Grandma Ruth’s UP Truck Stop

Rachel’s last semester at the University of Michigan would have been easy if not for the news that reached her six weeks before her final exams.

It wasn’t a phone call—the phone lines were still down from the most recent blizzard to hit Paradise, she guessed. Instead, a rumpled-looking envelope appeared in her mailbox, the ink of her address slightly smeared. She didn’t recognize the return address at first, but anybody mailing her a letter from Paradise must be someone she knew. Paradise was a small town.

Overwhelming curiosity forced her to open the envelope before she could even reach her front porch; in her haste, the sharp edge of the paper sliced into her fingertip, staining the letter with droplets of blood.

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Soon The Sentence Sign

Jason Sweeney sat quietly; his hands secured behind him. He glanced at the young uniformed Korean woman who had arrested him.

Marshal Hwang Min Pak didn’t so much as look up from her pad and stylus. She clicked a corner of her electronic device, consulted its clock function, then powered it down and put it away. “It’s nearly noon local time. We should get to the security tower in another five minutes, give or take, so let me clue you in given it’s your first offense.”

Sweeney hunched his shoulders submissively and remained silent.

Marshal Pak settled back in her seat. “Titan’s the new frontier, ‘Sweeney Todd’. We don’t have enough population-or criminals-to warrant a full-time legal system. Circuit court judges have a long haul to get here via interplanetary, so waiting for a regular trial can mean being imprisoned for a long time before anything happens.”

The transport began to slow. “But it was just a bar fight, and he started it!”

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