Humanity never came closer to general enlightenment than in May 1964. It all started with an immigrant. Make a note, class. People breaking free from their homeland’s constraints are always the ones to watch out for. They’re the dangerous ones, the disruptors. An adrenaline-fuelled mix of desperation and stubbornness propels them forward. Immigrants don’t all…
There’s this place up north. I won’t tell you its name. Either you know and recognise it, or you don’t, and then I pity you. I’m not from the north. I happened to find the place by sheer luck during my bleak years as a travelling salesman. Margaret Thatcher was bludgeoning Arthur Scargill to a…
Cole Delaney stood on the porch of his twenty-six-room house overlooking Lake Willoughby in Vermont. The sunset was sublime as ever. He couldn’t believe his good fortune finding this place for his retirement. He sold off his software company two years ago and had enough money in the bank to buy fifty houses like this…
On the eve of his twenty-first birthday, Roy had an epiphany. Suddenly, he could see all his previous lives. The experience had nothing to do with prayer, meditation, or ESP. Roy considered himself a rationalist. He wasn’t religious, and neither was he tempted by any form of New-Agey mysticism. Raised a Catholic, he’d jettisoned his…
Anton Kupka made his way through a poorly lighted hallway that looked more like a tunnel to him. There were no windows, no natural light, only evenly-spaced light bulbs, which made soft, humming noises. It felt as if he’d been walking forever. He’d forgotten how his journey started and had no idea where it’d lead…
Gary Koscinski and Choi Ha-yoon met each other for the first time in Vienna. He was a fifty-four-year-old lawyer from Vancouver, and she was a forty-year-old mechanical engineer from Busan. Two months ago, they each had received a letter from Öffentliche Notare Engels, Kaindl & Blatt Partnerschaft, informing them they were the sole heirs of…
Some marriages are made in hell. Jeff met his wife at a fundraiser and it was lust at first sight. Corine was a curvaceous brunette in her mid-thirties looking to settle down after having been the life of the party — and whatever came next — for fifteen years. Booze and coke had already taken…
David was an unusually beautiful man. The kind that made girls’ heads turn in surprised wonder. The kind that was predestined for a successful professional career without even trying. He was tall and athletic — although he’d never seen the inside of a gym-room. His strong jaw-line, Greek nose, deep-blue eyes, perfect teeth, and wavy…
Doctors in hospitals have the weirdest concept of customer-centricity. They give all their patients an appointment at nine and let them simmer for the rest of the day. It’s their way of making sure they won’t ever have to sit idle, waiting for patients who cannot read clocks. Doctors are convinced their time is far more valuable…