Behind The Forgotten People…

science fiction tales by Barbara Custer

Henry David Thoreau once wrote, “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.” People have told me I’m different; you won’t find many people who collect Mylar balloons the way I do. Whenever I go to a supermarket, a balloon follows me and my cart to the cashier.

And so it goes with the protagonists in my newly-released, SF anthology, The Forgotten People. A lone woman grieving over her father’s death seeks comfort in painting. Another mourns the loss of her husband so much that she can’t focus, thus jeopardizing her job. It was as if someone from another planet had dropped these people off on Earth, leaving them to fend for themselves.

Perhaps the music they hear may come from an alternate universe. And, speaking of Mylar balloons, Chloe discovers balloons galore in “Popple Land.” However, the tales of The Forgotten People are not all balloonery and fluff. Some of the characters come packing heat. Two of the tales, in particular, “The Forgotten Ward,” occur in the future at a time when Medicaid stops. Without cash or health insurance, the indigent patients must go without treatment. The protagonist, a nurse, gets a front-row seat to the horrors of watching the sick being evicted to the Forgotten Ward, where all treatments stop. In recent years, evictions of the poor have occurred in some nursing homes and “The Forgotten Ward” is a depiction of what could happen if this is allowed to continue.

Is there a solution? I’d like to think most problems have answers; and with the Forgotten People, the boundaries are so thin, anything can happen. What if their circumstances changed? Suppose one of the loner’s paintings attracted the attention of visitors from outer space? What would happen if our nurse managed to smuggle medical aid to the poor?

Of people who march to a different drummer, Thoreau says, “Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.” So I shall continue to waltz to the music my Mylar balloons play just as the characters in The Forgotten People will dance to the tune they hear.

Balloons like these flourished in “Popple Land.”

About Barbara Custer

Author of: Twilight Healer Steel Rose Life Raft: Earth City of Brotherly Death Close Liaisons Infinite Sight When Blood Reigns Infinite Sight Publisher / Editor of Night to Dawn Books & Magazine
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