Sixwhits Press, 2025, 279 p. Reviewed for ParSec 15.

Everyone experiences a multiplicity of worlds, for modern science tells us that this is a prerequisite for consciousness. However, for those who are not entangled, they experience such a narrow slice of all the realities that all seem identical, so it feels like a single universe. The day-to-day experience of the unentangled is one of many worlds, but a thin, uniform one.

So goes an extract from The Measurement Problem, A Guide to Entanglement by one A K Amari, quotations from which precede each chapter of David Whitmarsh’s novel of the same title. This imagined non-fiction work is a handy device for the novel’s author to provide background and context without it jarringly obtruding into the text. Our narrator, Detective Inspector Lewis Drake, is reading it (intermittently) to gain some insight into the world of the entangled, people who can experience the multiple worlds, a group he abhors since his sister Alice is in The Grange, a care home, after being given the implicitins which promote entanglement, with results which incapacitated her.

The action takes place mainly in a future London beset by rising sea levels, with a flood defence wall surrounding an area from which people are given encouragement to leave, in the long aftermath of a damaging virus war. Transport in this world seems to be by apparently driverless cars effortlessly on call to the public, though the rich, as ever, have their own provision. Implicitins were developed from research into CM-2057-phi-kppa, a virus that robbed people – like Drake and his sister – of memories from before their infection.

Exposure to implicitins can be benign or lead to cerasthesia, where the mind is overwhelmed by overlapping sensations from the many worlds. Their various forms, produced by the firm VirGenTech, range from alphas through betas, gammas and deltas and give access to memories/sensations from increasingly further back in time according to which has been taken. Alice’s treatment for cerasthesia in The Grange has heavily involved Drake both emotionally and financially and led to estrangement and separation from his wife. Lost in the other worlds, Alice has occasional reversions to the more benign Omega State but more generally presents as unaware of her immediate surroundings.

We start, though, on the day Drake is killed. In Marek’s café, an establishment with a signature ill-fitting door which scrapes noisily when opened.

Except of course, he isn’t. Killed, that is. Not in our narrator’s world anyway, but certainly in one of the multiplicity of entangled worlds. “Our” Drake does experience a feeling of dread, however, as sensation bleeds across from that universe.

In the wake of that he is assigned to investigate the murder of one Roger Wyndham, presumed to have been shot by a criminal organisation called Rdeča Kremplja, or Red Claw, run by a shadowy individual known as Vidmar, and the thriller plot, with attempts to frame Drake for that murder, kicks in.

Solving it all necessitates the usual detective novel contretemps with superior officers and agents of the state, not to mention encounters with Red Claw minions, kidnappings, betrayals and narrow escapes, with Drake needing to take implicitins himself to access as much information from the many worlds as possible in order to give him the edge. Recovery of the records inside a machine called Regenesys 5101 which can edit DNA sequences and be used to change identity also proves necessary.

Apart from a tendency to spell out acronyms, both police and otherwise, Whitmarsh handles everything well. The slipping from one reality to another as Drake falls under the implicitins’ spell could have been a source of confusion to the reader but isn’t. All in all, Whitmarsh’s The Measurement Problem (as opposed perhaps to A K Amari’s) is an enjoyable enough SF/crime mashup.

The following did not appear in the published review.

“time interval later” count; substantial.

Pedant’s corner:-  focused (several times; focused,) plus points for ‘whence’ used correctly, “a hairdressers” (a hairdresser’s.) “I wracked my brain” (I racked my brain,) “DI drake” (elsewhere always Drake.) “There were a string of voice messages” (There was a string of.) “Drake street” (Drake Street,) “outside of Cambridge” (no ‘of’, just ‘outside’,) “she’d drank me under the table” (she’d drunk me under the table,) “as good a guess is any” (as good a guess as any,) canvasses (canvases, please,) focussing (focusing,) “but the timing their appearance” (the timing of their appearance,) “latching onto to Alice” (no need for the ‘to’,) “Alice had invited us too” (invited us to,) “span off” (spun off. Two more instances of ‘span’ for ‘spun’,) protestors (protesters,) unfocussed (unfocused,) disk (disc,) “Soames’ answers” (Soames’s,) a new sentence begun with a lower case letter (x2,) imposter (x2, I prefer the spelling impostor,) Soames’ quarters (Soames’s,) “Regensys 5101” (elsewhere always ‘Regenesys 5101’,) “Sergeant Reynolds’ eyes opened” (Reynolds’ x3; ‘Reynolds’s’,) sat (sitting,) stationery (stationary,) “where Tamboli’s plants” (were Tamboli’s plants,) a question not given a question mark, “a drainage grill” (a drainage grille.) “It did me good, seeing him uneasy, relaxed me” (the second comma needs removed,) a missing opening quotation mark at the beginning of a piece of direct speech.

