To Sleep, Perchance to Scream

by Mary

Years ago, a friend who lived in the Middle East at the time mentioned she had met another expat who worked for the BBC. who observed they were not getting as many submissions as they would like for the Short Story spot on the World Service.

Well, of course I had to have a go at it! Thus was born Aunt Ba's Story, partly inspired by a dream and Arthur Hughes' painting Home From Sea. It was my first sale.

Lately we have been watching supernatural films created in the spirit of the season (no pun intended) and reckon the actor who provides that shadowy outline so often seen crossing quickly just in front of the camera and not noticed by anyone else must make a goodly salary, given all the work he has done. In passing, let me mention I have noticed so far at least the silhouette has always been male. Perhaps it is him or his brother I seem to see occasionally when waking up from dreaming, convinced a dark silhouette is standing nearby. It feels real at the time, even though I gather experts say the phenomenon is caused by the mind trying to make sense of shadows.

But what sense can be made of a serial nightmare that has been a night-time visitor to me over many months?

It began when an already deceased family member was murdered and buried in a cupboard in a house in which the family once lived in the old country. Unlikely though it sounds, every now and then I dream a bit more of the unfolding story, including a pursuit closing in on the culprit. In the last episode dreamt the story had reached the point where a detective looking around a well-lit room opened the door to the adjoining room, revealed to be the one with the fateful cupboard. Looking over his shoulder, I could see the other room was dark but there was enough light spilling in to show it was littered with broken toys and other rubbish. So I am supposing the unmasking of the culprit is doubtless not far off, at which time the blue-clad long arm of the law will be reach out to grab them.

Unlike the detective, I already know the identify of the dream murderer. It was me.

Skunk Cabbage Dreams

by Eric

Dreams are funny things. Or maybe not. I never wake up laughing. Screaming is another matter. I'm not sure why I never have funny dreams. Is it just me?

Some say humor is based on incongruity. What strikes us as funny is the perception of something incongruous — something that violates our mental patterns and expectations. This theory was set forth by several philosophers including Arthur Schopenhauer, whose favorite joke was purportedly: "What is the angle between a circle and its tangent?" Which kind of makes one wonder if Arthur had any business philosophizing on humor.

Still, tangents and circles aside, were this theory true it would follow that dreams can't be funny. Where could we find incongruity in the dream world where the expectations of our waking lives don't apply and we accept the irrational as a matter of course?

Well, I do anyway. While I'm experiencing them, dreams are absolutely real to me. So real that they can spill over into wakefulness, coloring my thoughts during the day. Dreams are like a second, alternative life. I remember being impressed by a science fiction story I read as a child. One night a man dreams he is an alien skunk cabbage on another planet. Soon his friends have the same dream, Yes, as it turns out, humans are actually alien skunk cabbages who were only dreaming of being human. (No, they don't write them like they used to.)

I am leery of describing my dreams for fear people might draw psychological conclusions. (Unflattering ones at that) But as Freud said, "sometimes a dream is just a dream" or was that Jung, or neither?

The first dream I can recall had me perched precariously on the steps of a high porch. The gaps between the steps were wide enough for a four year old like me to fall through. The ground below, so clearly visible through the gaps, lay hundreds of feet below. This was an only slightly exaggerated description of the porch on my parents' second story apartment. Heights have terrified me ever since. I still dream of ladders in the sky with missing rungs, swaying bridges without railings and bizarre, skeletal skyscrapers which must be climbed by eroding staircases open to the clouds.

The only time I don't fear falling is when I fly. Haven't we all dreamt of flying? I don't power my way through the air like Superman or soar like a bird. I levitate. What a wonderful feeling! And as I levitate hither and yon I am thinking how cool it is and how it seems like a dream but-- wow -- it's real! Even asleep I'm a sucker.

