All the Secrets of the Universe and Some Really Important Stuff Too!
That’s right get your free pdf copy of “The Sniper.” All that’s needed is to provide your e-mail address and view my harrangue at the end of the book to leave a review on Amazon. What’s fairer than that? Don’t answer that! It’s a rhetorical question as part of my sales pitch. Let me know if there are any problems with the download. This is my first attempt to use BookFunnel.
Click Here for Link to Sniper Giveaway
Update:
To verify my ownership of “The Sniper” for the Royal Road folks, I am adding this note to show I also control Orion’s Cold Fire.
We interrupt the daily progression of actual civil war to bring you a message about a fictional civil war story. I’ve finished the manuscript for my book, “The Sniper.” Now I’m looking for beta readers. I’m looking for folks to read the book and give me their honest feedback. Also I’d like to disseminate the book to friends and family who you judge would be a good fit for the book based on your estimation and if they agree to read it I’d like to get their opinions too.
I’m looking to get this book out to the largest group of people possible to see whether it is something that people will want to read. So after reading it if you think it’s appropriate for people you know let me hear that too. And remember, I’m not a fragile author. If you think it sucks, say so, but also tell me why you think it.
If you’re interested leave a comment to that effect and I’ll e-mail you a copy of the story. Now this is just a pdf. No nice cover, no actual paper. Just electrons. But I will guarantee that this sniper is nothing like the actual sniper we’ve had to hear about for the last week.
And just to remind you here’s the beginning of the book.
Chapter 1 – An Object Lesson
Joseph Boghadair was set up at a loophole in a small prefabricated metal building at the top of the mountain that contained the Icarus Mine. His .50 caliber sniper rifle was trained on the narrow road that led up to the mine. He could see a line of black SUVs about a mile and a half down the road and he was getting ready to start firing on the convoy. His first shots took out the engine of the lead vehicle thereby halting the convoy. His second volley took out the engine of the last car in line thus trapping the rest of the vehicles between. Then at a more leisurely pace he took care of the other eight vehicles. By this point the passengers were crouching behind their disabled cars and randomly firing handguns and automatic weapons in Joseph’s general direction with almost no discernible results.
After about half an hour a few of the men in black body armor attempted to reach a stand of trees about 300 yards away to their left. Joseph put a few well aimed rounds in front of their path and they quickly retreated back to the supposed safety of their not-so-mobile-autos. Joseph snorted wryly at their shyness.
An hour after that a helicopter approached the mountain from the opposite direction to Joseph’s loophole. Walking over to a window on the other wall he could see a distant Blackhawk approaching at relatively high altitude. Joseph then began his preparations for their reception.
Between crew and troops, the Blackhawk had a dozen men on board. And more importantly it had a couple of Hellfire missiles. From a very safe distance away it targeted Joseph’s position and fired. The missile struck precisely on target and obliterated the steel structure almost completely. All that remained was the foundation of the structure around the mine shaft, now clogged with debris.
The Blackhawk landed about three quarters of a mile from the mine entrance. At this point the agents, hunkered down behind their vehicles, began to stream toward the helicopter. By the time they reached the aircraft the troops had exited and were waiting for their rescued brethren to arrive.
FBI Special Agent in Charge, George Chastain assembled both teams and briefed them on the updated mission plan. “We will proceed to the mine head and look for any human remains. We will collect whatever we can retrieve for lab analysis and attempt to seal the mine head until qualified personnel can be assembled for recovery operations. It is presumed that the target, Joseph Boghadair was killed by the missile strike but we will take no chances. He was an extremely dangerous individual and should not be approached by anyone without backup and prior approval from leadership. In addition to his war record it is believed that Boghadair is responsible for the shooting deaths of forty-six people in the last six months with thirteen of those people being FBI personnel. No one enters the mine until remote sensing equipment is brought in. Alright, proceed.”
