[Ambush, Advantage]

  “Rose, I really don’t care to hear any more. I want to see you writing, you haven’t written a thing since I left and you are not going out that door until I see some pages or an outline. Now hand over the portal wallet. I will not have you portaling out of this store either.”

  “Oh, Sparky.”

  “Get in the back and start writing, and don’t start chatting with that tree either. As a matter of fact just send her out front, she can read out here just as well as in the back.”

  “But, Sparky.”

  “No, ifs, ands, nor buts. Get writing.”

  “Yes, Sparky.”

  The Dingy Little Bookstore

  My name is Laura, Laura Eriksson I’m a bookseller in a world where hardly anyone reads anymore. But that’s alright because I sell the kinds of books that can’t be read for enjoyment or knowledge anyway. I’m a rare book dealer and my customers are almost always rich entitled douches who want a first edition signed copy of the ‘Sun Also Rises’ not to read, or cherish nor for its resale value or even as an investment. They just want to impress their equally pretentious acquaintances. Notice I said acquaintances because people like this can’t really have friends, they just need acquaintances to impress with their latest greatest purchase.

  If I sound bitter, it’s because I am. I grew up with a deep appreciation for reading and commerce. The easiest way to keep myself in genre literature, my reading material of choice, was to open a bookstore. I did so forty years ago when people still read for enjoyment. The store was called ‘Genres’ , that's all we sold. From bodice rippers to westerns, the only genre I refused to shelve was pornography. I’d happily order it for customers but didn’t put it on the shelves. I didn't want a bunch of men in raincoats standing around the store reading or worse.

  For a few years it was fine, the store brought in enough money that I could pay the taxes and I could eat cheap store brand items with the very occasional treat of eating at the greasy diner on the corner. My customers started dying off and it seemed none were being born. Lucky for me this was happening gradually enough that I could pivot away from the books I loved to read to the rare book market.

  If the only reason you opened a bookstore was for cheap genre books, why not just go to the library and read for free and do some other kind of work. I’m cursed with eidetic memory. I remember every book I’ve ever read all the way back to ‘Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine.’ My first science fiction book in second grade. My first encounter with a smart machine, which I thought was so very cool. If only I knew that this machine would turn into the internet, the biggest advertising grift in the history of advertising. The whole point of a website is to lure you there to sell you what you were just looking at on your last website.

  You’d almost have to admire it if it wasn’t such an evil plan, hatched by evil little men. Who tried to convince the world they weren’t really the evil little men that their actions showed them to be. I mean Dicken’s couldn’t even have come up with stuff like the richest man in the world allowed to restructure the biggest government bureaucracy in the world. What is the first act by the evil little richest man in the world, he cuts the program for the most vulnerable individuals on the planet, children in a war zone. It really happened Twenty Twenty Five, look it up even Scrooge McDuck would be appalled.

  Eidetic memory or photographic memory as the popular press likes to frame it. It was great to have in second grade studying for those spelling tests, which for me meant looking at the word list for a minute or two. But as you can see from the last two paragraphs it also means I can’t stay focused on a subject and make wild leaps from second grade reading material to the most entitled man on the planet.

  The bell over the door to my dingy little store rang and in walked a priest. I know I don’t have any reading material for him. I wouldn’t stock religious texts even if it made me the richest woman in the world. Any book that opens with a lie, written by a series of unreliable narrators. Culminating in the biggest lie of all. Used by con men, charltons and the very worst sort of human being of all, zealots.

  “How can I help?”

  “I’m looking for Laura Eriksson.”

  “I’m Laura, what can I do for you?”

  “I have a wealthy parishioner who would like to have his book collection apprised for insurance purposes. He has a home in Scarsdale, he would put you up in his guest house for the duration.”

  “I don’t often do in-person appraisals. I usually just update the former appraisals. He can fax or email his current catalog and I’ll email him back my rate, depending on the size of the collection.”

  “It’s a very large collection that has never been appraised before. I was instructed to offer you one thousand dollars plus travel expenses to Scarsdale, just to look at the collection and give him a quote on how long it’d take and what you’d charge to do the job. He is very liberal with his spending and I’m sure you’d easily come to an understanding regarding your fee.”

  I could really use the money, the taxes on the building keep going up but the book business keeps shrinking. I’m going to have to do this, no matter how distasteful a job it is, it’s still a job. It could be worse I suppose, I could be selling John Norman Gor novels to men who just find the whole slavery subplot charming.

