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Selected Short Stories Featuring Save As
Selected Short Stories Featuring Save As
Selected Short Stories Featuring Save As
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Selected Short Stories Featuring Save As

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Selected Short Stories Featuring Save As contains fifteen short stories and flash fiction ranging from cyberpunk to literary fiction.


1:1: A family deals with a difficult decision, in a future where population control is strictly enforced.
One More Night: Those assigned to protect an Italian journalist watch for threats, and reflect on their dangerous lives.
How Far We've Come: How do you pick up the pieces after a betrayal?
Save As: A thrill seeker nearly loses his identity and life to a bad upload.
Things That Twitch: A psychologist probes a man institutionalized for a severe phobia of mosquitoes.
Bleed: Genetically engineered vampires have taken over the world, and soldiers fight for survival, when even a small cut spells a painful death.
Barbie at 50: The eponymous babe reflects on her celebrity, career, and love life over a glass of bourbon.
Buy the Cow: A farmer is forced to sell his life's work.
I'm Sorry I Got Caught In Your House: A very awkward run-at an ex's house.
Red: A soldier and a civilian injured in an explosion seek comfort.
White: A soldier trapped in an explosion doesn't want to be alone.
Blue: A young man's mother teaches him a lesson about expectations, and social mobility.
Freetown: A Sierra Leone man looks at the history of injustice in Freetown, as he deals with the injustices currently perpetuated against his sister after her sexual assault.
Two for One: A twin kept for organ replacement must find a new identity after his sibling's death.
Forget: An unsympathetic officer responds to a youth's suicide attempt.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateJan 8, 2014
ISBN9781497772779
Selected Short Stories Featuring Save As
Author

Nicolas Wilson

Nicolas Wilson is a published journalist, graphic novelist, and novelist. He lives in the rainy wastes of Portland, Oregon with his wife, four cats and a dog. Nic's work spans a variety of genres, from political thriller to science fiction and urban fantasy. He has several novels currently available, and many more due for release in the next year. Nic's stories are characterized by his eye for the absurd, the off-color, and the bombastic. For information on Nic's books, and behind-the-scenes looks at his writing, visit nicolaswilson.com.

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    Selected Short Stories Featuring Save As - Nicolas Wilson

    Select Short Stories featuring Save As

    by Nicolas Wilson

    Hi. I’m Nic. This is a short story collection of my earlier work. Other stories and information about upcoming work can be found on my website: www.nicolaswilson.com. At the end of this collection, you’ll find snippets of novels I’m working on. I’m calling them entertisements, because the word amuses me. Keep going to reach the fiction, or you can view the Table of Contents (including synopses of the stories in this collection).

    skip to fiction

    Table of Contents

    1:1: A family deals with a difficult decision, in a future where population control is strictly enforced.

    One More Night: Those assigned to protect an Italian journalist watch for threats, and reflect on their dangerous lives.

    How Far We've Come: How do you pick up the pieces after a betrayal?

    Things That Twitch: A psychologist probes a man institutionalized for a severe phobia of mosquitos.

    Bleed: Genetically engineered vampires have taken over the world, and soldiers fight for survival, when even a small cut spells a painful death.

    Barbie at 50: The eponymous babe reflects on her celebrity, career, and love life over a glass of bourbon.

    Buy the Cow: A farmer is forced to sell his life's work.

    I'm Sorry I Got Caught In Your House: A very awkward run-at an ex's house.

    Red: A soldier and a civilian injured in an explosion seek comfort.

    White: A soldier trapped in an explosion doesn't want to be alone.

    Blue: A young man's mother teaches him a lesson about expectations, and social mobility.

    Freetown: A Sierra Leone man looks at the history of injustice in Freetown, as he deals with the injustices currently perpetuated against his sister after her sexual assault.

    Two for One: A twin kept for organ replacement must find a new identity after his sibling's death.

    Forget: An unsympathetic officer responds to a youth's suicide attempt.

    Save As: A thrill seeker nearly loses his identity and life to a bad upload.

    Thanks From the Author

    Others_Works_by_Nic

    Novels Coming Soon

    1:1

    I remember how we used to mock China, and its one child policy; we were so arrogant, then, about how such a law would curtail our freedom to reproduce. Then rapamycin and a dozen other breakthroughs basically doubled the average human life expectancy.

    Suddenly everything was in upheaval; social security wouldn’t kick in until the hundred and teens, and age discrimination laws were tightened to the point that it was virtually impossible to fire someone over the age of 90- at least for a while. We eventually found a better balance.

    But the one thing we never expected to see was mass starvation in America. On a continent that could have at one point produced enough food to feed the entire globe, now we didn’t have enough of it to feed our ballooning population. Young people saw child-rearing as a short-term event, something that was only going to take a sixth of their life rather than a whole third (or more), one in a parade of distractions that for some could seem too long. So the population continued expanding.

    I wish I could say it had come down to a vote, with those of us who finally understood how our over-consumption had brought us to the brink, and with everyday Americans saying, finally, that it was enough. But it wasn’t. Polling data and the few referendums that made it onto local ballots went down in flames, never getting better than 20% of the vote among even the most elderly populations (who had less of a vested interest in so-called breeding rights).

    Then, the government in power did one of those rare, self-sacrificial things and passed the legislation anyway. Using sophisticated modeling, they decided how many people the resources of the country could sustain, and they set targets for that. No new breeding was allowed- and with each death by accident or age we grew closer to our sustainable levels.

    Predictably, we voted that government out of power the first chance we got, but their successors found the problem equally insurmountable, and so they attempted to do nothing to change what had been built. Eventually, even that failed, as the initial program had been too soft, relying on extra taxes and penalties to keep people honest. I think the only thing that stopped a violent revolution was the election of a charismatic president, someone who was able to finally explain the problem to the people. By having another child, a couple is taking food away from someone else, in effect killing that person. We can’t allow that to go on, so, as much as it pains me, as President and a mother, as a nation of responsible and above all good people, we have to stop.

    We passed mandatory sterilization laws; people were given the option of reversible operations, chemical regimens, or the use of mechanical prophylactics, and the dangers and failure rates of each were discussed openly. Accidental pregnancies could be terminated for free, but no new lives were allowed to start unless one ended. People didn’t like to talk about it, but sometimes this meant the government seizing a father or mother (or child) inside the maternity wing.

    Most of this started before my time; I lost my virginity at 18,

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