Reviews and Comments

An interesting collection of short-short stories, each can be read in one seating on the 'throne'. The stories are grouped together based on a common theme, with each story ending with a note about the author.

Of the stories in the collection, the ones that I found thought-provoking and interesting include those by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, James L. Cambias, Lawrence Watt-Evans, Steven Popkes, David Brin, Cat Rambo, Robert Dawson, Nancy Kress, Bud Sparhawk and James Van Pelt. These stories manage to invoke the feeling that the stories are just a glimpse into bigger stories full of fascinating possibilities.

Theme: Artificial Intelligence (A.I).

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• "For the Love of Mechanical Minds" by Brenda Cooper: a kid growing up with an AI assistant would obviously have different priorities from their parents.

• "Candle" by Liam Hogan: on the first turning-on anniversary, an A.I. left to its own devices decides to celebrate its birthday by lighting a spectacular candle.

• "Staff Meeting, as Seen by the Spam Filter" by Alex Shvartsman: since spam mail is best handled by an intelligent person, an intelligent A.I. is called for, even if that's unintended.

Theme: Aliens

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• "Stand-In" by Gregory Benford: aliens blend into human society via fictional personalities

• "Sing" by Kristine Kathryn Rusch: a thoughtful story about a researcher who wants to capture the essence of the people living in a society but turns out to have captured more than that. This one will make you re-read it when you reach the end to re-evaluate the situation and the characters.

• "Remember the Allosaur" by Jo Walton: an allosaur who only wants to act human in plays. But there is one play where he may not be the leading man.

Theme: Arts & Media

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• "Gypped" by Lloyd Biggle: about a clerk who feels he isn't justly rewarded when his 'artistic' actions unknowingly leads to a great discovery.

• "Sentimental Value" by Michael A. Burstein: a story involving an author's first sale and capturing the joy of that sale. Only funny if you have some idea who the editor and the magazine the sale was made to were in real life.

• "A Right Jolly Old…" by James L. Cambias: a tale of a series of unlike coincidences in various stories leads one man to deduce who Santa Clause is; and how he knows he's right.

• "Space Opera" by Daniel M. Kimmel: literally Opera (librettos) in space.

• "Musicians End the World" by Gerald Warfield: when air guitarist could destroy the world.

• "Nif’s World" by Lawrence Watt-Evans: a nicely set-up story of a naive young world-builder who thinks she has an edge in her world's creation: only it's one that readily dismissed for obvious reasons.

Theme: Religion

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• "Kayonga’s Decision" by Dave Creek: a man makes a confession to a priest about his former rescue mission, where he had to decide between saving his friend and saving a group of intelligent 'whales' in Jupiter.

• "Ten Things I Know About Jesus" by Steven Popkes: a man who personally knows Jesus (and other related Biblical characters) in modern times reveals a different kind of Jesus.

• "The Genre Kid" by James Sallis: a strange tale of a boy who produces images of Jesus in an unsanitary manner and what is says about his artistic skills.

Theme: Reviving the Past

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• "The Last Real New Yorker in the World" by J. D. MacDonald & Debra Doyle: in a future where only theme parks of New York are left, the last legitimate New Yorker demands more to act as an attraction.

• "Stewardship" by Holly Schofield: a robotic steward of a nature reserve finds its top predator dead. But an opportunity comes for it to find a possible replacement.

• "Bolesław Szymanski Gets the Ogden Slip" by Steven H Silver: in the game of hero versus villain, an attractive lady sidekick has little choice but to play along, even though she is the actual hero.

Theme: Space

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• "The Avalon Missions" by David Brin: a hilarious look at what could happen as successive ships are sent to explore an distant alien world, each ship being faster than its predecessor but launched at different time periods, resulting in different viewpoints about exploration.

• "The Good Girl" by Brendan DuBois: as punishment, a girl is sent to control a mining robot on the moon. But when she finds something unexpected, she had to decide whether to stop operations and end up being punished, but be a good girl to finish the punishment.

• "Without" by Fran Wilde: a mother leaving for a 'better life' pleads with her husband to sign an agreement and to leave with her, from a land that is slowly dying.

