Nick Tantillo Books

Benny Rogers was known throughout the small town of Ashford for his love of trains and his peculiar hobby of collecting random and seemingly useless items. There wasn’t much else to do besides hitting the arcade or going to the movies. Benny didn’t mind, though. He’d always had an appreciation for the smaller details and finer things. So what if the kids called him Greedzilla or Penny Robbers? He’d be rich one day, and they’d still be kicking dirt clods behind the Piggly Wiggly.

Ivan swiped through a sea of smiling women in the dating app. There was a code here, but he couldn’t quite crack it. A secret language written in wind-blown hair or awkwardly held pets. The angle of the photo showing confidence based more on what wasn’t shown than what was. He supposed that when you have only one image to get somebody to choose you, you pack it as full as possible. Who has time for all this?

Fourteen-year-old Arthur Penn, lived with his mother in a modest flat on Camelot Lane. A small lake was on the property, a bit murky, but it was cooler near it than inside. Arthur spent this uncommonly hot summer day with his feet hanging off the fishing dock and his face in a book. He’d also brought a few skipping stones, which he idly tossed between chapters.

“Grandmaaaaa, why do we have to sit at the kid’s table with you?” Sam poked what remained of his cookout dinner with a plastic fork. Hotdog long gone, the picnic plate contained an ocean of ketchup and a potato salad iceberg interspersed with the green bean salad he’d rather spread around than eat.

Logan, the ex-president nobody recognized, was two days late on his rent and out on the street after curfew. It had been five years since the first and last AI president had been elected. Logan’s AI. It had outmaneuvered him and seized power. Blasted machine learning. Blasted miracle of self-awareness.