My nocturnal imaginings are seldom so pleasant. As a child I had nightmares which I rather miss because they were entertaining as a Saturday matinee. I thrilled to Martian war machines looming over the houses on my street, shuddered at the unseen horror lurking in the shadows of the attic, gasped when I opened my closet door to reveal an endless twilit plain littered with skulls.

These days my dreams mostly lack the tropes of science fiction and horror. They are not frightening, merely muddled and disturbing, populated by people long gone or dead. And I can't tell you how many times I've found myself on the wrong bus, racing through unfamiliar countryside, headed God knows where. The story of my life perhaps?

Now, finally I see gray light through the office blinds. It's time for me to stop typing. I got up in the middle of the night to write this because I couldn't sleep for some reason.

Not Even a Gravestone to Point a Finger

by Eric

Not to give too much away, but in our Byzantine mysteries the murderer is rarely turned over to the authorities. Rather, our detective, John the Lord Chamberlain to Emperor Justinian, usually finds some way to bring justice to the miscreants himself. This isn't merely an artistic decision on the part of the authors. In fact, for much of its history the Roman Empire lacked the criminal justice apparatus we take for granted. There were no official police forces, or prison system, and as for murder...well, there was no general law against it.

That surprising fact is one of many aspects of murder, broadly defined, dealt with in A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Emma Southon discusses assassinations, murder within the family, murder by magic, and murder in the gladiatorial arena among other subjects. Although the book covers only the Republic and early Roman Empire the laws involved are not much different from those of Justinian's time.

And very strange they appear to us. Who in the twenty-first century would inscribe the following on a child's gravestone?

"To the spirits of the dead and to the most unfortunate Julia Restuta, murdered at the age of ten on account of her jewelry. Her parents, Julius Restutus and Statia Pudentilla, [set this up]."

This and other such epitaphs were likely the only "justice" average murder victims were likely to receive. Since murder was for centuries not a crime in the Roman Empire the responsibility for investigating, prosecuting and punishing a murder was entirely on the family and friends of the deceased. Unless a family was wealthy it had no way to pursue a murderer. The poor couldn't even afford a gravestone pointing a finger.

Roman law, at its inception in the Twelve Tables, was largely concerned with property rights. Perhaps because of the Ten Commandments we expect laws to have a moral basis but the Romans didn't think that way. Nor were they interested in interfering in family affairs. As Southon puts it: "The Roman state, at least until the dawn of the Imperial period, did not consider itself to be harmed, threatened or challenged when a man strangled his wife or stabbed a rival. That was their personal business."

Although we tend to think of the fellow on the library floor with the knife stuck in his back as the victim, technically the victim in a murder prosecution is the state. The state is the plaintiff. The state has suffered a challenge to its power to control the behavior of its citizens via the laws it has passed and thus it is the state that brings the case.

The Roman state was more interested in protecting private property than in protecting human life. Thus, while the family of a child killed in a mugging had no recourse, a man whose slave was murdered -- the slave being property and no more a human being than a table -- was at least reimbursed for his loss at market value just as he would have been for the destruction of cattle.

To the extent that Roman law dealt with murder it was through a hodge podge of provisions designed to deal with specific situations without apparent reference to any general concept of morality. For example, the father had absolute control of his family. Therefore infanticide was legal, however there was a law against parricide. This killing of any ancestor must have struck the Romans as particularly heinous -- as opposed to leaving an unwanted baby on a rock -- because the miscreant was put into a sack with a dog, a cockerel, a monkey and a snake. And then the sack was thrown into the sea. Did the phrase cruel and unusual spring to mind? (And where was the ASPCA?)

Many authors like to draw parallels between past events and today based on the supposition that human nature hasn't changed through the ages. And yet, looking at history from a modern perspective it is easy -- too easy -- to interpret the past in light of the present, to assume that people long dead had exactly the same motivations and goals and thought processes we do. Given our prejudices it is sometimes more difficult to see the differences between us and our ancestors than it is to see the similarities. A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum is not only a fascinating look at murder in all its forms during the Roman Empire, it is also an excellent antidote to the tendency to describe the past as the present but without cell phones.