  The next morning I boarded the metro north train, kept my fourteen dollar ticket, my first ever expenses receipt to be billed to a customer. The train smelled but not any worse than all of the other subcars I’ve ridden. Forty five minutes later I looked up from the last disc world novel I’d ever read. Eidetic memory makes re-reads just plain useless. I was sad, Terry Pratchett, joins Douglas Adams as writers I love that I’ll never ever read again.

  What I wouldn’t give to completely wipe HGTTG from my head, just so that I could read it again for the first time. I’ve often heard readers complain that months after reading some novels they don’t recall plots or really anything about the book. About the only thing Eidetic memory is good for is I carry a complete price list in my head, once I have a careful, conservative condition for a book. I can tell you exactly what a book is valued at.

  Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

  “Well what do you think, Sparky?”

  “I hate it, hate it. Maybe you are under the effects of the war, the rich Harris’s are still under your skin. I know you are still in there because your disdain for religion is readily apparent, I did like your critique of the bible but overall, I hate the protagonist unless you are starting off with the villain. I’m not sure you should set a story on Earth. Surely that can’t be true about the richest man on Earth.”

  “It’s true Sparky, even another rich man criticized him for it.”

  Elon Musk has been involved in controversies regarding cuts to humanitarian aid, particularly through USAID, which has affected food assistance for starving children in various countries. Critics, including Bill Gates, have accused him of endangering children's lives due to these funding reductions.

  “Well I understand your anger, but think about it Rose, would you want to read this? What kind of story was it anyway? Science fiction? Contemporary?”

  “It was going to be a mystery.”

  “Not cozy, I take it.”

  “No it was meant to just be a straight mystery, I was writing it for Lu, but now that I step back it does look a little bit angry. I’ll think about it some more, maybe I could rework it and make the angry bookstore owner the victim instead of the protagonist.”

  “I’m sure the readers will be happy that somebody killed her off, put her and us out of our misery.”

  “Very funny Sparky.”

  “I just call them how I see them Rose, why don’t you go for a walk or something, when was the last time you did something for you, that doesn’t involve saving the town. Go collect your key to the town.”

  “I’m not going to do that, that would be way too embarrassing, I don’t know how many times I have to say it, it was a group effort. Everyone did their part, if anyone failed we all would have failed. I did promise Arjun that I’d let him know as soon as you got back into town. Can I go tell him?”

  “If you must, he always was a persistent child.”

  “What if he asks me about Nyx’s method of gathering ambient magic?”

  “He watched you do it right?”

  “Yes he did.”

  “He even absorbed some of the magic to refill his magical reserves right, Rose?”

  “Yes he did.”

  “Well don’t bring it up but if he asks you about it, lying isn’t going to help, he has already experienced it.”

  “Should I teach him how to do it, it would be useful for a healer to be able to refill their magic, when they are trying to heal someone severely injured.”

  “Yeah, if he asks about it, go ahead and teach it to him. Opal too, in fact Opal first. If someone were to target her because they think she has the ability it would be better that she actually does have the ability. Also I want her tested to see if she really does have a general healing capability, that could be important down the line. Plus it’d be nice for Henry and Martha if they have multiple issues to cure them right? But put some scientific rigor into it. Get either Lottie or Maz involved. Then in a few days when you do get back to writing again, I don’t want any stories set on Earth, the place is toxic right now. Instead I’d like you to write a horror story.”

  “Oh, no Sparky, I can’t do that, I hate horror novels, horror movies. I kept waking up in the middle of the night from the horrible dreams that movie gave me where the baby monster burst out of the crewman's chest. It was horrible.”

  “It may be just what you need to get you past this war. It certainly won’t be any more horrifying than ‘The Dingy Little Bookstore’ poor Enigmatic Parchments he’s probably traumatized.”

  “You are a real comedian, Sparky.”

  “I’m one hundred percent serious, write something in the horror genre to get over trauma. You have to admit that you were traumatized finding out Draco isn’t indestructible. None of us are Rose. Now go have a cup of tea at the shop and then find Arjun, a promise is a promise right.”

  Instead of portaling I did as Sparky suggested and took a walk over to the tea house.

  “Wow Rose, we haven’t seen you in like forever. You aren’t fighting with Lu are you?”

  “No, Salome, I just needed to clear my head and a cup of tea just seems to fit the bill better. How have you been?”

  “Much better since you took care of that threat against the town. I was supposed to be responsible for Ryan and sometimes I’m not even sure I can be responsible for myself.”

  “Yes you are a very responsible person, just look at how this tea house runs and you are here day in and day out. If we ever have a crisis here in town just grab Ryan and portal to the tower. But hopefully we’ll never have another one. Besides Sparky is back, so if we do have another crisis it’s up to him to solve it, I’ll be in the tower with you.”

  I had my tea and walked down to the clinic.