Fiction
GINA, FOUND AGAIN
Author: Lawrence Bridges
Genre: Romance
Gina Valenzuela has never known what it’s like to go without. Her father, Baron Sr., is the richest man in Los Angeles. The life of private jets, haute couture and a monolithic house in Brentwood filled with priceless art has insulated her from the severe draught that has befallen the city. While people in LA wait anxiously every day for their two hours of water service, the Valenzuelas drink and bathe in Perrier that comes from a gigantic cistern in the kitchen.
Even the family portraits taken by Annie Liebowitz can’t hide the Valenzuela dysfunction. Gina knows she has to get out. A reality TV deal is looming, and her father has strange, possibly incestuous designs for her future. Her forbidden, unspoken crush on her half brother is unraveling, and the malicious ambition of her newly political sister, Claire, thrusts her out into the crazed revelry of LA. Something in the water has driven citizens of Los Angeles into a passionate rebellion against conventional life. They speak in rhymes, assemble in parks for poetry slams, and have turned the city into a permanent Burning Man. As she disappears into a community of illegal immigrants and starts a new life, she follows the spectacular demise of her family on their reality show that has gripped the nation. She reinvents herself in Little Guatemala, content with her new life. The Valenzuelas find a way back into her life, and not in the way Gina could ever dream of.
Martin and Martine
Author: Lawrence Bridges
Genre: Science Fiction
Martin has an easy life in the utopia that is post-apocalyptic Paris. The hedonistic society, devoted to leisure and sex, leaves little room to complain. The Server, an artificial intelligence that governs the city, has walled off Paris from the barbaric outside world that reverted to the Bronze Age after a series of calamities. At the Apple Store, Martin is introduced to the hottest new release, Best Friend. The device, a translucent laurel wreath, is worn like a crown and can create a vivid three dimensional experience with any person, in any place, living or dead. With Best Friend engaged, Martin spots a beautiful young woman on the other side of the tracks in the Metro. He doesn’t have to imagine her touch, her lips, her smell. Best Friend has taken care of that, and the woman doesn’t even know it.
Across the tracks, Martine is having her own fun. Through a glitch, Martin and Martine are united in their experience. Their erotic union takes the form of a true relationship in the physical world. There has never been a better time to be alive. This is not 1984 or Brave New World, but not everyone is happy. Calex, a rogue academic and Martin’s child hood friend, theorizes that The Server is slowly culling the human herd to reach a critically ideal number. There are unexplained breaches in the wall, but do the blissfully unaware citizens of Paris care enough to take notice?
