AN INDEX WE'D LIKE TO SEE
Table of Contents, plus plot summaries.
INFORMATIONAL FILES
FAQ - An FAQ We'd Like To See
Contains author info, indexes, species info, law enforcement info,
and even a guide to talking in Yttian! Gosh.
SHORT STORIES
0 - Introduction
Short blurb, with introductory history. Sort of a
README.TXT for the series : a must read.
1 - Live Slow, Die Hard
Life in the HAAFF, through a pilot's point of view.
2 - Burning Nonrecyclable Plastic
Two cyberhackers bump into the ultimate computer tool... an
artificial intelligence built to cut other systems. They
make a run on the richest person in the sector...
3 - Where No One Has Really Felt Like Going Before
Pure 'Star Trek' parody, fun, fast, and hard.
4 - The Common Sense
A night in the life of a senses collector on Yttia.
5 - Rebel Without a Spine
An accountant in mid-life crisis decides to join up with a
waprcycle gang, and realizes it's not exactly the career
move he was expecting.
6 - Belief in the Dollar
A religious leader on a Saren colony defends the holy ways
of Capitalism from the dreaded red menace.
7 - 20th Century Park
A demented time-travel parody of 'Jurassic Park', including
fun versions of many overdone scenes.
8 - Todo's Guide to C'atel
View the hot music scene through a travel guide who's used
to a little more out of life.
9 - 293 Channels
A couch potato takes a life-threatening tour of HoloVision.
10 - 37047734 : The Next Generation
A government worker on planet Murf romps through a typical
day of mayhem, chaos, and forms filled out in triplicate.
11 - Tales of the Rainy City Act 1
A computer game designer takes a trip through a game that
could be deadlier than it looks.
12 - Tales of the Rainy City Act 2
A poet bumps into his number one fan, currently wanted for
several murder charges.
13 - Tales of the Rainy City Act 3
An artist strives to create the perfect piece for an art
show, as well as coping with day to day relationships.
14 - Making the Grade
A very confusing teacher's report, which explains everything
there is to know about the universe...
15 - Excitement, Danger and Intrigue
A television producer goes 'on scene' to work up a new
series, but doesn't get what he was looking for.
16 - Interview in Motivated Rock, Issue #234, July
Behind the scenes with C'atel's hottest rock group.
17 - The Shell Game, Pt. 1
A few artifical intelligences strive to find a way into
reality, and succeed...
18 - The Shell Game, Pt. 2
A trader bumps into a colony of very unusual people...
they're not organic.
19 - Bad Trip
A pair of druggies are in search of the ultimate high, and
bump into parodies of every time travel show and movie ever
made.
20 - Junk Drawer
A dark trip through both the recesses of a man on the edge
and his endtable.
21 - Death Before Yielding
A fast ride on the Yttian highway system, where driving is
an exercise in combat manuvering.
22 - New and Improved
A peek into the advertising gurus of the future.
23 - Spatulas of Fury
Video games of the future aren't just candy for the eyes,
but for the rest of the senses as well...
24 - The Bridge
A struggling musician, ready to end it all, meets up with an
odd man...
25 - Real to Real Editing
A music enthusiast dies, but finds himself walking and
talking and breathing, with some sort of editor from hell
looking for him... (Note : A must read to understand many of
the rest of the series.)
26 - The Oracle
A pious monk goes forth to question an almighty Oracle, who
seems to be out sick. (Won 1st place in Humorous
interpretation at a Forensics tournament with this one.)
27 - The Universe, v 2.0
The creators of our universe stop by to say hello and patch
up a few screwups, all the while trying to evade officials
from Reality, Inc. They meet the president, too. Golly.
28 - The Run
High speed, high pressure, high stress delivery with a twist
ending.
29 - The Christmas Episode (rated PC-13)
Deck the halls with human organs, tra la la la la, la la la
la. Garunteed offensive or your money back! Also very,
very silly.
30 - Ah, Drama
Two teenagers in a car break down outside of a spooky
mansion, and, well, you know what else happens.
31 - Gilligan's Matrix
A rather bad, but very silly, series of diary entries from
the minnow.exe.
32 - Profit and Tradition
The traders of Port Hades have made a living on the edge of
space for many years, until someone comes along and buys the
Port.
33 - Research and Design
Space Patrol's crack team of field testers takes on some Bad
Guys(tm) in experimental armor.
34 - Hell
A dark look at the afterlife, which proves that Hell isn't
all its cracked up to be... personal favorite of the author.
35 - The Spaminator
It's 'Terminator' and 'T2' and 'Hormel' all rolled into one,
as a Reality, Inc. junior editor tries to save a girl from a
slathering meat-beast from the future.
36 - Dangerous Toys
A plot to kill the Net? New ways to hack into VOSNet? Demons
from beyond space and time? Yeah, they're all here...
37 - Net.Gods
The sequel to Dangerous Toys. What are the demons in the net, and
what really happened at the end of DT. (Longest FWLS story!)
38 - Hard Sell
A twitchy Middle Management type experiences the nightmare that is
rampant consumerism. No, really, it's funny.
39 - Misery Date
I just got to thinking, if AIs could predict the future based on
human behaivors and complex math, why not apply it elsewhere?
Computer-dating humor at its best.
40 - Rain Nor Sleet Nor Snow
A new courier agency opens, staffed by maniacs, violent bloodlust
mongerers and lawyers. And of course, they're all mailmen.
41 - Good Bad Guy
A trader with morals (if there were such a thing) tangles with his
worst nightmare.
42 - On the Writer's Block
Ten years have passed in the FWLS timeline, and a student writing a
speech must summarize or be the laughingstock of the school.
43 - Rock and Roll Will Never Die
A black market biotech doctor has to bring a peculiar patient back
from the dead again... and again...
44 - The Big Time
A programmer trapped in his own personal hell tries to escape from
the evil Protege information service.
45 - Help
An AI automation tries to get her life back from a set of warped
programming routines.
46 - All The News That's Fit to Print
More of an experiment than a story... I wrote an interactive VGA/MSDOS
newspaper, supposedly a daily paper on Macroware's colony world. The
text file is the ascii dump of the paper, the FWLS46ZP.ZIP file the
MSDOS program.
47 - Better Safe Than Sorry (not the original title)
A character from very early on in FWLS is thrown back into the hacking
biz by a rogue novice.
48 - Food for Thought
A mildly disturbed 'thought-eater' stalks a rumor about an AI that
knows everything...
49 - Tales of the Sunny City, Act I
What if you took ordinary teenagers, forced them to become super
intelligent and let them do whatever they want on summer vacation?