Published today: Two science fiction short stories

Just published for the Kindle, two science fiction/speculative fiction short stories: "Justice" and "the Mystery of the Sphinx: Solved."

Here is the Amazon description:

This is publication is a compilation of two speculative fiction short stories. In the first, "Justice", a man is being tried for the last remaining capital offense in a kinder, gentler, truly unified world in the not to distant future. In the second, "Riddle of the Sphinx: Solved" The secrets of the Sphinx are finally revealed to a curious world in prime time by the world's most famous Egyptologist in a live event reminiscent of the disastrous, much hyped opening of Al Capone's vault by Geraldo Rivera in prime time some years back. No empty bottle will be found in the chamber beneath teh right paw of the Sphinx. No, not this time. Alas.

Just published today--New short story preview: "Mars: Genesis 2.0"

In the year 2020, astronomers discover a previously unknown asteroid that will strike Earth in exactly 666 days. Because of its massive size, it is impossible to deflect or destroy it with the available technology, and it is clear that the impending impact will be an extinction event. While most governments do what they can to ensure the survival of as many people as possible, such efforts are not expected to succeed. Nevertheless, underground bunkers are pressed into service and new ones created around the globe in hope that some remnant of humanity might escape impending doom by burrowing underground with enough supplies to weather the predicted decades-long nuclear winter that will result from an asteroid strike much larger than that which killed off the dinosaurs and paved the way for the eventual birth and ascent of homo sapiens.

The wealthiest, most technologically advanced countries of Earth hedge their bets by mobilizing their available resources to launch a handful of their best and brightest into space, either to a greatly expanded space station or to the Moon in the hopes that small colonies may be established there that would eventually use the Moon's natural resources to be self-sustaining. The U.S. forges a more ambitious plan to send 12 colonists to Mars in less than two years where with existing technology and the cobbling together of a space ship from three mothballed space shuttles, they may have a better chance for long-term survival.

This is the story of Earth's final days, and a testament to humanity's resourcefulness and indomitable nature in the countdown to Armageddon.

This short story (7,777 words) was published 12-14-2013 and has not been previously published elsewhere. For more information, please click on its Kindle cover below.

Short story excerpt: "What Price to Live the Dream?"

"Stop trying so desperately to convince me, and yourself, that I'm wrong. Listen to what I am saying with your heart and mind; get out of the 'adversarial mode' and back into the 'friendship mode' counselor."

"I'm trying. Believe me, I'm really trying to understand."

And I'm trying just as hard to make you understand. Your understanding and approval is very important to me; although I know you realize I'll do what I have to without either, if necessary."

I know, I know," Dan replied softly, beginning to resign himself to the irresistible force of his friend's determination."

"Anyway, what you implied a moment ago is not accurate. I will not reprogram the system to bring about or even facilitate any given result. All I will do is program one single thought into my mind which should trigger the right course."

"And what might that be?"

"Simple. Twenty years ago, the last time that Linda and I got together and I broke it off, I reached what has become for me the most crucial crossroad of my life: a moment in which I was torn between wanting to hold her, to tell her that I loved her desperately and completely and that all would be well, and needing to run out of the apartment and keep running, never looking back. I chose the latter course. If only I'd stayed a few minutes more, looked for another instant at her warm brown eyes, and saw, really saw, her understanding face with the tears gently rolling down her cheeks, I know I would not have been able to follow through. I would have followed my heart and held her, kissed her, and poured out my heart to her. All I will do to the system is to program the thought that I must stay with her for a little longer, and kiss her one last time."

"And that will do it?"

"Yes."

"You're certain?"

"Absolutely."

"And what if you're wrong? What if you stay five minutes longer, kiss her one last time and then get up and run away, just like the last time?"

"I won't"

"Damn it, what if you do? Then what?"

"Then my ghosts will have been set free. I will be twice damned and will prove myself unworthy of that second chance. And I will most likely go on to live out the rest of my virtual life with the same pain and regrets as my real one. Who knows, perhaps I'll go on to work on this project, overflowing with regret, and do it all over again. How do you know I haven’t already, and that this is not the umpteenth iteration of an endless loop? It doesn't really matter what the outcome is; if there were only a one in a trillion chance of it working, I'd sell my soul to try."

