Railroad: Part 1

Lola has a good start to her day

The Triverse is
Mid-Earth, an alternate 1970s London
Max-Earth, a vision of the 26th century
Palinor, where magic is real

Previously: Earth First have swept to power. Portal travel has been heavily restricted. On Palinor, police liaison officer Lola Styles continues to work with the local city guard, solving portal-related crimes.

Bruglia.
3202. Leafless.

Lola lay on her side in her bed, a thick blanket on top to guard against the increasingly cold Bruglian nights, and re-read the letter in the morning light.

Lola,

Let me tell you a story about one Detective Constable Zoltan Kaminski. A seasoned professional, as you well know. Imagine him leading on a drug bust downtown. All goes smoothly. Now imagine the same DC Kaminski accidentally snorting half of the den’s supply while attempting to collect evidence.

He claims it was an accident, but I have my suspicions. He chain smokes in an hour more than the rest of us put together, and you know what they say about slippery slopes.

Anyway, not sure what really happened, but he’s fine, which means we’re allowed to laugh at him.

Everything’s a bit strained in the office. The election is rippling out through everything. We’re going to be getting a ‘media relations’ officer, apparently. I thought that was what Miller already did, but what do I know? I can’t see them putting me in front of a camera or a journalist anytime soon. Lots of scrutiny, though. All our reports are being sent ‘upstairs’ and checked over by government officials. They claim it’s about transparency, maintaining standards and so on. Smells like bullshit to this old cop.

You made the right call getting out of London. Hopefully things are a little quieter in Bruglia. That said, with the portal shutdown it doesn’t seem like I’ll be catching up with you in person in the near future. They’re really stretching the definition of ‘temporary’. Hopefully this daft referendum will put an end to it - once the vote makes it clear how important portal travel is, they’ll be forced to get everything up and running again.

Then again, I didn’t think they’d be elected to power in the first place. I’ve no idea what’s going through people’s heads in this country.

Lots of other interesting developments but I’ll have to save those for a face-to-face. Not something to put down in writing.

What else? They’re saying Walpole might be getting a promotion, which would take him out of the SDC. Not sure he’ll go for it, but we’ll see. Depends how good the offer is.

Stay sharp, Lola. See you when I see you.

Cheers,

Y Clarke

A warm hand moved around her waist and she felt Daryla wriggle closer. Lola’s skin tingled at the touch, and she wondered if that was Daryla doing something with her magic.

“Good morning,” the princess said, snuggling into Lola’s neck. “Didn’t you read that yesterday?”

Lola rolled onto her front and propped herself up on her elbows. “Yes, but it’s funny. You’ve not met Kaminski, so it probably wouldn’t make sense.” She frowned. “It’s also - there’s something Clarke’s not saying. He sounds uneasy about the whole situation back home.”

“I’m not surprised,” Daryla said, running her hand down and over Lola’s bare thigh. “Your entire world has gone mad.”

“Well, only some of the people there.”

“Enough to matter.” She moved her hand back up, stroking Lola’s back. “It’s most inconvenient. I had a charity party scheduled for this week. I’d be in Paris right now if it wasn’t for this ridiculous portal blockade.”

“’Blockade’ is a bit strong.”

“That’s what it looks like to me,” Daryla said. She plucked the letter from Lola and placed it carefully on the bedside table. “Now, can we not talk politics? One very nice benefit of not being in Paris is that I’m here, with you, right now.”

Lola grinned. “I don’t need to get to work for another hour.”

“Oh, I know.” Daryla smiled mischievously and kissed her. “How about I show you some more of my micrologist tricks?”

Lying on her back, Lola stretched her arms out straight, the coldness of the air above the blanket hitting her skin. “I wouldn’t say no.”

“Of course not.”

As Daryla’s hands moved down, Lola laughed. “I’d always read that micrology was one of the most dangerous disciplines. Used by assassins and all that.”

“Well,” Daryla whispered, “I only do a little death.”

