The Mandarin Crew
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Chosen by an extra-dimensional entity, Bongo, Dead Eye and Mai Ling are brought together to form a team of assassins. In a twist on the old Alfred Hitchcock masterpiece, 'Strangers on a Train,' they are given the task of eliminating complete strangers. When they have fulfilled their side of the contract with the Mandarin, a 'target' of their own choosing will be taken out by another crew.
Mismatch
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During Canada's Crisis of 1970, Pierre Laporte, a member of Pierre Trudeau's cabinet, has been found murdered in Montreal. At the same time, using the chaos caused in the French-speaking community by the imposition of martial law, a federal officer tries to dupe the FLQ terrorists out of their war chest. But he confronts an unanticipated adversary--a "human monster". The story moves to Virginia, 1996. Dr. Paul Racine, a Parisian who lives in Richmond with his Quebecois wife, performs a heart transplant on his latest patient, Mr. Powell. Except for the keen interest evinced by Annette Racine and the chairman of the surgery department, everything about Powell's case seems perfectly routine. But while recovering from the operation, questions not only arise regarding the legality of the transplant, but Powell's very identity. The mystery comes to a head when Racine is confronted by an official from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police who says Powell is not even an American, but an old member of the Quebec Liberation Front on the run from Canadian authorities. Racine has been tricked into performing a transplant on an unqualified candidate. As fragments of old history are explored, from the disastrous Canadian attack on Dieppe in 1942 to the Crisis of '70, the characters' true identities are revealed. This in turn culminates in a kidnap-chase that stretches from Richmond to Montreal, and the revelation that a third party has been manipulating them all: almost literally, a ghost from the past.
Heat Seekers
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Against the backdrop of an early-summer heat wave, Heat Seekers plays out the brutal logic of tragedy, with emotions following a predictable pattern to an unanticipated conclusion. The Old South has not vanished completely. New sensibilities and an antique code of honor meet in Ash Mason, who cannot reconcile himself to losing his girlfriend to a high school classmate and begins to act out his vengeful fantasies. Nor can the adults around him deal with the loss of old ways and their sense of inadequacy as the culture of the city spreads out to the countryside. Old assumptions fall before unfamiliar ideas, but there are no guarantees for the outcome. In the midst of emotional chaos, neither love nor hate emerges triumphant. The 'melting pot' takes on a new meaning as Ash's friends and foes collapse upon a mutual center of gravity: Ellen.
At the Midway
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In 1906 a detachment from the U.S. Signal Corps is attacked by three Tu-nel. The Tu-nel are descended from the therapsids, mammal-like reptiles that evolved in the Triassic Period--before the dinosaurs. They co-existed with the dinosaurs of the Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods. During the 135 million years of their existence, they have undergone major evolutionary changes. These helped them survive the mass extinctions of the dinosaurs and, much later, the giant mammals The scene shifts to Hampton Roads, Virginia. Teddy Roosevelt is launching his Atlantic Fleet on a world cruise. It is an audacious enterprise, mainly because of the political tensions between the United States and Japan. The oldest ship in the Fleet is the Florida, commanded by Captain Oates. His vessel is constantly in the "Observation Ward" because of poor performance, a position that does not improve after the Fleet sets sail for South America. It is his ship that will ultimately confront the Tu-nel off Midway Island.
Mismatch
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During Canada's Crisis of 1970, Pierre Laporte, a member of Pierre Trudeau's cabinet, has been found murdered in Montreal. At the same time, using the chaos caused in the French-speaking community by the imposition of martial law, a federal officer tries to dupe the FLQ terrorists out of their war chest. But he confronts an unanticipated adversary--a "human monster". The story moves to Virginia, 1996. Dr. Paul Racine, a Parisian who lives in Richmond with his Quebecois wife, performs a heart transplant on his latest patient, Mr. Powell. Except for the keen interest evinced by Annette Racine and the chairman of the surgery department, everything about Powell's case seems perfectly routine. But while recovering from the operation, questions not only arise regarding the legality of the transplant, but Powell's very identity. The mystery comes to a head when Racine is confronted by an official from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police who says Powell is not even an American, but an old member of the Quebec Liberation Front on the run from Canadian authorities. Racine has been tricked into performing a transplant on an unqualified candidate. As fragments of old history are explored, from the disastrous Canadian attack on Dieppe in 1942 to the Crisis of '70, the characters' true identities are revealed. This in turn culminates in a kidnap-chase that stretches from Richmond to Montreal, and the revelation that a third party has been manipulating them all: almost literally, a ghost from the past.
