Witness Mr. Henry Bemis, a charter member in the fraternity of dreamers. A bookish little man whose passion is the printed page, but who is conspired against by a bank president and a wife and a world full of tongue-cluckers and the unrelenting hands of a clock. But in just a moment, Mr. Bemis will enter a world without bank presidents or wives or clocks or anything else. He'll have a world all to himself... without anyone.
From the Phantom of the Louvre collection What is a routine study for his parents leaves a much deeper impression on a 12-year old. A lifetime of loss, disappointment and betrayal is balanced by recollections of a single act of bravery and sacrifice. ~ 4,100 words.
Eight students of telepathy go mad and their instructor is a vegetable. That makes the instructor the perfect person to work out the bugs in his system.
When the members of the elite Baltimore Gun Club find themselves lacking any urgent assignments at the close of the Civil War, their president, Impey Barbicane, proposes that they build a gun big enough to launch a rocket to the moon. But when Barbicane's adversary places a huge wager that the project will fail and a daring volunteer elevates the mission to a "manned" flight, one man's dream turns into an international space race.