Dime Novels From Oblivion

It was a pleasant early summer evening. A light breeze blew across the small pristine suburb carrying with it the jingles of wind chimes, the smell of burning charcoal, and the laughter children. The sun had all but disappeared from the sky, leaving a soft twilight that proceeded the starlit night. Strolling couples stopped on the sidewalks to make small talk with their neighbors about their plans for the coming summer; packs of children free from the obligations of school aimlessly sped through the neighborhood on their bikes. Backyards swelled with families and friends who congregated around open coolers, grills, and bonfires.  One man stood over the gas-fueled flame of his grill. Watching the four patties, he prepared for his family sizzle over the blue and yellow propane flames and listening to the hissing grease jump from the perfectly rounded beef as they changed color from pink to brown. The rising heat from the flames carried the smell directly to his nose, and his mouth sali

Generations had passed since man's ascendancy into the stars.  The descendants of the first people to escape the softly glowing blue and green orb revolving along its death spiral could scarcely remember the name of the obscure planet that had facilitated the birth of their species. City sized ships called Zimbras, designed and built by a company simply known as Singularity,  had ferried thousands of passengers on one-way trips to distant worlds.  Man's exodus into space had resembled the stampeding of a panicked herd, fleeing certain death.   Many of the Zimbra's never made it to their destination.  Some collided with asteroids creating colossal balls of fire which swallowed up 100,000 souls as quickly as the vacuum of space swallowed the explosion itself.   Others fell victim to faulty programming; somewhere in the stream of algorithms a number went missing, and the computers failed to guide the Zimbra and its passengers anywhere except into the eternal empty