The Shootout Solution Read online

  * * *

  Two coffees in, Leah watched King walk into the break room and make himself some tea.

  “So, what do you think of this operation?” he asked.

  “You’re all kind of suicidal. But I love it. There’s no way even being a professional comedian could be this cool. Sure, it’d be less dangerous, but . . . cowboys, and lasers, and spaceships!”

  “And that’s probably all in your next two pay periods,” Shirin said from the couch. Boots off and legs up, she had her nose in a thick tome of a biography.

  “With Mallery injured, my team’s understaffed for the foreseeable future. So, if you want it, there’s a probationary position here for you. Your start would be back-dated to yesterday when you walked in the building.”

  “Isn’t there some security screening I have to do?”

  “I did all of that already. So, do you want the job?”

  Leah was expecting the offer, since she’d manage to pull off the fight with her slapdash plan, but seeing the Genrenauts in traction had given her some pause. She could walk away right then and if King delivered, she’d have the solid gig, she could build her career and put this all behind her.

  She thought back to the team at the table, to the look in Maribel’s eyes as Matt Williamson dropped to the floor. She thought about Frank’s cooking, Shirin’s laugh, and the feeling of jet thrusters beneath her.

  Red-pill, blue-pill time. She could go home, keep filing other people’s paperwork while daydreaming material for her shows, or go down the rabbit hole into a totally bizarre and dangerous but exciting line of work hacking dimensions and saving the world with stories.

  Mom and Dad would say to stay with the familiar, to dig deep and commit to her comedy that she had chosen over her family. But she’d gotten into comedy because it was the best way she knew to make a difference, to tell the stories she wanted to hear. In the Genrenauts, she could do all of that and never have to take minutes during a Strategic Revenue Best Practices presentation again.

  “Can I Sandberg for a moment and ask about the pay and benefits?” She’d never argued a salary before, but she’d gone into a firefight for this job. A little negotiation wasn’t going to cost her the gig.

  King pulled a slip of yellow legal paper out of his jacket and passed it to Leah.

  She unfolded the paper and was disgusted at the lowball figure until she realized there was an extra zero at the end.

  “That first number is salary. In dollars. U.S. dollars?”

  King said, “That it is. And below that is the health package.”

  Leah scanned the bottom half of the paper. The plan was positively European. Including a lot of life insurance. Unsurprising, but not super-reassuring.

  “This job will call for long hours more often than any of us like, but I think you’ll agree that the compensation is worth the overtime.”

  So, to review, she could stick with her mind-numbing but safe job and bang her head against the stand-up circuit with one gig a week until she refined her act enough to earn more work, or take a ridiculous-percent pay increase to do six impossible things before breakfast.

  “You’ve got yourself a deal,” Leah said, extending a hand. King’s grip was unsurprisingly strong.

  “Welcome to the team, then, Probie.”

  Really? “Why Probie? This isn’t NCIS.”

  “The show didn’t make that up. Fire departments and other agencies use it. And so do we.”

  “But this place isn’t government, right?”

  “No,” King said. “We’re technically nonstate actors, and if most governments found out about us, we’d probably be locked away forever. So read the NDA very, very closely.”

  “How’s Mallery?” Leah asked, eager to change the subject from how much of a newbie she was and the hazing she should expect.

  “She’ll be fine,” Roman said. “No major arteries hit, and she’s already restless. Ms. Rachelle had to come in and up her sedative so she won’t tear her stitches.”

  Roman offered a hand to Leah. “Welcome to the Genrenauts.”

  They shook. “Hope you survive the experience,” he added.

  His cribbing of the famous X-Men line put Leah even more at ease. She already felt at home with the troupe, this band of storytellers and hustlers. And she couldn’t wait to tell off Suzanne at the office and move her army of office animals out of the cubicle and into the Genrenauts break room.

  “Sounds good. But for now, I’m going to go and crash.”

  “Not so fast,” King said. “Just because you’ve been cleared, doesn’t mean you get to skip the rest of the paperwork.”

  The team lead handed her a pen and a manila folder that was at least three inches thick. “I’ll need these on my desk within the hour. Then you can head home. And be back tomorrow by eight for orientation.”

  “I take it back. I’ll die of boredom. Anything to avoid paperwork.” Leah hung her head as she exaggeratedly padded to a table, dropping the manila folder to as much despondent effect as she could muster.

  A minute later, Roman sat down across from her, a tablet and earphones in one hand, a pair of bottled beers in the other. He twisted off the caps with his palm (nice trick), and passed one to Leah.

  They toasted, and Roman put in his earbuds. He opened a digital comics reader on his tablet, leaving Leah to the stack. Leah repeated the ridiculous salary to herself as she scanned the stack of papers.

  Camaraderie, adventures in storytelling, a fat paycheck, and health insurance. What more could a girl ask for?

  END EPISODE ONE

  Next time on Genrenauts . . .

  Leah dives headlong into learning the skills of a Genrenaut—from PowerPoint presentations on narrative forecasting to a rigorous course of readings and primary sources for genre awareness.

  And oh, so much paperwork.

  When a breach emerges in the Science Fiction world, the team takes flight for the cosmically cosmopolitan Ahura-3 station. Leah is thrown straight into the deep end of the station, filled with bumpy-headed aliens, galactic alliances, and space-faring mercenaries.

