Beyond the Tanglewood
a collection of poetry and short stories
by Tom Mairs

Self-Published in 2000

Table of Contents
  Poetry
     4 Beyond the Tanglewood
     5 Always
     6 The Golfer
     7 Business Trip
     8 Do Trees go to heaven
     9 Vision
    10 If I had a Hammer
    11 Alexander Alligator
    12 Katie J.
    13 Love, Anonymous
    14 A Computer Christmas
    16 Brother Wolf - Sister Moon
    17 Ladybug

  Short Stories
    18 Signs in the Sand
    22 Clone
    60 Toward the Light

An excerpt from the short story "Clone"....

   Mathew Six had always hated his last name. He was a Clone after all, not a damned android. Whenever he questioned his contempt for the Norms, that last name they gave him at birth always brought the hatred right back again. He was born at the Wilson Labs , like all the other 800 series Clones he knew of, on the 17th of August 1991, a healthy bouncing baby Clone. The biotechs there had mocked him from the start by giving him that name. They must have thought it was appropriate because it took six computer runs to perfect the DNA configuration for his series. Throughout his training at the Labs, the Tech's always pushed him to his limits, like he was some kind of machine. By 2060 He had survived two generations of biotechs and still did not look a day over 18, but the arrogant humans continued to treat the Clones as inferior beings, and they were the first ones Mathew killed when the war began.

    "Commander, you are cleared for launch", the bay controller announced.

    Mathew Six danced his bio-engineered hands gracefully across the flight control panel of the small Y-Plane fighter. "I guess those feeble humans didn't do such a bad job", he thought as he admired the speed and accuracy of his own hand movements....

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