• "Moving to a New Planet? Don’t Take Disembarkation Sickness with You" by Malphian Junket, by Leslie Starr O’Hara: on the various different symptoms people encounter when arriving at a new planet.

Theme: Strange Relationships

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• "Strange Attractors" by S. B. Divya: a couple drift apart but come together again many times in a tale that spans many years.

• "Grandpa?" by Edward M. Lerner: a funny tale about the Grandfather Paradox (going back in time to kill your grandfather) that can only stop when the grandfather makes a decision.

• "The Coffeemaker’s Passion" by Cat Rambo: a woman gets a new coffeemaker machine which begins talking and slowly takes over her life, in return for good coffee.

Theme: Technology (and its Discontents)

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• "Pop-Ups" by Robert Dawson: with pop-up ads appearing everywhere in brain implants, there will be a need for an ad blocker.

• "The Omniplus Ultra" by Paul Di Filippo: everybody's heard of and wants the Omniplus Ultra. But supply is limited. But when you finally get a chance to try it, it turns out not to be what you think it is.

• "Virtually Correct" by Marianne Dyson: on the perils of not ensuring that the criminals featured in crime scenes in virtual reality are associated with a particular race.

• "Patent Infringement" by Nancy Kress: a patented cure for a virulent disease is successful. But it is challenged by a man who claims his DNA was used to create the cure. The reply would turn patents and lawsuits into a virulent weapon.

• "Purgatory" by Don Sakers: teleporters make it easy for thieves to break into a house by 'dialing' in: except when there's a hold in the system.

• "Delivery" by Bud Sparhawk: a interesting look at how AI can help deliver groceries and other items to your house just when you need them. But it takes a chilling turn when world geopolitics requires the delivery of some special items.

• "Weaponized Ghosts of the 96th Infantry" by James Van Pelt: a chilling story about how ghosts can be raised from the newly dead to avenge their deaths in battle.

Theme: Time Travel

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• "Operation Tesla" by Jeff Hecht: time travellers go back in time to find Tesla's missing notes. Only they keep getting stopped before completing their mission for obvious reasons in hindsight.

• "The Man Who Brought Down The New York Times" by Paul Levinson: how a grudge against a newspaper not printing the work of a man lead to Fake News.

• "The Thunder of Sound" by H. Paul Shuch: a re-look at Ray Bradbury's "A Sound of Thunder" about the consequences of changing the past in even the slightest fashion.

• "In the Speed of Time" by Douglas Van Belle: arguing with a future you against killing you, to spare his future self from the depression over losing the one you love.

• "Cease and Desist" by Jay Werkheiser: the future you sues you for not being healthy.

Theme: Shaggy Dogs

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• "Return of the Zombie Sea Monster" by Michael F. Flynn: in a story full of pulp SF clichés, will the rise of the zombie sea monster end in victory or in a bad pun?

• "Throw Me a Bone" by Stanley Schmidt: a palaeontologist is disgraced because his found one bone and nothing else at a dig site. But then the mystery is solved when a subsequent dig reveals the bone shaking truth.

• "Relatively Speaking" by Darrell Schweitzer and Lee Weinstein: who should be the first to clone him or herself? The answer lies in the punning of a saying.

An interesting thriller involving the super rich of Silicon Valley hiding and moving their money around to make more money, and an investigative accountant who works to penetrate the surrounding defences.

In tech-speak, he's a Red Team person who hates to be one defending the accounts against attacks (Blue Team). But in this story, as he works to recover some lost digital keys before they can be used to manipulate digital financial ledgers that should not be alterable, he finds himself in the middle of a dispute between money-laundering families, and is marked for death for acts that he didn't commit. Now, he has to become a Blue Team person, defending against the attacks of the thugs out to get him. But the solution to his problem may involve being a Red Team member again.

A fast moving story with interesting technical details about cryptocurrencies, security and living among the rich and the homeless. However, the story does skip putting in more details that might bore the average layman, but would give more technical depth to the story and make it feel just a little less 'hand wavy' in the way the story get resolved.

A better than average issues with interesting stories by Amman Sabet, Matthew Hughes, Melanie West, Nina Kiriki Hoffman and with a chilling horror story by Stephanie Feldman.

