Ten thousand dollars has vanished from Steve Stevens’ bank account, complete with a check bearing his signature and the approval of his own bank. The money went to a company with the absurd name of Alternatives, Inc., a business Steve has never heard of. Furious and convinced he’s uncovered an elaborate fraud, he storms into their office expecting crooks and a chance to recover his money.
Instead, he finds calm professionals who insist they completed exactly the service he requested. They have a signed contract, a thumbprint, witnesses, and even a motion picture showing Steve authorizing the job. The only problem is that the person he supposedly paid them to eliminate has never existed… at least not in the world Steve remembers. As the explanations grow stranger, one impossible idea begins to fit every impossible fact.
Mack Reynolds builds this remarkable premise with confidence and wit, turning an outrageous business model into a clever exploration of possibility. Every revelation pushes Steve farther from ordinary reality while sharp dialogue and dry humor keep the mystery moving.
Alternatives, Inc. is built around one dazzling question: What if removing someone from your life meant removing every trace they had ever existed? The result is a tale that is funny, unsettling, and endlessly inventive.
Mack Reynolds (1917–1983) published more than 230 novels and hundreds of short stories during a career spanning four decades. His fiction appeared regularly in Astounding Science Fiction, Galaxy Science Fiction, If, Amazing Stories, and Fantastic.
Remembered for the Joe Mauser stories, Looking Backward, From the Year 2000, and the United Planets series, Reynolds also excelled at high-concept short fiction. Alternatives, Inc. is a perfect example, taking one extraordinary scientific idea and following it with relentless internal logic.
