David is on break from his dead-end job at the Dollar Store. A scruffy old man approaches him claiming to be his uncle who hasn't eaten in two days. David gives the old man his last $2. Something comes back in return later.

A fundamental task of ours is to test or experiment with our equipment...so began a report I wrote. We were struggling to build systems. Analysis showed that our basic problem was how we tested systems and reported the results. This booklet records time-honored fundamentals of testing and reporting on tests.

Joseph writes novels, and they have all been rejected so far. He pays his rent by writing junk magazine articles. Food? That comes from people who don't write as well.

An elderly widower finds a dog on his walk in the woods. The two become companions as the man cares for the dog and the dog watches the man.

An unemployed man laments the closing of the local public library. He decides to do something about it.

Jerry broke into computer systems. He had been doing this since the third grade. This time was different. This time Jerry was going walk into a corporate building and walk out with data in his hands. Would it work?

Tony felt for the homeless people he saw outside the window of his Washington D.C. office. He wanted to help feed them and figured that would be easy. It wasn't as easy as he thought.

Ten-year-old Todd is going with his dad while his dad goes hunting. It is the longest, hardest, and most memorable day of his life.

Nelson stumbles into a tiny restaurant somewhere in Alabama. The place is a treasure trove of chats with interesting people. Nelson goes out of his way two months later to revisit the place, but things have changed.

Mike Knapp would gaze at the top of the flag pole that stood outside his 4th floor office. It didn't look far. Maybe he could leap out the window and grab it. That was just a daydream until one morning when an accident in the parking garage set off a disastrous chain of events.

Thomas and Karen were winter house sitters at 12,000 feet in the Montana mountains. Spring arrived, but not in the normal fashion. They found a stranger in the barn who was too sick to explain himself. Thomas heads down the mountain to find a deserted ranch and town except for one man dragging himself across a street.

Two scientists descend below the Nevada Desert to examine an alien spaceship. They discover unbelievable things, and the aliens are a little weird, too.