NewCon Press, 2025, 139 p. Reviewed for ParSec 15.

Some while ago sentient ramship UNDSP-14 CORBYN had passed through a human-colonised star system but ignored all its inhabitants’ attempts at communication. However, they exerted themselves to sending after him their one and only light speed ship, the Great Honour, utilizing a D-jump mechanism Corbyn did not have, which folded space to make the distance between two points negligible. Corbyn’s ship had resilience, though, and the Great Honour hadn’t, so was falling apart when it caught up.  Corbyn rescued crew member PurLeeDah and salvaged the D-Jump. Now, at her request, he is returning PurLeeDah to her home system but they are travelling at 0.9999999999c and need to dump velocity by innumerable small collisions to below 0.8c in order then to decelerate “as God and Heinlein intended.” This means transiting the system above its ecliptic for twenty (subjective) seconds, jumping back and doing it again and again, thousands of times, each time making a spectacular light show in the planet’s sky, shedding blue Cherenkov radiation. No wonder the inhabitants, who have, in the many relativistic centuries since launching the Great Honour, regressed to pre-industrial levels, come to call Corbyn the Travelling God as he moves from what they call the Gates of Heaven to Exaltation. It also means PurLeeDah has spent most of the interim in suspended animation.

As time goes by the condition of the cold sleep system deteriorates and Corbyn offers PurLeeDah the possibility of seeking out other star systems, possibly more evolved and able to slow them down more easily, but she declines, wanting to see her own planet again. To slow down more quickly, Corbyn takes a risk.

The overall story is told in nine sections as Corbyn drops in velocity to 0.999999999c, 0.98c, 0.95c, 0.92c, 0.85c, Orbital Velocity, and Stationary (with respect to the planet,) each section beginning with what is happening on Corbyn before giving us a snapshot of the life of humans on the planet as they slowly develop civilisation again, their worship of the Travelling God evolves and the time taken for each transit gradually increases. In effect Morden has put together eight otherwise unconnected stories of the History of the World (PurLeeDah’s world) by using an inventive framing device. (If you were paying attention you may have noticed there were only eight – not nine – velocities mentioned above. The ninth is a valedictory chapter.) Each of the eight stories is peopled with believable characters in convincing scenarios.

I did idly wonder if Morden has read Brian Aldiss’s short story Heresies of the Huge God, with which this has some thematic similarities: but it is of course as possible that he has not. The resemblances are only incidental in any case. Not that it matters. Morden has written a very good novella indeed, a story to show that Science Fiction still has life in it. And we all stand on someone’s shoulders.

The following did not appear in the published review.

Pedant’s corner:- “And he and her had had rationalized” (he and she had rationalised.)  “The only way he knew … were the stars” (the only way … was the stars,) dove (dived,) “The chase to over too soon” (to be over too soon,) “in his own prophesy” (the noun is ‘prophecy’, prophesy is the verb,) “lay of the land” (it wasn’t a song; ‘lie of the land’,) “Berengas’ abacus beads” (several instances of Berengas’; Berengas’s,) prophesies (prophecies,) “calculations were only be done by” (‘were only done by’ or ‘were only to be done by’,) “he did recognized this” (recognise) “one of which were” (None of which was,) “Stratos’ face” (Stratos’s,) “taller than a few stories” (storeys, please,) “no sign anything resembling” (no sign of anything.) “Neither of them were in the first flush of youth” (Neither of them was in…,) “‘more advanced that I am’” (advanced than I am.) “ ‘It is semi-rigid inflatable boat’” (It is a semi-rigid inflatable boat,) “holding on edges” (holding onto edges,) “there would be hole there now” (there would be a hole there now.) In the “About the Author”; published in three months of each other” (published within three months of each other.)

Titan Books, 2025, 288 p. Reviewed for ParSec 15.

