Diane Luby Lane

Anxious to use artificial life to improve the world, Rosetta Stone, a bio-geneticist, creates a Recipe for Cyborgs and uses her own DNA in order to breed three Self Replicating Automatons, part human, part computer named Ruby, Olive and Marine.

A fire chief is investigating the cause of a string of blazes that threaten to destroy her small town, while at the same time dealing with her teen daughter's rebelliousness.

Oscar is turning thirty years old. He plans to celebrate his passage by asking the woman that he loves, Penny, to marry him. But in the next 24 hours, Oscar must face a shocking parade of surprises--about his friends, about his past, about Penny, about himself. Oscar must make a perilous trek from the sure and simple world of his twenties to the unsteady ground of his newfound maturity. Oscar must endure "The Surprise Party."

Over the course of a hot summer day in Los Angeles, the lives of 25 young Angelinos intersect. A skating guitarist, a tagger, two wannabe rappers, an exasperated fast-food worker, a limo driver—they all weave in and out of each other's stories. Through poetry they express life, love, heartache, family, home, and fear. One of them just wants to find someplace that still serves good cheeseburgers.