Gus attended the county fair for some well earned leisure time and an afternoon filled with relaxed thoughts. He was a recent retiree from his career as a U.S. Postoffice mail sorter. He had spent long, painstaking hours accurately sorting mail, and packages into slots and trains of canvas-bags. He took personal pride getting every address precisely sorted to expedite delivery. He once got a commendation from the Postmast...

Hail and lightning weren’t the only clandestine storm elements to worry about. Fragments of long ago collided planets and man-made satellites showered down upon a myopic world, proving even intelligent design could crumble. The night skies had turned to searing tracers of flame and red light while the days were chaotic with the sounds and movement of heavy war machinery. The only things on people’s minds were worried ques...

You wouldn’t pay any attention to her because she was one of the unattractive invisible. But that was exactly her thing. A woman of the common masses. She didn’t party, didn’t go to church, didn’t rock and roll. She wore her coarse dark hair braided and left it unwashed. She balanced thick, clear-rimmed glasses on the pinched bridge of her nose. Across her narrow sloped shoulders she hung a dingy navy-blue nylon jacket th...