Ready: Listen and/or learn
All right, luvvies? Matt here with the Ready edition of Ready & Waiting, a fortnightly newsletter from Foggy Outline.
The Ready edition is all about the things we've made that are ready for you right now – including a limited-time chance to take our latest environmental literacy training course for free!
Indie RPG Meetup
20 July, 13:30BST, Arcanist’s Tavern
The July Indiemeet is usually pretty busy, so we might end up taking over the tavern… I’m planning to pitch For the Queen by Alex Roberts, to give me a chance to see how it plays before I run it for Merely Roleplayers later this month. Pitching is competitive, though, so there’s no guarantee we’ll actually end up playing it!
Environmental literacy courses
Enroll in Renewable energy – What is it and do we need it? for free with voucher code RENEWABLE24-01
Our newest course is free to Ready & Waiting subscribers for a limited time!
The offer expires on 5 August if I’ve done my sums right (the code is valid for 31 days, starting from 01:00BST on 6 July).
The course is designed to help you mythbust and counter misinformation about renewable energy, like the idea that it isn’t reliable. As usual, there’s a grain of truth in that, but it’s more complex than, say, “it’s pointless building wind turbines because they don’t produce energy constantly”.
Be the one with the knowledge to say “it’s complicated” or “it depends” or “let’s really dig into that”. Enroll for free with voucher code RENEWABLE24-01.
Our July on Udemy in numbers
42 new 5* reviews
(consider adding to this figure if you take us up on the free course!)
156 new enrolments
9,661 minutes of learning
Dead Without Dying
This old story of mine now has an audio version, narrated by Mike Harrison-Wood. Listening to Mike’s version reminded me how much I still like this story! It’s me in unapologetic weird mode, and netted me some of the most glowing feedback I’ve ever had from an editor. Have a listen to Mike read Dead Without Dying and see if you can guess which sentence the editor of AE: The Canadian Science Fiction Review called one of the most perfect English sentences he’d ever read.
And now, our feature presentation:
A Net Too Wide to Break His Fall
11. Degrees of separation
It was functioning as one now, but the room Callum was trapped in wasn’t built to be a cell. A purpose-built cell would have been bare. Maybe with brackets bolted into the walls for manacles. Maybe a slot in the door for food (which would actually have been useful). But this was a room pressed into service as a cell, after being built for something else, with features to fit that purpose, not its current one. There was a glimmer of hope in that.
Callum didn’t spot the glimmer until he’d worn himself out smashing the chair to bits against the door.
In the unlikely event there was someone just the other side of the door, could they have heard the racket he was making? Without an introduction, Callum was invisible and inaudible – but how far did that extend? It definitely affected words he spoke – or yelled. Whistling, clicking his fingers, clapping, all worked the same way, he knew from experience. But if he smashed a plate in the floor in a restaurant, all heads turned. If he slammed a door in front of someone who didn’t know him, they’d see it move and hear the crash. Would throwing a chair leg at the door have a better chance of being heard than keeping hold of it and swinging it like a gong beater? How many steps removed from his unremarkability, his effective non-existence, did a sound have to be before it became ambient noise? These were questions he’d pondered idly, philosophically, now turned horrifyingly practical.
Exhausted, Callum picked his way through the debris by the weak light filtering under the door, and explored the limits of his prison. The floor was concrete. The walls, brick, flaked with remnants of paint. There were alcoves in two of the corners. The darkest alcove, farthest from the door, was where he found clues to the room’s original purpose. The texture under his fingers changed from rough brick to cold, hard metal. Sharp corners and protruding rivets. The jagged crevice of a keyhole. Cable conduits, bolted to the brick, following the line of the wall and ending in a locked cupboard kind of thing. Maybe a junction box or fuse box. This had probably been some kind of utility room. Somewhere out of the way to put appliances no one in the building would want to see or hear: industrial fridges or washing machines or something. Without knowing what the building had been before it was subdivided into bookie’s, nail salon and subterranean drug processing workshop, Callum couldn’t guess any more specifically.
He hunted on his hands and knees among the shattered remains of the chair for more bits he could improvise into lockpicks. His world narrowed to that purpose, so much that when one hand came away from the floor wet, he just stopped for a long moment, confused. Then jerked back, slipping, jarring a knee on the concrete and tearing the other palm on sheared metal shards, hearing Anton’s gunshot again, seeing recognition dawn in the eyes of the woman whose blood he was crawling around in.
His breathing was shallow. His hands shook. Pain, shock, fear. Dehydration setting in. Panic jellying his muscles, frying his fine motor control. The makeshift picks slipped in his bloody grip. An ache crept into his forehead as he strained in the darkest corner of the room to see the coin-sized lock.
The mechanism rotated through a grating, excruciating quarter turn before the pick bent and jammed it solid.
What would a stranger in the room have heard as Callum beat bloody dents into the door of the box?
One last blow as his strength bled out of him, and two things gave way: something in his right wrist, and the lock. With the latch half lifted out of its slot and the door dented out of shape, it popped free.
The stars bursting in Callum’s eyes resolved into twinkling LEDs. There were no appliances connected in this room any more, but the junction box was still connected to something. He could still connect to something outside the room.
Callum caught his breath, and set to work breaking even more things.
See you in two weeks for the Waiting edition: all the things we're getting ready for you behind the scenes.