"Thanks for coming along, Detective,” said Sergeant Raelar. “I appreciate this case may not be as dramatic as those you normally attend to, but it’s an important matter.”

They were stood in the loading docks for the Bruglia portal station, surrounded by shipping containers big and small. Lola always found it peculiar that shipping containers were the same across the triverse: long, oblong, with corrugated metal walls. Max-Earth had fancier ways of transporting goods but few of them worked cross-portal, so they’d reverted to a design several hundred years old which still got the job done. There were more of them than their should be in the bay, backed up from the portal delays. It was also far quieter than it should have been.

“How much is getting to go through?” She nodded in the general direction of the portal, which was out of sight at the other side of the dock.

“Not much, is your answer,” he said. His pointed ears twitched. “Some essential supplies, even fewer luxury goods for those who can afford the price hikes. Your government is making everything very difficult, which is why we have trails of cargo stretching back through the city streets and into the canyons.”

She wanted to object to your government, but resisted. “Hopefully they’ll sort out their security concerns and get it moving soon,” she said, trying to sound hopeful. “So what’s the problem?” She looked at the complex stacks of containers and crates. “Well, other than the obvious. What can I help with?”

“Everything slowing down is bad for merchants. Bad for anyone travelling. Bad for the economy. But it’s been quite useful for me.” Raelar gestured for her to follow as he headed towards a side door into a small office. “There’s usually so much coming through that we can’t keep track of it all. We do checks, we do what we can, but inevitably some things sneak past. We just don’t have the resources.”

Lola looked around the office. It was smaller than hers and looked bolted together from off-cuts of wood. “How big is your team?”

“I am the team,” he said, holding out his arms as if to showcase how little he had at his disposal. “Sometimes I get support from the garrison, but mostly it’s just me. We don’t have any of your electrical machines, either, so the records are all done by hand.”

“I’m surprised the Joint Council doesn’t require proper staffing.”

“Ha!” He clapped and grinned at her. “Good one. That would require the authorities here to pay attention to that kind of request. You’ve been assigned here a while, haven’t you? You’ve noticed by now we’re not always especially good at sticking to the rules? They put me here as a PR exercise years ago then left me to it.” He gestured to a battered seat.

She sat down, half expecting the chair to collapse beneath her. “A PR exercise?”

“A few years ago there was a fuss on your side of the portal about how there were no aen’fa in the city guard or working the portal station this side. Hence, me, here. Ticking that particular box.”

Lola accepted an offered biscuit and took a bite. It tasted of ginger. She wondered if there was ginger on Palinor. “Why are there so few aen’fa in the city guard?”

He looked at her as if she was an idiot, and she suspected it was an accurate assessment. “Why do you think? Aen’fa don’t generally get into positions of authority here, or hadn’t you noticed? Why do you think so many of us have tried to get through the portal to Mid-Earth? Much more opportunity there.” He opened a drawer and began flicking through files. He sighed. “But I always wanted to be a city guard. I don’t know why. They say we can’t join up because we’re unable to do magic. That it’s for our own protection. That we’re not qualified. It’s all bullshit. They’re just jealous of our ebullient nature and beautiful faces.”

He did have particularly striking cheekbones.

“So,” she said, smiling as she tried to pull the conversation back on point, “what are we talking about?”

“Like I said, everything’s slowed down, which has given me more time to check manifests, conduct searches and check what’s coming through the port. And that’s when I noticed something unusual.”

She could tell he was trying to build anticipation. It was kind of working, She liked a good mystery. Obviously. “What was it?”

“Entire containers gone missing. Straight up disappeared. They’re here, and then they’re gone. This goes back months, too. Containers that were logged as being here, registered, but never showed up on the other side of the portal.”

“How can an entire container get lost?”

“That’s the thing, Detective.” He leaned in closer, conspiratorially. “I think maybe the portal is swallowing them up.”

---

Thank you for reading!

