Barnaby's Shorts (Volume Six)

By Barnaby Wilde

Ten more coffee break sized stories in all genres, including another tale from the Vertigo labs, a mystery coach tour in the West of England, a message from beyond the stars and a spat between the quiz and darts teams at the Poacher's Inn. Stories that are the right length to read in the bath, on the train or during your break.
What if you woke up inside a maze, or your best friend went missing?
Ten tales of romance, mystery, adventure and sci fi, including the story of two kids trapped by an angry mob in prose and poetry.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barnaby Wilde
• Release date: Oct 21, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301023486

Barnaby Wilde

Barnaby Wilde is the pen name of Tim Fisher. Tim was born in 1947 in Hertfordshire, United Kingdom, but grew up and was educated in the West Country. He graduated with a Physics degree in 1969 and worked in manufacturing and quality control for a multinational photographic company for 30 years before taking an early retirement to pursue other interests. He has two grown up children and currently lives happily in Devon.

Book preview

Barnaby's Shorts

(volume 6)

A collection of short stories

by

Barnaby Wilde

Copyright 2013 by Barnaby Wilde

Barnaby Wilde asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Published by Smashwords

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Cover picture: Barnaby's Shorts, original self portrait by Barnaby Wilde

Other published works by the author.

Humourous Novels (The Tom Fletcher Stories)

I Keep Thinking It's Tuesday

A Question of Alignment

Every Which Way but East

Quirky Verse

Animalia

Life…

The Blind Philospher and the God of Small Things

Not at all Rhinocerus

A Little Bit Elephant

Tunnel Vision

The Well Boiled Icycle

Short Story Collections

Barnaby's Shorts (volumes 1 to 5)

Detective Fiction (The Mercedes Drew Mysteries)

Flowers for Mercedes

Free Running

Flandra

Visit www.barnaby-wilde.co.uk for the author's blog and more information about the world of Barnaby Wilde.

Barnaby's Shorts (Volume Six)

Table of Contents

A Matter of Funding ….. Another tale from the Vertigo labs.

Amazing Day ….. If you woke up, trapped in a maze.

Glowing in the Dark ….. A story about caving.

I heard a song today – The story ….. A love story about two kids on the run.

I heard a song today – The song ….. A song about two kids on the run.

Is Everybody Happy? ….. A sinister clown at a cricket match.

Of Proust, Joyce and Wilde ….. Just four blokes in a pub discussing Proust.

The Mystery Tour ….. A tale from the West Country.

Something Else ….. Josie's best friend goes missing.

Q-bits ….. A mysterious message from space.

Running Stitches ….. Rivalry between the darts and quiz team at the Poachers.

Other works by Barnaby Wilde

A Matter of Funding

We occupy a very favoured setting here at the Vertigo Labs Research Facility. Our building is situated at the heart of the small science park on the edge of the city and we're surrounded by rolling grassland and ornamental trees. The other establishments forming the science park are mostly small, single storey buildings, widely spaced and scarcely visible from our three storey tower on the top of the hill.

Some wit once named the park as 'not so much silicon valley, but more silicone tit' and I leave it to your imagination to work out how he described our small tower on the summit.

I'm doubly fortunate to have an office on the top floor of the building, a floor otherwise only occupied by the Director himself. His office, of course, is grand, with floor to ceiling windows and a panoramic view of the surrounding countryside. My office, on the other hand, is not really an office at all, but the large walk in cupboard where I store my janitorial supplies. It is big enough for me to have an old office chair and an electric kettle, however, and it does have a small window, so I get the same view as the Director, even though I may not get the same pay. I'm not complaining, though. I've been the janitor here ever since Vertigo was established and I like my job. The duties aren't onerous, though the hours can be long sometimes, and we get our odd moments of excitement from time to time. It's a friendly place to work, on the whole, and I get a deal of respect from the other workers simply because I've been here longer than most of them. Even the Director normally calls me J.T or Jeph. That's with a J at the front and a ph at the end by the way, short for Jepherson Thomas. If he ever calls me Jepherson, then I know I'm in trouble.

As well as being a quiet place to read a magazine or a book while I take my coffee break, my little office has another advantage. Apart from the view, I mean. From time to time, you see, I get to overhear things from the Director's office. Things that maybe I'm not supposed to hear.

