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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 project, a renegade Superior named Iris Wildthyme.
Characters
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