Challenge 986

A Stepping Time

In Samuel R. Kaplan’s Promises and Portals:
1. How many kilometers does the narrator cover on foot?
2. Does the narrator know where the time portal is?
3. What might happen if the narrator took his wife with him to the time portal?
4. Does the narrator dare set foot outside his apartment again?
In Theresa Konwinski’s Leaving Hedges: The story is set in the U.S.A., and the year is cited very early as 1943. Why that year rather than another? No mention is ever made of the prime news story of the day, namely World War II. Are the townspeople of Hedges so isolated that they haven’t even heard of it or, far worse, don’t care about it?
In Natalia Liron’s Death on Behalf:
1. What role does scent play in the characters’s perception of each other? Why might the olfactory exprience be psychologically important?
2. At the end, what might happen if one of the characters drinks the elixir of oblivion while the other doesn’t? Does it really make any difference what they do?
In Rod Raglin’s Cryptic Messages:
1. How are the cryptic messages actually worded? What is to be gained by avoiding negative commands, for example, “Don't go to your office on Thursday, August 8 at 10:27 a.m.”?
2. Whom do the messages really protect? Aside from Stanley Ernest Blunt himself, who stands to benefit most if Stanley heeds the two cryptic messages that summon him to strange places at times when he will be far from mortal danger?