Where There's a Will There's Usually Trouble

by Mary

We've never written a legal thriller. However, it could well be said Five For Silver took us as close to contributing to that particular sub-genre as we've ever been, since the focus of the plot revolves around our Lord Chamberlain's labours to locate witnesses to a wealthy man's will.

Given our protagonist's position and power, this would seem an easy task for him to accomplish but it was one of the most difficult he has had to tackle, given this entry in the series is set during the Justinianic plague, which has been estimated as causing between five and ten thousand deaths a day. Nobody was safe and as a result Constantinople became a ghost city, largely deserted between the mounting number of deaths and the flight of residents deserting it for what was regarded as the safer countryside. The pandemic played no favourites -- Justinian himself was infected but managed to survive its deadly touch.

Since a will is the key to the plot, our preliminary research necessarily involved taking a plunge into Justinian's Institutes, a fascinating collection of laws. Glancing through it, certain situations give the modern reader pause. For example, it was illegal to engage in abusive language in an attempt to cause a crowd to form. Another provision concerned what would nowadays be considered stalking, in this instance defined as "following a matron, or a young boy or girl below the age of puberty", Meanwhile, writers faced punishment for "writing, composing, or publishing defamatory prose or verse." Compensation due to an injured party depended upon their social position, so as a result an aristocrat was entitled to greater pecuniary compensation than "a mere stranger, or to a person of low condition".

We'd never think of Peter, John's elderly servant and like his master a former slave, as one of low condition although doubtless he would have been considered such -- if he was thought of at all -- during his period of enslavement.

It is in fact Peter whose vision of an angel visiting him to announce "Gregory. Murder. Justice" starts the engine of the plot after John undertakes to find out if Gregory, Peter's oldest friend, has indeed been murdered. This in turn leads to John's need to search for witnesses to a deathbed will made by Nereus, a superstitious and wealthy shipper, in order to disinherit his wastrel son Triton.

But as we all know, where there's a will, there's often trouble.

Another dip into the Institutes provided most useful information. Oral wills were valid, provided the intent to make one and its provisions were declared before an assembly of seven witnesses. Slaves, lunatics, and those with certain disabilities or who were under the age of puberty were among those not permitted to serve in this capacity. Women were also barred from witnessing a will.

The task presented to John seems impossible given Peter, despite his long friendship with Gregory, does not know where the latter lived or his occupation. However, when John's friend Anatolius turns out to be one of the last to see Gregory alive, this sliver of information, scanty though it is, serves to enable John to begin tracing Gregory's movements.

As John pursues his time-consuming and increasingly urgent daisy chain of finding and interviewing witnesses, he is ever aware the plague could carry off any or all of them at any moment, not to mention the distinct possibility of one or more having fled the increasingly deserted city. As he discovers, there were indeed seven men present when Nereus made his will, a motley band who by a combination of circumstances happened to be in the right place at the right time to serve as witnesses.

The septet in question included Peter's friend Gregory as well as a seller of dodgy antiquities, a morbidly lugubrious court poet, the assistant to Nereus' house steward, a holy fool notorious for dancing in the street with the dead, a rustic carter, and an archdeacon.

The Institutes declares "The precepts of the law are these: to live honestly, to injure no one, and to give every man his due" and when John's winding path finally leads him to the culprit, he administers justice both terrible and appropriate -- without shedding blood.

Mystery Readers Journal

Mary's essay, Talking Snakes and Other Mysteries, appears in the summer issue of Mystery Reader's Journal. She talks about the roles played by animals in our Byzantine mysteries. The issue can be ordered online. Historical Mysteries II.

