Short Fiction Young Adult Science Fiction Fantasy

An unintended result of a terrorist bombing a children's hospital, the Lazurai could kill a person without touching them. The government made it worse by their experiments. All the children wanted was to feel love like any child. When they grew older, their powers increased. And they found they couldn't be stopped. Chuck hears a rumor of one coming his way, to his remote way station on the highway. But he can't leave his wife, who's dying. So he waits. And sees the hooded Lazurai walking the long miles on a hot desert day toward him. All he can do is wait. What he doesn't know is that this one is different from all the rumors. And his life is going to change forever...

You don't expect a goddess to visit you and start talking about your writing, or the lack of it. Yet here she was, dressed in a garment so thin that it was nearly transparent if the sun hit it just right. And, here with some message for me. Of course, she didn't get to it right off. Like her dress, she used her conversation to get my full attention before she could tell me what that message was. It didn't take long for me to see she was dead serious about my future...

Carol and Reggie were different. They thought different . Reggie could talk "the ears off a corn stalk." He was an expert on history, like a walking Wikipedia on ancient times (if people could stand to listen to him.) Carol hardly talked, but her hugs could tell you the world. She could solve quintic polynomial equations. And a 4x4 Rubic's cube with one hand. They were autists. "Special needs" people. Savants, kind of. They were perfect for each other. Or maybe not. So different. Between them, they understood the universe. It was no small surprise that they were part of the next stage in human evolution. The one that's already here. Of course they knew it. But most of humanity didn't...

An Epic Road Trip and Fantastical Semi-Memoir Living life is nothing that any moron or better couldn't accomplish, even without setting one's mind to it. The trick is to do something with that life. Or live several at once, so that one could at least be a success in one of them. Herbert, having endured his mid-life crisis with all the aplomb possibly available to him, now was set on making a new life for himself. This is his book. Such a book has parallels with our own. That is life for you - it sneaks up on you and drops some odd segue or link into some other person's scene and then just nips away, as if it was mainlining pixie dust or some super-quantum Dune drug. Blue eyes and all. You see, Herbert does live more than one life at once. Shackled to the mundane world of the Midwest warehouse laborer, he yet lives in worlds of extreme science, wild fantasy environments and incredibly sensuous surroundings. For Herbert reads books, surfs the Internet and has an overactive imagination. But let's meet our hero...

I was sent here to keep me safe. From horrors I wasn't supposed to know about. But they didn't understand the first thing about arriving in a female body with raging hormones and a genius beyond understanding of myself and anyone around us. Of course, they wiped my memory. That didn't mean I couldn't figure out that I didn't belong. Then I met someone that I could almost trust. Not to give me away. Because if anyone really found out who I was - including me - then the universe would literally collapse on itself. Seriously. Not just another teen-angst romance. This was deadly serious. Deadly for everyone, including me. And somehow, he seemed to actually care...

Sue returned to earth in what looked like a meteor to those watching. But it was an escape pod from the Moon colony. Where the cities had gone to escape Earth and its governments' leaving the rest of the planet to its new dark age. She had fallen unconscious when she popped the pod's hatch to get fresh air. And had been saved from the surrounding fire by the one witness who saw her land. A sentient, telepathic wolf. Now the dominant sentient species on Earth...

At the beginning was The Games. Because they were running out of people. The gangs were killing each other off too fast. And the city was running out of money to keep them all on free food and free medical. The Games put everyone in the city to work. They competed with each other for production bonuses. Citizens that didn't work, hardly ate. There was a Plan, and the Game was part of the Plan. In this plan, the cities were going to rise up into space, and remove almost all humanity from this polluted planet when they did. While into this scene, two healers showed up. Someone needed their help. Or several someone's. But their deadline was coming up. Soon that city would lift off, forever. And those healers were told they had to be out of there before 'Cagga did...

Why I was brought in to solve a mystery of people getting and staying healthy was a bit curious on its own. They were all terminally ill. And in quarantine. Yet one nurse and her student "angels of death" had been able to reverse this deadly disease that modern "medicine' had created through their own negligence. Most of the big city hospitals had these outbreaks, and had sent their worst cases out to live their lives in suburban hospices - often unknown to those locals. And if their quarantine security failed, an incurable plague could spread and decimate the human population by at least half - to start with. Whoever had hired me wanted to know what those healed people were going to do - for anyone could see a huge litigation potential from being cured. But not if they died. For dead people can't talk - or sue. At least to stay anonymous, my financiers had to stay off my radar and out of my hair. Or the head nurse would help me find out how they created this mess that she was solving without their help...