  All of this and more in:

  Genrenauts Episode 2: The Absconded Ambassador

  Acknowledgments

  I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t enthralled by storytelling. But it quickly grew into more than that—I came to be interested in the types of stories, the expectations they set, their shared vocabulary of characters and plots.

  In other words: genre.

  The first film that I remember watching that specifically invoked the idea of narrative genres and the rules that came with them was The Last Action Hero. But it was far from the last tale to hit me right in my story-fixation. Eventually, I was so caught up by stories that I designed a major to learn more about them. But that was just another beginning. I figure I’ll be working through and from my fixation with stories and genre for as long as I can continue to write.

  Genrenauts started as a toss-off joke about a woman from our world thrown into a stereotypical high fantasy realm, where she instantly pegs the goatee-wearing advisor as the bad guy because the goatee-wearing advisor is pretty much always the bad guy. That loving playfulness with genre expectations, archetypes, and time-honored tropes grew into a word: Genrenauts—people who travel to similarly rigid worlds. But why? And that, friends, was a question worth answering.

  To build this idea into something capable of sustaining what is currently planned as a five-season arc, I did what I normally do—I piled on influences like they were mix-ins at a boutique ice cream shop, taking familiar flavors and combining them with my own perspective and sense of humor.

  I believe in citing your sources, and specifically inspired by Austin Kleon’s Steal Like an Artist, I’m making good on that.

  The conceptual bones of Genrenauts are informed by: Quantum Leap, Leverage, The Librarians, Planetary, Sliders, Indexing, The Last Action Hero, Redshirts, Primetime Adventures, a fistful of Choose Your Own Adventure novels, and pr
obably several other touchstones I’m not even consciously aware of. In terms of the episodic format, I was influenced by TV shows like Babylon 5, Leverage, and The Librarians again, as well as the idea of fiction-as-serial-TV projects like The Beam or Yesterday’s Gone.

  And as Genrenauts has many influences, I had just as many helpers along the way to this first installment in the series.

  First, my ceaseless thanks to Meg White—my first reader, confidant, brainstorming buddy, and so much more.

  Big high-fives to Megan Christopher and Ron Mitchell for the initial gut check.

  Huge props to Dave Robison for brainstorming awesomeness, encouraging me to dig deeper with the central concept.

  Massive thanks to Beth Cato, Effie Seiberg, Kate Walton, and Daniel Bensen for their invaluable feedback and support.

  A hearty round of applause to Patrick S Tomlinson for his insights into the world of stand-up comedy.

  Emphatic head-nods of gratitude to fellow Tor.com novella series author Matt Wallace for his support and encouragement as we take the literary world by storm with novella magic.

  Three cheers for my fellow Skiffy and Fanty Show peeps for the exciting and stimulating discussions of media and storytelling, keeping my genre senses sharp.

  Continued thanks to my agent, Sara Megibow, for following my flight of fancy and selling the series.

  A toast of thanks to my former colleague and now editor Lee Harris, for believing in the series and bringing me into the Tor.com family.

  Thank you to Irene Gallo and Peter Lutjen for briefing and designing a wonderful cover to set the tone for the series look.

  To Mordicai Knode I award 1000 XP of gratitude for his help in spreading the word.

  Last, but not least, my undying thanks to you, the reader. Whether this is our first dance together or if you’ve been with me since Geekomancy, thank you for your support and your part in bringing this story to life.

  About the Author

  Photograph © Brandie Roberts

  Michael R. Underwood has circumnavigated the globe, danced the tango with legends, and knows why Tybalt cancels out Capo Ferro. He also rolls a mean d20.

  He is the author of the Ree Reyes urban fantasies, fantasy superhero novel Shield and Crocus, supernatural thriller The Younger Gods, and Genrenauts, a comedic science fiction novella series. By day, he’s the North American Sales & Marketing Manager for Angry Robot Books.

  Mike lives in Baltimore with his fiancée and their ever-growing library. In his rapidly vanishing free time, he makes pizzas from scratch and reads comics by the pound. He is a cohost on the Hugo-nominated Skiffy and Fanty Show.

  Also by Michael R. Underwood

  The Ree Reyes Series

  Geekomancy

  Celebromancy

  Attack the Geek

  Hexomancy

  The Younger Gods

  Shield and Crocus

  Thank you for buying this Tom Doherty Associates ebook.

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  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue: Inciting Incident

  One: Everyone’s a Critic. Even Drunks. Especially Drunks.

  Two: The Story Lab

  Three: Blast Off

  Four: Y’all are pullin’, not squeezing

  Five: High Eleven-Thirty-Ish

  Six: Improvisation

  Seven: Ritual and Reward

  Epilogue: Sign on the Dotted Line

  Next time on Genrenauts . . .

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Michael R. Underwood

  Newsletter Sign-up

  Copyright Page

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novella are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  the shootout solution

  Copyright © 2015 by Michael R. Underwood

  Cover art by Digital Vision Vectors/Getty Images

  Edited by Lee Harris

  All rights reserved.

  A Tor.com Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

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  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor.com

  Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  ISBN 978-1-4668-9194-4 (e-book)

  ISBN 978-0-7653-8532-1 (trade paperback)

  First Edition: November 2015

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