The agents formed two groups. Apparently, SUV agents and helicopter agents must not bond very well. But before they were more than a hundred feet from the helicopter the ground began to quake so powerfully beneath them that they were irresistibly knocked off their feet. And while they were clawing at the ground for dear life, they could see that the high ground where the mine head was located had collapsed into the earth. The roar of that collapse was more frightening than the initial earthquake and some of the agents hid their heads under their arms in abject terror. When the mountain stopped shaking the men started to collect themselves and stand up. When they looked around them, they were astonished. A circular pit had opened up centered on the mine head. It was a thousand yards in diameter and so deep that only blackness could be seen at its center. Several cracks had formed outside the circular pit. One of these had nearly swallowed the Blackhawk. It was on its side and half buried in the crevice. Its rotors were fractured and it wouldn’t be flying away from this landing.
Chastain went over to the edge of the crater and just stared down into the blackness below. Then he went back to his team and started giving orders to begin a retreat from the stricken mountain. He was trying to think of what he was going to tell his boss. Nothing reasonable came to mind.
When I was a kid in high school back in Brooklyn in the early 1970s every school either public or private had an English class that used this book as a source of classic short stories. Now at the time it never occurred to me to look at the bio on the editors who selected these “great” stories. Many years later I did and discovered that these two editors were actually educators who worked at two local high schools (Abraham Lincoln H.S. and Sheepshead Bay H.S.) that were both within a mile of my home. In fact, Camera Girl went to one of these schools (although as I learned, she wasn’t really putting in the effort she should have and it took all my help to get her over the finish line her senior year). So, there is my link to this revered literary treasury. And back then I really wasn’t particularly interested in the kind of stories represented. There was one Ray Bradbury story but it wasn’t really science fiction so it wouldn’t have been on my radar.
But many years later I saw the familiar cover of the paperback on the shelf of a discount book store while we were on vacation in Old Orchard Beach, Maine and since I hadn’t packed enough reading material, I bought the book for (I think) two dollars.
And over the course of the week we were there, I read the whole thing for the first time in my life. And damned if most of the stories weren’t excellent in their own separate ways. Sure, I liked some of them much better than others but I had to admit that almost without exception they were well-crafted stories that could stand the test of time and quite a few of them could be re-read over the years without becoming tiresome.
Here’s the table of contents:
If you asked me which was my favorite once a year it’s likely that I’d give you a different answer every time. It seems to change based on what mood I’m in that day. If I’m in a light mood it might be “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.” If I’m feeling cynical, I might enjoy “The Cask of Amontillado” or “To Build a Fire.” But I can usually find a story to reread if I’m waiting for an oil change or a dental appointment.
Now, let me be clear. These are not all the short stories I like. In fact, these are not even my favorite short stories. I can find funnier sections in P.G. Wodehouse and I can find more engaging science fiction short stories by several other authors. Specifically, “There Will Come Soft Rains” isn’t even in my top twenty Ray Bradbury short stories. But this is a good book for tasting a cross section of classic short story styles. Not a bad book to own.
Now I protest to thee, gentle reader, that I entirely dissent from Francisco de Ubeda in this matter, and hold it the most useful quality of my pen, that it can speedily change from grave to gay, and from description and dialogue to narrative and character. So that, if my quill display no other propertoies of its mothergoose than her mutability, truly I shall be well pleased; and I conceive that you, my worthy friend, will have no occasion for discontent. From the jargon, therefore, of the Highland gillies, I pass to the character of their Chief. It is an important examination, and therefore, like Dogberry, we must spare no wisdom.
Sir Walter Scott
I was at a get together with a bunch of family members. And, as is the case with gatherings of this sort, we talked about a variety of subjects of almost a ridiculous range; Joe Pesci’s guitar playing in the shower, the theory that Alzheimer’s disease is an autoimmune disease, a recent positive experimental result in the search for dark matter, the likelihood that artificial intelligence will achieve self-awareness and a bunch of other stuff. But the topic that had the most separate conversations over the course of the day was AI and the data centers that are being built to support it.
And I heard a range of opinions. Everything from AI was the granddaddy of all bubbles that would shred the current tech boom once and for all, to the opposite opinion; that AI was about to create heaven on Earth where the productivity created by AI would allow us to live our best lives while problems like limited resources and affordability would evaporate in a world awash in material wealth. Well, who’s right?