Now, I don't want you to think that I make a habit of eavesdropping, but the wall between my office and his is paper thin and if voices get raised at all, then it's impossible not to hear. Of course I keep anything I hear to myself. I'm not in the habit of gossiping and I like to think of myself as a man who knows how to be discreet. It does mean, though, that I sometimes know more about what's going on than the heads of the three research labs themselves.

It was while taking my morning coffee break a few weeks back that I heard something quite disturbing through that separating wall.

The Director had two visitors that morning. They were both grey looking men in identical grey suits and carrying identical black brief cases. They'd passed me without comment on the stairs when they were being shown up to the Director's office by our receptionist. I was polishing finger marks off the handrail at the time and gave them a friendly 'Good Morning' as they passed, but my greeting was ignored as though I simply didn't exist.

There was clearly an animated discussion taking place next door and I couldn't help overhearing the words 'funding' and 'future' mentioned several times. My attention strayed from the old copy of Nature that I was reading and I began listening more carefully to what was being said. Although I couldn't hear everything clearly, it was apparent that the visitors were threatening to withdraw future funding from Vertigo due to lack of tangible results.

I have to confess that I had wondered from time to time where our funding came from, since we produced nothing saleable as far as I could see.

In case you don't remember, we have three areas of research here, all located on the ground floor, like spokes around a hub. The AG lab, which folks usually called 'upwards', is looking at anti gravity devices and the Maglev lab, usually known around here as 'onwards' is investigating magnetic levitation and propulsion. Maglev looks to me the more likely to produce a useful and potentially saleable product, although both labs seem to have become distracted from their main objectives recently by spending most of their time playing around with the Reversal Field. The third lab, which is smaller than the other two, is Para-psychology, sometimes unkindly referred to as 'what? where?' or even more unkindly as 'why?'. It's hard to imagine anything useful coming from there.

The Reversal Field, you'll remember, comes from an interaction between the Maglev and Antigrav experiments and creates a region of space that reverses the direction of anything or anyone entering it. We've had a couple of unfortunate incidents arising from the Reversal Field, but both teams are racing to be the first to understand and control the effect.

Anyway, the conversation next door got quite heated, but I could tell that the two men from the Ministry were not giving way and there was a distinct sound of panic in the Director's voice.

After the visitors had left, the Director hastily called the three lab managers to his office and brought them up to date. I couldn’t hear everything, of course, but it seemed to me that they weren't coming up with much that was likely to satisfy our benefactors.

The following day, I was surprised to find an invitation in my mail box to attend a meeting in the main conference room. The only conference room. I couldn't recall when I'd ever been invited to a meeting before and I'll confess that I thought the worst. I could only imagine that we, for I assumed I was not the only person summoned, were about to be told that our jobs were disappearing. I couldn't have been more wrong.

When I turned up for the meeting, I found I was one of about a dozen people who'd been invited to take part. The Director was there along with the three lab managers and six scientists from the labs. The Director's secretary was there, as well as one of the Account's staff and me.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Director said, when we were all seated. Colleagues. Fellow employees.

This was the moment I'd been fearing. Clearly we were all about to be made redundant.

Our jobs are at stake, he continued. Yours and mine. We are about to lose our funding.

This was scarcely news to everyone in the assembled group, though, of course, I for one was not supposed to know.

Vertigo will cease to exist beyond the end of this year unless we can convince our paymasters that there is a realistic possibility of becoming profitable in the near future. As you are all well aware, our funding comes from the Government through the Department for Business Innovation and Skills. We have no other source of income unless we can sell services or inventions developed here. Gentlemen, we need ideas and we need them quickly. I have no intention of seeing Vertigo dismantled.

I still couldn't fathom why I was here. Surely it would be the scientists who would come up with the ideas?

Some of you may be wondering why you are here. It seemed to me that the Director was reading my mind. Was that something to do with the Para-psychology lab, or was I just getting paranoid?

We need ideas, he repeated. And ideas can come from anyone. You ladies and gentlemen have been chosen as a random cross section of Vertigo staff to take part in a brainstorm session.

Now I'd never taken part in a brainstorm before, but I'd been around long enough to know what one was. As I understood it, everyone