Examination

Pretzels, New Offering on Amazon Kindle

Another new Ebook listed on Amazon Kindle site. Pretzels is the third in my "snack stories" unofficial series. It has all of the addictive goodness of the first two snack-story Ebooks and more. More fun reading entertainment than a bowl full of popcorn. (which was the title of the second Ebook) Popcorn by the way is FREE for the rest of the week. Get your's while you can. Enjoy.

https://authorcentral.amazon.com/gp/books/book-detail-page?ie=UTF8&bookASIN=B00JHPWNI6&index=default

Newest Ebook Offering Announcement

This is my latest book of short stories published with Smashwords. If you like Apocalyptic science fiction and Distopean settings and quirky-twisty literary fiction, then this book is definitely for you. Some of my latest favorite works are in this Ebook. Stop by and give it a look.

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/426650

MeLos the Memory Loss Drug

Zombies? There aren't any zombies. It's a word that got used over and over again until... 

There was this experiment done decades ago with monkeys and cocaine. A lab monkey could press a bar in his cage and get a dose of cocaine. Eventually the monkey pressed the bar so often he forgot to have sex, forgot to eat, or drink and eventually pressed that bar until he died of an overdose. 

Decades later, science in concert with large corporate pharmaceutical financing, invented a memory erasing drug. It’s original intention was to relieve the patient's chronic stress caused by irreconcilable memories. War vets were some of the first test subjects, looking for relief from post traumatic stress. Desperate to forget the horrors of war. It seemed to work as expected. For a while. The government gag order kept a lid on details behind a sudden increase in violence and homicide on military bases and in vetren hospitals.

Then the drug began showing up on street corners, eventually ending up in suburban living-rooms of middle America. People became obsessed with forgetting. Black market demand for the drug even outstripped the demand for marijuana. Then things really started to change...

Once some manmade synthetic is released into the natural environment, there’s no control over it. Genetically modified crops first proved migratory data on this scientific short-sight. Then came mutating viruses from animal to human, another overlooked aberration. When the pharmaceutical companies started pushing gene modification injections, they frantically attempted to cover up the monstrous, unexpected genetic outcomes. Think tank committees, quickly hired by the companies, were coerced into a consensus that the Memory Loss pill was the only way to return things to normal. They called the pill MeLos and advertised it on television and over the internet. Misguided visions of profits and absolution danced in their heads.  

When people began taking MeLos the memory erasing drug, it blended with a battery of pharmaceuticals they were already codependent on. These people lapsed into semi-functional, vegetative states. Already at the time, the word zombies had been over-used and adopted by pop culture and infiltrated it’s way into the lexicons of municipal departments and social institutions. The advent of Melos usage just cemented the label Zombie into reality. Only the few people who didn't take the memory loss drug-  didn’t buy into marketing hype, were able to fully realize the drug’s hideous result.

MeLos zombies proliferated every niche of society. Service sectors, even governments became useless. Before Melos, people who took drugs -over the counter medication or illegal controlled substances- could hide their addictions for a period of time, still function at their jobs or with their families to a minimal degree. But when people started taking Melos, they couldn't hide it’s effects. They couldn’t remember how to do their jobs, care for their families, be responsible for their actions. MeLos made them forget everything- and people felt good about that. They felt so good, they didn't feel a need to interact in any functional way with their communities. They simply didn’t remember anything. 

After a month, the person's mind and body started to organically self-produce the drug. This was a big shock to the pharmaceutical companies that held patents to profit from the  drug’s manufacture. The scientists, micro-biologists, developers- no one saw the memory drug high-jacking the patients genetic codes and begin to internally manufacture the insidious chemical on it’s own. 

There's an old saying, "it's never just one thing." When people fixed on an agenda of profit to invent that magic bullet, they often overlook the other "things" that might contribute to wrecking the outcome of their greedily imagined agendas. GMO pesticides, antibiotic over-use, polluted water supplies, microwave radiation, designer gene manipulation and yes, the copious production and use of more and more pills. When you combined MeLos with this already festering chemical- cocktail, somebody should have seen it coming. Nobody's run of blind luck is THAT good. 

Zombies? There aren't any zombies. Don't you remember? 

Time Spheres

Palm-sized spheres with deep grooves purposefully incised around the circumference and strange, spongy material insides. A warm tarnished bronze hued ball bearing errant reticulated scabs. The most unlikely of time travel devices, yet... the story is now dead. The spheres have lost their energy. The technology is light years ahead, yet millions of years old. A quick wonder about the choice of such distant antiquity to have arrived and maybe, possibly not returned from. It's frivolous speculation. A dreamer's folly. Folly that stems from belief in physically existing objects. 

There's an object, and an unknown origin, function and intent. This unknown outweighs physical evidence. Time was traveled, then forgotten. Eventually, measuring with increments of time was rediscovered, reinvented. But the applications of manipulating time, traveling the winds between then- now and beyond hide, still denied. Maybe that was the intent, to bury the secrets of time travel, prevent a dark and dour eventuality from millions of years in the future. But that only raises more speculative and unanswerable questions. The dull voice of distant drums echo more dreamer folly.  

Apocalypse Thanksgiving

After the apocalypse, renegade hordes of fake-tan polo players rode their ponies through the streets using their polo mallets to whack decapitated heads with. They rode through the avenues, the by-ways and out around through the countryside. Their long-legged ponies trampled seedlings and sod like buffalo herds grinding grassy plains. The men kept their chins tucked and their white and red helmets securely strapped. Post apocalyptic polo was a serious game. They gave no quarter and took no prisoners. Who ever fell behind, got left behind and no residuals were given to the families of the fallen. 

The mounted gamesmen swung their mallets with acuity, striking any orphaned skull with gusto. Little boys in white undershirts and sun lighten hair watched the cavalier polo riders from behind elm trees that lined matured boulevards. Visions of envy danced in their young, sky-tinted eyes as their hearts beat faster and they unconsciously scratched at their belly buttons. 

The hard ridden ponies frothed around their bits and their manes tangled in the reins. The polo players kicked their mount’s bellies with rich leather boots polished to a high shine. Abruptly, at the end of an unkept park pasture, the players rode up upon an old cemetery. A battered head with it's esophagus trailing was cracked high into the air, over the iron fence, landing with a dull thud in the middle of the cemetery. 

The players pursued, goading their mounts around tombstones and ricocheting the head off marble and granite monuments like a snooker ball. This play occupied their focus for a long time. Long enough for a scant number of spectators to spontaneously gather. Their eyes grew wide at the garish spectacle. If any of the onlookers took sides, they didn't outwardly show it. The game of head polo continued into the early evening, splattering almost every gravestone with stains of blood. No one saw it happen directly, but a player and his horse collided with a tombstone and went down followed by another. 

The still mounted players viciously began attacking the dismounted ones, striking them with their grim mallets. They continued to mindlessly attack each other as more riders went down. The cemetery seemed bent on claiming it's own victory. The post apocalyptic polo player's soon dwindled in number. The sick cracking sounds from their mallets became fewer.  Soon all the polo players lay dead amongst the stone markers, the cemetery lawn awash with fresh, ebbing blood. 

The loosely gathered spectators stood mute. Their boney hands grasped the iron rods of the cemetery’s fence. Then almost as if acting as one hive mind, they entered the hallowed grounds and began dressing out the bodies of the fallen polo players, removing their entrails and dismembering their arms and legs, leaving the heads where they lay.  The spectators then took the spoils back to their hovels and basements and cooked the delicacies in a feast of thanksgiving.