Victor D. López's Blog: Victor D. Lopez, page 87

Sonnets: “Familiar Pain”

Familiar Pain

If I continue on my present course,

I cannot help but come to lose my mind,

The strongest feeling left me is remorse,

And solitude the answer that I find.

I ask so little, yet it seems too much:

To share complete, unfettered, selfless love,

To feel the titillation of a touch,

Which does not fade and we can’t rise above.

I know that what I search for is not real,

Yet I can’t still the yearning in my heart,

Reason decries the tenderness I feel,

Still, I trudge onward playing out my part.

I struggle daily to gain self control,

Conscious that I am heading for a fall.

From Of Pain and Ecstasy: Collected Poems (C) 2011 Victor D. López



Tagged: book of poetry, contemporary poetry, sonnets

Sonnets: “The Pages of My Life”

The Pages of My Life

I read the pages of my life so clear,

Its images dismissed as pains of youth,

And yet, though far, I see them all so clear,

Relive the fear, hope, warmth‑‑glimmers of truth.

 

Vague shadows visit me and leave behind,

Uneasy feelings draped in tenderness,

I see too well, yet wish that I were blind,

And fear above all else my truthfulness.

 

If only I believed that I could find,  

One path in life to follow faithfully;

How sad that knowledge can be so unkind,

And pain the wages of our honesty.

 

I’d gladly give my life for peace of mind,

Yet know in life it is not mine to find.

From Of Pain and Ecstasy: Collected Poems (C) 2011 Victor D. López

Tagged: blank verse, book of poetry, contemporary poetrry, free verse, sonnets

Sonnets: “The Heart’s Betrayal”

The Heart’s Betrayal

I hear her voice and cannot help but smile,

I hold her eyes and do not need to speak,

I hear her laughter and life seems worthwhile,

I think of her and am bereft of sleep.

When she is near my thoughts are but a blur,

I feel contentment  and great tenderness,

When she leaves, even briefly, I endure,

An irrational growing emptiness.

I do not wish to love her, yet I do,

And recognize the pain that it will cause,

To one who loves me deeply, long and true,

And does not know of her potential loss.

Reason decries the growing love I feel,

Yet it is there, most powerful and real.

From Of Pain and Ecstasy: Collected Poems (C) 2011 Victor D. López

Sonnets: Ode to Innocence

  Ode to Innocence
Oh half-remembered, fleeting happy time,
When nothing mattered more than love and play,
Imagination was then in its prime,
And life began anew with every day.

A flower was then a joy, a mystery,
And not a petal, root and simple stem,
And life was full of wondrous fantasy,
Untainted by the intellect of man.

That time is gone now, It cannot return,
The fruit’s been swallowed, its slow poison kills,
And yet my fallen heart will always yearn,
For that ephemeral time of unknown skills.

Oh false god, knowledge, daily you destroy,
All that was holy in me as a boy!



From Of Pain and Ecstasy: Collected Poems (C) 2011 Victor D. López

 

Book of Dreams 2e: Preview #7

Short Story Preview, “End of Days” from Book of Dreams 2e.

This is the newest short story from my Book of Dreams 2nd Edition: Science Fiction and Speculative Fiction Short Stories collection. It is also available as a stand-alone Kindle short story here. The description from the short story  from Amazon.com appears below:

This short story poses a novel theory as to the role of black holes in both the creation and destruction of an endless number of universes that coexist in an incomprehensibly complex multiverse. It is a cautionary tale about the arrogance of scientists who are the cosmic equivalent of amoebas attempting to discern the secrets of the universe by thoroughly examining within the limits of their perception the drop of pond scum they inhabit. It is also a cautionary tale about the ability of determined, creative terrorists to begin the process that will lead to the destruction of our corner of the multiverse by the creative use of materials at their disposal. 


The end is very, very near and there is absolutely nothing we can do about it.

I hope you enjoy the following preview.

_________________________________________

End of Days
God spoke to me last night. No, I am not schizophrenic or a Jesus freak. Nor am I a conspiracy theorist (well, except for JFK’s assassination, of course–unless the principles of quantum mechanics somehow apply to bullets fired from book depositories with inhuman rapidity to perform a dance macabre through the bodies of governors before striking their intended target), but I know precisely the series of events that will result in the end of the world and will eventually give birth to a new universe. It came to me in a dream. No, really, it did.


It all started pretty much like a bad Hollywood disaster flick (sorry, I know that’s redundant) with well funded mad scientists doing what comes natural in fiction as well as in fact. “Build us a big Hadron Supercollider, and we’ll find the elusive Higgs boson God particle. Maybe we’ll even come up with a unified theory that incorporates the pesky behavior of subatomic particles and allows us to demystify quantum mechanics once and for all.” It turns out, not surprising to anyone, other than scientists of course, that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and that allowing children to play unsupervised in a chemistry lab or with a super-duper, neat-o particle accelerator is not such a good thing after all. Who’d have thunk it?


The first hint that something was just a bit off-kilter came in the form of assurances by project scientists delivered with the smug expressions and thinly veiled contempt with which they usually approach any communication with the unwashed masses, that yes, miniature black holes could probably be created by subatomic particles accelerated at nearly light speed through a 17-mile circular particle accelerator and forced to collide in a massive release of energy, but such black holes would quickly dissipate. “No,” they smiled complacently, “there is absolutely no danger in these experiments.”


