they found out about it.
“Pre Pause any Earthling author could get away with writing whatever they wanted. There was enough positive science that people could believe in space travel and alien planets, ironically not even realising that they were connected to one. But enough of Favlas had leaked through over the years in myth and legend that people enjoyed stories of dragons and elves. Once the Pause hit, all those stories stopped. Fantasy authors had nothing left when they were suddenly living next door to an elf who was so frighteningly normal she would come by to borrow tea. Science also stopped; electronics and communications were wiped out by the pulsing of magic from the Nexus. Magic users tore down anything burning, or using the power derived from the burning of a fossil fuel. There were no phones, convenience foods, fridges, freezers, computers, televisions or cars. Earthlings couldn't even run factories to make clothes with sewing machines because those machines would run off electricity and magic users had destroyed the sub-station. It would take fifty years before we managed to turn magic into Fusion Drives for a reliable and renewable power source.
“You are talking about one generation who had their whole technological life taken away in a split second. It would be like you dropping everything and going to live in a cave. Then a second generation growing up with none of those technological aids. You raise a baby in the cave and then for their fiftieth birthday you give them a mobile phone. They aren't going to know what to do with it, they might even be afraid of it. Suddenly able to talk to someone who isn't in the room, send emails unseen through the air, even something as simple as the clock feature would be amazing because they are used to telling the time with the sun. Right now those people amazed with the clock function are the leaders in any field of study. They have an impatient third generation of students at their heels who never lived in that cave, who are comfortable with the technology available and who are trying to push for new advances towards Pre-Pause science, but they are having to wait for the old guard to retire before they can invest in their own ideas. Commercial science is fast paced because there is money in a better Fusion Drive. Everything else isn't deemed essential and is slow right now, and that makes it hard for people to leave their comfort zone and enjoy a science fiction story.”