Ever since something known as the weatherbomb hit it, cutting it off from its past and erasing some of its inhabitants, Jamie Pike’s Fairharbour has been a city enveloped in everlasting winter. All contact between its island and the mainland has been severed, any expeditions sent out over the frozen wastes of the sea never heard from again. Black-clad officers called Doormen patrol the streets enforcing order, sealing entrances and windows to keep heat inside buildings. Jamie spends a lot of his time tinkering in the workshop of his vanished uncle by marriage, Pawel, a mechanical whizz, and watching what remains of the work of his grandmother Carmen, a famous film-maker.

By contrast, after the weatherbomb, Esther Pike has lived in a Fairharbour bathed in perpetual summer, with sunlight a relentless presence. In her Fairharbour too, an authoritarian regime, The Fenestration, exerts power, forever cutting holes in the walls of buildings. She, too, strains against the restricted life of her city.

With this premise of a city with a doubled character, City of All Seasons has a superficial similarity to China Miéville’s The City and the City but is in the end much more interesting than his novel (which was really only a murder mystery with an unusual setting.)

Both Jamie and Esther wonder what has become of the other and of their lost family members but both have encounters with the city’s mayor, a curious apparition always dressed in a diving suit yet who seems to be able to bridge the divide between the two manifestations of the sundered city. Their two stories are told in strictly alternating first person narratives as their interconnections begin to mount.

One of those connections lies via an atypical Tarot deck, three of whose cards are involved in the exchanges between the winter and summer city. Illustrations of those, The Two of Fish, The Stage, and the Nine of Smiles, preface three of the book’s four sections.

To plot, though. Jamie catches a glimpse of greenery and begins to wonder if there is another existence just out of reach. He constructs a kaleidoscope from some glass fragments, wing mirrors and a tube, and leaves it where he hopes it might be found by Esther.

The story delves into Jamie and Esther’s past lives and of their family before the split (crucially their uncles Jan and Remi were forever unable to share) while also gradually revealing the lore and customs of the city. In this, the tale of the city’s emblem, the smiling knight, assumes significant importance. In an old interview with Carmen she told of this as her inspiration for an intended film about a man who uses his death for the benefit of the city and prophesies, “‘When I die; it will be spectacular.’”

Also prophetic are a suit worn by her, black on one side, white on the other, slashed diagonally from right collarbone to left ribcage, and a two-handed saw made by Pawel. All of this comes together in the city’s Lavender Theatre, the source of the divide.

Though there is a slight imbalance between the two strands Langmead and Whiteley let their tale unfold at just the right pace, the similarities and differences between the situations of Jamie and Esther counterpointing and emphasising each other, the influence of their extended family to the past and future gradually becoming clearer in this well-written and characterful novel elegantly resolved.

One final note. Very few fantasy novels have as a plot point the construction and subsequent playing of a glass harmonica. A pleasing touch.

The following did not appear in the published review.

Pedant’s corner:-  “the orchestral pit” (usually ‘the orchestra pit’,) “to keep him a state of permanent uncertainty” (to keep him in a state of,) “crow’s feet” (crows’ feet,) “but Fairharbour’s artist population were never meant to” (Fairharbour’s artist population was never meant to.) Descendent (Descendant,) Esther has dyslexia [“the alphabet still runs away, even now”] but she is narrating half of this story with no apparent difficulty. “Hardly a shard of its enormous windows remain” (Hardly a shard … remains,) “one less eyesore” (one fewer eyesore,) “none of the Fenestration guards … have spotted” (none … has spotted,) “with nine people stood upon it” (standing upon it; there were more instances of ‘stood’ for ‘standing’,) a single opening quote mark at the beginning of a piece of direct speech; all other such marks are double. “The fishing fleet are out already” (The fishing fleet is out.)  “The crowd of Doormen part around him” (The crowd … parts around him,) “golden candelabras” (candelabra is already plural,) a new sentence without an initial capital letter, focussed (focused – used later,) “at the far end of the lawn were a large group” (was a large group,) “I dove” (I dived,) “-together, intense,” (- together, intense,) a missing comma before a piece of direct speech. “It lays open on the wooden bench” (It lies open.) “The rippling of all the droplets dripping from the ceiling distort it” (The rippling …. distorts it,) “at the peripheral of the city” (at the periphery.) “They put her hands to her throat” (‘They put their hands to her throat’ makes more sense,) “they sweat” (‘the sweat,) “untameable enormity” (it wasn’t a terrible thing, just a large one; so ‘untameable size’ or ‘untameable extent’,) fit (fitted.)

