The Bright Future Series

In 2013, Nabisco’s Oreo generated over two billion dollars in revenue worldwide. In the decades since, its fortunes have only grown larger. Low carb, gluten free, and pure organic diet trends did nothing to slow the frosting sandwich juggernaut. That was until a scientist baker, working in a secret lab, developed a recipe that threatens to take Oreo’s crown – a cookie so valuable that when the baker is murdered, nation-status corporations risk war to find and recover the prototype batch. A shape-shifting mercenary races against a corporate police officer forced by internal politics to be more interested in locating the cookies than investigating the murder of a citizen employee. Free of the legal restrictions once imposed by weakened traditional governments, corporate states redraw maps and enforce their own law to claim the four billion dollar prize in a story of corporate power, personal identity, and moral flexibility.

Killer new firewall protects data from hackers! The all natural diet corporations don’t want you to know about! She turned her cell phone off; the reason why is shocking! 108,903 words you need to read. #98,641 is insane! Not everyone was delighted by the advent of synthetic body parts. Some people protested the new technology, some fled “The Altered State” to form Naturalist colonies, and others took more direct actions. Hackers have turned up dead all over the city. When a friend goes missing, one hacker hires Canbe to discover what happened. The shape-shifting freelance mercenary discovers more about the people in her life than she ever wanted to know as she takes on her most difficult infiltration yet—living in a cult dedicated to reducing the use of synthetic parts by murdering people who have them.

The Shipping Wars completely reformed the business of carrying things from one point to another. Competition grew so fierce that it finally burst into armed conflict. The old companies were destroyed, and Parcel Service rose out of their combined ashes. Obtaining nation-status, Parcel Service exercised its power to make certain that those dark days of competition are gone. Every truck is armored, every package defended, every step taken to ensure that the mail must flow – through Parcel Service. When an unscrupulous employee stole a valuable console and sold it to the competition, it was only natural that he used Parcel Service to move the device. He didn’t plan on getting caught or being forced to reveal the tracking number of the package. Now, the rightful owners want their console back, and they’ve offered a ridiculous bounty for its safe return. Armed with the knowledge of the console’s route, a smuggler, a sniper, and a shape-shifting thief concoct a risky plan to claim the bounty: taking on Parcel Service and hitting their armored car – with another armored car. Set in "The Bright Future", this short story takes place before book 1 in the series: "The Cookie Caper".

Sergeant McGoohan wasn’t always a corporate police officer protecting the baked goods and other interests of a nation-status corporation. Kraft Security Services’ sarcastic top-cop was once a police officer for the city’s elite Corporate Affairs Division. A respected authoritarian, McGoohan has spent decades climbing to the top of his career, bending the occasional rule in the interest of a peaceful state. The limited resources of the city has capped his salary, but a haunted past steers him away from the pursuit of money. Pressing his face to the glass ceiling, Corporate Affairs Officer McGoohan trains a younger officer to replace him, so he can enjoy an eventual retirement. One stray bullet changes everything. Years before The Cookie Caper, McGoohan and Canbe almost crossed paths, and the event altered the course of both their lives.

Spies and corruption have always been problems for governments and corporations. When corporations became sovereign nations, those problems did not go away. They became intertwined and compounded until they landed on Senator Saul. One of his employees stole the most valuable prototype in the history of a nation-status corporation, but that isn’t a problem. The thief was arrested and a freelancer recovered the prototype. When a spy is caught, scrutiny follows. A decade of operations and actions would be questioned. Saul sponsored the thief’s citizenship, but that could be explained. What no Senator wants to explain is a captured spy’s role in election fraud. As a freelancer, Butcher specializes in only one thing. He does it well. He does it efficiently. It also happens to be the one thing a corrupt Senator needs done to avoid explaining what his former employee might reveal.

Bounty: HAND DELIVER Intact Prototype Game Console – Gates City – 1M$ – [apply for job] For the freelance mercenary, Khutulun, the advertisement sounded like a straightforward theft. Secure a box, deliver it to an office, and collect a million dollars – not credits, dollars. The stipulation that it be hand delivered was unusual and made the gig more difficult. No dead drops or third party couriers meant she would have to have the thing in her possession for a longer time, and Gates City was a dangerous place to be in possession of anything stolen from The Microsoft Nation-Status Corporation. By itself, anything that was worth a million dollars to a competitor was sure to draw the attention of Microsoft’s entire police force. The console had already been stolen and recovered once. Adding a traitor, a corrupt Senator, and a murder, Khutulun’s synthetic legs were about to carry her into a whole new kind of challenge.