"You can't live out the rest of your life, damn you. That's the point; you'd have nothing but a dream, a make-believe reality."

"What's the difference, as long as I don't know it? Reality is a subjective thing. It will be real, to me, and that's all that matters."

"And what if I can't stop them from pulling the plug? What if I can't get a restraining order? National security is still a touchy area; there are no guarantees that a state or federal judge will be willing to meddle in an intelligence agency's internal affairs, especially when they're being carried out with Senate approval."

"Come on, Dan, you know perfectly well that no judge will stand idly by when a human life is at stake, especially when three others have already been lost. We're not engaged in any meaningful war at the moment, and we're not talking about the Manhattan Project. The judiciary will grant you a temporary restraining order as a matter of course."

"Granted, I can get an injunction. But there's no guarantee that I can get it on time to prevent the system from being dismantled, or your death. What’s to prevent the agency or the military from simply pulling the plug before or after I get a restraining order?”

"That's why time is of the essence, my friend. That's why we can't debate the issue all night. But don't worry about the agency being in too much of a hurry to pull the plug; I've taken some precautions to safeguard against that."

[End of preview]

 Excerpted from "What Price to Live the Dream?" (C) 1987, 2011 Victor D. Lopez. All Rights Reserved. 

Poem excerpt: "Maria" from "Unsung Heroes"

Maria (Paternal Grandmother)
You were a gentle, genteel young woman swept away by a man
Thirteen years your senior who gallantly courted you,
Riding proudly atop his great steed, and who offered you
Safety, security, his good name and his heart.

He gave you four children—two boys and two girls—and left you,
And them, just before the Guardia Civil came for him. You told them that
Your husband had emigrated to Argentina and was an honorable man.
They questioned you but left empty handed and did not trouble you again.

For the next decade, you managed your husband’s affairs,
Continued with his business for a time,
Grieved the death of your youngest son, Manolito, to meningitis,
And found comfort in your lot, which was better than most.

You were a proud, prim, proper, handsome woman,
With large, penetrating, deep blue eyes.
Though you were not the a radiant beauty like your older sister,
Who died young but whose beauty long outlived her in the eyes of many.

But you were beautiful, and turned more than your share of heads in younger days. And you fondly recalled all the good, young men from good families who courted you,
Whom you kept at a proper distance through your virtue, wielded like
A great shield; yet you took no small pride in recounting their attentions.

You were kind, generous, and self sacrificing. And you were strong, though this
Trait was not encouraged of proper women of the time. You were a
Good friend, and though you could appear as aloof as a queen walking among her
Subjects, you had many close friends among both rich and poor.

Though you were proud, you tilled the soil and grew potatoes, beets, beans,
Cabbage, artichokes and many other vegetable in your ample garden,
Picked apples, lemons, pears, figs and many other fruits for your family,
From your fruit trees, milked your cows, and raised chickens and rabbits.

Your pride sustained you through the tough times, and you took comfort from
Your illustrious relative, José Sánchez Bregua (1810-1897), the distinguished
Four-star General, Commander in Chief of the forces of Spain, and War Minister whose
State funeral was the first moving picture shot in Spain.

Your memories of a gentler past colored by both real and imagined glory,
And your overly strong pride in your children, grandchildren and family,
Rescued you from loneliness and the unpleasant realities of life,
And condemned you to remember the past at the expense of living the present.
The last time I saw you, you were as strong and lovely as ever, with perfect
Posture, and every hair in place.  Your eyes were still clear, and your smile as
Gentle and reassuring as it had always been.  But you did not know me, and spoke to me of
Your son and grandson in New York of whom you were so proud.

While dad and I sat next to you, you told us both about ourselves and of
Sánchez Bregua, and of your many suitors when you were young, and of your
Virtuous friends, and of your husband’s good name, and of his standing in the
Community, and whispered not a word of pain, of loneliness or of self-sacrifice.

