This is the final blog in a deep-dive series on the stories in Rick’s newest book, Random Precision. The following blog includes spoilers.
 
A few months ago, I underwent surgery for a torn meniscus in my left knee. It was the second time that leg went under the knife; the first time was more than 16 years earlier in a much more extensive operation to rebuild the shattered limb described in “Three Miles.”
 
While this year’s procedure was far less involved, I experienced some of the same emotions described in this story.
 
“Three Miles” is a departure from the rest of Random Precision in that it’s a true-life tale, not fiction. I really experienced that awful accident. Even now, many years later, I relive those moments when I go for a run over that same spot. (To be accurate, as I write this blog I’m still rehabbing from arthroscopic partial meniscectomy, so not a lot of running happening right now.)
 
The themes in this story are many. Trusting in God to work out the bad things to become good things. Living in the moment. The risk of assuming the future will play out as you expect it to. Appreciation for the things you cherish, or should take time to cherish.
 
About a year after the accident, I was interviewed by a reporter at our local paper just before I took part in a community road race. Twelve years later, I hired her for a job with one of my clients. Best hire I ever made—and not just because she wrote about me!
 
*   *   *   *
 
This wraps up the blog series covering Random Precision. But it’s not the last blog I’ll put together. In the weeks ahead, watch for blogs about my Star Trek experiences as well as a look at my first novel, Radiance. I hope you’ve enjoyed this study of Random Precision.

This is the 24th in a deep-dive series on the stories in Rick’s newest book, Random Precision. The following blog includes spoilers.
 
Every short story collection ought to have a Christmas tale, don’t you think? It’s like having a holiday episode of Doctor Who. It just seems right.
 
Thus we get “Sacrificium,” which my wife says is her favorite of all my stories. I also get an annual request for it when volunteer mentoring at a local middle school. And it won a Christmas story contest just a few years ago. Yeah, this one seems to hit the mark. (For the record, “Superhero” is a Christmas story, too, though less obviously so.)
 
When I read this one to middle schoolers, I delight in their reaction when they finally realize who—or rather what—Josh is. Typically they go back to try to find the many hints sprinkled throughout. No single hint gives it away, and even collectively the leap is a big one. But it’s a fun exercise.
 
“Sacrificium” has won a couple of contests over the years. The first time I entered, it didn’t even place. The second time it was the winner. I tweaked it a bit in the interim, tightening the prose, which probably helped.
 
It’s hard to write about this one without being too spoiler-y, so I’ll stop the expose’ there. But it’s worth noting that this one is a unique way to tell not just a Christmas story, but an Easter one, too.

This is the 23rd in a deep-dive series on the stories in Rick’s newest book, Random Precision. The following blog includes spoilers.
 
I’ll admit “Hearsay” isn’t one of my stronger stories. The basic idea is sound, but it suffers from being mercilessly slashed from its original length to fit the word count of a short story contest. Somewhere along the way I lost the longer version.
 
Still, it’s a theme we can relate to, especially those of us a bit longer in the tooth: How do we handle our own perceived obsolescence? Benny Warren is an old newspaper guy who can’t let go of his past life and believes he can’t reinvent himself. So desperate is he for the glories of the past that he makes a deal with the Devil. (Literally? You decide.)
 
I first drafted this shortly before Google Glass arrived (and quickly failed). I'd read an article about the idea of contact lenses connected to the internet that could offer up information to users instantaneously. I decided Benny needed a more permanent solution—hence the magical pill.
 
There’s a secondary theme here, too, about believing everything you read on the internet. There's a lot of that going on right now. Obviously Benny is fed a lie for a purpose, but who is to say the other revelations weren’t equally false? Not once does Benny turn a skeptical eye to what he’s reading. That alone speaks volumes to his state of mind--and therein lies a message for each of us.
 
As I said, not my strongest story. But one we can all learn something from.

This is the 22nd in a deep-dive series on the stories in Rick’s newest book, Random Precision. The following blog includes spoilers.
 
As I noted in the blog about “Three Hours,” “Flash of Life” was a contest winner and an episode of Chronicles long before winding up in a book. But this may come as a surprise to you: I like the TV episode better.
 
“Flash of Life” is based on the old notion that we see our lives “flash” before our eyes at the moment of death. (Or, if you prefer, it gets a hard review in the afterlife.) In this case, Hap Lister isn’t actually experiencing the future moments before it happens, but rather his entire “life” is the review happening at its frightening end.
 
