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Aphelion: The Webzine of Science Fiction and Fantasy

Issue 166, Volume 16 -- September 2012

Editorial

As the days of Summer slowly draw to a close it seems as if there's never enough time to do everything that needs doing. Lists of chores that Summer's heat made too difficult to accomplish have begun crowding Fall's more temperate days. And so it goes, as it ever has, always more to to than time to do it in.

With that all said, I do seem to be getting more done. There are always tons of unfinished projects that pile up. But I make progress on them, little by little, and even finish a few of them. Not as many as I like, but then again every completed project is a victory of sorts. I enjoy those small victories. Like my upcoming month of unemployment...

Wait a minute! I did indicate that it is going to be a temporary thing. I haven't lost my job at the factory. They're just not going to need me during the month of November. You see, every few years my factory shuts the production line down, turns off all the machines, and takes a little Time Out. We've got the world's largest electric glass melting furnace, and the firebrick erodes over time. Having a great big pool of 2800 degree F. molten glass in your innards for a few years is kind of corrosive, even for firebrick. Roughly every five years or so, the Melter has to be drained, shut off, and torn down to be rebuilt. It's three stories tall, so that can take a couple of weeks.

The company also uses this time to rebuild some of the machinery in the rest of the factory, too. Like the Curing Oven, which runs at roughly 900 degrees or so, all day, every day, for years at a time. The company recently changed the formula for the chemicals that are sprayed on the glass fibers as they are spun. All the formaldehyde was eliminated. Lots of the ammonia, as well. The new formula is more environmentally friendly and releases nearly no dangerous fumes over its lifetime. The new stuff is amazingly safer for the homes it will be used in, and even though the old stuff had to pass rigorous health and safety standards, this new stuff just stomps the old standards into the dust. Well, when we switched to the new formula, the Oven proved to be in dire need of modifications so as to cure the glass and new binder chemicals out completely. It just doesn't work as well with the new binder as it used to do with the old binder. So the company is going to make the Oven about 15 to 20 yards longer. This is a bigger project than it sounds. You see, there are other machines we use in that space the new oven is going to occupy. All that stuff has to be moved, redesigned, or modified.

Have you ever been to a pizza place where you could see the oven they bake your pizza in? It's a big metal box, with a wide sheet of chain that tows your pizza from fresh, uncooked dough with raw toppings on one end, to baked, crispy goodness on the other. It's slow, otherwise you pizza doesn't get baked enough to be good. That's exactly like our oven at the factory. It's a huge metal box about twelve feet wide, fourteen feet tall, and a hundred feet long, with a huge moving chain drive that tows the glass along to bake and cure the binder chemicals that we spray on the glass fibers as they get spun into filaments. Just like your pizza, but on an industrial scale. That's what we've been doing with our glass. We had to slow the oven down to bake the chemicals on the glass completely. The old binder chemicals would cure our in less time than the new chemicals do. So we can't make as much fiberglass as we used to make. At least, not and insure that it's good enough to sell to our customers, and to have in the walls or attic of your house. We have to make the oven longer so the glass will cook to perfection.

Now, the company also takes this down time to clean out lots of air ducts, and whatnot that are part of this process. Imagine climbing into a air duct. About four feet high and three feet wide. Imagine that the walls and ceilings of these ducts are coated with baked-on dust and dirt and soot and whatnot, and the floors are a foot deep with mud. And your job is to take a shovel and get the mud out. And after that you take an air chisel and chip the baked-on stuff off, then shovel it out too. Now imagine that these ducts are about two miles long, but twisted up like a plate of noodles. Not my idea of a fun workday. And this is going to go on for about six weeks. So we come to the part of this essay wherein you begin to understand why I am willing to forgo these and many other delightful tasks on hand during a factory rebuild. In the last thirty five years I've worked many a rebuild. But I choose to sit this one out. I'll be selling the rest of my unscheduled vacation time so that I can collect unemployment for a week or two of the downtime. I've already got some vacation time scheduled for November. Scheduled before the dates for Rebuild were picked. I've got months worth of mortgage payments sitting in the bank right now. My vacation checks and the unemployment will be more than enough to buy groceries and pay the utility bills for the duration. From October 27th to December 3rd I will take a short break from the daily grind of factory labor. Just imagine what progress I can make on my own projects while all that mess is going on without me.

I'm even going to go to one of my High School football games!