The second hint of a problem (and by hint I mean claxons going off, red lights flashing, and Robby the Robot’s accordion arms waving wildly while proclaiming “danger, Will Robinson!”) came when the Hadron Supercollider suffered some unspecified problems that caused it to be shut down for months on end after its first full-scale test. When the 17-mile supercollider was once again brought back on line, headlines proclaimed the countdown would begin again for the end of the world. Smile, snicker, hah-hah. What was not reported was the actual reason for the shutdown, since no one, including the geniuses running the experiments, knew the real cause: a miniature black hole that did not quickly dissipate in the lab as expected and caused a nearly catastrophic shutdown as it drilled an invisible hole a few molecules wide, eagerly sucking up anything that crossed its tiny event horizon, as it accelerated slowly but inexorably downward, worming its way through the containment chamber, rapidly vacuuming vital bits of the temperamental equipment on its way to the center of the earth.


Not to worry, though, it is still relatively small despite its voracious, unquenchable appetite, though it is exponentially increasing its mass as it swings like a pendulum through the earth’s core and beyond it in decreasing arcs that will eventually settle it at the earth’s core. It will be many months and perhaps years before we begin to feel the cataclysmic seismic effects of its inexorable violation of the earth’s core, and longer still before the entire planet and every living thing in it is sucked into its vortex, followed thereafter by the moon, and then the outer planets as the growing black hole continues its feeding frenzy, eventually consuming the entire solar system and Sol itself.


But that would be many years, perhaps millennia, in the future given the diminutive size of the black hole at present. And scientists still believe that the equipment failure was unrelated to its actual cause since the unreported black hole the initial full-scale test produced dissipated soon after its formation according to their classified reports. Therefore, the supercollider was repaired, and billions or Euros later, the scientists have their plaything once more and science is free to continue its happy march towards oblivion. If it ended here, we’d have little to worry about in the short term, other than perhaps ever-increasing seismic activity. Even the hungriest little black hole needs a great deal of time to ingest a planet from the inside out, and if later laboratory-created black holes don’t ingest other vital pieces of sensitive equipment on their way to joining their older brother down the rabbit hole in their inexorable journey to swallow our blue planet, we’d probably kill off our species through war, pestilence, famine or other forms of humanity’s endless capacity for galloping stupidity long before daddy’s and mommy’s little darlings consumed the world.


If my prescient dream had ended there, I’d shake it off with a smile and go about my day without another thought, compartmentalizing the certain knowledge of future doom in the nether regions of my mind, right next to the knowledge of the unsustainability of our ballooning federal and state deficits and the possibility of an asteroid hit that would once again eradicate most plant and animal life on this planet.


Unfortunately, scientists are not the only ones who like to play God. They are just more tragic and contemptible in their efforts at doing so because they should know better. They are like amoebas attempting to extrapolate the secrets of the universe by examining in minutest detail the drop of fetid swamp water atop a floating leaf that they inhabit. In a very real sense, scientists are among the smartest amoebas, all hail their boundless wisdom! But others like to play in the hedonistic God sandbox, too. And here is where my prescient dream grows infinitely darker.


It so happens that terrorists pay attention to science. Science, after all, brought us TNT, the A-bomb, the H-bomb, weaponized anthrax and lots of other cool goodies that are wonderful additions to the terrorists’ toolkits. As it happens, one particularly well funded, well connected group in the Middle East thinks it a grand idea to blow Israel off the face of the earth before that even better funded, and better connected state has the chance to do the same to them or to their proxy states. They have acquired a gaggle of disaffected, under-employed Russian physicists and funded them generously to come up with “outside-the-box” ideas for a doomsday device on the cheap. They did not have 17-mile supercolliders to play with, and Jihadist physicists are a rare breed. But not to worry, they had something better: money, lots of it, and the ability to entice scientists who view themselves above pedantic, bourgeois notions of ethics
and for whom science is the only religion.

 

Undaunted by any notions of right and wrong and guided by the simple principle that “if it can be done, it must be done,” these brilliant men and women soon developed a working experiment that presented an elegant solution that their benefactors immediately approved.

[***** END OF PREVIEW *****]


Book of Dreams 2e is available both in paperback and Kindle editions. Seven of the eight short stories in the collection are also available as stand-alone short stories for the Kindle. You can get additional information about each of these by clicking on their respective covers below.


I hope you enjoyed the preview and am very grateful for your interest.




















Tagged: science fiction, short stories, speculative fiction

Book of Dreams 2nd Edition — Preview #5 — Earth Mother

Book of Dream, Second Edition

Science Fiction and Speculative Fiction Short Stories

Victor D. López

Copyright 1976-2012 by Victor D. López

 

No portion of this copyrighted book may be copied, posted, transmitted or otherwise used in any form without the express written consent of the author.

About the Author

Victor D. López is an Associate Professor of Legal Studies in Business at Hofstra University’s Frank G. Zarb School of Business. He holds a Juris Doctor degree from St. John’s University School of Law and is a member of the New York State Bar, New York State Bar Association, The Academy of Legal Studies in Business (ALSB) and the North East Academy of Legal Studies in Business (NEALSB). He has been an academic for more than 25 years and, prior to joining the Hofstra University faculty, served as a tenured Professor of Business, as Dean of Business and Business Information Technologies, and as Academic Dean in urban, suburban and rural public and private academic institutions.

Professor López is the author of several textbooks and trade books and has written poetry and fiction throughout most of his life, some of which has been publishes in anthologies and literary magazines.