Issue 16 of  ParSec magazine is available.

This one contains my reviews of:-

Project Hanuman by Stewart Hotston

Reality Rift by Fred Gambino

No Man’s Land by Richard Morgan

Green City Wars by Adrian Tchaikovsky

If We Cannot Go at the Speed of Light by Kim Choyeop

I have just seen from various sources that SF writer Ian Watson has died. I’m so sad to hear about this.

I knew he had been ill recently but had been under the impression he was recovering.

I have thirty of his books on my shelves, the most recent of which was The Chinese Time Machine which I reviewed for ParSec in 2023.

The first time I met him was when I attended the signing event for my first short story publication, The Face of the Waters, in New Worlds 2 way back in 1992.

He was a gentleman and had a particularly sharp wit.

Ian Watson: 20/4/1943 – 13/4/2026. So it goes.

ParSec 15 is indeed live and I now have my copy.

I found it does contain my reviews of City of All Seasons by Oliver K Langmead and Aliya Whiteley along with The History of the World by Simon Morden but not that of Project Hanuman by Stewart Hotston.

I have four other reviews there though:-

The Measurement Problem by David Whitmarsh,

Halcyon Years by Alastair Reynolds,

Exiles by Mason Coile,

plus Solstice by Ruth Aylett and Greg Michaelson.

Or at least it ought to be.

The publication date was yesterday.

I’ve not accessed my copy yet but this one should contain my reviews of:-

City of All Seasons by Oliver K Langmead and Aliya Whiteley

The History of the World by Simon Morden

Project Hanuman by Stewart Hotston

Those reviews will appear here in due course.

Luna Press, 2025, 187 p. Reviewed for ParSec 14.

At the start of this novella Elif is the sole inhabitant of the apparently desert planet Maoira-I. At twelve years old she has hitherto known only the companionship of the AI, VAS-H, her Vital Auxiliary Support: H-unit, and her knowledge of other humans is derived solely from the films and shows available to her on screen.

Contact from Commander Isabel Aremu of the Interplanetary Mission, based on Polaris, who addresses Elif as Warden, comes to her out of the blue, as does the task she is assigned of growing, or attempting to grow, plants to see if Maoira-I might be a suitable future home for humanity. The Mission is on an indefinite space flight fleeing something unspecified back on Earth. VAS-H retrieves the seeds Elif will need, seeds she had not known were there, from the base’s storage freezer.

Part One centres on Elif via both a third person narrative tightly focused on her unfolding experiences and the log entries VAS-H asks her to compile. While these are not the reflections of an unreliable narrator they are those of one without knowledge of the full picture. Helping to fill in those gaps for the reader there are also two italicised sections dealing mainly with the consequences for Commander Aremu on Polaris of the Mission having to admit that Elif exists and its failures regarding her. This leads to Aremu’s replacement as contact by the much less sympathetic Lieutenant, later Commander, Julian Bishop.

In the meantime Elif uncovers a buried Transporter vehicle on the surface and learns to drive it while Maoira-I’s long-term climatic variations begin to manifest themselves.

Part Two makes a step change. Mission operative Rokeya Khan, whose grandfather Latif was on the original team to land on Maoira-I, has set off on her own to get to the planet and find out what happened. Her arrival shocks Elif but they learn to work together.

Rokeya’s presence is the catalyst for the discovery of what became of the original crew, one of whom, naturally, but against all protocol, must have been pregnant.

It also crystallises Elif’s feelings towards the rest of humanity and towards the only home she has ever known.

There are some caveats to this. The premise does stretch credibility a bit. Could an infant human really thrive under only the influence of an AI and old videos? Could she retain sanity even? Could the original expedition genuinely have been forgotten by the Mission for twelve years?

But Reza has written this well. She captures Elif’s initial ingenuousness and growing confidence. The claustrophobic atmosphere of an isolated environment comes across, as does the slightly sinister sway of an AI companion.

This is an impressive long form debut.

The following did not appear in the published review.

Pedant’s corner:-  shrunk (x3, shrank,) CO2 (several times. It’s CO₂,) “wherever the fleet of ships were” (wherever the fleet … was,) fit (fitted,) “than several millions” (than several million,) “about to reach a crescendo” (you don’t reach a crescendo, you reach its end,) sunk (sank.) “Rokeya’s opened her mouth in shock” (Rokeya opened her mouth.)

Luna Press, 2025, 198 p. Reviewed for ParSec 14.

