Selected Works by Jorge Sanchez

By 2065, the Stellar Command Authority Academy had grown into something far larger than a school. It was a complete planetary operations training environment—where every system required to operate an off-world civilization was practiced, tested, and refined before anyone left Earth. The campus stood on a high plateau in Colorado at the High Range Command Complex—Iron Mesa, a location chosen deliberately for its thin air, wide horizons, and isolation. The altitude imposed a measure of physiological stress similar to that of extraterrestrial environments, while the surrounding plains and mountains provided thousands of square kilometers of controlled training range. Clear skies made the region ideal for aerospace testing, orbital tracking, and night-sky navigation.

Chapter 2 — All Grown Up

Before the sky split and the ocean swallowed the land, Frog City held its breath. At the window, I felt it too—restless, nearly sixteen, already searching for something I could not name. Palms swayed and bent in the morning breeze. The whole town braced for change. I sensed it, though I could not say why. It began in June 2019. Dark clouds churned above, rolling like waves on a storm-tossed sea. The air felt wrong—off-kilter, as if reality itself had begun to warp. Time thickened, sticky as taffy.

Opening excerpt

Dawn lifted like a breath across Miami—orange bleeding into blue, water shimmering alive again. A humid day rose, restless and vibrant. By midmorning, the house stirred fully awake, the buzz outside the patio growing. The driveway stretched toward the detached garage, but the real heart of the home was the patio—an open-roofed extension of the kitchen, cluttered with a domino table, a flatscreen on the wall, football posters, and family life spilling in from every direction: kids shouting, a dog barking, a cousin yelling at a video game. By early afternoon, the sun settled over the neighborhood like a warm blanket, thick with the sounds of summer—the steady thump of a trampoline next door, a dog barking at invisible threats, and the crackling chatter of a Spanish AM station drifting through the patio.

Chapter 3 — Guantanamera