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Jeff Carter is a software engineer with numerous technical articles to his credit. This is his second professional fiction sale.
You turn on your reader with some trepidation. It's the beginning of the month, and the latest issue of Digital magazine should be available. Despite your continual complaints during the six years since the current editor, Quentin Trebek, took the helm, he still wastes your subscription money on unreadable stories in the present tense or second person, and on stories that waste your time by setting up an interesting situation and then stopping without an ending. You continue to subscribe, though, for the usually large fraction of good stories, and as a chemical engineer and scientifically curious person, for the science-fact articles.
You've tried everything you can think of to get Trebek to see the light. Pointed out that the Good Doctor taught us, by example, that good writing doesn't draw attention to itself, for that draws attention away from the story. Too often the writing draws so much attention from the stories that there's not enough attention left to bother finishing them.
You've organized a group of like-minded fellow readers, orchestrated letter-writing campaigns, and confronted him at conventions, without effect. The situation has long been intolerable.
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The digital Digital is ordered differently than the analog Digital you used to subscribe to. All the fiction comes first, in table-of-contents order: decreasing length of story-category order. Right off the bat you're faced with a present-tense story, and perusing a few paragraphs is enough to let you know that you don't want to finish it. Later there's a short story that sets up an interesting situation and then simply stops, with no ending. You feel cheated. Luckily, reaching the end of the fiction, you see there are no other offenders, and no second-person stories, praise be to the vagaries of the universe. You shudder at the memory of the second-person, present-tense stories he published.
Two stories in an issue isn't too bad, but it's still too much. You reach a decision: Quentin Trebek must go! The new solvent you've helped develop has interesting toxic qualities. It shouldn't show up with any current test. It will be attributed to natural causes. You should check his schedule for an opportunity, but first, there's the non-fiction to read.
You turn the page.
The End
This story was first published on Thursday, May 18th, 2017
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