Challenge 749

Clicking the Counter

In Robin Helweg-Larsen’s “Zombie Apocalypse”:
1. Who are Branson and Musk?
2. Are zombie apocalypses a covert death wish?
In Michael Amitin’s “Silver-Wing Caddy”:
1. What is a Caddy? Think of at least three possible answers.
2. Who is Little Lotta?
3. What are baggies?
In Susan Savage Lee’s “The Illusion of Brilliance”:
1. Is Susana innocent or naïve? What might she do differently in light of what she observes?
2. Why does Susana implictly accept the rape by not reporting it to the police?
3. Does Lee’s note to Susana imply that he killed Megan? Why might he have done so?
4. What did Lee’s mother do? On what grounds is Mr. Flint fired?
In Ásgrímur Hartmannsson’s Attack on an Evil God, chapters 16 and 17:
1. Does anybody — including the currently surviving characters — know what the “evil god ” is or even what it’s supposed to be?
2. For what apparent reason does a robot kill Snær?
3. What is the body count? How many people and robots are killed in these two chapters? Include the allegedly soul-transmigrated inhabitants discovered in the strange city. All told, have more people been killed than there are characters in the story?
4. Hypothetical question: If a story concludes with a population of zero — or a negative or imaginary number — would it overstep our “Dead Narrator“ guideline even though the point of view is third-person omniscient?