Skunk Hunt
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Killed in a botched robbery, Skunk McPherson returns to life via a series of letters to his children. In them he plants clues that send Mute, Sweet Tooth and Doubletalk McPherson on a wild hunt for hidden loot, all the while trailed by lovers and ex-lovers, Skunk's old cronies, private detectives, the police and a host of unsuspected relatives. Death and comedy combine in a spectacularly twisted journey of self-discovery.
Three Stories: Present, Future and the Supernatural
Three stories that take place in the present, the future and a place without time:
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Three stories that take place in the present, the future and a place without time:
THE MISSING RAINDROP
AI is missing one key ingredient in its bid for world domination: Luck. To attain this, it has identified the luckiest people alive and bound them by contract. Nicknamed ‘the Raindrops’ by the general public, they are divided into four levels. Those with Radial Luck Diameters of 4 rank the highest and are exceedingly rare. As a courtesy, two NYPD detectives are assigned to escort RLD4 Loonup to the airport for a trip to Germany. For unknown reasons, Loonup attacks them before disappearing. The flight carries vital cargo that requires maximum luck to safely reach its destination. Loonup must be located and taken to JFK, no matter the cost. But when one of the luckiest men to ever live does not want to be found, the cops need a lot of luck to find him.
I NEVER LOVED HIM SO MUCH AS WHEN I KILLED HIM
Mary Dubois lives a disconsolate life with her meandering husband. Her closest confidant is one of his former lovers. Although rarely cruel to her, Bill’s aloofness is a constant torment. Lucky with women, he is hopeless in everyday matters. So many years have passed, yet he does not seem to have aged a day… while the decades have weighed her down so much she can scarcely look in the mirror without revulsion. Now afflicted with inoperable breast cancer, she confronts the possibility that he will outlive her. He will undoubtedly live a riotous life, leading to the ruin of himself and others. The only logical course would be to cut short this disaster and depart the world with him. In death, they would finally find harmony….
BEETHOVEN NADA
While attending a matinee performance by a local orchestra, the narrator resigns himself to hearing the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy for the umpteenth time. Only now, he is told it is a new piece by one Ardent Pinkson, a recent college graduate. The program notes, the conductor and the audience are all in agreement: Pinkson composed Tchaikovsky's little masterpiece. But this is only the first of his appalling discoveries. Over the course of a few days, he meets improbable artists and inventors at every turn. They stake claim to creating everything from Excel spreadsheets to dinosaurs, including rum punch, beef stroganoff, ATM's and champagne. On the verge of being declared mentally incompetent by his healthcare provider, he can only save himself by summoning his own unique and revolutionary invention, one guaranteed to change the world.
Close Before Striking
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Hank Cheatham, a professor of American History at a state university, has begun to suspect he is losing his mind. He has frequent blackouts, and often regains consciousness at the airport, with no idea if he is coming or going. He has inexplicably given his daughters permission to do things that would have been inconceivable only a month earlier. He is convinced that the South won the battle of Gettysburg, with distressing results when he gives the keynote speech at a Civil War reenactment. He approaches Oliver Redman for advice. A black professor of psychology, Redman has often crossed swords with Hank over his politically incorrect views--specifically, his public assertion that Robert E. Lee and lesser known Confederates were great heroes, not merely defenders of the institution of slavery. Redman seems strangely reluctant to help him out of his dilemma. On top of all this, his old mentor, now dying in a nursing home, has drawn from him a promise to bury him at Appomattox. This entails trespassing upon Federal property in the dead of night. By the end of the book, under peculiar circumstances and with unforeseen historic consequences, the promise is fulfilled.
Soft Zombies
Has Artificial Intelligence conquered the world? Is it a machine already on the verge of decrepitude? Or is it simply another invention to which we must accommodate ourselves? With cars came miraculous mobility, highways, pollution and collateral death. Yet we have adapted to automobiles, invest heavily in their maintenance and attend the funerals of those killed by them without a single thought of banning the internal combustion engine. Is a similar integration of human mind and machine in the offing? We have, for the most part, learned to balance everyday life with unanticipated consequences. A surge in technical semi-domination might be met with the same querulous indifference that confronted the plague that killed 21 million of our fellow earthly inhabitants.