I’m going to guess that both these scenarios are fringe ideas that don’t realistically represent what’s currently going on with AI.
Whereas there probably is a case to be made that the trillions of dollars of infrastructure being assembled to allow AI to “transform every part of human industry” may fail to provide a positive return on investment and disappoint Wall Street. But I would assume that would cause a bear market, not a complete meltdown of the world economy.
And as for AI creating an earthly paradise, I think it’s more likely that AI is going to cause a major disruption in employment markets that will be a net negative impact on everyday people until the changes caused by AI begin to equilibrate in the economy. At that point there will be a new reality where the higher productivity will allow for the standard of living to improve.
So, AI will be neither a panacea or a catastrophe. It will be just another change in the environment that human intelligence brings about as it attempts to increase its control over the physical universe and optimize the way that humans interact in what we call civilization.
But one thing I am sure of. We will all have to get used to talking to bots almost exclusively. And for this reason, I really hope that AI gets much, much better at training them to understand English. Every time I have to struggle through trying to explain a customer service problem with a machine that is as dumb as a bag of hammers I can’t help but think that the Unabomber had something in that manifesto of his.
But despite all this I guess I’m basically optimistic about the future of AI technology. I can already notice a great improvement in the quality of the answers I get from AI’s like Grok today as compared to a year ago. They definitely have made these things smarter and more reliable than before.
Oh, and on a personal note, I had one of my cousins buy a paperback copy of my book when he found out about it. I hope he likes it. He might tell his family. And he has a big family.
A mother’s pride, a father’s joy.
Sir Walter Scott
So, eleven out of twelve jurors in Massachusetts think Lindsay Clancy is not at fault for strangling the life out of her three young children. I think this alone is all anyone needs to know to understand New England. These are the kind of people who live in this region of the world. From their point of view women cannot be held responsible for murdering their own children because life is just not fair to women and anything they do to make themselves happier must be morally right. They’ll blame post-partum depression, dangerous medications and of course her husband along with every other man on the planet. But not Lindsay Clancy. She was not responsible.
So, we’ve come full circle. Under traditional morality a mother saw her children as her primary responsibility in life. She provided them with life and then milk and she loved them with her whole soul and sacrificed her youth and her health to give them a nurturing and loving home.
And now where are we? Children are a burden and an imposition to women who put off bearing them until fertility is strained to the last remaining eggs and then immediately handed off to “child care” and pre-school as soon as the mother can escape her home for the office.
But even that is not enough. Murdering them is now the new frontier. After all, even sending them to day care doesn’t completely get them out of the house. They still show up in the evening when it’s even more inconvenient. And they still want to be fed and washed and who knows maybe even talked to. No, there’s just one way to really free yourself from these parasites. Just choke the life out of them. Any civilized jurisdiction will understand that it just wasn’t fair and therefore you can’t be held legally responsible for freeing yourself from this biological tyranny. After all, women are the sensitive, emotional sex and the sadness you feel about having to eliminate these living chains is punishment enough. Maybe a year or so in a hospital with beautiful gardens and a kind nursing staff might provide the correct “time out” to show the peasants that the medical profession has sanctioned your return to society completely renewed and ready to take up a better place in society. Possibly as a motivational speaker for other women trapped in homes inhabited by tiny monsters.
From my point of view deciding whether she’s evil or insane is moot. There is no place in this world for someone who could do what she did. If she wasn’t insane, she deserves death. If she is so completely insane that she is capable of committing such an inhuman act then she should be put down the way you would a mad dog. But even from an unemotional, practical point of view, what does a woman who strangled her infant and young children do with the rest of her life. Who exactly does she hang around with. Who is signing up to be her neighbor or friend. What would you talk about with her? Her past? You can’t. Her future? She doesn’t have one. I guess you could talk about her anti-psychotic prescriptions or the latest breakthrough with her psychiatrist. But I’m guessing most people wouldn’t want to. She really is basically waiting for death so she can find the correct level in hell for her variety of monster.
