Author: Collector

Bangkok, Krung Thep, the metropolis, had so many foreigners, too, or, as the Thais called them: “farangs.” Not that she’d never seen foreigners, in person; she’d seen a few farangs, sure, but only a handful, usually graying, overweight, with far younger Thai wives, often Thai wives who’d been single mothers. Such as one of her neighbors, Bu…

Ever since I’d been promoted into the Sexually Frustrated Department, I’d seen more offices of the vast skyscraper where Vick Industries filled its floors, than I ever had as an ad executive, and I’d only been in this department for a week. The worst thing about my new department is its location, near the mail room downstairs. The space is […]

I go camping in the woods as often as possible because I like to embrace the natural world, far away from the urban congestion and odors man has wrought on the world. I’m just a guy who doesn’t fit in with the city life, so I escape for my solitude as often as I can. Usually every weekend in the […]

Jordan found the ad in a local newspaper. “Needed: Healthy male, age 18-30, for testing of a classified robotic prototype, $400 dollar stipend for selected volunteers” with some half-assed stock photo design and a number to call for information. Jordan’s friends laughed when he told them about it, and warned him that it sounded like human trafficking or at the […]

“That was one hell of a party,” he muttered as he sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. He looked around as he stood. The walls were eggshell white, two walls held paintings of bowls of fruit and flowers. In one corner stood a pressed wood wardrobe of the quality one would expect to find […]

The hiss of the hydraulics was the first sensation she experienced. Some sort of fluid drained outside the bag she lay in, settling her gently on the bottom. The bottom of what? The light was filtered by the opaque plastic sheeting, a fact she was grateful for as her eyes struggled to readjust. She tried to raise her arms but […]

Milo Maxwell sighed as he returned the entry column back to its original loading position and entered the command keys to engage the sequence again. He loaded another pod remotely into the chamber, locked the shield clamps down and slid the human sleep chamber into the firing bay. He powered the shields, engaged the heatsync and fired the single man […]

“Alex! Are you out of bed yet? You’ve got that audition today, remember?” I groaned at the sound of my mother’s raucous voice that came shouting up the stairs as I finished getting dressed. One of these days, I kept telling myself, I’d get a good job, a good acting gig that paid well and I could move the hell […]

When Barbara woke up she assumed it would be a day pretty much like every other day. It was a Wednesday, the middle of the work week. Where most people tend to say they hate Mondays it was always Wednesdays that Barbara liked the least. It seemed somehow unfair to her that after busting her butt for two days she […]

Eneccor had been the top science professor at the university for exobiology for nearly 10 solar cycles. He knew that the rampant disease would stop all reproduction, and eventually cause extinction of the whole of the Gork race. At the King’s insistence he had sent his students across the galaxy to find the one bipedal intelligent creature that might be […]