Here’s a fun new thing: I’m going to be doing a group watch of the 90s show Babylon 5 right here on this newsletter. Now, that’s obviously not going to be of interest to everyone, so I’m making it a strictly opt-in thing. If you fancy a rewatch or would like to discover a key influence on me as a writer, here’s the details:

Lots of interesting reading material this week, too.

John Ward

put together a fantastic piece examining the state of fiction on Substack. His argument is that wooing romance writers and readers could be what’s needed to really kickstart fiction as a thing. Good insights, and it’s a useful follow-up to something I wrote back in June:

How to fix Substack's fiction experience

Meanwhile,

Jeannine Ouellette

put together a post outlining how she built her newsletter. Yes, it’s one of those. However, Jeannine started in an interesting place with just 600 subscribers on her initial list. When I started writing this newsletter I had about 100 subscribers, so not too dissimilar. That makes for a more interesting case study, rather than the usual fluff that Substack Reads promotes (where the secret to success always seems to be “have 6 million Instagram followers”).

Then Ted Gioia wrote a piece about macroculture vs microculture, which includes the immortal line “This really is a war. I’m not exaggerating.” I’m not entirely convinced you can put those two sentences next to each other unless you’re writing about an actual war. Wade through the intense hyperbole and there’s some interesting stuff in there, though. It does feel like culture has bifurcated into internet culture and non-internet culture, with each wilfully ignoring the other. It is a bit weird how organisations leap upon the latest social media fad but ignore interesting, age old distribution methods like newsletters. So yeah, lots of interesting discussion points, but I feel like we have enough actual wars in the world without making up metaphorical ones as well. I’m not exaggerating.

I’ve also been catching up on the podcast Origin Story. It’s always fascinating listening and the latest two-parter is all about eugenics. Which obviously makes for a cheery time. Vital stuff though, and worryingly still relevant in 2023. In fact, some proponents of eugenic-adjacent theory have been interviewed on the official Substack company podcast, and some interesting lines are drawn between eugenics and IQ-obsessed Silicon Valley. Progress isn’t a straight line, and all that.

Also, here are some ebook giveaways, if you’re looking to stock up on holiday reads:

• Fantasy Realms - free fantasy reads

• Urban Fantasy Freebies (there are a lot of muscley male torsos on these front covers. I reckon anyone downloading the Triverse sampler will be seriously disappointed)

Author notes

We’re back with Lola! Feels like it’s been a while. That’s the odd thing about a weekly serial - in real time it can be weeks or months between events, but for someone catching up on the story it could all be read in a single sitting, or in a few hours.

I think it might have been September, actually, with the conclusion of the ‘Rubbish’ storyline.

This particular chapter is mostly day-in-the-life Lola stuff. We get to catch up, see that she’s getting along just fine with Daryla, we get a bit from Clarke as well, and have some opportunities to sneak in some world building and reinforce the tensions across the triverse.

Something I’ve always been fascinated by is action choreography in films. Some directors are good at it, some are not. A lot of it comes down to the geography of the scene, and whether the audiences properly understands where everything is happening, and whether that staging makes sense or not.

World building in Triverse sometimes feels a bit like that. For certain upcoming story beats to work, readers have to have a decent grasp of certain fundamentals about the state of the world(s). Without enough context, some plot points could fall flat. On the other hand, too much world building bogs down the story and distracts from the characters, so it’s always a tricky juggling act. It’s like those movie directors who make a complex action sequence seem effortless, compared to films where the action is muddled and feels contrived or confusing.

I received an email from a reader recently who noted how much they enjoy the way I weave real world politics into Triverse in (and I quote) “subtle and not so subtle ways”. The ‘not so subtle’ made me chuckle. It doesn’t take a genius to see some of the parallels in the politics of the story at the moment. It occurred to me recently that all four of my books, including Triverse, are responses to Brexit and 21st century UK politics. Each is dealing with my evolving thoughts on the matter in more-or-less direct ways. Triverse is probably the most overt - although, again, I hope it doesn’t get in the way of the story and instead adds additional depth to the flavour.

Right, that’s me done for this week. See you on the other side of the weekend.