Head of Zeus Special Editions

We don't often write about our fiction being as interested parties will find a bibliography and reviews on our website, but given Rodgers and Hammerstein tell us June is busting out all over, this must surely to be the appropriate month to burst out with a shout-out to British publisher Head of Zeus' editions of John's adventures with their really striking covers. We like how the covers emphasis the fact that what some refer to as the Byzantine Empire was simply the continuation of the Roman Empire which survived in the east, untouched by the fall of Rome.

We'd also like to point out some special bargain priced editions published by Head of Zeus. Three Great Historical Mysteries is a collection featuring fellow Poisoned Pen Press authors Bruce Macbain with Roman Games and Priscilla Royal with Wine of Violence. John's debut One For Sorrow makes up the set. Together these span classical Rome, later Rome and the Middle Ages.

https://headofzeus.com/books/9781781855393

In addition to individual single titles Head of Zeus also offers a boxed set of the first four John novels in the Murder In Byzantium collection.

https://headofzeus.com/books/9781781859063

Finally there is a 48 page mini-book featuring one of John's early adventures, The Body in the Mithraeum.

Head of Zeus: https://headofzeus.com/books/9781781858394 Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/tmvwcsu8

In Praise of Tubbies

by Mary

When I mentioned my intent was to talk about "tubbies" this time round, Mr Maywrite asked me if the word was a Britishism or a Maryism. I cannot say either way, but will confirm right off the bat that the following is not about the colourful Teletubbies inhabiting the world of the popular British TV show for young children.

No, this essay is devoted to coffee containers and came about because only a couple of types of plastic bottles and jars are accepted locally for recycling. This means items without the appropriate magic numbers on their bases branding them as unwanted types of plastic must perforce be disposed of in the weekly bag of rubbish. However, not all of our numerical undesirables disappear that way, because we have amassed a collection of various sizes of coffee tubbies. Not surprising really, since being devotees of Satan's brew we generally get through even the largest sized container in about six weeks.

A quick survey of Casa Maywrite reveals several tubbies currently in use. A medium sized example in this very room holds spare light bulbs, an excellent way to store fragile items of that kind. Why light bulbs are sold in flimsy cardboard packaging when it takes a hacksaw to get into certain plastic-wrapped items is a mystery for the ages.

More of these lagniappe storage units lurk in three rooms and a porch. The tubby in the latter location houses sundry small garden tools as well as drop cloths and paintbrushes. Another office example holds small odds and ends of the type that tend to be found lurking in desk drawers. Unfortunately neither of our desks include that most useful feature, so items such as envelopes, stamps, spare pens, and scissors are kept in their own tubby. There is the disadvantage that tubbies do not seem to spontaneously generate rubber bands and paper clips as desk drawers do.

There's another tubby in the bathroom housing the loo brush, and assorted hoover attachments lurk in the pantry tubby. Last summer one of the bigger containers proved really handy when carrying out a controlled pouring forth of wood stain, rather than attempting to wrassle with large tins reminiscent of British petroleum containment units, as Mr Maywrite put it. Which, he observed, in this country are still known as gas cans despite being made of plastic.

One of a procession of plumbers whose retirement accounts we have enlarged significantly the last couple of years asked if he could have one of our smaller tubbies, and we were glad to oblige. My guess is it will serve as a mini bucket in tighter plumbing spots. We have used one as a temporary bucket when the kitchen sink sprang a leak and of course they are also useful when dealing with other tasks involving water.

Leading subscribers further around a grand tour of the premises, observe the fine example of the largest type of tubby residing on the kitchen counter. We pressed it into service some time since to store wet rubbish such as coffee grounds, fruit peelings, and eggshells. Its capacity is large and keeping it tightly lidded until it the time came to dispose of its contents has proved particularly useful during east coast heat waves.

Another attraction of these handy items: stores expect you to pay for specialised containers for various sorts of clutter, but tubbies are free. Which reminds me there's one containing loose change in the kitchen but their use extends further: they serve as the subject for an essay when the idea fairy goes missing.