• "Tender Loving Plastics" by Amman Sabet: an interesting look at a future where some children are raised in homes run by robotic mothers. The story looks at a girl raised in such a home at various points of her life from childhood to adulthood and her reactions towards her 'mother'.

• "The Barrens" by Stephanie Feldman: a chilling fantasy that starts out as a group of teenagers eager to join in a festival being broadcast on a strange radio channel, only to become involved in what may have been a continuing competition ritual since ancient times that may end in their apparent victory or death.

• "Inquisitive" by Pip Coen: in a future where Inquisitors and fear of inquisitions rule the worlds, one girl (who lacks social skills) is determined to become one herself. But one enemy stands in her way, and she will need to learn and understand what the love of her mother (whom she is oblivious to) really means to her.

• "Plumage from Pegasus: Live by the Word, Die by the Word" by Paul Di Filippo: an unusual future where artists and writers are in charge comes to an end, as the masses rebel against being told to examine their inner thoughts and feelings and yearns for the old world where rules are meant to be broken.

• "Argent and Sable" by Matthew Hughes: the next in the series of stories about Baldemar, this one has him testing out the luck and other changes done to him. It would lead him on a task to retrieve magical gloves for his master. It would require more than just luck for him to successfully perform the task, while keeping himself intact.

• "The Bicycle Whisperer" by Lisa Mason: cute small story about a girl who rescues runaway AI bikes and what its relationship with its owner says about her own past.

• "Unstoppable" by Gardner Dozois: after being disappointed by Dozois' past few stories in F&SF magazine, here is one to make up for it. From childhood, a prince has a peculiar ambition that can only be fulfilled by becoming the king of his country, which involves killing off his own brothers and isolating his sister. But even then, the path to his ambition can only be fulfilled by paying for a sorcerer and could be derailed by a smart enemy general.

• "Crash Site" by Brian Trent: a tale about a race to find a possible rare weapon being carried in a jungle on a planet between two interplanetary corporate groups.

• "What You Pass For" by Melanie West: an interesting tale about a black painter with the ability to 'paint away' not just the black colour of the skin of his 'customers' but also their mannerisms and memories that might give they away as they try to blend into the white culture setting of a highly segregated country. But things come to a head when a ballerina asks him to paint her barely visible blackness away, leading to a queue of customers from other cultures. To what extent should such skin and culture differences by painted away or celebrated?

• "Ku'gbo" by Dare Segun Falowo: a story with a 'magic-realism' feel to it about a child that yearns to escape from her village by following a magical creature that that did not really catch my fancy.

• "Behold the Child" by Albert E. Cowdrey: a child's tantrum can be a terrible thing if not controlled, and this tale shows how bad it can be when this particular child's tantrums are coupled with the ability to move objects to horrible effect.

• "The Properties of Shadow" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman: an interesting alien tale of a being who becomes the assistant to a world travelling artist who makes artwork out of the wastes that civilizations produce. On one particular world, a reporter takes an unhealthy interest in the assistant (and her ability to quietly produce young which start out in shadowy form) which leads to a dangerous break-in of their quarters.

A lower than average issue, with not much SF to the stories. The final two stories by Malcolm Devlin and Leo Vladimirsky goes some way to saving the issue.

• "The Fate of the World, Reduced to a Ten-Second Pissing Contest" by Erica L. Satifka: aliens that almost look like us face off with humans in a bar removed from the earth. That's it.

• "Looking for Landau" by Steven J. Dines: a horror/fantasy piece about a hunt for a person or entity who leaves agonizing phantoms in its wake. When the pursuer finally catches up, it may be the journey rather than the destination that matters the most.

• "The Mark" by Abi Hynes: a person, burdened with a personal guilt, leaves the community to attempt to die alone, far away. As the journey proceeds, the nature of the guilt is revealed, leaving the reader wondering how guilty the person is.

• "The Purpose of the Dodo is to be Extinct" by Malcolm Devlin: a story that starts out focusing on the life of one person suddenly becomes significant when it turns that the person dies in all the various timelines at the same time. The story then focuses on the ramifications of that unusual event to the agency that monitors the timelines and to people in the agency who know him in one way or another.

