Flickering Flame (short story)

Flickering Flame
Main character(s):	Chris Cwej
Featuring:	Iris Wildthyme
Main enemy:	Alien researcher
Main setting:	Plymouth, 2020
Key crew
Publisher:	Arcbeatle Press
Editor:	Hunter O'Connell
Writer:	Andy Lane
Release details
Release date:	28 October 2020
Cwej: The Series
← Previous	Fountain of Youth
Next →	Hearts of Gold

Flickering Flame was the third short story in Down the Middle.

Plot

Chris Cwej is sent on a mission by his Superiors. He meets the individual who he is working with on the mission, a renegade Superior named Iris Wildthyme. more to be added

Characters

• Chris Cwej
• Iris Wildthyme
• Attendant
• Frederick Garness
• Receptionist
• Elaine Padgett
• Pathologist
• Blond attendant
• Bearded attendant
• Alien researcher

Worldbuilding

• In Chris's time as an Adjudicator, he mostly ate foodimals, algae and fungus that lived beneath the Overcities.
• Chris meets Iris in the Salt Lamb.
• Iris Wildthyme is performing community service for the Time Lords.
• According to Iris Wildthyme, there has been a "thinning" of the ranks of interventionists recently.
• The Hoothi is a fungus that Iris' people had to deal with once.
• Dickens wrote about spontaneous human combustion in one of his novels.
• Iris has a yo-yo, a bag of mints, a 28th century plasma pistol and an Orthogonal Dimensional Retensioner in her bag.
• There is a jacuzzi and a mini-bar with Venusian Tequillas in the upper level of the Celestial Omnibus.
• Chris uses Google Maps.
• Neuralgia means having pain in one's nerves.
• Frederick's body is found in a Lexus.
• Iris is friends with a local Community Policewoman.
• Frederick left behing a wife and three children.
• Frederick worked at the Plymouth Oceanographic Research Institute
• Elaine Padgett is the Human Resources Manager at the Institute.
• The Institute conduct DNA-lever research on marine animals.
• It is believed that sharks never died of old age.
• One of the animals in the Institute is a frilled shark. They are usually found a kilometer and a half beneath the surface.
• Dr Garness' speciality was communities viling in the abyssopelagic zone of the ocean.
• Padgett uses atmospheres as a unit of measurement.
• Chris and Iris rent a small SUV.
• Hyperbole is greek for exaggeration.
• The Swiss psychologist Carl Jung and the Nobel Prize winner Wolfgang Pauli called synchronicity the force in the universe what looked like coincidence.

Story notes

to be added

Continuity

• Chris was once a companion of the Evil Renegade. This was shown in the latter half of the Virgin New Adventures, beginning with Original Sin ^[+]Loading...["Original Sin (novel)"].
• Chris had a mission recently in Deptford County, as shown in Fountain of Youth, the previous story in the anthology.

External links

• Official Flickering Flame page at Arcbeatle Press