1 – Paper: January 2018

Jordan climbed out of the mouth of the old volcano and brushed the dust from his clothes. The dagger was in there, sure enough, but as it was wedged a solid two feet into the rock-hard earth of the volcano he had decided against trying to move it. (Plus, it was twelve feet tall.)

Rachel came over to him with a large lump of Rivenese rock in one hand. "Any luck?"

"Well, it's definitely in there," replied Jordan, "but it's not going to move any time soon." He glanced at his newly-repaired watch. "Should we call it a day? It'll be dark soon, and I think I've still got some champagne left over from last night."

It was a few weeks since their return from Riven, but the various bits of detritus drawn into the Star Fissure on Riven were still not finished. Every now and again, Jordan and Rachel would be sitting in the front room looking out over the desert, or off walking around the dunes, and they would see a bit of rock or something larger drop into the sand, seemingly out of nowhere. Mostly what they picked up were bits of rock, but every now and again something rather more interesting showed up. Not more than a week ago, they had been out walking and an ornately-patterned beetle had almost hit Rachel in the head. Jordan had recognised it as one of those from the Gate Room, and he kept it.

As the two of them turned to return to the house, they heard a whistle followed by a thud as something else dropped out of the sky, landing near the telescope, which they had also been unable to move. It was white, as if it had been bleached, and when they walked over to it they discovered it was a skeleton of some description.

"Looks like some sort of fish," said Rachel. "Like that one in the lake schoolroom game."

"It probably is," replied Jordan. "Gehn used to feed people who he didn't like to these fish. He called them wahrks... I suppose that's like a cross between a shark and a whale. I think he'd string them up on the gallows, then he'd sit up on his throne above the village, open the floor of the gallows then -"

"That'll do, Jordan," cut in Rachel, who had begun to turn green.


Brittany got up from her desk with a groan and looked at the clock on the wall. She had spent the past two weeks frantically clearing the backlog of paper in her in-tray, and she was finally finished. The council here might as well have been completely oblivious to the fact that she hadn't been in for six months, judging by the mountain of paper that had greeted her when she had entered her office.

The phone rang, and Brittany cursed out loud. She was exhausted, and it was half past one in the morning – who could possibly be calling her at this time? She sank back down into her chair and picked up the phone.

"Hello. Yes. Yes. No. What? Don't be ridiculous. Good. Yes. No. I don't know. Because Bill hasn't told me. Yes. No..."

This went on for about five minutes before Brittany was finally able to put the phone down. She couldn't make head or tail of it – most of the phone calls she got were like that. And then, when she did manage to tell people what they wanted to know, they never seemed to end up using it. It was like they called just to annoy her.

The phone rang again. It seemed like it was only thirty seconds later, but since Brittany had managed to fall asleep at her desk, it was actually about half past ten. She woke with a start and grabbed for the phone.

"Hello. Yes, it is. Oh, hi, Jordan. Clearing my in-tray. Yes." She paused as she absorbed what Jordan said next. "They did what?" Another pause. "They held your mail? Six months worth of mail is waiting for you at the Post Office?" Pause. "I'll be there in five minutes." She put the phone down, grabbed her coat from the hook on the back of the door and dashed out, locking the door behind her.


"You do get a lot of mail, don't you?"

For many people, six months worth of mail really isn't all that much. For Jordan, however, six months worth of mail was a lot. And for Jordan, a lot of mail meant a couple of hundred letters and at least four score packages. After all, the phone lines and wireless signals didn't reach him and Rachel out in the desert, so the post was the only way for people to communicate with him without coming out themselves. This much post wasn't going to fit in his car, so he had had to summon reinforcements. Rachel was visiting her mother, who Jordan guessed at least five dozen of these letters were from, and Maddy had gone to the city for the week, so Jordan had called Brittany.

"Yes," sighed Jordan, "I do get a lot of mail."

They were standing in one of the roomier storerooms of the Post Office. It was Sunday, so the Post Office was closed, but since Jordan worked there he thought that today would be the best day to collect the backlog of mail.

"I think," said Brittany, the planning part of her brain spinning up to speed, "that we should load as much of this into your car as we can, then get out to the volcano and unload it into... uh... have you given any thought to where we're going to put all this?"

"It should fit into the loungeroom."

"The kitchen is bigger, isn't it?"

"Yes, but Rach will cut my head off if I dump a pile of six-month old mail in the kitchen.

"Fair enough. Into the loungeroom, then. Come on... the sooner we start, the sooner we finish."

They managed to fit about half the mail into the car before setting off. Two trips back and forth took three and a half hours, but they finally moved the backlog of mail from the Post Office to the loungeroom. They had piled it in one corner, and Jordan looked at the stack with a slight smile.

"Looks like I get to work today."

Brittany glanced at him. "You don't happen to work in the sorting office, by any chance?"


Rachel pushed the door open and stopped dead in the doorway, staring at what she saw. Jordan was sitting on the floor in the far corner of the loungeroom, sorting a pile of mail into two smaller piles on the floor in front of him. It was anyone's guess how long he'd been at it, but he was almost finished. He looked up as Rachel entered.

"What -"

"The Post Office," said Jordan with a slight smile, "was nice enough to hold our mail for us."

"No way," said Rachel. Jordan just smiled.

"Hey, I work in the sorting office," he said. "I'm used to doing this sort of stuff... no pun intended." He pointed to the pile on his right, which was significantly larger than the other. "That one's your pile." He picked up an envelope from the large pile and examined it at a glance. "That's the gas bill." He opened the envelope with the letter opener lying on the floor. "This is five weeks overdue... I'd better take care of that."

"That explains why the stove isn't working," replied Rachel, smiling and going into the bedroom.

"So how's your mother?" called Jordan as he continued to sort the letters.

"Almost sick with worry," replied Rachel. "She normally gets the weekly letter from me, and she hasn't had one for six months."

"Understandably worried, then," Jordan said. "By the way, there's a lot of cards and packages here for both of us, and there appears to also be a few letters from later wondering why we didn't reply and say we liked the presents."

"I suppose we'd better take care of that," called Rachel in reply. The water pump hummed as Rachel turned the shower on. Jordan didn't seem to notice, instead just continuing to sort the letters. After ten minutes or so, the pump switched off again and the water stopped. By this time, Jordan had almost finished the sorting. He picked up the last three letters and fanned them out.

"One for Rach..." he muttered, "marked Card Only... one for me from Dad... and another one from Rach's mother. Finished at last."

"Jordan?"

"Yeah?"

"Can you go into the kitchen and get my hairbrush?"

Jordan got to his feet and went into the kitchen. The hairbrush was sitting on the table next to the closed Myst linking book. He picked it up and went into the bedroom.

"Oh, what a day," sighed Rachel as he handed her the brush. "There's a reason I normally write to Mum instead of going to visit her."

"I can tell," replied Jordan, who had his hands on her shoulders. "You're really tense."

"Well," replied Rachel in something between a casual tone and a seductive tone, putting down her brush and turning to face Jordan, "maybe we can do something about that..."