Dan

Serials and Long Fiction

Baron Sabbath
By McCamy Taylor
On the island of Boymere, Baron Sabbath reigns supreme over the spirits -- and the flesh -- of the dead. When another necromancer usurps the Baron's very skin and abuses his reputation, the Baron must rise from his own tomb to reclaim his realm.

The Price of Light
By Beverly Forehand
The former High Vestal Aemilla Verity of the Daughters of Artemis is now one of the Fallen, with a number instead of a name. However, she continues to fight in the service of her Goddess. As a long siege draws to a close, she must take command to prevent the enemy from getting hold of an ancient, powerful alien artifact.


Short Stories

Cemetery World
By Kurt Heinrich Hyatt
Serving as engineer on a rustbucket hauling caskets from the planet Morbus to the cemetery world Quan-Lan wasn't the worst job Radner had ever had, but it was probably the strangest. And he had the feeling there was something else going on there...

Unmarked By The Malachim
By McCamy Taylor
The Malachim were, depending on whom you asked, aliens or angels. All anyone knew for sure was that being chosen and marked by them meant that your life would never be the same.

The New Kultur
By Ian Cordingley
Michel had survived the trench warfare of the Great War, with its poison gas and genetically-engineered saber toothed tigers. More than fifty years later, he would find that genetics could create horrors of another kind.

Oceans
By Branden Szabo
Life on Ayva Island was civilized to a fault -- causing offense to anyone through speech, action, or inaction was unacceptable. But there was nowhere else to go -- was there?.

They -- It's Always They
By Damian Delao
Nobody knew what the creatures hunting the scattered survivors of their invasion of Earth called themselves. Nobody had come up with a nickname that stuck. But when one man cried "They killed my son," and another wailed "They took my wife," there was never any doubt who They were...

Please Don't Cut the Rope, Mister
By Peter Adamakakis
He spent his days letting fed-up parents' children drift out on the river on floating platforms, then hauling them back in when the parents were ready to reclaim them. The rest of his life was equally uninspiring, and there was nothing better on the horizon. It was enough to make a man do something desperate...

The Recurring Customer Is Always Right
***A Mare Inebrium Tale***
By Sergio Palumbo
Sometimes a familiar face at the Mare Inebrium is more than just another pretty face. Max recognizes someone he'd met, briefly, only once before...

China Express
By George Schaade
Jack was one of the first outsiders to be allowed into China in decades, supposedly due to lingering effects of a spectacular nuclear meltdown. The truth behind the stories turned out to be something beyond belief.

Super-Feud
By P. F. White
A cow wanders off its owner's land and damages a neighbor's corn field, leading to an escalating feud. Oh -- did I mention that the cow weighs nine tonnes and the farmers have super-powers?

Holo, Grammy
By Richard Tornello
In a world where trivial offenses lead to lengthy prison sentences, and the elderly are sent to special communities (which, oddly, never allow visitors), Peter and his Grandmother managed to form a special bond -- via two-way hologram communications.

Here's One for Mr. Serling
By P. B. Hampton
Remember the good old days of television sci-fi, when special effects were absent (or crude) but the scripts were clever? Well, sit back and enjoy this visit to...The Zero Zone.

***August 2012 Forum Challenge***

Congratulations to I. Verse (again!), author of the favorite entry in the August 2012 Forum Flash Fiction Challenge. Check out "The Deal" and five more tales of space merchants (or rather, merchandising to creatures FROM space) here, after sampling this month's editorial, poetry, short stories, and long fiction, of course...

Poetry and Filk Music

Catechism
by John M. Marshall

Diamond Moon
by Clinton Van Inman

Fuzzy Thing
by Mike Berger

Shiny Happy People
by Richard Tornello

Victory Feast
by Robin Lipinski

Stepping Into the Same River Twice
by Richard Tornello

Features

Thoughts on Writing #41: Something Old, Something New
By Seanan McGuire
In an ongoing series, Seanan McGuire takes apart the engine of writing to find out how it works, and offers her insights into how to put it back together again.

Ares, a Manwha Review
By McCamy Taylor
McCamy Taylor reviews the Korean graphic novel series (hence "manwha" instead of "manga") featuring Ares, a prince who becomes a master swordsman when an injury robs him of his memory.


Aphelion Webzine is © 1997-2013 by Dan L. Hollifield