Pandora's Progeny

If you loved Orson Scott Card's - Ender's Game - and William Gibson's - Burning Chrome-, and hid under the covers with the lights on while reading Stephen King's homegrown horror, or couldn't put down an Ann Rice Vampire novel, and if you find aliens romantic and terrifying then there are stories in this collection for you! Fourteen year old Jing and her brother, fifteen year old Gyp Crawler, do whatever they must to survive in a place that is like "Vegas for Children." A place where enlistment-officers cruise for runaways to send off planet to labor camps. A place where the nice people in town want to buy children's glands and organs to stay young. Jing and Gyp used to live a good life with their mother on the moon, but their father took them for a weekend visit and abandoned them years later on Earth in a dark arcade called Squirrels in Frankfurter Highlight, a 24 hour gamblers' haven of vidmind games. Jing must save her brother from the arcade's ogre, Base, the biker-bouncer who hunts the boy to trade him for cash to the cruit-joes who will sell him as cheap offworld labor. A bad gamble costs Gyp his consciousness; now his mind is lost and locked inside a Gamm, the arcade's gaming machines, where bleeders lurk. Gyp can only be saved by Jing, but she's never before played a game in void link. In this cyberpunk Christmas tale genetically selected children compete and kill for the chance to win Christmas. In a simulated, yet antiquated future playground called Daycare, Ceep, an omniscient computer, responsible for creating deadly gangs of urchins who desire to reap the rewards of Christmas, encourages his creations to use their enhanced genetic skills to destroy one another and take the Christmas tree for their own. Only the strongest survive, or do they? When Chronos, the leader of his gang, discovers his love for one of the most detested members of his group is stronger than his love for his creator, he can't help but try to save her from ultimate destruction. A sixteen year old skateboarder calls himself Squatch after the mythological forest creature he worships. He agrees to go on a family camping trip to the San Diego zoo to see a captured bigfoot. A flat tire strands Squatch and his family in the Pacific Northwest woods, but an old local hiker, Billy Jackson, comes to the rescue. When Squatch steals Billy's cigarettes he soon discovers that Billy is much more than he appears. Newly undead Angel can't understand her need to return over and over to the abandoned child called Alia, the little girl who feeds Angel small cups of blood. Angel fights her desire for blood but drinks it anyway and reads picture books to Alia and her friend Pier who are abandoned in a condemned warehouse. From two forsaken children Angel learns that monsters come in many colors. With his ship, Shadow Hunter, old man Kayden, an alien species trapper, and his secret client, make their way aboard the aging space station Habitat. A special item sold in the duty free shop brings Kayden across the galaxy, but first he must slip past store security and the shop's eternal keeper. Yet, even with the instincts of a galaxy hunter, Kayden is shaken when he finds the unexpected. In tall, grassy fields of the northern flatlands, a mysterious lemonade stand waylays lost travelers when strange children offer to quench their thirst. The strange and industrious nature of two youngsters lures a lone fisherman who seeks a pond where the fish are known to bite. He lands more than he bargained for when he accepts a thirst quenching snack. Halloween comes early to Jason, Milo and Tannis who live on a hobby pumpkin farm run by their parents. Harvest time arrives in a few weeks, but dad has disappeared, and the children discover too late that their mom's arachnid tendencies are only getting worse. It's the end of the summer holidays, and the end of the farm if dad doesn't show up to harvest the fields. In the meantime, mother spins a wic