That sounds somewhat familiar but books about escaped government bioweapons were a big thing over the last several decades. I’ll see what I can do.
During the story, each chapter is intercut with various reports and interviews revealing that a scientist of incredible skill was working on a modified tapeworm that could rapidly but safely cause weight loss while also accepting grants from military agencies hoping to use the parasites in warfare, with Falstaff Island being used as a testing site.
As described by the Wikipedia article, the plot seems to involve multiple impossibilities: weight loss at a thermodynamically impossible rate, and infection by trivial contact, including via what ought to be a sterilizing disinfectant.
Yep, but I don’t defend ‘em, I just identify ‘em!
Yes this was it, thanks!
Glad to help
Here’s one. Guy has a completely mail-based dispute with a library over whether he returned a book and owes a fine. A computer sends the fine to collections, and eventually to small claims court. Due to a data entry error, it winds up in the criminal court system, and because the book was Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson, and RLS is dead, his trial is held in absentia and he’s sentenced to death, imprisoned, and is waiting on a commutation from the governor…
“Computers Don’t Argue” by Gordon Dickson.
Thank you.
I snooze, I lose
Even more terrifyingly plausible than ever.
SF short story: set in a future where a noble hereditary class rules over a mass of peasants. When a peasant is condemned to death the noble executioner shoots them to death in a “duel”. Depending on a random augury to determine “the will of the gods”, the condemned may be given a gun to try to defend their lives; with for example either no gun, a crappy gun with one bullet that may or may not work, or a fully loaded pistol the equal of what the executioner wields. The story depicts such an executioner who truly believes in the justice of the gods, until someone cynically points out to them that statistically the survival of the accused tracks how good a gun they happened to be given.
I don’t know the story; but why would that dent their faith? Wouldn’t they just say that the gods’ will (and their knowledge of what was just) had been shown in deciding who got the good gun?
I’d have to reread it to get what the particulars were, but the idea was that it was borne home upon the protagonist that the will of the gods bore an astonishing resemblance to the inherent odds of the set-up; and that what he had his whole life taken as impartial justice was rigged in the elites’ favor.
The faithful would insist that you’ve inverted cause and effect: the will of the gods is the direct cause of the effective odds of the set-up. There’s no such thing as “luck”.
You’re not supposed to say the quiet part out loud.
Doesn’t ring a bell, but I’ll look around.
I have a question about a SF/fantasy vampire? film I saw, can anyone take a crack at it?
Two british guys are tracking down a supernatural horror, they find a tomb, and want to ward it, one guy has a valuable icon cross he found, puts in it, and sags under the evil power, the other guy has a Star of David and says his nickname was “Ham”??
I seem to recall reading a story about a woman who wakes up in a strange room, on a bed that is wet and pungent smelling. She finds a dress in a large ziplock-type bag that she puts on, and there is a thing about the door having a large bolt, being very heavy, marked with some numbers and letters on the outside. She finds herself in an unfamiliar village populated with odd folk. As the story unfolds, it turns out to be a sort of open penal colony and she had been sentenced, for some unrecorded crime, to sixty years in suspended animation. No other conditions, just to wake up tomorrow in an unfamiliar future, like most of the other people there, some of whom are still in suspension. As I recall, the story ends with the first person to return after having ventured out into the world – others had left but not come back.
The style reminded, I think, of Ellison or maybe Vonnegut, but I cannot find it in the catalogs of any of the usual suspects.
Hmm, don’t remember that.
What did the first person to return have to say about the world beyond?
When I search on that i get this:
Her first sensation was not one of sight or sound, but of profound discomfort. The mattress beneath her was damp, not with sweat, but with something thicker, a slick, cool moisture that clung to her skin and carried a medicinal, pungent odor. She sat up, the air-chilled sensation giving her a jolt that cleared the fog from her mind. The room was a small, cube-shaped cell with smooth, white walls, and an absence of any furniture save for the bed she had just left. A single light panel in the ceiling glowed with a cool, even light that cast no shadows.
Shivering, she noticed a large, clear bag on the floor, the kind you’d see for dry cleaning, sealed at the top with a heavy-duty zipper-like closure. Inside was a simple grey tunic and trousers. The fabric felt rough, almost like sacking, but it was dry and offered a welcome escape from the wetness that now felt like a second skin. As she dressed, a sense of disquiet settled over her. Her memory was a blank slate before this moment. She knew her name, Elara, but nothing else. No home, no family, no past.
The only other feature of the room was a heavy, industrial-looking door. It was the color of unpolished steel, marked with a grid of alphanumeric code: C-11-207-A. A massive, solid bolt, the size of her forearm, was set into the door’s thick frame. She pressed her ear to the cold metal, but heard nothing. The silence was absolute.
After a few minutes of waiting, the bolt slid back with a low, hydraulic hiss. The door swung open, revealing a sun-drenched day and a village unlike any she had ever seen. The buildings were cobbled together from mismatched materials: salvaged metal sheeting, roughly-hewn logs, and some kind of hardened, pale clay. The streets were packed earth, and the people walking along them were a motley crew. Some wore clothes like hers, while others were draped in patchwork fabrics. Many bore physical anomalies—a man with unnaturally long limbs, a woman with a shimmering, scaly patch on her neck, another with an extra finger. Elara realized she was an oddity herself in this place, but she couldn’t pinpoint why.
Hesitantly, she stepped out. The air smelled of woodsmoke and a faint, sweet, rotting scent. A few people glanced her way, their expressions curious but not hostile. The most common look was a weary, knowing pity, the same way you might look at a confused animal.
“First day?” A woman with a shock of pure white hair and a network of crimson veins across her face approached her. “Don’t just stand there, dearie. You’ll make yourself look like more of a mark.”
Elara stammered, “I… I don’t know where I am.”
The woman chuckled, a dry, raspy sound. “You’re in the Penumbral, honey. The big ol’ open penal colony. You did your time. Now you do the rest.”
Elara’s blood ran cold. “My time? For what?”
The woman’s pity deepened. “Don’t know, do you? They don’t tell us anymore. Just give you a number and a sentence. Sixty years, was it?”
Elara’s mind reeled. “Sixty years? I don’t remember any crime. And I’m not sixty years older.”
“Sixty in suspended animation,” the woman explained, tapping a finger to her temple. “You were ‘hibernated.’ All part of the rehabilitation program. Freeze you, let you thaw out a few decades later, and then you get to be a productive member of society.” She gestured to the surrounding village. “This is society now.”
The pieces began to click into place, a horrifying mosaic of lost time. The wet bed, the strange-smelling residue—the telltale signs of the thawing process, the chemical soup that had kept her in stasis. The villagers with their bizarre appearances were the lucky ones, or so it seemed, the ones whose bodies had adapted to the slow, frozen creep of time. Some had mutated, others had simply become brittle with their unearned age.
“What about the people who haven’t woken up?” Elara asked, her voice trembling.
The woman pointed to a row of small, boxy structures near the edge of the village. They were the same sterile, white-walled containers as the room Elara had woken up in, each with the same heavy, bolted door and alphanumeric tag.
“Those are the new arrivals,” the woman said. “Or, rather, the old ones. Just waiting for their number to be called. Wake up tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after. A brand-new sixty years older.”
Elara stared at the boxes, each a tomb containing a lost soul, a forgotten criminal. Their faces were pressed against the cold glass of the future, waiting to wake up to a world they didn’t know, their sins wiped from the record, their sentences served, their lives a blank page. And tomorrow, another one would wake up, just like her.