Other Books by the Author

Of Pain and Ecstasy: Collected Poems (Printed through Kindle Book Publishing and CreateSpace, Summer 2011)
Intellectual Property Law: A Practical Guide to Copyrights, Patents, Trademarks and Trade Secrets (Printed through Kindle Book Publishing and CreateSpace, Summer 2011)
Business Law: An Introduction 2e, Textbook Media, 2011. (text, test bank, and instructor’s manual) Available at http://www.textbookmedia.com
Business Law and the Legal Environment of Business 2e, Textbook Media 2010. (text, test bank, and instructor’s manual) Available at http://www.textbookmedia.com
Free and Low Cost Software for the PC, McFarland & Company 2000.
Legal Environment of Business, Prentice Hall 1997. (text, test bank and instructor’s resource manual)
Case and Resource Material for the Legal Environment of Business, Prentice Hall 1997.
Business Law: An Introduction, Richard D. Irwin/Mirror Press 1993. (text, test bank and instructor’s resource manual)
Free and User Supported Software for the IBM PC: A Resource Guide for Libraries and Individuals, McFarland & Company 1990. (coauthored with Kenneth J. Ansley)

For Claude, Cathy, Andy and Christina Morell, with love and gratitude for a lifetime of friendship

Table of Contents

Eternal Quest
To Sleep Perchance to Dream
What Price to Live the Dream?
Mergs (Or Why Godot Can’t Come)
Earth Mother
The Day the Dolphins Vanished
Justice
End of Days

Earth Mother

She awoke in the throes of a mind numbing panic.  Her eardrums sympathetically vibrated with the subliminal hum of an unseen, unheard yet very palpable force just below the threshold of audible frequencies.  Her heartbeat sloshed in her ears as though she were under water, desperately trying to escape a powerful predator.

The adrenaline in her veins and the irrational fear that paralyzed her made every joint in her body ache and yielded spasmodic pains as though her muscles were tightly coiling around themselves. Her mouth dry and vocal cords frozen from fear, Lisa lacked the power to give voice to a scream that was born, grew and died in her throat without expression.  Unable to move and still unaware of the cause of her discomfort, Lisa could detect a barely perceptible blue-green aura through the partially closed Venetian blinds and drawn drapes in her bedroom.  The air was charged;  she could sense it though the prickly itch of her hair standing on end. It smelled like a summer thunderstorm had just passed though, despite a cloudless sky.

After long, silent moments of languishing transfixed in irrational terror, satin sheets clinging coldly to her naked body as she lay in a  perspiration-soaked bed, a painful flash of white light inundated her bedroom, leaving Lisa temporarily blind, with multiple circular black afterimages receding slowly through her repetitive blinking, eventually fading to gray and melding into a humanoid form standing some six feet from the foot of her bed. The form, a hairless, androgynous ashen skinned humanoid with large, seal-like black eyes, button nosed, with thin, small lips,  approximately five feet tall and weighing perhaps ninety-five pounds, finally spoke to her.  More accurately, it transmitted words and fragmentary, vivid images into her mind accompanied by a soft, musical sound that might be speech and was as beautiful as it was unintelligible.

“Please, please don’t hurt me,” she thought, still unable to utter a sound.

“No need to fear; we will not do you harm. Be calm,” the creature replied in visual words and images that were fragmented but quite clear.

“Please go away.  Oh. God, help me, please.”  Lisa would have cried and screamed and run had she the power to do any of those things.  Since she did not, she lay still, mentally pleading with the seemingly innocuous creature whose presence, despite its attempts at reassurance, had done little to ameliorate her dread.

“Do not fear.  We bring you a gift with which to bargain for your help.”  The creature’s facial expression and body language did not change, but the visual messages it transmitted clearly tried to show its good will. Warmth, happiness, contentment emanated from the creature as does the sweet scent of a flower carried by a slight summer’s breeze.

“You won’t hurt me?” Lisa half asked, half pleaded, somewhat reassured by the creature’s communication, yet certainly not yet disposed to accept its alleged good will at face value.

“We come only to offer a gift, in exchange for your assistance.”

“What kind of gift?  And what type of help do you want?” Lisa’s fear seemed to dissolve rather quickly with each reference by the creature to a gift.

“We offer a great gift, the ability to communicate without words as we now do, in exchange for your service”  The creature retorted, seemingly encouraged into more negotiation by Lisa’s growing receptiveness.

“Are you offering me the gift of telepathy?”  Lisa’s heart, no longer beating fast in response to fear, was beginning to speed up in response to a new growing emotion.”

“You may call it that, yes.”

“What do you want in exchange?” Lisa asked, furrowing her brow slightly, and beginning to ask herself what in her power she would not be willing to do for that ability.

“You must incubate one of us and nurture it until it is strong enough to part from you.”

“I don’t understand. Do you want me to care for you or one of your kind? To be a baby sitter?”

“Much more,” the creature replied, sending Lisa a clear image of a human body, her body, in the last stages of pregnancy.

“No!” replied Lisa, tried instinctively to close her legs and gather her sheets about her, aware for the first time of her nakedness and vulnerable position with great revulsion. She also remembered the unpleasant reports of alien encounters with horrific medical exams and intrusive probes wielded by intergalactic perverts apparently intent on molesting humans for their own gratification. But her body would not obey her commands; whether she was paralyzed by some sort of stasis field of by the creature’s mental powers, she did not know.

“It is not copulation we seek,” the creature immediately offered, seemingly amused and sending a clear visual image of its honorable intentions.  “Our anatomy is unlike yours and would not permit it, but your womb is compatible for our purposes.  We would plant an embryo in your uterus that would grow, protected and nourished through your normal biological means” With this, the creature sent an image of a sesame seed-sized embryo being implanted into a human host, and later emerging in the usual means less than a fifth the size of a human baby.

“No pain?” Lisa asked, relived but cautious.

“Both the implantation and the subsequent birth are completely free of discomfort.”

“How long for the procedure and how long is the period of gestation?”

“Two of your minutes for the implantation and six of your weeks for the gestation to be completed.”