In Chronicles, Hap becomes Hannah, and the story happens in the 1940s after a woman finds the journal of her deceased grandfather, a doctor who observed what happened to Hannah. We filmed the opening and closing scenes at the Gilmore Car Museum near Kalamazoo. Except for those scenes, the episode is filmed in black and white, underscoring its back-in-time setting.
 
Like Hannah, Hap becomes increasingly desperate as he slowly comes to realize what’s happening to him—and that it’s too late to turn his life around. The reciting of Matthew 25 makes that painfully clear to Hap. And to us.
 
If you’re interested in the TV version, it’s still online. Fun fact: The bag carried by the doctor has made two appearances on TV screens. This is the first one. The same bag also appears briefly in “Mind-Sifter,” an episode of Star Trek New Voyages for which I wrote the teleplay. I purchased it at an antique store near my hometown, and I still have it.

This is the 21st in a deep-dive series on the stories in Rick’s newest book, Random Precision. The following blog includes spoilers.
 
A few years ago, a couple of news stories—written with tongue firmly in cheek—suggested that time travelers are among us. Or were, as the case may be. One story claimed that a street scene in a 1920s Charlie Chaplin film shows a woman talking on a cellphone. The other story insisted a man at a 1940s gathering was a time traveler as well, sporting modern-day clothing and sunglasses.
 
Both instances have perfectly logical explanations that don't involve time travel. Still, those were the images that prompted me to write “Gabbatha.”
 
There’s another motivation as well. We like to pretend that we’re enlightened in the 21st century and would never make the poor choices that our ancestors made. Christians, for example, insist they’d be far more faithful to Jesus than his disciples proved to be. Had today’s believers been in Jerusalem then, they would stick up for him, stand beside him, be prepared to suffer with him.
 
“Gabbatha” suggests that isn’t so.
 
Rhys, our time traveler, glimpses a Christ we don’t like to think about: a Messiah who takes on all of our sins and failings. We applaud this in our church services, but we really don’t consider what it must have been like—what it looked like, if we could literally see that ugliness. Rhys sees it, abhors it, and joins in with the deadly chorus.
 
Finding the ancient Greek phrases was more difficult than I’d expected. Google Translate doesn’t do koine. Fortunately, I found a history text that offered phrases I could write around. I thought it brought a little realism to the final product.

This is the 20th in a deep-dive series on the stories in Rick’s newest book, Random Precision. The following blog includes spoilers.
 
“Three Hours” shares something with another story in this collection, “Flash of Life.” Both won writing contests, and both appeared on TV screens before landing in a book.
 
In the days before YouTube, I collaborated with a producer friend on a direct-to-video series called Chronicles. It took a cue from The Twilight Zone—an anthology show featuring strange, even bizarre stories with a moral. We did four episodes before the producer, laden with other projects, decided to move on. I wrote two installments, including the pilot, “Three Hours.”
 
The difference between the video version of “Three Hours” and this one is that the former has an entire act (plus a female character) that doesn’t show up in the short story. That’s because the story wasn’t nearly enough to sustain a 30-minute episode. When preparing Random Precision, I briefly considered rewriting the story to include Weena—H.G. Wells fans will recognize the name—but decided that, while she was essential to the TV show, she wasn’t needed for the story.
 
Once again I revisit the theme of trying to rewriting one’s history to duck one’s responsibility. For Herbie—yup, H.G. Wells again—not only does it fail, but does so with horrific results.
 
If you like the short story and wonder what the Chronicles version was like, it’s your lucky day! It’s still available online.

This is the 19th in a deep-dive series on the stories in Rick’s newest book, Random Precision. The following blog includes spoilers.
 
The idea of quantum dice isn’t mine. I read a thought piece (I think it was in Scientific American) about quantum dice as a way to illustrate quantum mechanics—in this case, how that feeds into alternate realities. I’ve always been drawn to multiverse tales for the same reason I enjoy time travel stories: the idea that you can change your reality to something else. Larry Niven’s “All The Myriad Ways” does an outstanding job with this concept. (And the ending of “A Throw of the Dice” takes a small inspiration from that story.)
 
Of course, the twist here is that Trevor Gaine has been rewriting his reality all along, without dabbling in quantum mechanics. He does it simply by not being accountable for it—running away from it, in fact. But the simple truth is, his sins (like ours) are destined to find him out. At some point, we must be accountable to our past, our present and our future.
 
I placed this story in Tucson because I’d recently visited there, though I didn’t visit any such bars. As for the London pub, applause for anyone who catches the classic Monty Python reference!