Your soft voice spoke only of pleasant things I’d heard many times before that belied Y
our strength, your mettle, your life deferred, your wounds covered over by the only
Salve available to you—pride—and by the unshakable knowledge of who you were
Without a moment wasted in the pointless contemplation of what might have been.

Dad and I left you for the last time, contentedly fussing with your old sewing
Machine, the same one on which you had made your children’s clothes, and taught
Your two daughters their craft. You did not recognize us, but chatted politely and did
Not notice our tears when dad and I said what would prove to be our final good-byes.

From Of Pain and Ecstasy: Collected Poems (C) 2011 Victor D. Lopez. All rights reserved.

"End of Days": Short Story Excerpt #3

*  *  *

The current models for black holes holds that they will absorb any matter that crosses their event horizon and that they have, in essence, an infinite capacity to absorb matter in their nearly infinitely compressed centers. So powerful is their attraction that light cannot escape them, and it is posited that crossing their event horizon will distort or perhaps stop time. With all due deference to physicists who can do the math, they are wrong; I have it on the best authority.
 
Black holes can amass incredible amounts of mass and energy and extend the reach of their event horizons—the pull of their gravitational force—outwards as they grow. The mass of a collapsed star may be compressed to a circumference of a few kilometers. Compress it further still, as when a truly massive star is involved, and at some point it becomes a black hole. In extreme cases, we know there to be massive black holes in the center of spiral galaxies, including our own Milky Way, slowly, inexorably sucking in stars, planets, and everything else into the cosmic drain that is their vortex and causing the spiral form of these galaxies just like water spiraling down a terrestrial drain.
 
But there is a limit to the amount of mass and energy that can be contained in any black hole. Exceed that limit, and the fabric of space time that is bent further and further under the stress bursts just like an over-stressed aneurism under the pressure of an arterial wall overcome by too much blood pumped under too much pressure, or a rubber balloon overfilled beyond its capacity by an overanxious birthday boy.
Matter cannot be compressed ad infinitum, nor can the mass and energy captured from thousands of stars and their accompanying solar systems be forever retained at the center of the singularity or converted to and expelled as radiation. Eventually, every singularity reaches critical mass and burst outward expelling in a few nanoseconds its retained mass and energy through the torn fabric of space time, giving birth to a new universe in a flash of fury, an unfathomable release of energy and mass, a new big (and sometimes little) bang. The energy is released not in our universe, but into a new one, disgorging the contents of the singularity outwardly to expand in accordance to the compressed matter and energy in its universe of origin. The rift in space time is then sealed and a new universe joins the omniverse.
 
If we could view the omniverse in a macro scale across all of space time, we would see an infinite fireworks display of cosmic proportions. The size of the singularity required to burst space time varies depending on the region of space time it occupies. The fabric of space is not uniform; there are infinite variations in its relative strength and stability so that some regions may be able to withstand singularities that have swallowed up billions of stars form multiple galaxies without rupturing while others may rupture upon the formation of a single singularity such as occurs from the collapse of a star significantly larger than Sol. The universe created by the rupturing of such a small singularity would be ephemeral and incapable of forming new stars from the matter ejected. Not so when massive black holes that have swallowed up thousands or perhaps even millions of galaxies reach the breaking point; these will eject their stored mass and energy in big bangs of their own that will generate new stars and planets in a new universe of seemingly infinite size to the average man, woman or amoeba observer.
 
When the universe reaches the maximum rate of its expansion, it will begin to contract as the weak gravitational force pulls back matter into an ever-decreasing space. As the fabric of space time compresses, it will be strengthened, allowing for truly massive black holes to merge before bursting forth into new universes. The process continues ad infinitum, with new universes expanding, collapsing, and redistributing their mass, spawning ever-smaller versions of themselves, replicating self-contained, self-replicating omniverses of their own. Like a fertilized egg, with cells splitting in half, growing exponentially into an organism that is greater than the sum of its parts. The universe is organic, a living, evolving, growing organism in which each universe in an endless number of omniverses is just a cell, replicating itself in an organic process we can no more understand than a self-aware electron, neutron or lepton in an atom within one of our body’s cells can understand us. The universe is a part of God, or the collective consciousness, and none of us can ever grasp the full organism any more than a cell in our body or its smaller component parts can hope to know us.
 