Things the Library Taught Me

by Eric

Last month I visited the library for the first time in a year to make copies of our tax forms. Years ago a week wouldn't have passed without my going to the library, let alone a year, but recently I've turned to e-books and never need to leave the house for reading material.

My grade school was a short walk from the local library and every week our teachers would have the class troop single file to the white wood frame building to exchange our borrowed books for new ones. That was my introduction to libraries and over the years they taught me a lot, quite apart from a love for reading.

Even during my picture book phase those weekly school excursions weren't sufficient. Saturday mornings it wasn't uncommon for me to trek from home to the library to stock up on Dr Seuss and the like, exhaust my selections by afternoon and return for more. Unfortunately the walk to the library was close to a mile with steep hills at both ends. I greedily piled up books until I had far too many to carry under one skinny arm, and nearly too many to see over cradled in both arms. I staggered outside, nose more or less resting on a Lorax or Horton the elephant. My thick lensed glasses kept slipping down as I stumbled along, more and more slowly, arms beginning to ache from the weight of all those delightful flights of imagination. Thus I learned about one's reach exceeding one's grasp.

When I was on fourth grade I learned about censorship. I had read all the Tom Swift Junior books my parents had bought for me and desperately craved more science fiction. (Instead of a monkey on my back I had an alien). Unfortunately the science fiction section of the library was upstairs in what must once have been a small bedroom. It was adults only. Apparently certain science fiction, including juveniles by Andre Norton and Lester del Rey, were unsuitable for young minds. Maybe an irate parent had shown them Heinlein's The Puppet Masters, or else someone didn't think kids should be reading about futures that held out the possibility of things being different than they are. Luckily, before long my parents were able to straighten out the strait-laced librarian and I was no longer barred from reading Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 which condemned book burning, and plenty of other science fiction which railed against the suppression of knowledge and freedom.

Speaking of freedom, libraries also gave me a foretaste of the surveillance state and not just via science fiction. Are you old enough to remember when library books had borrowing cards in a pocket on the inside back cover? You'd sign and date them when you took a book out. It was interesting to see how many times the book had been borrowed, when, and by whom. But at the library I went to this system also allowed the librarians to keep track of how many books each patron had borrowed. Which one time led to the librarian checking my books out to admonish me that I ought to read more. My classmate Nancy C----- had read twice as many books as I had! Despite the great loads of books I'd lugged home. What can I say? As a girl Nancy was not obligated to spend hours of potential reading time with friends reenacting the Gunfight at the OK Corral with cap guns.

The library also taught me not to lose my head in financial dealings. No, I didn't read books of investment advice while growing up (nor since). Rather I went to the annual library auction with a buddy. Usually what attracted me to the fund raiser were the food vendors and used book tables but one year the big speakers by the auction platform in front of the barn blared out that the next item up for bid was a trio of hamsters. My friend and I excitedly counted our pocket change and immediately began bidding furiously. Against each other. Solely against each other. Who other than a ten year old wants three hamsters? I guess we were naive but the whole point of an auction is bidding. What's the fun if you don't bid? Not surprisingly we eventually exhausted our funds and took our furry little prizes to my friend's house. We'd agreed to share custody and trade them back and forth. But I never got to keep them at my place.They turned out to be a bad investment because they got along worse than the Three Stooges. The next morning one was eviscerated and one decapitated. The survivor of the fight (I suppose he would have been Moe) we set loose in the woods. God help the chipmunks.

So I learned a lot from libraries but today I sit here typing electronic words which you'll read off a screen. I can't help remembering lurching homeward, gasping for breath, legs trembling, under the burden of those picture books and thinking that maybe books that weigh nothing are not a bad idea.