This is the 18th in a deep-dive series on the stories in Rick’s newest book, Random Precision. The following blog includes spoilers.
 
If you can’t rip yourself off, who can you rip off?
 
“The Margin” is a “tech-ier” version of an earlier short story of mine, titled “Out of Sight, Out Of Mind.” In the earlier story, a city mayor discovers an ancient portal through which he banishes homeless people, where they live in the same world as ours but slightly out of phase, neither seen nor heard. That piece didn’t go anywhere, unfortunately. So I stole the basic idea for “The Margin,” only the “portal” in this case is a hatch to an unused section of a massive, generational starship in deep space.
 
The approach in “The Margin” is a little less mystical, a little more realistic. The “undesirables,” as they’re considered, are shuffled off to the margins of society, just as they are in real life today. Our communities have a sad history of doing this; “redlining,” the effort to force minorities into specific neighborhoods, is an example.
 
“The Margin” has other inspirations, too. One is from a favorite episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, titled “Past Tense.” In that story, the homeless and impoverished people of San Francisco are banished to a walled-off district. Another inspiration is the biblical tale of the Good Samaritan, where a marginalized person helps another in need.
 
The most disturbing part of this story is the ending, and it’s disturbing because it illustrates a frightening modern reality. Charity Gritt’s father is willing to sacrifice her rather than step up to help those trapped in the Margin. It’s no huge mental leap to imagine that same scenario in our hyper-polarized society today.
 
A less-disturbing fact about this story: If you’ve read my book Radiance, you’ll recognized the design of starship Estera. It’s based on the Bernal sphere space station concept I used for Canaan. Again, why not rip off yourself if it works?

This is the 17th in a deep-dive series on the stories in Rick’s newest book, Random Precision. The following blog includes spoilers.

This story is rapidly on its way to becoming out of date.
 
The inspiration was two-pronged. Some scientists were speculating that our reality might be a computer simulation, akin to the holodeck on Star Trek. I don’t believe that, of course, but it was an intriguing and downright unsettling idea. The other driver behind this was the life-simulation video game “The Sims,” one I’ve never played but is still around.
 
Of course, there is also the biblical passage from John 1, among my favorites. This underscores the eternal nature of Jesus and his unwavering love for humanity—to the point of death.
 
Thus we encounter Taylor Wayne, the brilliant scientist who “creates” a universe as detailed as the one we inhabit, and how his desire to love his creation leads to his ultimate sacrifice.
 
It’s worth noting that this is a broad effort to get at an ancient question: If God loves us so much, and he’s all-powerful, why does he allow bad things to happen? I’m not sure there’s an easy answer for that—Billy Graham once said that there’s an element to evil in the world that we’ll never understand—but the perspective I offer here is one of allowing for genuine love. We want our children to love us because they truly love us, not because they’re “programmed” to do so. We teach them in the way they should go, then we release them to make their own decision and their own mistakes.
 
That’s not a satisfying answer by any means, and it raises lots of questions, ones we should ask. God is big enough to handle our hard questions, even our angry ones.
 
One could argue that “A Sheep Oneself” is pretty “on the nose.” I accept that. I don’t think every parable has to be vague or subtle. Sometimes we need our nose broken.

This is the 16th in a deep-dive series on the stories in Rick’s newest book, Random Precision. The following blog includes spoilers.

“Superhero” is the Christmas play that’ll never get produced. That’s how this story began—as a holiday stage show I planned at my church. But as I scripted it, I realized I’d never find a 10-year-old kid who could memorize all those lines and deliver the powerful performance the story needed.
 
I resurrected the tale a couple of years ago when a magazine put on a Christmas story contest. I dug up the script and turned it into a short story. A lot of the original story made the jump—in the script, Barry’s dad is much more involved and a MUCH bigger jerk, and the playground experience was far more involved (and embarrassing for poor Barry).
 
This isn’t a science fiction story, but it features a boy who lives in that sphere. In some ways, Barry Parker is me at that age—obsessed but unable to share it with anyone else. I distinctly remember how my interest in all things SF made me a pariah starting in second grade. I feel Barry’s pain.
 
But it’s not just the people around Barry who learn an important lesson about compassion, mercy and grace. Barry himself learns that his love for superheroes must be tempered with love for other people—real people, folks who need to know they’re loved.
 
I volunteer as a mentor in writing for a middle school, and “Superhero” is a favorite with the teacher and students I work with. I wonder how many of them can relate to Barry’s struggles. They need to know they’re loved, too.