Two 6th-grade boys play a game of basketball. The game is a terrible mismatch. The victor is unable to come to terms with the outcome for 40 years.

Jacob sits stunned in the woods next to his house. A schoolteacher turned guerrilla warfare recruiter explains to him that he just shot dead ten soldiers of an invading army. Jacob is now a hero, but he has also become something else, something he despises - a killer.

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

Things were going well on the job site - except for the generator building. The mechanic had not spoken a word to anyone in two weeks. It was eccentric to say the least. The managers didn't know what to do until a kid showed up on the job site.

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?

"Everyone who goes in that room is a liar." That had to be a myth. There cannot be anything special about a silly little room. That's what I thought until I spent a couple of minutes in the room.

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.

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.

In the future, all motor vehicles drive themselves. You summon one, it comes to you, and you ride. Yawn. A few people want to have some fun. The people administering the system learn that they system worked to well to do anything.

A boy doesn't like his grandfather. That isn't the way it is supposed to be as a boy is supposed to cherish his grandfather. Sometimes it takes a little time.

A couple is too rich to obtain college education grants for their children, but too poor to pay tuition. They find a solution that skirts around legal and moral bounds.

A writer has his first novel published, but $10 a month won't pay the bills. An uncle has an idea for an new strategy.