“A two minute implant and painless delivery six weeks later buys me the gift of telepathy, huh.  Is that your deal?”

“Yes.”

“Wait a minute.  My mother raised no fools.  How long does my telepathy last?”

“Throughout the entire period of your life.”

“Not bad.  A lifetime of telepathy for six weeks of work.” Lisa replied, more to herself than to the creature, who perhaps sensing that fact made no reply.

Then, her brow furrowing again, she continued, “If this is such an easy deal, why do you need me?  Why can’t your own kind do so themselves.”

“All of those capable of breeding on our world are dead.” The creature’s thoughts and mental images conveyed great sadness. “We will cease to exist as a species unless we have outworlders such as yourself help us.”

“Sorry to hear that. “  She thought back at the creature, which again made no reply.  “Is there any risk to me from the pregnancy or birth? Will you return for the birth?  And how long need I care for the thing afterwards?”

“There is no risk to you.  We will give you medications to strengthen your immune system and eradicate any illness you may currently have. The medication will also prevent your antibodies from attacking the embryo.  We can guarantee your health and vitality for the rest of your life as a byproduct of the procedure.  As to our return, it is unnecessary.  Our infants are self sufficient and require only the most basic type of sustenance for a period that never exceeds two of your weeks after their birth. The infant would then move on without need of any additional assistance from you.”

“Sounds like a deal to me.  The little bugger will pop out like a slice of toast when its time comes, care for itself immediately, leaving me with telepathy and good health for life, and I don’t even have to undergo morning sickness or stretch marks.  What more could a girl want?” She smiled, thinking about the possibilities that telepathy would provide for her.  To know what others thought, and to be able to plant messages in their minds.  The possibilities were intoxicatingly endless.

“Can I still work until it is time to give birth?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“What do I feed the baby when it is born?

“Your body will provide all the nourishment it needs”

“You mean it will breast-feed?”

“Just as you say, at least for a while.” The alien answered without expression or accompanying images.

“What if I refuse your offer?”

“Then I would leave and not trouble you again.”

[*****END OF PREVIEW # 2*****]

This short story is one of eight short stories in Book of Dreams 2nd Edition and has also been reprinted as a stand-alone short sot for the Kindle reader. You can view additional information about each by clicking on the book covers below. For additional information about other titles currently available through Amazon, you can visit my author’s page by clicking here. Thank you for visiting this page and for your interest in my short fiction.

Tagged: science fiction, SF, short stories, speculative fiction

Free Audio File — SF Flash Fiction “Justice” from Book of Dreams 2nd Ed.

Audio file – Short Story, Justice, from Book of Dreams 2e.

This is my reading of the shortest short story, Justice, from my Book of Dreams 2nd Edition: Science Fiction and Speculative Fiction Short Stories. It is the only piece of “flash fiction” in the collection of eight short stories. Although I’ve lectured for a quarter century, it is interesting how difficult it can be to read one’s own work out loud. It is a cold reading due to time constraints, and is recorded with an inexpensive microphone, but I hope it can provide at least an awkward semblance of the “sound” of the story in my mind’s ear as I wrote it. You may access the reading, formatted as a YouTube video, by clicking here.

A Modest Proposal for a New Centrury – Revisited

During the final stretch in the circus that was the last Presidential election I wrote the following post. Since I can no longer sit through an entire newscast from ANY of the cable news channels due in no small part to the continuing three ring circus that is Washington D.C. with variants of the same old **** playing out at Pennsylvania Avenue and Capitol Hill, I thought it appropriate to dust off my proposal once more.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Once the auto stimulation of the Republican and Democratic conventions is finally over and the echoes of bombastic speeches full of sound and fury signifying little are swept off the stage along with the confetti, it might be wise for all Americans to do some out-of-the-box thinking about what could be done to save us from a government that too often gives anarchy a good name.So, with advance apologies to Jonathan Swift, I would like to offer my own six-point modest proposal to save our democracy via some creative Constitutional Amendments for a new century. Since the Constitution is a living document under the prevailing jurisprudential view, let us inject some vibrancy and new vitality into the old, dated, dry, parchment.

1. Send every single politician in Washington D.C. on a one-way junket to any lesser-developed country on earth that still practices cannibalism as both foreign aid and a good-will gesture that shows our respect for all cultural predilections;

2. Replace the anachronistic electoral college system and representative democracy with direct democracy–one (live) person one vote (even in Chicago);

3. Disband the executive and legislative branches of government and their attendant bloated bureaucracies and replace
both with a supercomputer (HAL 2012?) to implement the direct wishes of the people through appropriate legislation literally interpreted and enforced;

4. Use the savings from the dismantling of the federal bureaucracy for direct programs at home to provide a true safety net for needy individuals, enhance everyone’s health care, and provide practical work-related training and support that every American may once again take pride in being a useful contributor to and stakeholder in a great society that actually lives up to the name;

5.Send displaced federal bureaucrats for retraining that they may utilize their innate skills for other more useful purposes–guano farming and cesspool cleaning services come to mind (no disrespect intended to guano farmers or cesspool cleaning
professionals). Those who resist can be offered a free trip under Paragraph 1;

6. Provide the same benefit under Paragraph 1 to federal judges who subvert the people’s will and the Constitution by interpreting square legislative pegs as anything but square legislative pegs.

Any thoughts?

Book of Dreams 2e — Preview #4 — Mergs (Or Why Godot Can’t Come)

Book of Dream, Second Edition

Science Fiction and Speculative Fiction Short Stories

Victor D. López

Copyright 1976-2012 by Victor D. López

 

No portion of this copyrighted book may be copied, posted, transmitted or otherwise used in any form without the express written consent of the author.

