Fiction
A Taste of Home
was raining. Daphne Pridmore was getting thoroughly sick of the rain. It meant that she had to stay inside for the most part. Going out to check on the hives was pointless. If they could use the truck, it might be worthwhile, but they'd decided to save the wear and tear on their only truck for emergencies. As much as she hated to admit it, cabin fever wasn't a real emergency.
Federico and Ginger
Federico Ballarino stopped his mule and studied the guards at the roadblock. They were too well uniformed to be brigands, but it wasn't unheard of for a local lord to decide to boost his income by imposing a toll. Or even robbing travelers outright. Indeed, it was out of concern of being robbed that he was dressed rather below his rank.
Recycling
"Hey! Watch it with that broom." Officer Preston Richards hastily pulled his feet back away from the stiff bristles that threatened the shine of his newly polished shoes. He glanced up from the night sheets he was going over, and looked over the unprepossessing figure before him.
Old Folks' Music
You reckon we could afford to do something special for the Fourth?" Ella Mae Jones was sipping iced chamomile tea and making faces at it at the same time. "Lord above, I wish a person could afford sugar," she muttered.
Mightier than the Sword
Frank Jackson looked out across Magdeburg from the window of his office. Under a blanket of snow, the capital of the months-old United States of Europe looked deceptively tranquil. Underneath the blanket, though, Frank knew there was a dynamic city, still growing, still filling out. A city that was ugly and industrial but beginning to get the sorts of cultural institutions that gave any city, in any time, an indefinable sense of "livability."
Grantville is Different
It was late August, 1632, when Georg Bauer climbed out of the ditch he'd been digging for Jena's new sewer line. Sweat was still pouring off him when he first heard about Grantville.
The Woman Shall Not Wear That
No. Pastor Ludwig Kastenmayer put it out of his mind. His eyes must have deluded him. The cleaning woman at Countess Katharina the Heroic Lutheran Elementary School, here on the outskirts of Grantville, could not have been wearing . . . that.
Live Free
Tom Musgrove peered carefully around the door. This close to midnight few of the staff should be around. Down at the end of the hallway he could hear moaning. "That's the way, Stan, get the nurses' attention," Tom muttered under his breath before he remembered that Stan Zaleski had been dead a year or so.
The Dalai Lama's Electric Buddha
"Respectful greetings from His Majesty Gegen Setsen Khan to Your Holiness, Kundün," said the emissary. It was not really warm in the library, but the atmosphere felt warm and friendly. "Let me present you this surprise from the Western lands."