But we are more than the smallest particles in an unfathomably large universe. Self awareness links us to that unfathomable body—to the mind of God, or to the universal spirited element, if you prefer—in a way that is much more vital than our seeming insignificance within it. We are the universe. The universe is us. We are God; God is us, to borrow a phrase from Heinlein. We are linked to all the omniverses that ever were and ever will be by our consciousness, energy that flows from all the omniverses through us, and connects us each to it not just in the particular segment of space time we currently inhabit, but to the very fabric of space time itself.
 

[End of excerpt]
The above is an excerpt from the short story End of Days, one of the eight short stories in Book of Dreams 2nd Edition: Science Fiction and Speculative Fiction Short Stories. (C) 2011 Victor D. Lopez. All rights reserved.

Earth Mother (Excerpt #3)

She rose from her soaked bed, feeling a numbing chill in a body that still ached from atrophied, tight muscles only now beginning to slowly release. Her heart still beating loudly in her ears, she moved as swiftly as the prickly feeling in her unsure extremities would allow, feeling as though tiny needles coursed through her veins as the circulation was restored to her numbed extremities.  Reaching the bathroom, she turned on the water in her shower and let it run hot until it steamed the full length mirror behind the bathroom door, the reflection of her trim, perfect body slowly fading into the mist, though not before eliciting an appreciative smile from Lisa.

As she turned to get into the shower, she heard what appeared to be conversation from the apartment next door.  To be more accurate, she sensed the conversation, or rather the disjointed monologue, inside her head.  Words and images about work, power, fear and a breakfast cereal incongruously raced through her mind like some deranged medley of a half dozen Fellini movie trailers streaming simultaneously on fast-forward. Then the mental cacophony began to clear and she recognized Harry, her next door neighbor, his lathered face reflecting off an unfamiliar medicine cabinet mirror, startling her in its unexpected clarity.  “He must be shaving, ” she thought with an exhilarating smile parting her lips. “Must have been thinking of his new advertising campaign.  It really works;  I’ve got to learn to use it, but it definitely works,” she added.  She then quickly showered quickly and got out of the shower stall radiating confidence, aching to take her new powers out for a spin.

As she toweled herself dry in front of the full length mirror,  she smiled again appreciatively at the lithe, firm body reflected there.  She was thirty-five years old, just past the peak of what she knew had been unusual beauty.  Her shoulder length auburn hair would have shown numerous streaks of gray, had she not meticulously hidden these for the past five years.  A firm tummy and buttocks reflected back to her, as she assayed her body in the mirror, not a hint of cellulite visible on her dancer’s legs.  “Not bad, earth mother,” she thought, finally getting into her clothes with unusual speed.  She then added as an afterthought, “Gotta start thinking about a breast job soon.”  Her appearance had been of great importance to her most of her life, not merely out of vanity, although she was not exempt from that particular character flaw, but because she knew her looks and presentation had helped her career. She was one of the lucky beautiful people whom others  always strive to please.  Though competent and self-assured, she was not above using any means available to her to ensure her success.  Madison Avenue ground up fresh talent into hamburger meat daily, and she had no intention of ever being on anyone’s menu.  Looks were important in advertising agencies, especially for upwardly mobile female executives on the fast track to a meeting with the glass ceiling.  She always figured that if she were traveling fast enough, that ceiling would not bear the force of her inertia.  Now, she was certain it would not.  Who could compete with a bright, energetic advertising executive who could read clients’ and competitors’ minds?  She could barely contain her excitement.  This would be almost too easy, like taking the proverbial candy from unsuspecting babies.
[End of preview]

Excerpt from “Earth Mother” (C) 2011 by Victor D. Lopez. All rights reserved.

What Price to Live the Dream? (Excerpt # 4)

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. [End of preview]

The above is a brief excerpt from the short story "What Price to Live the Dream?" available as a stand-alone Kindle book and as one of the eight short stories in Book of Dreams 2nd Edition. (C) 2011 Victor D. Lopez. All rights reserved.