About the Author: 

Remarkable Robustness
KJ Hannah Greenberg


Dr. Penelope Adams shrugged her answer to the billy club-wielding woman in the orange cravat. Words were not going to liberate her, especially if spoken in English. Americans deigning to travel to foreign lands were openly hated.

Following the tungsten-motivated Russian annexing of California, Nevada, and a portion of Arizona, and the Sino-Korean siege of the rest of that continent, including Canada, Mexico, and most of the neighboring islands, it was ignoble to admit fidelity to a “seditious” Congress or to confess competence in Received Pronunciation. In balance, Hanja-eo was lauded as was Bulgarian. Devotion to regimes upholding Proletarian internationalism was, moreover, publically esteemed.

 That Dr. Adams was a world class metallurgist specializing in nuclear warhead heavy metal alloys and a guest at the 2020 Thai conference on ballistic missiles, were immaterial. What’s more, she had gotten mugged en route to a TAT-sponsored trip from Bangkok to the Nonzhoan hills; her bathroom quest had been a bad idea.

 Summarily, she was routed by the local equivalent of a deputy sheriff and transported to the local equivalent of a holding cell. Since her linguistically incriminating smart phone and notepad were stolen, Dr. Adams relied on pantomime. Remaining mute seemed wise. Too many bruises later, she was returned to a space where inmates were expected to sleep without beds and to eat without food.

 A fortnight more, she was sent back to the conference. Nothing was said of her absence or treatment, except during a lone Khoa Sod interview, held on Suvarnabhumi Airport’s tarmacadam, when she was asked her impression of the great Siamese Nation.

Penelope sputtered, in French, that the American Imperialists ought to be further quashed. Thus, she was thus spared a lethal portion of Som Tum and returned intact to Kansas.

 

About the author:
Faithfully constructive in her epistemology, KJ Hannah Greenberg channels gelatinous monsters and two-headed wildebeests.Some of the shelters for her short fiction have included: AlienSkin Magazine. AntipodeanSF, Bards and Sages Quarterly, Big Pulp, Morpheus Tales, Strange, Weird and Wonderful, Theaker's Quarterly Fiction, The New Absurdist, and Weirdyear. Hannah's newest books are: The Little Temple of My Sleeping Bag (Dancing Girl Press, 2014), The Immediacy of Emotional Kerfuffles (Bards and Sages Publishing, 2013), and Citrus-Inspired Ceramics (Aldrich Press, 2013).