"Forty, Counting Down": With the help of his time travel software, computer genius Justin Kloster returns to the past to stop himself from making a terrible mistake -- but all actions have their consequences.
"The Maltese Elephant": A legendary detective finds himself in grave danger when a noir masterpiece takes a stunning new twist.
"Goddess for a Day": Taking a page from history, a young girl dares to challenge the gods -- and is richly rewarded for her efforts.
"Deconstruction Gang": Mired in unemployment and despair, an academic finds happiness and intellectual fulfillment in a most unexpected place.
"Twenty-One, Counting Up": Justin Kloster's college life and romantic dreams are rudely interrupted -- and irreversibly disrupted -- when forty-year-old Justin arrives from the future to save him from himself.
Plus twelve more thrilling, unforgettable tales of wonder!
This story is a mirror-image twin of "Twenty-one, Counting Up," the last piece in this book. If you read one, you'll see one thing. If you read the other, you'll see something else. If you read them both, I hope they prove more than the sum of their parts. I don't recommend that you read them back to back-I think they should have a little time between them. But if you choose not to listen to me, who's going to know? "Hey, Justin!" Sean Peters' voice floated over the top of the Superstrings, Ltd., cubicle wall. "It's twenty after six-quitting time and then some. Want a drink or two with me and Garth?"
"Hang on," Justin Kloster answered. "Let me save what I'm working on first." He told his computer to save his work as it stood, generate a backup, and shut itself off. Having grown up in the days when voice-recognition software was imperfectly reliable, he waited to make sure the machine followed orders. It did, of course. Making that software idiotproof had put Superstrings on the map a few years after the turn of the century.
Justin got up, stretched, and l ... read full excerpt from Counting Up, Counting Down ebook