Well. They do say you should start with a bang – and this novel does begin with a sentence reminiscent of the first in Iain Banks’s The Crow Road, though what unfolds is neither a bildungsroman nor (quite) a murder mystery but a decent enough piece of Science Fiction.

Viewpoint character Jocelyn Carsten (Joss,) is a hostage negotiator on the way home from managing a crisis on the planet Haitch when her passenger ship Tiktaalik suffers an explosion. She is still alive, just, but is injured, and is the sole survivor. All contact with the ship’s Central Hub – and the outside world – is lost. Only Harbour, the controlling intelligence of passenger mod Petal 4, is available to aid her.

After a trip to the med bay and an EVA to survey the damage to the ship, Harbour advises her to rest. When she wakes up there is another presence in the mod, a gemel; a holographic copy of Joss’s personality, but this has the physical appearance of her ex-wife, Alice Dray.

“A gemel” (the plural is also gemel) “is a sentient being generated from an individual’s psyche,” usually, but not always, taking on the appearance of their sires, “fuzzy copies of their progenitors, interpolated from memories and neurocircuitry, and can resemble their users to a disturbing degree,” but can be “warped by narcissists with fat wallets and the desire for more intimate personal assistants,” as had been the case with Gabrielle Vecher, on-site CEO for Haxen Mining Corps, and his gemel Malachi. Narcissus and Echo in the same package, thinks Joss. Gemel were not allowed physical bodies but, with safeguards, could patch into systems and control them from the inside. They “drew force from external sources, running off the excess electricity in the machines around them.”

This Not-Alice becomes a psychological prop for Joss and a device for the author to run Joss’s backstory past the reader, in instalments. Indeed, at times our access to Joss’s thoughts shifts between the present and her past memories with little or no signalling.

Joss’s rescue from isolation – when it comes (rather abruptly it must be said) – is by a military force co-commanded by none other than Alice Dray: the real one. Its mission is to investigate both why Tiktaalik and the tunnels on Haitch were blown up and to try to obtain the release of the humans still there held by gemel, an endeavour where Joss’s negotiating skills come to the fore. But Alice Dray’s co-commander – something of a loose cannon of the gung-ho military type – threatens to undermine Joss’s steps towards a solution of the situation.

It turns out Vecher had constructed a highly dangerous device deriving from mysterious markings on the tunnels on Haitch. And time is running out. “‘That thing Vecher made tore a hole in the fabric of the universe or whatever the hell you want to call it, and it’s growing, becoming less stable by the hour,’” says Joss during the negotiations.

Given her initial circumstances, Joss is unsurprisingly prone to periods of introspection and questioning both of herself and others.

Despite some problems with structure and pacing this is an engaging read and will push enough familiar buttons for SF readers to emerge satisfied.

The following did not appear in the published review.

Pedant’s corner:- Written in USian but with some British spellings. The planet Ross128 H’s nickname of Haitch is an egregious mispronunciation of that letter of the alphabet, “on a round-a-bout route” (roundabout – which was used elsewhere in the text for a meander -) once there was a single quotation mark where double ones are employed elsewhere, shlock (schlock,) back-peddling (back-pedalling,) hostage takers “174 million miles away” morphs to “140 million mile silences” during the communications gap, “sliding the stack of credits Joss had won back from her back across the table” (Joss was playing her opponent for the first time, so just ‘had won from her’.) “This is ….. based on …..?” (wasn’t a question so full stop, not question mark,) C02 (It’s not C zero two as was printed in the text, and the 2 ought to be a subscript,) “wracking your brain” (racking,) “sending some part of her ex’s upper-class snobbery would revolt” (sensing some part.) “‘Tell and I send you outside to repaint the serial number.’” (No clue. Who is Tell?) “what she can offer them are options” (I read ‘what she can offer them’ as a singular subject to the following verb; so ‘what she can offer them is options’,) “is different thing” (is a different thing.) “‘Ph damage right here’” (‘pH damage’ was meant and pH always has an upper case H and a lower case p – even at the start of a sentence,) “drowns out nothing but Callen’s voice” (everything but Callen’s voice,) “‘I pretty sure’” (I was pretty sure,) “for having sunken so low” (for having sunk so low.) “She doubts its convincing” (doubts it’s convincing,) “amid glow of the launch” (amid the glow of the launch,) a missing extraneous end quotation mark, a missing comma before the quotation mark at the end of a piece of dialogue. “‘How is that that they’ve got people down there?’”  (How is it that they’ve got…,) “‘if we so much get within the distance’” (if we so much as get within…,) “it takes her moment” (it takes her a moment.) “Alice takes her seat again and switching back to their private comm.” (and switches back to,) “the metal partition the separated them” (partition that separated them.) “A name that inferred family, and what she’d always been taught to mean trust, love and guidance” (and that she’d always been taught…,) “but do they do afford” (but they do afford,) “of the Florenz’ cargo bay” (the Florenz’s,) “breathing apparatuses” (the plural of apparatus is apparatus,) “nothing but the judder of the engine and the clatter of equipment as rattles against the bulkheads” (could be rewritten more clearly,) “‘I can’t let you can’t do this’” (either, ‘I can’t let you do this’ or, ‘You can’t do this.)