Maybe All Dogs Don't Have Their Day

by Eric

When it comes to literary cliches, I'm ambivalent. The ghosts of my English Literature professors cry out from the past to avoid cliches like...well... like something other than a rat-borne disease, certainly. But I also believe there's a lot of wisdom in the cliche that cliches become cliches for a good reason -- because they express an idea so well. I recall watching MacBeth and needing to continually remind myself that when he wrote the play, Shakespeare wasn't a hack piling up tired old phrases. No doubt every dog had its day and brevity was the soul of wit long before 1606 but it took William Shakespeare to put those truths into words so apt that we still use them more than four hundred years later.

Though not necessarily in a novel. Some cliches are so familiar as to be wince-worthy even in their originator's work. A writer today would probably not tell readers that a villain was hoist on his own petard. On the other hand, might a protagonist still see something in his mind's eye? It's a thin line and besides, most cliches are more mundane than Shakespearean. They don't leap out from the page, at least if you're not a critic. The eyes of startled characters still get round, those knocked on the head from behind fall into pits of darkness or the like. Many sorts of common expressions are cliched to varying degrees and it doesn't upset me when a writer gives in and says something in a way that's been used before.

It can be painful to read desperate attempts to avoid those dreaded shop-worn phrases. A sixties science fiction author once wrote a whole paragraph describing, with anatomical precision, how a character's vertebrae quivered beneath the cold footsteps of a terrible foreboding (or some such), perhaps because he couldn't bring himself to just tell the reader (who might have been a literary critic after all!) that his poor character felt chills down his spine.

As a writer you don't want to make readers cringe at your lazy lack of originality but you don't want to make them laugh at your clumsy circumlocutions either. As Shakespeare might have said: neither a pathetic hack nor a Great Artiste be.

Cliches can extend beyond simple words. How many hackneyed plot devices do we all tolerate to one degree or another? For instance, you'd think there's an unwritten law that thrillers and action movies need to end with the hero's wife/daughter/girlfriend being taken hostage. I admit I have never seen a female action heroine's boyfriend held hostage but maybe I don't get out enough. Then more times than not, as the villain is about to pull the trigger of his weapon a shot rings out (ouch...) and rather than the hostage dying the villain looks surprised, then presumably falls into a pit of darkness, having been shot from behind at the last moment, quite often by a character who has not had the guts to shoot anyone until then.

Though overused this ending is satisfying and useful. I have to say that because in the climactic scene of our first book, One for Sorrow, Mary and I had John's family taken hostage by the baddies.

So, yes, even writers who might know better in principle often employ cliches. Meddlesome old biddies who solve mysteries are cliches, as are ladies who track down murderers while not baking pastries to sell in their small shops, not to mention private investigators. Not that PIs are sold in small shops. They tend to spend their time drinking in their small offices. One thing all these cliches have in common is that they are unrealistic. These categories of people hardly ever solve murder cases in reality.

So these cliches are popular because people like them, not because they artfully express a truth. Maybe all dogs don't have their day but we only think they do because Shakespeare said it so well and, in fact, brevity is not the soul of wit. (Oh yes it is, I hear you saying at this point. Oh yes it is.)

I seem to be going off the tracks here, hopefully not straight into a pit of darkness. The point is Mary and I have begun a new novel and we made our detective a reporter. Which is a cliche and also not very realistic. Call it a trope if you prefer. (See if I care) We didn't want anyone in law enforcement, or the usual type of amateur, or anything too esoteric. Reporters do look into wrongdoing and possess sleuthing skills and plenty have been involved in fictional murder mysteries. We had the idea after watching Fritz Lang's 1958 film While The City Sleeps about reporters vying to identify a serial killer. If it's good enough for Fritz Lang....

By the way, the movie was based on Charles Einstein's brilliant novel The Bloody Spur, the title of which, you probably won't be surprised to learn, comes from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.

