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Have you ever entertained the idea of having a friendly, intimate little afternoon one-on-one tea with Genghis Khan, perhaps sharing a few shaggy-dog stories with Ptolemy, cruising up the Nile on a warm, lazy evening while running your fingers gently through Cleopatra's hair and discussing the ins and outs of international politics with her, or delving into the finer points of comparative world religions and religious tolerance with Torquemada? Maybe...maybe you'd just like to have a little fun by tweaking "Schickelgruber's" schnozola or rubbing old Albert's face in the fact that he shouldn't have given up on the cosmological constant so easily, pointing out to him that he was wrong because he was right (in concept, anyway).

Well, any ordinary, everyday time traveler you run into will tell you that one step to either side of the line, or the tiniest miscalculation will have you coming out back then or later on, dangling in airless space, trapped in a lump of granite, or stuck halfway through the wall of someone's -- or something's -- bedroom. Today is, after all, nothing more than a single slice out of the timeline and the "now" is but an infinitesimal point in that slice holding us between the future and the past by the slimmest of margins, boundaries too small for measure, too fine to see, too delicate to feel as we move through them, which brings to mind my pet theory that time doesn't exist. We "measure" it, but we have no idea of what it is. If that gives you trouble, try this. Measure now. No, I'm not kidding. I'm quite serious. How long is "now"? When you've come up with a number that satisfies you, answer these two simple questions. 1) How long is it from "now" to the future? 2) How long is it from "now" to the past? Lots of luck, my friend.

The trick in time travel is, getting from "now" to whenever and returning without upsetting the delicate balance in the process -- and not using an infinite amount of energy to do it. Simple, right? Well, okay, not simple now that you're thinking about it.

The consequences of moving around in time can be disastrous, you know. Just one little mistake, anything left behind, anything taken away, the death or salvation of a single critical link in the chain and bam!, the whole timeline is screwed up and you, possibly the world itself, may or may not survive. The time you return to might be altogether different from what you remember -- the natives could be hostile, or there might be no one there at all. Who knows? You could even !pop! out in a parallel universe with or without a way to get back where you belong.

Join us as we explore the possibilities, but be prepared. The Twisted Tails series of books is based on the unexpected "twist" at the end that is bound to leave you bouncing around between the way-back-when, later, maybe never; the here, there, somewhere, or nowhere. Enjoy -- but beware. Our authors are masters at rug-ripping endings.

The authors of Twisted Tails II: Time on our Hands -- Volumes 1 and 2....

                                Eugen M. Bacon
                                Darrell Bain
                                Jeremy Davies
                                Ann Dulhanty
                                Anderson Gentry
                                E. Don Harpe
                                Christopher Hoare
                                Jamie A. Hughes
                                J. Richard Jacobs
                                Joyce K. Jensen
                                Biff Mitchell
                                K. L. Nappier
                                Marilyn Peake
                                Lea Schizas
                                Terence West
                                Margaret Whitley

The stories contained in Volume 1 are:

EPOCH by Terence West

THE ART OF TIME TRAVEL by Joyce K. Jensen

NEANDERTHAL NEMESIS by Darrell Bain

BUCKING THE SYSTEM by J. Richard Jacobs

A RINGKLE IN TIME by Biff Mitchell and Ann Dulhanty

THE LIBRARIAN WHO WASN'T by Lea Schizas

MUMMY IN THE ART MUSEUM by Marilyn Peake

A MAJI MAJI CHRONICLE by Eugen M. Bacon

HEART OF STONE by Jamie A. Hughes

THE EDGE by E. Don Harpe

An excerpt from TWISTED TAILS II: Time on our Hands - Volume 1

BUCKING THE SYSTEM

J. Richard Jacobs

“Number three hundred and seventy-four. Three-seven-four,” a gravelly female voice rattled through the room.

Carmen Flores glanced absently at the small red tag in her hand. Three hundred and seventy-four, that was her number. She stood, noticed with some trepidation that she was in the middle of an immensely long line of seats occupied by other impatient people waiting for their numbers to be called, then began threading her way through a tangled forest of feet—not too successfully—toward the aisle to her right.

“Three-seven-four,” the voice said again.

“Coming,” she responded. Her terse response carried an unmistakable mix of frustration and anger that was understandable from the human perspective but only meant another possible rehabilitation session in MX2 from The System’s point of view. Flores shuddered at that thought and hoped The System hadn’t noticed her breach.

Not much chance of that. Why can’t I learn to keep my mouth shut?

“What can we do for you?” the woman behind the glass said in a flat monotone that dripped a small puddle of boredom on the tiny counter in front of her, its surface dulled by years of elbows leaning and fingernails nervously scratching.

“My...my allotment hasn’t come in,” Flores said.

“That’s impossible.”

“Um...how is it impossible?”

“The System is infallible, that’s how,” the woman behind the glass said, a sharpness building in her tone.

“Oh, yeah...I forgot. Infallible. But...but my allotment still has not arrived, infallible or not.” Flores teetered on the tattered edge of thoroughly pissed. She mused on how pleasant it would be to wrap her fingers around the scrawny neck of the broad in the booth until her droopy eyes—drugged?—popped from their sockets.

“That’s impossible. Credits were transferred on the fifteenth of the month—as usual,” the woman snapped. “Give me your right wrist.”

“Huh? Oh, yeah,” Flores said and slipped her right hand, palm up, through the slot at the bottom of the window.

Damn, they’re going to read my histochip and then I’ll be in for it for sure. Good thing it can’t read minds.

The woman in the cubicle passed a small sensor over Flores’s wrist. She then glanced to her right. A blue-gray light glowed from a flickering monitor there that gave her normal living-inside-the-complex pallor the look of the living dead. She nodded a quick, economical single bob of her head.

“You’ve been in for adjustments four times this year, haven’tcha?”

“Well-l-l, yeah—but...but I can explain. They were mistakes. You see—”

”The System doesn’t make mistakes, sweety, and it doesn’t want to hear your lame-brained excuses, either.” There was a certain sticky nastiness in the statement and Flores drew back a little. It was nothing more than a reflex, but she knew The System had seen it and would interpret it in its own, infallible way.

Damn The System.

“You’ll be happy to hear that you’ve been scheduled for behavioral adjustments at MX2 tomorrow afternoon. Fourteen hundred hours, sharp. Don’t be late,” she said. She raised the boom mike to her pencil-line thin, purple lips.

“Number three hundred and seventy-five. Three-seven-five.”

“But...my allotment—”

“Screw your allotment, bitch. Get out.”

“But I—”

”Out, or it won’t be only adjustments you get over there at MX2.” A second or so of angry looks passed between them. “Three-seven-five!”

Excerpt from a review by Beverly J. Rowe

"These two exciting books explore the concept of time, according to each writer's imagination. Does time exist as a separate dimension with a unique place and definite limits in space? How, exactly does that work?

Each of these stories has a surprise twist ending, designed to catch you off guard, and they really do just that. But be careful...the publisher states that you are on your own...no promise that once you are into a story, you will ever come out. Some stories will give you a laugh, and others will really creep you out and may send you on a time-warp tail-spin of your own."

For the entire review go to the link for MyShelf below.

<http://www.myshelf.com/scifi_fantasy/07/twistedtailsII.htm>