• "The Christ Loop" by Leo Vladimirsky: the usual 'death of Christ' story with a twist: this Christ is still searching for the proper way to sacrifice himself for mankind. Being tortured, burned, mauled by wild animals, etc. doesn't satisfy him. He relives that day, searching for the proper way. The ending is expected, but here the story is about the journey Christ makes, rather than the end.

An excellent and funny book about the various ways scientists fail in their endeavours while collecting or observing things in the field. The idea for the book started as a hashtag on Twitter which then became a Kickstarter project which I was happy to back.

The public might have the view that scientists are emotionless robots that collect data out in the field. As the book shows, scientists in the field are only human and tend to do silly things like gluing themselves to dangerous animals or standing on an ant's nest while making observations.

Yet the book is more than just a catalogue of silly things done. After laughing over a fieldwork fail, you then get a behind-the-scenes glimpse of just what the scientist was hoping to do. This lets you appreciate the kind of work being done by scientists in the hopes of understanding more about the natural world.

A very entertaining book, good for laughs and for educating the public about the kind of work scientists do in the field.

An interesting read about the coming-of-age of a wizard in the group of islands known as Earthsea that was raised out of the ocean in the distant past by forces unknown. In this realm, magic and control of an item by magic comes by knowing the true name of the object. This also applies to the wizards; for to reveal to a fellow wizard your true name implies trust that your true name would not be used against you.

The story starts with a young boy who discovers a knack for magic. After learning a few simple spells, the boy manages to protect his village from marauders, which gets the attention of a powerful wizard who proceeds to tutor him. But when the boy's desire for magical knowledge grows faster than the wizard is willing to teach, he goes off to learn it from the school at the heart of magic in Earthsea.

There he learns magic and also discovers friends; and possibly make enemies. In his desire to prove himself, he casts a powerful spell that calls up an unknown entity from the dark, which scars him before being pushed away from the school. As he recovers, he learns the truth; the dark entity is still there, waiting for him to emerge and hungry to possess him.

When at last his training is finished, he goes out into the world and protects a region from attacking dragons. But it is only a diversion, for the dark force is there, waiting for him and the time would come when it would possess him, or he will conquer it.

As he encounters and escapes from the force, he gradually learns more about it but lacks one thing to overcome it: its name. Yet, it is only during the final confrontation with the force far from Earthsea itself, does he learn it and, in doing so, learn about himself.

A fascinating, light tale about growing up, making mistakes, learning and making friendships that make the book a nice read.

An entertaining read, highlighting women (who were mothers) doing things not expected by the culture or society of the time, resulting in change, sometimes for the good and sometimes for the bad. Some mothers became rulers, others martyrs; some are mostly forgotten, while others are celebrated. But they all show the determination that only motherhood can sometimes provide.

As with his previous book, Rejected Princesses, a few pages are devoted to each of them, starting with his own illustration and followed by a write-up written by him. He tries to keep to the documented facts as much as possible but notes that history is written by the winning side: some women didn't end up winning, so the stories written about them may not be true and embellished to either praise them or (more often) to denigrate them.

Still, the book contains lots of interesting stories about women (who were mothers). He prefaces each story with a key indicating the maturity and violence featured in each story so that you can avoid those if you wish.

A fascinating and easy to read book about one area that tends to be ignored: the evolution of organisms in a new landscape that is rapidly growing in size around the world: cities and urban landscapes. In numerous chapters organized by sections, the author shows what organisms are taking advantage of the new urban ecological niches opened up by human cities, what evolution has been doing to adapt organisms to an urban life and what might be in store for the future.

The first section gives an overview of the urban jungle. The author traces the history of urban ecology and looks at various cities and some of the animals and plants that inhabit them. He shows how species that are generalist and have been preadapted to live in a natural environment that resembles the environment in cities are the ones that are most successful at making a living in an urban setting.

