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.

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.

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.

The old man walks from his porch to his mailbox every afternoon. He grabs the junk mail, reads the newspaper, and watches the future of mankind pass by in a crowded school bus.

I stopped going to work. My walks in the woods wouldn't let me. I couldn't bring myself to tell anyone why. How could I tell of the bullets that I had shot into the eye sockets of those people who weren't really people anymore wandering about at the edge of the woods?

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 plague has hit the world. The healthy flee the cities to try to survive in the countryside. The old and dying are doomed to stay behind.

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 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.

The key witness to a triple murder sits on a curb with filth running under his feet. He will testify only if a police detective agrees to enter the sewer and help someone.

The government has abandoned the dangerous zones. The Interstate routes pass through those dangerous zones. The only entrance is through one of the islands on the interstate.