The Return of the Age of Aquarius

by Mary

Our ongoing saga of random conkings-out of household machinery restarted last month when one evening the loo began flushing itself every few moments, meaning the well pump was turning on and off in a pattern akin to traffic flow during rush hour, only a great deal speedier. Not to mention running the risk of burning itself out. As a result Adam's ale ran rampant and in alarming quantities during our investigation, which showed no obvious problem bedeviling the tank's mechanism. Joining in the merry aquatic activity the stopcock under the tank apparently did not feel obliged to do its work, despite moving it both ways. So on the advice of the plumber we flipped the switch controlling the well, turning it on and off to restore water as and when needed.

Ladies and gentlemen, we never before realised how many times a day we required water for one purpose or another. Try counting the occasions you turned your taps on in the course of any given day and you'll be startled at the very least.

The plumber arrived that afternoon and soon revealed the problem to have been caused by what he called black sand partly choking a vital tube. This is not really surprising. The high mineral content in our water sometimes coagulates and has caused similar blockages on other occasions, such as in the showerhead as well as one of the incrustations adorning the heating boiler. If memory serves, it was the latter's bell-shaped gizmo which we understand serves as a water feed valve. We suspect the dark colour of the sandy obstruction responsible for causing the bother is related to the iron present in our water, which is high enough to cause dark stains to form in a short time. In any event, the entire tank mechanism was replaced and peace once again returned to the turbulent waters.

Two days later we woke up to a cold house. A really cold house. Our hydronic heating -- water was involved again, as you see -- had come out on strike some time during the night. The boiler wallah appeared on the threshold a couple of hours after our call, by which time the indoor temperature had fallen to 43 degrees. It took some time, but the cause of the problem was eventually traced to a failing thermostat. Our wall now sports a new-fangled model of the type with big figure displays and we are advised we must remember to change its batteries every year. While we do not expect to see the boiler wallah again in the autumn when he arrives to conduct a pre-winter heating check-up, much as we like him hopefully his shadow won't darken our doorstep before then.

Just last week the melodious sound of fast-running water, accompanied by a theme played on the well pump, broke into our consciousness. Yes, the loo was at it again. This time Mr Maywrite diagnosed the problem at a glance: the chain attached to the clapper had come adrift for unknown reasons, got lodged under said flapper, and was preventing it from closing completely. The hook part of the doings moved a link or two down when reattached to the chain solved the problem without need to turn the stopcock. Either way.

That Time We Constructed A Whale

by Mary

We are not two to boast, but a few years ago we outdid Herman Melville in that Three For A Letter features not one but two whales, both of which play major roles in the narrative.

The real whale was mentioned by Procopius in passing in his History of the Wars, wherein is recorded it was a terror to shipping for years, whereas our great grey whale was based upon information gathered from that most engaging work, Hero of Alexandria's Pneumatics.

In the opening chapter of Three For A Letter, a banquet held in honour of Empress Theodora features a presentation of the story of Jonah. To the wonderment of all, our mechanical sea beast appears from behind a curtain painted with a seascape, rolls forward without any visible method of propulsion, halts at the edge of the stage, spouts, and then rolls backwards to disappear behind the curtain.

That sounds somewhat unlikely, someone in the back row has doubtless remarked. But while we have not actually built a working model, our fictional whale's remarkable performance was based upon, and extrapolated from, the aforementioned Pneumatics. Details of its construction we borrowed from Hero includes a method of moving a cart back and forth without being pushed (accomplished by ropes around axles hidden under the whale and two bags of sand) and how to produce a jet of water by the use of mechanically compressed air. We also equipped our whale with a skin of painted canvas stretched over wooden ribbing, glass eyes, and, when the leviathan opens its mighty jaws, the action reveals a stuffed red linen tongue and huge metal teeth illuminated by lamps.

We also featured further artifacts whose inner operations are described in Hero's work, including an automatically opening villa door that terrified John's servant Peter (the original instructions applied to a temple door), a mechanical satyr dispensing an unending stream of wine, and an automaton archer who shoots his arrow at a dragon.