The second section examines whether evolution by natural selection can operate in such relatively short spans of time, and the answer is yes. Using various examples, like the classic moth study (later verified to be correct) showing that the moths adapted their colours to match sooty surroundings, grass that produce heavier seeds (to stay on nearby soil patches in pavements) and possibly birds that grew shorter wings (to be better at escaping cars and prey), the author shows that evolution can indeed work on timescales of centuries or decades, contrary to what Darwin believed when he first proposed evolution by natural selection. However, further studies are needed to determine whether the evolutionary changes are really due to changes in the genes of the organism or due to gene expression being enhanced or reduced.

The third section looks at the various ways evolution might be acting on organisms. One is the organism adapting to the environment: finding new ways to get food by, for example, learning to open bottle caps to get to the cream from milk bottles, or by leaving walnuts on streets to be cracked open by car wheels. Other organisms are engaged in a "red queen's race", constantly adapting to one another in the battle between predator and prey, now played out differently in an urban environment. Finally, the environment itself can modify the sexual preferences of organisms by, for example, forcing song birds to change their songs, so they can be heard over traffic, or by altering their behaviour to be more or less anxious around humans, vehicles or buildings in urban environments.

The last section looks where we go from here. The evolution of organisms in an urban environment poses major challenges to the organisms themselves, not just from the environment and other organisms, but from humans themselves. The urban landscape is very different from the 'natural' landscape and drives evolution in different ways. The rapid introduction of 'alien' species from other cities (which tends to make the mixture of organisms in cities resemble each other more than the nearby surrounding countryside) poses new challenges. Documenting this change (with the help of amateur naturalists and observers) is required so that we know where things stand now and could help predict how urban evolution may change in the future.

A fascinating story set in a world where huge rocs, bigger than humans, fly and hunt terrifying prey: manticores that prey on humans. Human have made a dangerous pact with the rocs, and now hunt the manticores together.

The story focuses on Ester, a ruhker (roc partner) who at the beginning of the story is paired with a fledgling roc named Zahra. After winning Zahra's trust, and not getting eaten in the process, they train together to hunt smaller prey before they are considered ready, with the help of senior ruhkers, to take on the manticores.

The heart of the story is Ester's relationship with Zahra: for while Ester adores Zahra and trusts her, Zahra may not reciprocate, for she was bought in from the wild and could leave (or kill) Ester at any time. Ester's training and relationship with Zahra are about the only thing keeping them together as they journey through the kingdom, being called to hunt manticores that have killed other humans.

That relationship would be put to the test at the end when tragedy strikes, and Ester must now put her trust in Zahra; for in most manticore hunts, the ruhker is the bait to draw out the manticores for the kill. Ester and Zahra's relationship with each other, and with other ruhkers would never be the same.

An anthology of interesting 'proto-SF' stories from before the era known as the 'Golden Age of Science Fiction'. These stories show that some ideas about aliens, machine intelligence and the unknown are much older than they seem. However, due to their age, some stories may make modern audiences cringe at the depictions of humans at the time (as being 'lesser beings' compared to white people). My favourite stories here are by E. M. Forster and Arthur Conan Doyle, which I have read before in other anthologies, but are still cracking stories that show what SF (and horror) are capable of, even in those early times.

• "Sultana's Dream (1905)" by Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain: a woman dreams and is transported to a land where women rule the country and men run the kitchen. It is, of course, a utopia.

• "The Voice in the Night (1907)" by William Hope Hodgson: a sailing vessel is hailed by a lone voice which refuses to reveal himself. But he tells the sailors the story of how he ends up being marooned on an island with nothing to eat but a fungus that slowly reveals its horrors.

• "The Machine Stops (1909)" by E. M. Forster: in a future where all of humanity lives in isolated underground cells, and their every need is catered to by the Machine, one mother reluctantly makes a journey to visit her son, who tells her an incredible story of surviving a trip to the surface of the Earth. But that would not be the last of it, for he would later tell her that the Machine is stopping. And that may well spell doom for humanity.

• "The Horror of the Heights (1913)" by Arthur Conan Doyle: an airman suspects, from the mysterious deaths of fellow flyers, that there is some kind of 'jungle' in the air. What he discovers, as later found written down in a stained journal when he journeys high up in the air, would be both wonderful and horrifying.

• The Red One (1918)" by Jack London: a jungle explorer hears an extraordinary sound coming from the interior of a jungle, leading to a voyage filled with violent encounters with native tribe until he gets to the truth behind who or what is making the sound. But he may not survive to show it to the world.

