Something is rotten in the state of cybernetics.Elsinore Robotics is on the cusp of a breakthrough—the company is poised to create the first humanoid androids powered by true artificial intelligence. Their only rival, Norwegian Technologies, lost a publicly streamed contest between their flagship model, Fortinbras, and Elsinore's HAM(let) v.1.But when the first Hamlet model is found irreparably deactivated, the apparent victim of wild malware, the field of ...

Tropical adventures. A rag-tag sailing crew. Running off-grid data servers? Sounds legit.Devi Jones is a year away from graduating with a Computer Science degree and it's internship time. But usually the ship part isn't quite so literal. She gets hired by Really Remote Desktop, a cloud data storage company that keeps their servers in odd places, like the bilge of a hundred-foot sailboat.How can a homebody like Devi step on to a boat with six strangers and s...

Accustomed to being an only child, adoptee Brian “Gumbo” Guillemot’s teenage hobby was searching for his birth parents. But when he finally finds his birth mother, Kim, he’s unprepared for the boisterous instant family that comes with her.Besides Kim, no one knows anything about Brian’s birth father. With Kim refusing to answer any questions about him, Brian must choose whether to continue the search, even if it means alienating his few friends and both his families. But the more h...

Andersson Dexter is a new man, still living his old life.Part vigilante, part private eye, part cop, Dex is muddling his way through his day job as a faceless customer service rep for a giant firm, while solving routine cases in his off hours. But when a gruesomely mutilated corpse is found, things heat up for Dex and the underground organization he calls the Cubicle Men.Soon, Dex finds himself racing against the clock to find a killer who seems to be deter...

Ever wish things were different?Ivy Velasquez did, so she became someone else. In the 3D virtual world Marionette City, you can be anything you want — but everyone still knows who you are. Driven by her desire for a new life, Ivy takes her future in her hands when she makes another identity for herself. A brilliant designer, Ivy works for one of the huge multi-national firms which control the online system the world relies upon for both business and pleasure. But o...

Can home be a place you've never been, a place no one has ever been?The White Cloud is the most audacious experiment the human species has ever undertaken—to search for a new Earth. The ship and its crew exist for a solitary purpose—to reach a distant planet and establish a colony. However, the vast majority of people undertaking this journey will not live to see its result, nor were they part of the decision-making process to leave.A novel-in-stor...

After settling into a new job, new home and new living arrangements, Andersson Dexter has finally found a comfortable life in both the physical and virtual worlds. But that sense of security is blown apart when an explosion rocks Dex's real-life Nice neighbourhood.He and his colleagues begin an investigation into a string of seemingly senseless and random vandalism attacks, that remind them all of similar assaults in the simulated world Marionette City. While at first the attacks s...

Mars is good place to reinvent yourself, isn't it?Jules Morales's life has always been a state of contact change. When the opportunity comes up, why not take a trip to Mars to work on the platinum mining operation—and make a load of money? But what if there is more to Mars than just a payday and an adventure?The woman now calling herself Lisa Marie has spent her whole life trapped by the struggle to make ends meet, and sometimes held hostage by her own memories. On...

This collection showcases a wide variety of plans gone sideways — private eyes getting stuck on cases they really don't want to take, petty criminals getting in over their heads, law enforcement professionals on the wrong side of the bars, and upstanding citizens finding themselves to be not so law-abiding after all.These stories are as varied as they are excellent — there are light-hearted tales to make you smile, literary pieces that challenge the definition of crime writing, and...

Taking something away from others — their possessions, their dignity, their liberty, their lives — is the root of taboo.All the stories in this, the fourth collection of tales from Plan B Magazine, touch on what happens when one person puts their will above that of others. Sometimes it's amusing, other times heartbreaking, but it no matter what, someone's day won't be going according to plan.Table of Contents"Old Friends" by Frank Byrns"Write Your Epitaph" by...

Crime knows no boundaries, and no one culture or time period has a monopoly on plans gone wrong.In this second collection of stories from Plan B Magazine, we find tales from around the world and across the span of time. These stories also travel the breadth of human experience, from the innocence of a child to the mind of a bigoted murderer.Some stories will make you smile while others will make you cringe, but all will take you on a journey into the darkness of the human s...

Desperation is the same in any language. Madness respects no borders. Greed and revenge transcend cultural differences.In this third collection of stories from Plan B Magazine, we find tales from all the corners of the crime world. From Cold War espionage to small town stick-ups, high-powered diplomacy to the opportunism of poverty, these are stories of the darkness of the human heart. And once in a while, how the light of our common humanity can transcend that darkness."Si...