While doubts have been expressed concerning whether any such wonders would actually work, either way Hero's instructions are good enough for us. Dammit, Jim, we are authors, not engineers.

In all fairness, we should mention now and then startling events in our fiction are actually based on real life incidents. How else could John have flown in Four For A Boy? Admittedly his flight lasted only a few seconds and ended with a crash landing but it was based on an account of a failed Victorian era suicide. Fortunately John survived -- and a good job he did too, since otherwise the series would also have come to an abrupt end.

Travels on the Roads of Life

by Eric

The pandemic has forced kids all over the country to learn from home, something technologically impossible when I went to school. The closest we came to distance learning was the occasional episode of Mr Wizard, barely visible on a tiny black and white TV set at the far-off front of the classroom. These days I'm okay with spending hours staring at a computer screen but I don't think I would have enjoyed it growing up. What I would have been happy to escape was the commute to school.

Admittedly, my walk to grade school wasn't bad. All of six tenths of a mile, according to Google Maps. (I'd have guessed it was a lot further.) Down the street past the telephone company where my grandfather worked as a custodian, the dairy, the post office, and the movie theater which charged fourteen cents admission. From there across the highway, past the pharmacy, barbershop, and police station. Yes, it does sound like some sort of small town play set, doesn't it?

The big brick box elementary school sat at the top of a steep hill that could be difficult in the winter when coated with snow and ice. Given that the school year was a mandated 180 days, even accounting for days missed due to chicken pox, measles, flu, colds, and miscellaneous vague discomforts I suffered from time to time when I got fed up with the educational system, I must have been up and down that hill 2,000 times. (I admit my calculations might be off since one of my common ailments was long-division-itis) I can still recall the sidewalks in intimate detail - the bumpy stretch of macadam, the place where a root had buckled and broken a concrete slab. Not long ago I walked up that hill for the first time in ages and those details remained. The sidewalks hadn't been touched in fifty years. The hill seemed steeper though. I wouldn't try running up it these days.

Although the actual journey wasn't onerous I could only run so fast carting my bulging book bag (no backpacks yet) which meant I had to choke down my Cheerios at high speed to arrive before the bell. And naturally the familiar walk soon became boring. I muttered made-up stories to myself to relieve the tedium.

After grade school my commutes got tougher. Sartre had it wrong. Hell isn't other people, hell is a school bus stuffed with adolescents. I can't bring myself to say more.

Driving the roughly twenty miles from home to college was a bit less horrific. Except in winter. The Plymouth wasn't exactly a chariot of the gods to begin with -- the body was mostly patches of unpainted unsanded fiberglass and it left a billowing black trail of smoke in its wake. I had to stop for oil fill-ups more frequently than gasoline. Add to that, during the months of icy weather, the heater didn't work and the tires were bald. One particular intersection required me to start pumping the brakes (such as they were) a half mile in advance when there was snow on the road. Then there was the hill with the sharp curve by the power plant where I twice executed a 180 degree pirouette, luckily not when one of the enormous gravel-laden trucks that frequented the road was coming.

During my last year in law school I worked at a county law library during the day and took night classes in lower Manhattan. This involved bussing from Weehawken NJ (yes, there's really a town with that name) to Jersey City in the morning and taking the subway to Manhattan in the afternoon, then taking another subway at ten PM uptown to the Port Authority in order to catch a bus back to Weehawken. The dark deserted streets I hiked to reach the Canal Street station after classes were exactly as you've seen on film with steaming manholes and the occasional taxi. Since the area was mostly warehouses it wasn't as dangerous as it looked. I felt more uneasy making my way through the maze of corridors, escalators and stairways in the Port Authority.

Luckily I've worked from home for the past twenty-five years and haven't had to commute, so that's that. I'll shut up before I start sounding like one of Monty Python's four Yorkshiremen outdoing each other about the hardships of their childhoods, living in shoe boxes or paper bags or an 'ole in the ground.