Aliens, technology gone amuck, and a human who can take a charge
A special treat for you all. Some of you have been very inspirational. All of you have been faithful and supportive readers. So here’s a sneak peek at my latest foray into Sci-Fi, soon to be headed to a publisher.
Six longer stories (at least one is novella length) where science takes the driver’s seat. Each story is infused with mystery, tension, a hint of horror, and even a dash of hopefulness where the human spirit wins out.
The stories in order of appearance:
The Stardust Alliance — Marvin wheels his cantankerous, cancer-ridden, wheelchair-bound grandfather Harvey at the old-man’s insistence up Gazer’s Hill to join with other members of the Stardust Alliance for the “beaming” as they call it, something that occurs approximately every five years. Marvin witnesses the event and is shocked into carrying out Harvey’s last wish, but members of the alliance, most of them in their seventies or older, are determined to stop him since that wish was to disband the alliance!
Sally’s Destiny — The Maduna family in Pretoria, South Africa, are part of millions now evacuated from their homes as a mysterious thing is killing people. When someone answers his cell phone or looks at a computer screen or electronic tablet, he/she screams in fiery agony as the cells of his or her body break down into atoms, the human equivalent of ones and zeroes. The Madunas break away from the evacuees fleeing this killer and head off in another direction. They soon find themselves, with the help of an elderly British man, in a position to save mankind from this scourge.
A True Joule — Sherry Corbin is a social media consultant in a city near the border of what had been Canada but is now Yi North, a province of China. The U.S. is now Yi, also a province of China. Sherry learns from her boyfriend Hugh Stagg, head of the Joule Group, that the deep freeze they have been experiencing the past month is caused by a new power generation plant in China. Having discovered that Sherry can direct electricity from the Earth’s polar fields through herself and to objects around her, Hugh convinces her to help him find that power plant and shut it down. But she eventually finds that another plan is in play.
If Looks Could Kill — Thultha Smith isn’t an ordinary hot babe, walking the sidewalks of the city shimmering in the summer heat. Charles Niler soon discovers this when he sees her suck the life force out of a bum in a dirty, smelly alley. Then he discovers that she is a new hire at the law firm where he works. She claims more victims but doesn’t seem interested in going after Charles, telling him that he’s not her type. Police detective Reece Simms enters the picture when Charles’ neighbor in his apartment building disappears. Soon Charles learns the truth about who or what Thultha really is.
The Eyes of Cleopatra — Zachariah Fontaine and his assistant Jessica Cushing of Fontaine Investigations in Rockville, Maryland, north of Washington, DC, are on their weirdest case yet. This time their client is Ahmud Rah, an Egyptian official in search of two very special gemstones stolen from his hotel room. He hires Zachariah, and the hunt begins. But Zachariah and Jessica can tell that these gems are even more special than Ahmud had told them. A dead Egyptian scholar, a dead professor, a dead waiter, and the kidnapped daughter of the Egyptian ambassador who is to be the new Cleopatra spur Zachariah and Jessica to quicken the search. It leads them to a Gothic style stone house in a farming area of the state where they encounter Univera, creator of the universe who is ready to resume the role she had played as Cleopatra millennia earlier.
A Long Way from Arach — We sent out an invitation to alien life in the universe. That invitation has been accepted by a sentient race of spiders on the planet Arach. They have mutated to be the size of ponies and to eating endoskeletal creatures, especially the two-legged kind. In the year 2085, a scout ship from Arach lands in Detroit in what is now CanUS (Canada and the U.S. combined) on Earth. A hundred hatchlings stream out—the advance force for the mass invasion. Dr. Sharon Grant, an arachnologist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, teams up with Dr. Nathan Vanderley, director of the NASA Research Park in San Jose, California, to track down the hatchlings while Nate’s team studies the remains of the egg-shaped spaceship in which they had arrived. Meanwhile, Earth satellites have detected a swarm of one hundred egg-shaped spaceships headed their way. The war against the Arachnians is on.
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If you’ve been enjoying my flash fiction on here, please check out my first book of short stories (a couple are actually novelette length), newly published by Wordwooze Publishing. (I even designed the cover.)
A.C. Cargill, Author 