Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

Three Amazing Tales
Three Amazing Tales
Three Amazing Tales
Ebook164 pages2 hours

Three Amazing Tales

Rating: 0 out of 5 stars

()

Read preview

About this ebook

Here are three novellas. The Magical Earth is scifi/fantasy about a man who invents a teleporter. His invention works, but not in the way he intended. In teleporting him from one location to another, it takes a detour through an alternate world, a world where magic is commonplace. Jason Devlin, inventor and karate expert, is taken to this world where he meets and falls in love with a beautiful sorceress. She thinks he is a powerful sorcerer who has come to save her people from a horde of barbarians led by an evil sorcerer.
Jason and his nephew/assistant find themselves neck deep in misadventures, and even a war where swords and sorcery are the weapons. They must use their knowledge of science and martial arts to survive in a world of magic.
~~*~~
Project Genesis is a post-apocalyptic scifi tale about four people: an astronaut and three scientists, who are sent to a space station during a catastrophic war that could annihilate the human race. Their mission is to repopulate Earth if it becomes necessary. Their payload includes frozen human gametes and newly developed artificial wombs to help accomplish the mission.
Trouble develops when one of the scientists goes psychotic and threatens to kill the others in order to carry out his own agenda of creating a super race. Mack Jones, astronaut, and Donna Larson, biologist, have their hands full in trying to survive while attempting to rescue the mission.
~~*~~
The Soul Hunters is an occult/horror tale of a private investigator, Mark Rollins, who is killed and finds himself on the other side. He is neither in Heaven or Hell, but is still here on Earth. He decides that this must be a "holding area" of some sort. He is not alone. He finds there are others like himself, and he even meets a girl he once dated.
But there are also the Hunters. They are vampire-like creatures who feed on the Earthbound souls. These evil creatures are forever prowling, always on the hunt for souls. Mark has several narrow escapes before finding himself face to face with one of the creatures.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateAug 11, 2012
ISBN9781476271095
Three Amazing Tales
Author

Donald H Sullivan

I'm a native Floridian, retired from the US Army, I started writing in the army, mostly training and tech manuals. Boring stuff, but it whetted my interest in writing. I've written sci-fi, thrillers, mysteries, humor, fantasies, horror, and more. I'm now living in NC. While in the army, I served in air defense artillery, military intelligence, and psychological operations. I also worked in Federal Civil Service as a quality assurance specialist, ammunition surveillance. I love writing, reading, most kinds of music, and animals--especially dogs.

Read more from Donald H Sullivan

Related to Three Amazing Tales

Related ebooks

Science Fiction For You

View More

Related articles

Reviews for Three Amazing Tales

Rating: 0 out of 5 stars
0 ratings

0 ratings0 reviews

What did you think?

Tap to rate

Review must be at least 10 words

    Book preview

    Three Amazing Tales - Donald H Sullivan

    Three Amazing Tales

    Fantasy-Scifi-Horror

    By Donald H Sullivan

    Copyright 2012 Donald H Sullivan

    Smashwords Edition

    ~~*~~

    Smashwords Edition License Notes

    This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

    ~~*~~

    This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of the characters herein to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

    Table of Contents

    Title Page

    Foreword

    The Magical Earth

    Project Genesis

    The Soul Hunters

    About the Author

    Excerpt From The Psionic Man

    Foreword

    Here are three novellas. The Magical Earth is scifi/fantasy about a man who invents a teleporter. His invention works, but not in the way he intended. In teleporting him from one location to another, it takes a detour through an alternate world, a world where magic is commonplace. Jason Devlin, inventor and karate expert, is taken to this world where he meets and falls in love with a beautiful sorceress. She thinks he is a powerful sorcerer who has come to save her people from a horde of barbarians led by an evil sorcerer.

    Jason and his nephew/assistant find themselves neck deep in misadventures, and even a war where swords and sorcery are the weapons. They must use their knowledge of science and martial arts to survive in a world of magic.