This case is a Rorschach test and provides an effective binary choice. If you see the murdered children as the victims, you’re on my side of the fence. If you have even the least sympathy for the child killer, you’re on the other side. It’s a perfect dichotomy. On one side are people, men and women paying forward the life and love that was given them by raising a family and making the future. On the other side is a woman so self-centered and dysfunctional that she could strangle a three-month old infant just to be free of her human responsibility to pay forward what was given her by her parents. To objectively see how despicable this point of view is just imagine the reaction if a father strangled his three young children. Every woman in Massachusetts would be baying for his blood demanding a way to allow capitol punishment for this one heinous case. But for Lindsay Clancy; nothing but sympathy for the devil. Pick a side.
And better had they ne’er been born,
Who read to doubt, or read to scorn.
Sir Walter Scott
Roger’s sleep was haunted by dreams where he was chased by shoggoths that seemed to mock him by matching his speed and keeping within reach of their tentacles that flicked at the back of his neck and his flailing hands. Their cries echoed in his ears and when one finally gripped his wrist and spun him to face his pursuer the raw panic woke him from this nightmare.
After assuring himself that no real danger was imminent, he consciously steadied his breathing and formulated his plan for getting back to the tunnel leading to Dunwich. Rather than chance a sprint back to where he believed it was, he decided on the painstaking but “safe” option of stopping at each tunnel and waiting for a shoggoth to activate the “shoggoth exclusion principle” before proceeding to the next step. And he congratulated himself. And not just mentally. His calm had been so thoroughly cracked that he found himself muttering his thoughts out loud, “That’s smart Roger, that’s right, that’s how we’ll do it!”
So, employing this smeagolian dialectic technique he steeled himself for the return trek. And after a few minutes a protective shoggoth appeared and as soon as it exited the open circle Roger stepped into the open and tensed for his dash. And barely avoided running into the side of a shoggoth emerging from his destination. The screeching monster shot past him heading to his left. Roger froze and held his breath. Unsurprisingly there was no hint of annoyance at the collapse of his exclusion principle theory. But fifty feet beyond him the living nightmare stopped its forward motion and let out a new sound, a rumbling roar that split the air. It spun around. Shivering from head to toe, Roger swallowed his fear and took off as fast as his legs would carry him to where he imagined the Dunwich tunnel opened. He could hear the shoggoth bellow again but all he could do was aim for the tunnel entrance and pump his legs. Maybe it took fifteen seconds. Roger reached the entrance and made the turn. And what he saw was a window. He had guessed wrong. This wasn’t the Dunwich tunnel. What he could see was dying red light and mountain walls. He hesitated at the brink. But just then the shoggoth slammed into the tunnel behind him and Roger leaped through the looking glass. He rolled onto sandy ground and started running again as fast as his heart and lungs could provide. And right behind him came the shoggoth trumpeting its chase. It was only a few feet behind Roger when it shot out a tentacle and snagged his wrist. As in his dream he was spun around by the pull on his arm and crashed to the suddenly hard ground facing his pursuer. He felt none of the pain in his back from the crash but stared in horror as the monster formed a gaping mouth full of teeth. He heard the triumphant bellow of the creature. But then he heard another bellow. It was familiar but he couldn’t place it in the desperate scene he currently inhabited but it got steadily louder. And then he remembered. It was an air horn. The tractor-trailer hit the shoggoth broad side at about eighty-five miles an hour. The driver hadn’t seen the creature because an outcrop of Nevadan red rock obstructed his view at a curve of the road. His truck was filled with a shipment of refrigerated beef and the vehicle punched a pretty convincing hole right through the gelatinous protoplasm of the unsuspecting hell-spawn. On impact, the tentacle holding Roger released him so he was still facing the mouth of the shoggoth but it seemed to have lost interest in him after its evisceration. And as he watched, the flesh of the beast began to steam in the air and evaporate before his eyes. It was sunset and, in the distance, he could see the lights of Las Vegas brightening an otherwise darkening sky. He staggered away from the blacktop of the highway and slowly trudged toward the now stopped truck.
He could hear himself saying, “Now, how am I going to explain all this?” And then he started laughing hysterically.