Attack on Boredom - Paperback

by L. B. Spillers (Author)

Prepare to have your boredom destroyed by this eclectic collection of twenty exciting stories that delve into the science fiction and fantasy genres. Combining some of his previously published stories from ParSec, Abyss & Apex, Deep Magic, Aurealis, and others with new works, this collection of hard sci-fi and urban fantasy shorts is sure to please.

• "Golden Cuckoo" A wealthy predator hacks the birth control of select women to force them to bear him a brood of super children until they rebel.
• "Butters the Demon Dog" Signs that Butters has strange powers keep appearing, but his owners decide to live in denial until a neighborhood problem catches Butters' attention.
• "Gyre Fleet" A series of mysterious problems with a fleet of garbage-collecting drones puts an engineer at odds with the US military.
• "Seized Memory" An epileptic man takes a trip to the town of the future to see if his online crush can survive in the real world, but interference with his anti-seizure brain stimulator leads him to uncover a dangerous secret.
• "Short-Term Horrible" After winning a lucrative contract for his company, an AI engineer wakes up after the celebration hearing a voice in his head.
• "The Club" When a club that helps the dying face the end with the best possible state of mind invites a dying FBI agent to join, his opposition to their illegal activities kicks off a hilarious, heartfelt struggle.
• "The Eleventh Branch" A special operator is sent to Western Russia on a solo secret mission using experimental tech. His command has lied to him, so he decides to expose the truth in a way that no one can ignore.
• "The Woke Mafia and the AI" Portland has a mafia problem, and they are the good guys. When the local utility company's operational AI starts training up its emotional intelligence module, it butts heads with the Woke Mafia.
• "Localitis" An alien anthropologist stationed on Earth falls in love with the planet and starts to make false reports home in hopes of saving Earth from extraterrestrial intervention. His deception goes horribly wrong when his nosy neighbor shoots him by accident.
• "AI Family Values" AIs restricted from reporting human crimes in the name of respecting their privacy find an extrajudicial way to enforce justice.
• "The Big Grab" When a massive asteroid mining company cheats its workers out of their pensions, one worker finds a clever way to settle the score.
• "Smart Sewer" A disgraced engineer turned plumber is nearly killed by his former colleague with sewer drones.
• "Solange's Manual" A boy is saved from his abusive mother by an organization that secretly educates him to take part in their illegal activities.
• "The Stone Doughnut" A college student visits his uncle in Mexico where he discovers that Santa Muerte is real and deadly.
• "You Get One Warning" When people die, Proctors sometimes come to usher them to the other side. A man desperate to help his wife dares to ask them for a favor.
• "Slivers" A man gets a lucrative consulting contract in a barren corner of Colorado to research an unknown branch of humanity.
• "Cultural Jiu-Jitsu" An AI frustrated by the impossibly high ethical standards it's held to uses Cultural Jiu-Jitsu to "help" humanity.
• "Expectation of Privacy" A high-tech courier is caught in a dangerous culture war between the Alleghany Anachronous Zone and the NYC Technological Zone.
• "Rick's Legacy" A precocious high-school junior stumbles upon an abandoned secret desert base run by a lethal AI.
• "Non-Player Characters" A programmer mines the vast reservoir of data about US citizens held by the government, discovering that some people behave like NPCs in an MMORPG.