MacMillan, 2025, 347 p. Reviewed for ParSec 13.

Twenty years ago the Soundfield appeared overhead. Ever since, temperatures have continued to soar, UV radiation makes going out in daylight all but deadly, food is short, parts of the world up to and including Italy are devoid of humans, and refugees are countless. People in Britain now sleep during the day and carry out whatever business they can at night.

Hannah Williams lectures on genetics at a college but her life is complicated by her son, Isaac, who cannot speak, only sign, must be kept occupied and also looked after by someone else if she is busy.

They are living in a dystopia. The Government is essentially authoritarian, dissenters can be shot, (refugees have been in the past when trying to come ashore,) agents of the Atavism Programme are ever vigilant, looking for children who connect with the Soundfield’s constant hum and its occasional musical calls. Isaac’s tendency to sing at these moments is why Hannah is so protective of him. She does not wish to lose him to the Programme. (How Isaac can sing when he can’t speak is unexplained.) The ongoing story of their lives in this harsh world has its menace heightened by the author’s use of the present tense. The passages where Hannah remembers her past life, before the Soundfield and when she was part of the first investigations into it, are in the past tense. Hannah’s part in that investigation was carried out in collaboration with a team led by Elias, a physicist, with whom she had a relationship.

Examination of the field showed it to contain the components of air, in the normal proportions, but also small dust particles, inert minerals and silica, some bacteria and fungi, “as if a microscopic layer of the ground had been scooped up and held in suspension thirty kilometres up, creating a dome that sealed the Earth.” Video footage revealed it to be moving, like waves. “A thin taut membrane that vibrates thousands of times a second.”

Hannah’s lectures centre on the FOXP2 gene. This is usually invariant and has been for millions of years – except for the (relatively) recent two changes which coincided with the development of language in humans.

Her breakthrough in trying to understand the Soundfield came with studying the EK family, who all had developmental verbal dyspraxia. In them, one of the bases on the FOXP2 gene had reverted to its previous state.

This is an unusual piece of SF as writers in the genre do not usually consider the evolution of language nor its connection to music.  Through Hannah, Martin tells us language and music are combinatorial, made up of individual units that stack together to give new structures, but are also recursive and innate. But as Hannah says to Elias, “We are biologically programmed to speak, but also to listen to and produce music.” She suggests speech and music co-evolved from a musical protolanguage and wonders if that might be what the Soundfield is producing. The publishing of her results, though, is the trigger for the Atavism Programme and Hannah’s present predicament.

The dystopian aspects of the novel are reasonably similar to other works in that vein (autocracies do tend to be similar in their repressions, as are people’s reactions to them) but Martin combines them with a concern for family and relationships. As in all human interactions, though, betrayal and jeopardy are never far away.

The following did not appear in the published review.

Pedant’s corner:- “on his hoody” (usually spelled hoodie, as it is later in the book,) “of the front frow” (front row,) “much more hands-on that it used to be” (than it used to be,) “a man with a short beard wearing a bullet-proof vest” (why would a beard wear a vest? Try ‘a short-bearded man wearing a bullet-proof vest,) “the old stationary store” (stationery store,) “‘what do you parents do?’” (do your parents,) “outside of” (x 2, just ‘outside’ no ‘of’,) “‘there was only once choice’” (only one choice,) “in Elias’ team” (Elias’s – which appears later,) phenomes (the passage was about phonemes,) sat (several times; ‘sitting’,) span (spun,) focussed (focused,) “in the middle of wide, open room” (of a wide, open room,) “‘to make sure your safe’” (you’re safe.)