Electric Sheep: The Foragers (Super Science Showcase Adventures #2)

By Alicia Cole, Lee Fanning and Laura Espinosa

After a mysterious energy flux is detected on the war-torn alien world of Bathsheba, The Foragers-a crew of cosmic archaeologists-set out to find what's causing it. But when they uncover an elaborate a

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wonder Mill Cosmos
• Release date: Jun 6, 2022
• ISBN: 9781958721032

Book preview

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Published by Wonder Mill Cosmos 2022.

The Foragers: Electric Sheep Copyright © 2020 Wonder Mill Cosmos.

All Rights Reserved. Published in the United States by Wonder Mill Cosmos. No part of this story may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

For information: wondermillcosmos.com.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Illustrations by Laura Espinosa

Character Designs by Kevin Maggard & Laura Espinosa

Logos designed by Andrew Persoff

Articles by Wilson Toney; Edited by Liv Salma

Produced, Designed & Edited by Lee Fanning

superscienceshowcase.com

wondermillcosmos.com

Printed in the United States of America

Second Edition 2022

1

The desert dunes shine beneath the sun.

Bright blue eyes, sharp and electric, suddenly illuminate. The android, his dented golden head gleaming, turns and surveys around him.

The sand sparkles. Digital readings over the brightness are all that the android sees in the broken wastes of sand and rubble.

When he stands, his tattered steel body creaks. His right arm is petrified from rust.

Communication link on. I am. I seem to be. Lost.

Only static responds. Communication Link Failed flashes on his peripheral scopes.

And for a moment, Gizmo is at a loss.

He spots movement. His vision zooms to it. It’s a rodent of some kind, scurrying amongst the sands. His scopes identify it: Brown Rat, Native of Earth.

Odd.

The rat sees Gizmo and scurries back over a large dune.

Gizmo hesitates, then follows where the rodent had gone in a half-dead stagger.

He stops as he sees it. The broken half-globe silhouette, cratered in the sand. It’s familiar.

No. It is not possible.

Ruins of buildings—crumbling, empty, dead for generations—fill his vision. He knows them. These ruins, he’s all too aware, were once the sprawling headquarters of the International Space Alliance, but now only what’s left of the building’s masthead, that rotting half-globe, offers any witness to its former existence. It’s now its tombstone.

Of course, Gizmo would never forget this place. It’s where he was born.

The android slumps to his creaky knees. This. Is a lie, he says, aggrieved. Communication link on. I must speak. With the Wise Drive.

Again there is only static.

"This cannot. Be Earth."

A sharp rod erupts from Gizmo’s left palm. He cuts into the ground.

Chemical analysis. Engage.

Gizmo’s eyes strum. Chemical compounds flood his peripheral scopes, with flashing scans of photographs and data of all the planets in the known universe. The analysis complete, there is only one conclusion: Earth is a 100% match.

No. How? Where. The others. Where are the others—where—the year. What. Is the year?

Gizmo’s eyes again strum, the calculation flashing on his scopes.

The answer:

6745 A.D.

They’ve been. Dead for centuries.

Gizmo slumps further in the sand, as if crumbling in on himself.

I am alone.

Gizmo’s eyes spark back an electric blue as he wakes. Erratic, shocked by the sudden change in his surroundings, he startles up from a reclined leather chair, tangling with his charging station’s umbilical cords.

A freckled, red-haired, nearly-teenage boy rushes to him.

Whoa, hold it! Gizmo, what’s up?

The door opens. A commanding figure charges in with a pair of aliens—a Sheevan and a