In this volume, the author has compiled 48 short stories, narratives and other short prose pieces. The first ones date back to the early 1990s. He welcomes the third millennium with the sarcastic column: My 2000 Column It reflects critically and sarcastically on the transition to the new millennium. It is an examination of social injustices and questions the complacency and ignorance of modern society towards global and local problems. The text uses a mixture of irony and seriousness to draw attention to the discrepancy between wealth and poverty. The author is firmly convinced that the world does not end at the horizon. That is why he likes to address his own quirks and weaknesses, which he imposes on his protagonists, and makes fun of them. After all, we are no longer the type of people who do such strange things. However, not all the human oddities he writes about come from his own life experience, but are the result of careful observation of the events around him. In some stories, he exaggerates human idiosyncrasies and weaknesses to the point of absurdity. He particularly loves human idiosyncrasies because they are what make us human. Take the story 'The Pedantic Passenger,' for example. This story describes in minute detail the observation of a corpulent passenger who devotes himself with meticulous precision to the ritual of eating during a flight. Sometimes there are also stories that seem ridiculous at first glance, but on closer inspection are not so ridiculous after all. For example, 'Aus dem Leben eines Kaugummis' (From the Life of a Chewing Gum). Here, a completely trivial matter is exaggerated and told dramatically. One could say that there is meaning in the trivial. That, too, is human. The author likes to pick up on psychological or philosophical aspects in his stories, such as in 'The Firebird.' It is a mythical story that tells of creation, renewal and the search for the meaning of existence. It combines nature, spirituality and cosmic cycles and weaves together motifs of transformation, consciousness and rebirth. The protagonist, the firebird, symbolises the original consciousness and the essence of life, which is constantly renewed through the cycle of creation and destruction. He does not shy away from psychologically disturbing stories either. Anyone who reads 'Das Kindergrab' (The Children's Grave), for example, will agree. It always becomes disturbing when human coldness or apathy come into play. The author also gives scientists tremendous possibilities and describes how overwhelmed humans are in dealing with them, for example in the title story, 'Immortality for an Elite,' or in 'End of a Chromosome.' It is impossible to summarise the breadth of the stories in a few words. In motivations, background information and explanations, as well as an extensive appendix, the author provides insights into how the stories came about. Here, readers will also find references to when the stories were written. This appendix is intended to enable readers to understand the meaning of the more difficult or seemingly insignificant stories.

Erich Romberg was born in Essen in 1950 and grew up in the Ruhr region. He still remembers the bombed-out houses of the post-war period, which he visited with his father to collect roof beams for firewood. The family was barely making ends meet. Then came the economic miracle, and little by little the ruins disappeared from memory and the many empty fields were covered with new houses. All he remembered from primary school was that most of the teachers beat the children and that a trainee teacher read his essay about a walk in the woods out loud to the class as an example of how it should be done. It was his first A and a source of satisfaction, because his class teacher thought he was a boy who would never amount to anything. But he never had to repeat a year. There were still quite a few teachers like that back then. After completing a craft apprenticeship, the essay writer was drawn back to school, an evening school in the Ruhr area. Here he was amazed to discover the beautiful things of the mind. Although he actually wanted to do something completely different, he studied physics. As a physicist, he researched in various fields for a while and eventually became a consultant for air pollution control and local climate. Writing had always been a part of his life; he felt the need to express his personal insights and feelings in poetry and stories. He discovered the momentum that stories take on when you simply write them down. They develop a life of their own, and the writer doesn't know in advance what the end result will be - at least that was the case for him. Just as he wrote his stories spontaneously, he also ended his previous life and moved to Ireland, which he had cycled around on holiday for two years. He got to know Kiltimagh on his first holiday there. After his second holiday in Ireland, he rented a house in Kiltimagh for five years from an Irish friend from Germany. There he found time to write and windsurf, which he enjoyed equally. He also met his current wife through his online published literature. Today, the author lives with her and his young son in a village in Saxony-Anhalt. The idea of leaving books behind for his children became increasingly appealing to him. He himself knows very little about his father, as he told him very little about his past. It was probably the collective silence of that generation.