About the Author

Victor D. López is an Associate Professor of Legal Studies in Business at Hofstra University’s Frank G. Zarb School of Business. He holds a Juris Doctor degree from St. John’s University School of Law and is a member of the New York State Bar, New York State Bar Association, The Academy of Legal Studies in Business (ALSB) and the North East Academy of Legal Studies in Business (NEALSB). He has been an academic for more than 25 years and, prior to joining the Hofstra University faculty, served as a tenured Professor of Business, as Dean of Business and Business Information Technologies, and as Academic Dean in urban, suburban and rural public and private academic institutions.

Professor López is the author of several textbooks and trade books and has written poetry and fiction throughout most of his life, some of which has been publishes in anthologies and literary magazines.

Other Books by the Author

Of Pain and Ecstasy: Collected Poems (Printed through Kindle Book Publishing and CreateSpace, Summer 2011)
Intellectual Property Law: A Practical Guide to Copyrights, Patents, Trademarks and Trade Secrets (Printed through Kindle Book Publishing and CreateSpace, Summer 2011)
Business Law: An Introduction 2e, Textbook Media, 2011. (text, test bank, and instructor’s manual) Available at http://www.textbookmedia.com
Business Law and the Legal Environment of Business 2e, Textbook Media 2010. (text, test bank, and instructor’s manual) Available at http://www.textbookmedia.com
Free and Low Cost Software for the PC, McFarland & Company 2000.
Legal Environment of Business, Prentice Hall 1997. (text, test bank and instructor’s resource manual)
Case and Resource Material for the Legal Environment of Business, Prentice Hall 1997.
Business Law: An Introduction, Richard D. Irwin/Mirror Press 1993. (text, test bank and instructor’s resource manual)
Free and User Supported Software for the IBM PC: A Resource Guide for Libraries and Individuals, McFarland & Company 1990. (coauthored with Kenneth J. Ansley)

For Claude, Cathy, Andy and Christina Morell, with love and gratitude for a lifetime of friendship

Table of Contents

Eternal Quest
To Sleep Perchance to Dream
What Price to Live the Dream?
Mergs (Or Why Godot Can’t Come)
Earth Mother
The Day the Dolphins Vanished
Justice
End of Days

Mergs (Or, Why Godot Can’t Come)

Something was definitely wrong with the world. The Provider appeared to have abandoned his children, and the cold advanced unchecked from the great beyond, even as the land lost its life-giving warmth. And, although every single being was aware of the incipient disaster, none could understand the reason for the inexplicable climate change, let alone think of a way to stave off the certain destruction of their kind.

Mergs, the dominant beings in a world of almost limitless bounty, are highly resilient, sentient beings who had evolved in an environment that offers no natural impediment to their growth and development. With no natural enemies to protect against and no need to marshal limited resources, Mergs, who are not by nature particularly gregarious, never developed a social structure or any concept of property; all the necessities of life are provided by the land in inexhaustible quantities. Each simply takes from the land in accordance with its needs or appetites without the slightest need for toil, industry or planning. Food can be found all around in limitless quantities and variety. All that is required to procure a meal is to bend down and scoop up tasty, highly nourishing morsels of delectable substances in endless varieties and inexhaustible quantities. Thirst quenching, delicious liquids quite nourishing in their own right are available in pools, lakes and rivers of various sizes scattered throughout the land. As with the solid food, the land offers up liquid nourishment in endless variety, some yielding intoxicating effects not unlike that of alcohol and hallucinogenic drugs in the human system. These intoxicating springs are particularly popular with Mergs who are not by nature temperate creatures.

Although the Mergs’ existence might seem a utopian one, there is, alas, a price exacted for such a life of perpetual ease and unending bounty. Endless leisure and an existence devoid of challenge had made the Mergs into a rather intellectually dull race. Intelligence is not prized in a land that so freely yields up its bounty, where there is no game to hunt or trap, no enemy to guard or plot against, and no need for shelter to protect one’s property or oneself from the elements, or the aggression and greed of others. Thus, while Mergs had the same genetically coded survival instinct as all other living organisms, the particular circumstances of their rather hospitable world did not necessitate that it give birth to science, mathematics, or the cultivation of knowledge that at its most fundamental core is born of the survival instinct. For Mergs, survival merely requires eating, sleeping and reproducing to take place. And, since Mergs reproduce asexually, that function is best served by eating as much as possible, thus obtaining the necessary mass and energy required by the reproductive function. Not surprisingly, then, Mergs spend most of their waking hours eating, or looking for new sources of food in order to find pleasure in what would otherwise be the tedium of their primary occupation.

Although the Mergs have no religion as such, they share a universal belief in the Provider, their creator who is the source of life and, in accordance with their belief system, constantly replenishes their supply of food and keeps the land warm for their benefit. Perhaps such a belief system developed due to the destructive floods and killing fumes that are inexplicably visited at least once on the land during the typical Merg’s life cycle. In the Mergs’ belief system, the Provider doles out such catastrophes as punishment for unknown transgressions of which they must surely be guilty, though they be beyond their comprehension. But, because such punishments are uncommon, they represent more an apocalyptic myth than a reality to be feared by the average Merg.

When such disasters occur, the remarkable resilience of these creatures allows them to spring back undaunted to soon forget they had taken place. And if the Provider earned their respect  through the awesome power he wields, he also earns their unwavering devotion through his constant replenishment of their food supplies which miraculously appeared daily throughout the land, rumored to emanate mostly in a far-off region of the world, where they are said to gush forth in incalculable quantities, conjured forth by the benevolent Provider, erupting from the bowels of the land  and spread by Him to the four corners of the land through powers beyond their ken.

