Dust Devil: Tales from the High Desert

Slice-of-life vignettes and six-word stories morph into tongue-in-cheek humor, sci fi, satire, social commentary, surrealism, speculative fiction, and a smidgen of sex. The Dust Devil emerges, whipping up a handful of dirt at the side of the road.A kind, old woman sits alone in her home at the edge of town, reminiscing about the way things used to be in the neighborhood when everyone knew each other and cared about their welfare. Nowadays, neighbors don't even say "hello." Her sardonic wit and intelligence inspire her grandson to shoot for the stars and become a world-renowned astrophysicist.The Dust Devil swirls, balloons to the size of a child and picks up speed.Dave's grandfather was a Navajo Code Talker in World War II. With his deaf cousin, Dave struggles with a bird of prey and pines for a girl he met years ago and still can't get over. Six stories tall and half as wide, the Dust Devil stampedes across the rez. Stephanie and her brother, Jorge, shared a traumatic event in their early childhood that was never resolved. In high school, Stephanie's driving teacher triggers her long-forgotten inner demon, and she plows into the Principal's P. T. Cruiser. Ten years later, she has no close friends and an unfulfilling job. Taking off on a summer road trip to visit Jorge in Baker, Nevada, where he works as an astronomer, she picks up a very unusual man on the loneliest road. The Dust Devil barrels across the state, leaving small towns in ghostly desolation in its wake before demolishing Nuevo Panadero, an elite "suburb" of Baker.Katsuo Setagawa, an eccentric billionaire, inventor, architect and black ops assassin hires Stephanie to work on the world's first operational holodeck. The launch of his Virtual Reality Interactive Cinema is doomed. Many of the nation's one-percenters are aboard along with eighty of their closest friends and two miniature giraffes.AlIce XI, a prototype A.I., takes control of the maiden launch of V-RIC, wreaking havoc in northern Nevada. Residents and visitors to Area 61 and Burning Man will never be quite as sane as they used to be.Its tremendous energy dissipated, the Dust Devil fades into the landscape of Nevada's high desert.