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Has Artificial Intelligence conquered the world? Is it a machine already on the verge of decrepitude? Or is it simply another invention to which we must accommodate ourselves? With cars came miraculous mobility, highways, pollution and collateral death. Yet we have adapted to automobiles, invest heavily in their maintenance and attend the funerals of those killed by them without a single thought of banning the internal combustion engine. Is a similar integration of human mind and machine in the offing? We have, for the most part, learned to balance everyday life with unanticipated consequences. A surge in technical semi-domination might be met with the same querulous indifference that confronted the plague that killed 21 million of our fellow earthly inhabitants.
Soft Zombies, the title story of this collection, portrays a world where humans, plague and AI take equal shares in collective mismanagement. Neighborhood Watch follows the same theme. MOUT takes place 5,000 years in the future, where a tyrannical AI has run its course and is in the process of rusting away. Metaphysics is lampooned in Metaphysical Mall and Mr. and Mrs. Doppelganger. The Rehab and Hospice Center for Supervillains confronts the idiocy of the Marvel Universe, while Nine Billion Names takes on the possibility that Arthur C. Clarke was not only a master of sci-fi tech, but of supernatural woe.
The other titles in this eleven-story collection deal with self-delusion, Armageddon and evolution…with a personally nostalgic and cautionary addendum.
Death of the Toaster
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Two hundred years after AI's hostile takeover of the Earth, Humanity has become a living artifact of the past. Vulgar simpletons, apparently useless, completely dependent on neural implants for any intellectual endeavor, it is a mystery as to why it has been spared extinction. The primary employer is the ScatterGun Temp Agency, which hires humans for jobs as diverse as astronauts and serial killers. Like everyone else, Dingleberry passively accepts his fate. Unless hired as a temporary anarchist, he gives no thought to upsetting the apple cart. He is a sociable creature who spends nearly every evening down at the Bellywash & Puke with his fellow barflies and lover. However, his best friend is his toaster, with which he holds long conversations. It is his toaster who reveals that JerryRig, the central AI platform, has been infected with a virus that might very well send the world crashing down. When ScatterGun dispatches Dingleberry to retrieve vital data from the Flatlight (the realm of the dead) his late mother confirms that JerryRig has indeed lost control. Pleas to his friends to organize themselves for survival in a barren world fall on deaf ears. It is only late in the day that Dingleberry learns the real reason for life on Earth--and of Humanity's role in the construct known as the Universe.
Mean Spirit
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Charlie Bretall comes to believe the malevolent spirit of a dead man possesses his daughter. He risks his sanity and his life to save her, only to encounter evidence that he is being manipulated by invisible forces he never suspected. It is a race he is bound to lose without help. This first comes in the form of Detective Rosen, who deduces the truth from a simple limp. But no one--Rosen, Charlie's daughter, the narrator, or Charlie himself--are who they seem to be, nor are their motives clear as murders accumulate. The story culminates in an abandoned garage, where Charlie is put on ‘trial’ by skeptics and believers...and by the dead.
The Lazarus Children
After testing positive for a deadly virus, a group of children is abandoned in a state forest. Lost, and with few resources, they set out to find Slate Mountain and a refugee camp rumored to be located in an old bomb shelter. They are led by their 'pod captain', Jeremy, who is quickly placed in a moral dilemma no one, child or adult, should be forced to confront.
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After testing positive for a deadly virus, a group of children is abandoned in a state forest. Lost, and with few resources, they set out to find Slate Mountain and a refugee camp rumored to be located in an old bomb shelter. They are led by their 'pod captain', Jeremy, who is quickly placed in a moral dilemma no one, child or adult, should be forced to confront.
On reaching the mountain they find their hopes both met and dashed when they learn of an incomprehensible menace approaching from the north.
Death and adventure accompany Jeremy as he struggles to save the pod. Assisted by the older children, while being opposed by his old foe from school, he slowly and painfully accrues the lessons of leadership.
The Lazarus Generation
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