 [**** END OF PREVIEW ****]

This short story is one of eight short stories in Book of Dreams 2nd Edition and has also been reprinted as a stand-alone short sot for the Kindle reader. You can view additional information about each by clicking on the book covers below. For additional information about other titles currently available through Amazon, you can visit my author’s page by clicking here. Thank you for visiting this page and for your interest in my short fiction.

Tagged: science fiction, sf scifi, short stories, speculative fiction

Book of Dreams 2nd Edition – Preview #3 – What Price to Live the Dream

What Price to Live the Dream?

Ken was tired, despondent and none too sober. He’d learnt only a few hours before that the Phoenix Project of which he was the lead scientist was about to be scrapped, that funding would not be renewed by Congress for the current fiscal year to the intelligence agency for which he worked. He saw the last 15 years of his life, years in which he’d been entirely absorbed in working on this most carefully guarded project and which had borne success beyond his most optimistic hopes, rush by him in a swirling haze. His life’s work was dissolving before his eyes like an early morning  mist burnt away by the unforgiving rising sun of a new day (and a new Washington administration unfriendly to risky, high-priced covert projects).

The Phoenix project had been his life. He had conceived it while an undergraduate student at MIT and it had taken on  a life of its own until it became his rason d’etre. He used his considerable powers of persuasion, and political connections (being the son of a senior senator certainly had not hindered his efforts, and he had not been shy about enlisting his father as an ally from the start), to convince the intelligence agency that his project was both feasible and of unparalleled value as an intelligence tool, and much too dangerous to be developed by private industry. All three assertions were undeniably true. Unfortunately for Dr. Kenneth Leyans, having cast his lot with the government, he was now precluded from pursuing his project through the private sector despite the fact that the cost of further research and development from this point on would be relatively modest. The pointed success he had achieved, to date would make many technology companies and most foreign governments literally kill to get their hands on his work, and would make him to only an instant billionaire, but a guaranteed Nobel laureate.

Simply put, the Phoenix project represented quantum leaps in computer technology and nanotechnology that allowed for a symbiotic melding between humans and computers. Dr. Leyans had succeeded in creating a device which could read and store any person’s complete memories from birth and download them into a computer’s memory, where they would be stored and could be enhanced, manipulated and made to interact with the real, computer-enhanced and computer-generated virtual memories of thousands of other people.  Any person interfacing with the system can be made to relive his past from any given point with such accuracy as to make it indistinguishable from reality. Any past experience could now be relived in minutest detail. But the system was far more than a virtual memory generator. A subject interacting with the system still retained the free will to change past events by making different decisions from those made in his or her past, thereby affecting a change in all that followed from that moment in time onward. Decisions great and small that define our lives and its intrinsic quality could be revised. Doors closed by past choices, destinations forever unreachable in life after taking the wrong fork in the road leading to the wrong career, the wrong friendship, the wrong mate, could all be potentially revised.

At a fundamental level, we are little more than the sum of our life’s choices. With the benefit of hindsight we can judge the wisdom of our decisions and congratulate ourselves for our successes or lick the wounds of our failures. If we are wise, we learn from both. But no amount of introspection can alter the course of events that flow from crucial decisions made. Words spoken in anger cannot be taken back. A bullet fired from a gun cannot be recalled. A priceless crystal vase once dropped and shattered cannot be reassembled. Life offers no rewind button and the detritus we leave in our wake as the remnants of our broken dreams, broken words, broken hearts and broken souls is all too often beyond repair.

But the Phoenix Project had the potential to change that. The system’s many applications would include entertainment and it would add a powerful new tool for the treatment of mental illness. But it is the value to any government as an intelligence tool that Dr. Leyans had stressed when seeking government funding of his research: It would provide a valuable training and debriefing tool for agents and for the military, allowing subjects to re-live previous assignments or computer generated new ones; the entire memories of captured terrorists, enemy agents or dangerous criminals could be read into the computer and examined or changed by it so as to yield important information which could not be withheld. Agents’ reactions to specific events, such as interrogation under torture, could be examined so as to best determine their likely reactions in the field. It might even be possible to re-program captured foreign agents, terrorists and other enemy combatants at will so that they could be used to sow misinformation, gather information and otherwise disrupt the plans of enemies of the state‑‑something not yet achieved by the system, but certainly well within its theoretical limits and a possibility well worth exploring.

Unfortunately, not every bug had yet been satisfactorily worked out. The system’s Achilles heel, and the trigger for the withdrawal of funding, was that the link between it and a subject once established could not be safely severed. Such attempts invariably led to one of two unacceptable results: death or madness. A person’s memories could be downloaded safely into the system without any ill effects; all that was required was the massive storage and processing power of a network of linked supercomputers and the wearing of a helmet with hypersensitive sensor receptors able to intercept and translate normal brain waves into data downloadable to the network. The average download time for a subject was a mere 10-12 hours of connect time under sedation. But for the system to directly interface with the brain in an active manner, setting up the parameters of the memories to be relived or hypothetical present setting to be infused, a more complicated procedure was required. In order to facilitate the symbiotic linkup to the Phoenix Project, an esoteric mixture of biochemical and nanotechnology agents needs to be consumed within four hours of the linkup. The biochemical agents strengthen the brain’s normal electrochemical reactions and enhance the body’s circulatory system, while the nanotechnology agents are carried through the blood to the brain, where they attach to individual neurons and act as miniature receptors to translate and convey impulses from the computer directly to the brain.  The combination of the biochemical and nanotechnology agents makes it possible for a subject to receive data directly from the system safely.  Unfortunately, once the link is disturbed, dire consequences result for reasons that Dr. Leyans and his team did not yet understand.