    ~~*~~

    Project Genesis is a post-apocalyptic scifi tale about four people: an astronaut and three scientists, who are sent to a space station during a catastrophic war that could annihilate the human race. Their mission is to repopulate Earth if it becomes necessary. Their payload includes frozen human gametes and newly developed artificial wombs to help accomplish the mission.

    Trouble develops when one of the scientists goes psychotic and threatens to kill the others in order to carry out his own agenda of creating a super race. Mack Jones, astronaut, and Donna Larson, biologist, have their hands full in trying to survive while attempting to rescue the mission.

    ~~*~~

    The Soul Hunters is an occult/horror tale of a private investigator, Mark Rollins, who is killed and finds himself on the other side. He is neither in Heaven or Hell, but is still here on Earth. He decides that this must be a holding area of some sort. He is not alone. He finds there are others like himself, and he even meets a girl he once dated.

    But there are also the Hunters. They are vampire-like creatures who feed on the Earthbound souls. These evil creatures are forever prowling, always on the hunt for souls. Mark has several narrow escapes before finding himself face to face with one of the creatures.

    Back to Top

    ~~*~~

    The Magical Earth

    Chapter One

    If Jason Devlin's tests were successful, he would not only be realizing the greatest invention of his life, it would be one of the greatest inventions of all time.

    Jason already had a number of inventions to his credit, and the royalties from those inventions earned him more than enough to quit his job at Astro Instruments and allow him to devote full time to his greatest love: tinkering and experimenting with just about anything that struck his fancy.

    In a few moments, he would know if this was to be the invention that would bring him fame and fortune. He would attempt to teleport a rabbit from booth A on one side of the lab to booth B on the other side. He opened the door to booth A and placed the rabbit inside. After many long hours of mental and physical toil, he was finally ready.

    He thought of the movie, The Fly, and checked the booths for the presence of any unwanted insects. He chuckled to himself. Why am I worried? Even if I do end up with a monster in booth B, I should be so lucky it works at all.

    He double-checked all his settings, and held his breath as he grasped the handle and pulled the switch out and up to the ON position. His pulse quickened as he watched the rabbit in booth A vanish. His gaze jumped to booth B, expecting to see the rabbit sitting there. Booth B was empty.

    What in the devil...this is crazy. The rabbit had to go somewhere.

    He rechecked the two booths carefully, and then he searched the lab. There was no sign of the rabbit anywhere. The rabbit did not cease to exist; it had to be existing somewhere. There was a space of twenty feet between the two booths. Could the rabbit be trapped in some nebulous limbo in that space?

    He pulled the switch down to the OFF position. He stared at booth B in amazement, for as the power switched off, the rabbit materialized in the booth--and sitting atop the rabbit's head was a bright blue grasshopper. Wherever the rabbit had been, it had picked up a hitchhiker. He was relieved to see that the two creatures hadn't meshed together or exchanged parts, but were two separate entities. He chuckled inwardly as he pictured a rabbit-grasshopper monster appearing in booth B.

    He'd never heard of a blue grasshopper, but bugs weren't his field. Probably a common insect, he mused, but where the devil did it come from?

    The next day Jason placed a potted plant, with the blue grasshopper perched on a leaf, into Booth A. He threw the switch. As with the rabbit, the plant vanished from Booth A when he activated the switch, but did not reappear in Booth B until he deactivated the switch. The plant was in booth B but the grasshopper was gone.

    He reasoned that when the switch was activated, objects were teleported to an unknown third location. A field was energized at the third location, and when the switch was deactivated the field collapsed, teleporting whatever chanced to be inside the field to the final destination…in this case booth B.

    When he teleported the rabbit, the grasshopper at the third location had jumped on the rabbit's head. It was caught there when the field collapsed, thus teleporting it to Booth B along with the rabbit. The next day the grasshopper was teleported along with the potted plant, and when it reached the third location it jumped from the plant before the field collapsed.