• The Comet (1920)" by W. E. B. Du Bois: Earth passes through the tail of a deadly comet, and the only two survivors in the city are a lowly black bank worker and a wealthy white heiress.

• "The Jameson Satellite (1931)" by Neil R. Jones: an eccentric person arranges for his dead body to be sent into space so that it would not be consumed by earthly decay. Millions of years later, an alien race discovers his body and revives him in a body of metal. Now, he has to decide if all he craves is to follow the human race into death, or join the aliens on a voyage of discovery.

A better than average issue with nice stories by Matthew Hughes, Corey Flintoff, Ashley Blooms and William Ledbetter with an interesting story by Rachel Pollack about fantastic cities featured during a search by the protagonist.

• "The Phobos Experience" by Mary Robinette Kowal: an interesting story set in an alternate timeline where we have a colony on Mars. An astronaut there is tasked to help a military unit investigate the moon Phobos. An unexpected finding there hints at possible moves by the military to get a foothold in the Martian civilian colony.

• "The Prevaricator" by Matthew Hughes: an entertaining piece about a boy who discovers early in life that he can get rewarded by creating and then taking away unpleasant situations that people are uncomfortable with. He grows rich by planning cons to create and then remove unpleasant social situations. Then he hits upon an idea to involve a wizard to create an even more unpleasant situation. But that would eventually lead to a very uncomfortable situation for himself.

• "The Queen of the Peri Takes Her Time" by Corey Flintoff: a fantasy tale involving a beautiful, unworldly being who will remove a promised body part if your promise to love the Peri is broken. One person has lost his hand to her. Now another comes, looking for help for an even more vital body part that will be lost in his broken promise.

• "Freezing Rain, a Chance of Falling" by L.X. Beckett: in a future where wealth and social standing is determined by your social media popularity, one man loses it all when his attempt to gain social points by criticizing another socialite backfires. Then, he is offered a chance to regain it by working on a story about illegal medical drugs by a very wealthy and 'artistic' eccentric lady. As the story proceeds, he begins to realize that the lady may be more interesting in turning him into part of her private, grotesque art work, and has to figure out how to escape.

• "The Adjunct" by Cassandra Rose Clarke: a funny story about an adjunct faculty member tasked to teach students at a college how to use a peculiar indexing and referencing system in their work. Trying to understand the system better (so she can teach it better) leads her to discover the sinister origins of the system as a means to take over the world. But, as it turns out, the world might be safe due to the students themselves.

• "Visible Cities" by Rachel Pollack: growing up, a girl is suddenly aware of another world hidden from ours that only she can see. This draws the attention of a secret society, who points her to a teacher. When the teacher vanishes, she goes on a journey to various kinds of hidden cities to find him. The conclusion of her search would be an interesting one and hints at a bigger plan that she will be part of.

• "Bedtime Story" by James Sallis: a short, fragment of a story about a future when civilization is apparently breaking down due to an alien virus. In this story, a man looks for the body of his former partner. The journey would show how much the world has changed.

• "Morbier" by R.S. Benedict: a chilling story set in a country club where waiters and waitresses suffer abuses while they work. One unusual person suddenly arrives and is given the job as a waitress. Her unusual behaviour climaxes when she claims to be a time-traveller and, she has a terrible job to perform to the guests at an upcoming party.

• "Hainted" by Ashley Blooms: an interesting story involving 'haints' which are parts of a person left behind in coal mines, squeezed out by the unrelenting pressure of working in such confined, stressful underground mining conditions. A boy convinces a girl that her father's haint must be found if she is to restore her father (who has been acting distant). But as she journeys into the coal mine and learns more about haints, she discovers that finding her father's haint may not be the best way to recover her father.

• "Broken Wings" by William Ledbetter: a fast-paced story about an asteroid miner who discovers an artefact and asks for the help of a flight dispatcher on Deimos to put his claim on it. But their plans are interrupted in a sudden and suspicious manner by a customs official. As news of the discovery spreads, the dispatcher will find herself involved in a web of intrigue and needs to think fast if she is to save the miner and the discovery.