Convinced that the failure of the tests on the chimpanzee and gorilla subjects was related to the creatures’ inability to cope with the stress of the procedure due to their limited mental capacity and their inability to understand what was happening to them, three volunteers from the Phoenix Projects took it upon themselves to perform unauthorized tests on humans. Without the knowledge or consent of Dr. Leyans, three volunteers agreed to simultaneously interface with the system. They knew they would only get one shot at it and, aware of the high risk to themselves but confident in the success they would achieve, they wanted to have multiple positive results to strengthen the argument for further human trials. Of the three test volunteers, two died upon the severance of the symbiotic link between the subject and the system, and the third suffered severe psychosis requiring her to be institutionalized; the well-meaning volunteers in a single act confirmed the failed results on the simian test subjects and simultaneously dealt a death blow to the project.

Ken had been torn between the grief and guilt he felt for his colleagues and the frustration and anger at the untimely demise of the project so close to achieving complete success.  The link‑up had been successful in all three cases; he had the complete record of their brain responses to their trips back in time into their own past, and all seemed normal until the link was severed and the attempt was made to bring them out of their virtual reality. The new generation mainframes which he had developed contained voluminous amounts of data on each of the psychic “voyages” undertaken by the project volunteers. While it would take years of close scrutiny to fully analyze such data and to yield conclusive results, there was little doubt from the preliminary findings that the experiments had been successful, other than for the recurring fatal flaw.

Yet, despite these unquestionable triumphs, the Senate Oversight Committee had decided to scrap the project. The computer equipment would certainly be put to some use, and he was assured of getting credit for that part of the project; but the Phoenix Project was effectively dead. All research relating to it would be branded top secret and filed away beyond the reach of espionage or the Freedom of Information Act.

But all was not lost. His father’s warning had purchased him a grace period of perhaps a day, or at least the better part of it. No guards were likely to storm his lab at 2:00 A.M., at any rate. Ken smiled; there was something to be said for red tape, after all.

There was nothing for him to do at the moment but wait. He’d called his best friend over an hour ago, and knew that he would soon be arriving. He had not given him any specifics over the phone, but had told him that he needed to see him immediately on an urgent matter. He smiled again faintly, conjuring a vision of poor Dan rushing out of the house in his pajamas, making the four-hour trip up from Albany to the Suffolk County facilities in what he knew would be record time. He felt some guilt about putting his friend through that; but it was necessary, and he knew the other would understand.

Ken sipped slowly from his large snifter‑‑brandy, real Napoleon; he kept several  bottles in the lab for important occasions, such as the celebration of new breakthroughs with his team (champagne, he felt, was better suited for World Series winners and senior proms); he certainly was not in a celebratory mood, but what the hell, crossroads counted, too.

A loud buzzer erupted in the lab, destroying the hypnotic humming of the computers. He arose slowly, self consciously attempting not to stagger perceptibly, and walked towards the intercom to be greeted by an emotionless voice.

“I’m sorry to disturb you, Dr. Leyans, but there is a man here by the name of Daniel Lantz who claims you’ve sent for him.”

“That’s right, Sergeant, I have. Please escort him in.”

“Sir, he lacks appropriate clearance. I cannot allow him into the compound.”

“I’m clearing him now, Sergeant,” Ken retorted, not attempting to hide his annoyance. “Let him in at once.”

“But sir,” the Sergeant began, “I have strict orders that no one is to be admitted without proper clearance without the express authorization of General Worthing.” The man was insistent, but a tone of nervous annoyance was also detectable in his voice. Waking the general at 0215 hours was not something he cared to do; neither did he wish to incur the ire of the head of a project as important as this must be, judging by all the extensive security surrounding it‑‑security and secrecy unlike anything he’d seen in his twenty five years of service.

“Sergeant,” Ken interrupted impatiently, “I am the head of this project, not General Worthing. His sole responsibility is the same as yours, to ensure my safety and to secure my project. Mr. Lantz has information I need immediately that is crucial to that which is your duty to guard. If you delay me for one more minute, I promise you that both you and General Worthing can kiss your careers good-bye. Am I making myself perfectly clear?”

“Yes sir,” came the somewhat muffled response.

“Please escort Mr. Lantz to the lab immediately. Thank you.” With that, Ken turned towards the locked vault-like steel doors and punched in the access code to open them. He felt a little ashamed of his heavy-handed treatment of Sergeant Ellis, a man he had grown to know and like; but he simply did not have time to be diplomatic or overly concerned over a man’s hurt feelings, not when his life depended on what would transpire within the next few hours.

As soon as the door opened, an M.P. immediately came to attention on the outside as Dr. Leyans walked out to meet his friend. a moment later, he saw Dan being escorted by a somber Sergeant.

“Thank you, Sergeant,” Ken said with a thin smile, “And don’t worry, the surveillance tape of our conversation is on the record and I take full responsibility for Mr. Lantz’s presence here.”

“That you do, sir” the Sergeant retorted, stiffly doing an about-face and heading away at a brisk pace.

“Thanks for coming, Dan,” Ken began, turning to his friend and giving him a quick embrace. “I’m sorry to put you through this; you’ll get a full explanation in a minute.” With that, Ken signaled his friend to precede him inside. After both men had entered, Ken again punched in a code and the door slid shut, closing with a final clanging sound which sent a slight shiver down Dan’s spine.

“What the hell is this all about?” Dan demanded no sooner than the door was sealed, nervous anticipation and concern clearly detectable in his tone.