    He concluded that the teleportation of objects from Booth A to Booth B was working, but in the process, the objects were taking a detour through the third location--wherever that was.

    But he hadn't a clue as to where it might be. It could be nearby, or it could be halfway around the world. He could think of only one way to learn where the blue grasshopper came from--by going there himself. But how could he pull it off? He was reluctant to ask a friend to operate the switch; he preferred to keep his invention a secret until it was perfected.

    He was tired. He needed to rest his brain a while and try to figure out a solution to his problem. He went into the kitchen and made a pot of fresh coffee. He poured himself a mug of the steaming hot coffee and sat down at the kitchen table.

    Maybe I could rig up a timer to the switch…

    ~~*~~

    The timer switch worked, but the system wasn't set up to work with timers. Jason was never comfortable with jury-rigged affairs, but his timer was just that: something tacked on as an afterthought. He found that it worked best by setting it for the same time once every twelve hours; he decided on noon and midnight. He didn't want the field to stay active for too long, and thus increase the chances of trapping all sorts of animals and insects in the field when it collapsed, thus depositing the critters in Booth B.

    But he didn't want it to stay active for too short a period, which would increase the chance of trapping himself out of the field and causing him to wait another twelve hours--exposed to who knows what.

    He decided on ten minutes. He figured a ten minute window every twelve hours should be about right.

    His thoughts were interrupted by the roar of a motorcycle pulling up, followed a moment later by a knock on the door. He chuckled. It would be his nephew Stuart.

    He unbolted the door. C'mon in, Stu. Hey, what's with the hand?

    Stuart held up his left hand, crudely bandaged with an old tee shirt, with blood seeping through. It's Mom, he said. She's drunk again. This time she came at me with a butcher knife.

    Sit down and rest your elbow on the table top, and keep the hand up. I’ll get the first aid kit.

    Jason inspected the gash on the back of Stuart's hand, sprayed antiseptic on it, and applied a bandage.

    It doesn't look too bad. No need to see a doc if you've had your tetanus shots. He paused and took a deep breath. Stu, it's not that I don't believe you, it's just that I've never seen your mother take a drink since I've known her. It's hard to picture her drunk.

    Stuart's eyes narrowed. You just don't know her. She's always been a secret drinker. She hid it from everybody except me and Dad. Since Dad went to… He hesitated and swallowed. Since Dad went to prison, she just gets worse all the time. Uncle J, if you go over there right now you can see for yourself.

    ~~*~~

    Jason cranked the car and started the fifteen minute drive to Janet's house. He had always felt sorry for Janet. She had always seemed like too nice a woman for his older brother. She was from a wealthy family, and owned the spacious, expensive house she and Ernie lived in.

    Ernie, ten years Jason's senior, was the black sheep. He was into drugs and always in trouble from his early teen years. And now he was doing time for the attempted murder of an officer during a traffic stop.

    During the last few months, since Ernie was incarcerated, Stuart had come to Jason several times seeking refuge from his drunken mother. But Jason had known Janet for eighteen years, since he was a youngster of twelve, and never knew her to drink, even socially.

    He pulled into the driveway and parked behind Janet's Mercedes. He walked up the steps and knocked on the door.

    She screamed and something that sounded like a pot hit the door. I told you to get out and not come back. I should have killed you. You're no better than your daddy.

    Janet, it's me, Jason.

    She cursed. Yeah, the high and mighty Jason, the brains of the family. Well you're no better than your stupid brother.

    The door opened and Janet, reeking with alcohol, rushed at him with a knife. The karate-trained Jason adroitly sidestepped her and had the knife in his possession in a heartbeat.

    She sputtered out curses and then started crying. Get away from me. I don't want to see you again, or anybody tainted with Devlin blood. She ran inside and slammed the door.

    ~~*~~

    Stu, you're seventeen, almost eighteen, and in this state you're legally permitted to leave home with your parent's permission. Jason chuckled dryly. "I guess getting thrown

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1