Beth Bernobich's "A Flight of Numbers Fantastique Strange" (novelette, science fiction): A serial killer is on the loose

It began as a very gripping story - several murders on a university campus by what looks like the same killer. Plus an apparently unrelated but likely to later get related parallel tale of schizophrenic girl locked up in a sanatorium.

I had a feeling may be Chiang & Resnick will have competition next Nebula round. But I was wrong.

Perhaps half way through, I started losing interest - it wasn't boring, but kind of draggy. End is utterly incomprehensible & muddled. A group of university students & a professor have figured out some kind of relationship between numbers, colors, & I think electrical signals (I might be mixing up the last with something else).

Anyway, they have used this "theory" to build a time travel device. To change history so Simon & Gwyn's dead-in-an-accident parents can live in the alternate version of history. One of them uses the machine, & never returns. Then another... These vanishing ones are those getting murdered in the main story. Eventually Simon will also go there & vanish. I could not quite figure out how the main story relates to this time travel one; or may be I wasn't paying enough attention by then.

Title comes from some poem of "Henry Donne. Obscure Anglian poet of the late sixteenth century."

Full text of this story is available for download.

Fact sheet.

"A Flight of Numbers Fantastique Strange", short story, review
First published: Asimov's Science Fiction, June 2006.
Rating: B
Passed the preliminary nominations stage of Nebula Awards 2007 in novelette category.