Author: Blaine Arcade

The Detectorate 7/6c (Part Three)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 1 Comment

(reading time: 46 minutes)

It was awfully quiet for a place where so much money changed hands.  There were tons of poker players there that night; as a crowd they tended to know how to keep their eyes down and their mouths shut.  Half of them wore sunglasses even though it was the middle of the night.  The other half had toothpicks in their mouths, just enough of a disturbance to make their tiniest smiles or frowns undetectable.

It was a private apartment, high above the streets of Midway, so excessive noise wouldn’t have helped anyway.  Still, it didn’t feel like much of a party.  The loudest noises were the clinking of glasses and the brief scrapes of USB drives docking and undocking from various ports.  Every dealer had a box next to them with at least four ports, perfect repositories for the digital currency while the guests gambled.  Should the police burst in the boxes would automatically cancel everything they held and wipe their own memories. Continue reading →

The Detectorate 7/6c (Part Two)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 1 Comment

(reading time: 47 minutes)

(Scene Change)

Eirene wondered if her father had more of a literary talent than she had initially thought, because the two houses that made up the Odeck family compound did appear to be stitched together, like the arguing children of a mad scientist.  They were bound by a tunnel of unpainted wood, with nearly every board having come from a different source.  There was one window on the tunnel, its frame an actual picture frame.

It was a nightmarish playhouse already, but the image was further enhanced by the entertainment and sport debris littered all over the yard and in the branches of a giant twisted elm tree, the roots of which crawled into the gray asphalt driveway and broke it into chunks like lava rock. Continue reading →

The Detectorate 7/6c (Part One)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 2 Comments

(blurb)

Police work has been the subject of fiction for an age, but what about television police work?  Dive into this quirky novella that blends the twists and turns of a murder conspiracy with the trappings of hokey law dramas, complete with time slots, character tropes, crossovers, and commercial breaks!

(reading time: 46 minutes) (reading for entire novella: 3 hours, 16 minutes)

The Detectorate 7/6c

by

Blaine Arcade

This program is a work of fiction.  Any similarity to actual persons or events is purely coincidental.

Intro Narration: Law enforcement is taken seriously in the township of Little Pond, Massachusetts.  A new crime wave, worsened by local corruption, has convinced its people that elections are now necessary for its detectives as well as its sheriff.  The first two candidates for this experimental program, called the Detectorate, are Eirene Amstead and Cincinattus Golfort.  These stories are the evidence of their efforts, conviction, and dedication to their constituents.

Intro theme tune by Zizi Caraway

Produced by Heath Moose

Episode 17: By the Horns Continue reading →

Twitch Stream Story: Refreshing Defeat

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Prompt: A magic school where every year there is a battle.  Those who win learn a new spell and those who lose have to leave the school. The main character only ever gets one spell (not a very good one).

The waterfall muffled any scream that might’ve escaped the natural arena. It was the least-used part of the school, only once a year during final testing, yet it always drew the largest crowd. People who’d never expressed an interest in education before showed up with snacks and noisemakers to see the graduation contest. Continue reading →

Minesweeper Fiction: Session 13

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Author’s Note: This was written live on stream, with the tone being determined by the numbers under minesweeper tiles.  The audience could bid tokens earned in stream to reveal random tiles.  A mine hit results in the death of all characters, unless they are temporarily saved by a lump sum of tokens.  If characters make it to the end of the stream, they survive to be seen another day.  Join us at twitch.tv/blainearcade if you wish to participate.

1-peace    2-alert    3-escalation    4-action    5-tragedy    6-world-changing

The minefield has been moved. It now connects the Trap to a new world, a new game. There is no destruction this time, nothing forcing them to flee. Only the brave, curious, and strange will take the journey. Who will step through the fog and face the myriad dangers of the field?

Three enter: Grayjay the angry resident bird, Mack the disconnected robot, and Sashonne the jovial judge. Continue reading →

Regular Romp #5: Wickediel Makes an Entrance

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Regular Romp is an interactive fiction activity over on our Twitch stream where I ask a regular a series of questions before turning their answers and a corruption of their username into a short story.  Stop by twitch.tv/blainearcade if you’d like to participate.

starring

Wickedscript

The scene opens on rolling hills on a windy day. (Stage hands off to the side have large cloth fans and are working quite hard on their simulation) Elizabeth Mary stands at the top with an arm full of dresses in various colors. One by one she throws them to the wind and they are blown off stage. Continue reading →

Twitch Stream Story: Terms and Services and Awhhh who Cares?

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Prompt: Someone makes you an offer you can’t refuse. You refuse.

Those five streets always sounded like there was a train just under them, something clicking rhythmically against the tracks. I never saw a station anywhere, but after compartmentalization I was out of the loop. There didn’t seem to be much point to reading the news from different compartments or looking at their layouts when nobody was allowed to visit them. Continue reading →

Twitch Stream Story: The Flame you can Hold

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Prompt: A young man wanders the Earth on an epic quest to make himself ‘normal’, but when he finds the cure he realizes that loving himself was all he ever needed.

When I was younger I thought a lot about the story with the lion who had a thorn in his paw. If you’ll recall, he needed a mouse to pull it out. At least, that’s the way I heard the story. Maybe I’ve wandered so far that it’s different now. Things like that are changing, but I’ll get to that in a bit. I was going somewhere with this story, the same way I’m always going somewhere. Continue reading →

Minesweeper Fiction: Session 12

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Author’s Note: This was written live on stream, with the tone being determined by the numbers under minesweeper tiles.  The audience could bid tokens earned in stream to reveal random tiles.  A mine hit results in the death of all characters, unless they are temporarily saved by a lump sum of tokens.  If characters make it to the end of the stream, they survive to be seen another day.  Join us at twitch.tv/blainearcade if you wish to participate.

1-peace    2-alert    3-escalation    4-action    5-tragedy    6-world-changing

The minefield has been moved. It now connects the Trap to a new world, a new game. There is no destruction this time, nothing forcing them to flee. Only the brave, curious, and strange will take the journey. Who will step through the fog and face the myriad dangers of the field?

Three enter: Greg the janitor in a wedding gown, Cybil the spoiled teen were-bastard, and Glyphlight the polite shadow butler. Continue reading →

Regular Romp #4: Screamer Echo Echo Echo

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Regular Romp is an interactive fiction activity over on our Twitch stream where I ask a regular a series of questions before turning their answers and a corruption of their username into a short story.  Stop by twitch.tv/blainearcade if you’d like to participate.

starring

ScreamingEcho

All three versions of this story are surely interesting. I know why mine has succeeded over the others; it’s the easiest to understand. It’s also written the ‘loudest’. You may not know what I mean by that quite yet, but you will. I don’t feel bad that the others aren’t quite as popular, because I know their authors don’t mind. There will always be the cult followers, the beatniks and the berets ready to praise anything quieter than what’s in all the bookshop windows. Continue reading →