“That is a long and complicated story. But I’ll try to keep it brief. Please, come in and make yourself comfortable; this will take a while.” Both men moved towards a table in the corner of the expansive laboratory. As they walked, the immensity of the place with its myriad electronic equipment began to sink in for Dan. He let out an unconscious, low whistle. “God, what is this place?” he asked with a tone that clearly evidenced his surprise, curiosity and awe. He recognized some of the equipment immediately, namely mainframes and the ubiquitous video display terminals. Yet, most of the electronic paraphernalia was completely foreign to him. For the most part it consisted of monolithic metal structures with LED read‑outs and flashing lights; the enormous lab was well lit, almost painfully so, with white halogen light bouncing off the myriad chrome counter tops and milk-white high gloss laminated cabinet surfaces. The facility was spotless, anesthetized to the point of completely eradicating all odors; only the faint scent of ozone could be sensed, barely perceptible. Even the sounds seemed clean‑‑merely white noise, a  soothing hum at an almost subliminal level. The general effect, after the initial disorientation caused mostly by an almost overwhelming sense of immenseness, made Dan uneasy in a way he could not have explained were he even fully aware of it.

“This, dear friend, is the end result of my life’s work. You know what I have been working on for the past 15 years, but only in a superficial way. Until a few hours ago, this place stood for hope, a self-made vehicle for redemption. Now …” Ken’s voice trailed off to a nearly inaudible whimper.”Now, it is a tomb.”

“What the blazes do you mean? What is this place, and what the bloody hell are you talking about?”

Ken sighed, inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly, mechanically reaching for another snifter for his friend and pouring out a generous serving of the precious brandy, groping for words and a place to begin what he knew would be an explanation difficult to accept.

“I haven’t told you exactly what it is that I have been working on because it is classified information, and because, even if it were not, it could be dangerous for you to know it.”

“I can see it’s heavy-duty stuff. This damned place is a fortress.” I had no idea this lab was still operational.

“To put it simply, I am working on a project which has made it possible to relive one’s past. I can synthesize memories from brain impulses, translate them into code which the computer can manipulate and inject it back into the brain so that the subject actually relives them.”

“That’s . . . fantastic,” Dan interrupted excitedly. “Does it really work?”

“Yes and no. I have incontrovertible evidence that the process works, but the biochemical changes necessary to effectuate the process in conjunction with the physical symbiotic link‑up to the computer is not reversible at this time.”

“What do you mean by ‘not reversible’”?

Ken shuddered almost imperceptibly and answered in a low tone: “I mean you can’t cut the link without some . . . unacceptable consequences.”

“You mean that anyone who gets hooked up to your machine can’t come out of the . . . the dream?”

“Basically, yes. Although your characterization of the experience as a dream is inaccurate. The programming is so complex that the person linked with the system literally relives past experiences, or whatever scenario, real or imagined, we inject. You can think of it as a dream, but a dream so very real that it is indistinguishable from reality. The effect is not some blurry, black and white fleeting representation, as with most dreams, but a true life experience. Every nuance of taste, smell, touch, sound and sight are re-experienced; every feeling and thought relived.”

“God,” Dan interrupted. Can you imagine what people would pay to relive a particularly pleasant experience at will? To be with a loved one long dead? To recapture lost youth? This has to be among the greatest inventions of our time. Programmable dreams and truly attainable fantasies!”

“Yes, the potential uses of my invention are many, including the obvious commercial ones. But it’s all a moot point now.”

“What do you mean?”

“My father has just informed me that funding for this program has been cut. I expect the prototype will be dismantled by tomorrow.”

“But why?” Dan asked in disbelief. “Just because you haven’t perfected it yet? I know you said that once a person gets hooked up to the system he can’t be disconnected, but that must be something you could eventually fix . . .”

“It’s not just that, Dan. I’ve lost three colleagues who voluntarily underwent the link-up. The Senate simply felt it is too dangerous to be allowed to continue. Also, the climate has changed in Washington. Pricey research is out‑‑especially when requested by an intelligence agency known for its black ops. The deaths of my staff members was simply the last straw that those opposed to the project needed to finally destroy it. I can’t really fully blame them. In the wrong hands, the Phoenix Project could be potentially more dangerous than nuclear weapons.”

“You should never have gone to the government with this. You could have developed it in any major university, or even through private industry.”

“No, I needed my dad’s clout to even get the government to listen to my crackpot notions. And no corporation on earth could have provided the enormous capital needed for research and development. At any rate, that’s all immaterial now. The real reason I asked you to come is that I have made a decision that I need to speak with you about before I can carry it out.”

“I know you well enough to know that I’m probably not going to like this,” Dan said, picking up his snifter, swirling the amber liquid slowly, absent‑mindedly, and downing half of its content in a single gulp. It could have been brandy, vodka or kerosene; Dan would not have noticed the difference. He was preparing himself for whatever it was that Ken had brought him here for. He cleared his mind of everything and concentrated on his friend, waiting to do whatever was asked of him. Ken refreshed their drinks saying “This is your final one. I need you clear headed. Clarity for me is of secondary importance at this time.” He smiled at Ken, then sat back in his chair, warming his brandy in his hand and exhaling a soft sigh as he resumed speaking.

“Let me tell you straight out why I asked you to come, and we’ll take it from there. I must link up with the system tonight, while it is still possible, and I need you to assist me with the process.”

[*****END OF PREVIEW # 2*****]

This short story is one of eight short stories in Book of Dreams 2nd Edition and has also been reprinted as a stand-alone short sot for the Kindle reader. You can view additional information about each by clicking on the book covers below. For additional information about other titles currently available through Amazon, you can visit my author’s page by clicking here. Thank you for visiting this page and for your interest in my short fiction.

Tagged: science fiction, scifi, SF, short stories, speculative fiction