Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

AI-15882: Exorcism.
Many, through no fault of their own, find themselves with haunted real estate due to fraudulent nondisclosure of haunting by sellers. Let Altman Industries clean house with one of our patented exorcisms. Using extensively cross-trained Unitarian ministers, Altman guarantees that the invocation will be found which drives the spirits away, and backs that up with a 10-year assurance plan.

AI-40834: Possession
Want to get ahead in your career or vocation of choice? Want to sabotage a rival? An Altman Short-Term Possession Contract (STPC) may just be the thing for you. Let a tireless Rage Demon inhabit your mortal husk to undercut the others on the trading floor, or send a wailing Insanity Demon into the body of that young turk who’s stealing all your contracts. Like what you see? Extend the offer with a Long-Term Possession Contract at no additional charge!*

*No additional monetary charge. Other conditions such as the forfeiture of your eternal soul and plunges into lakes of fire may occur. Altman Industries is not responsible for these conditions and will not offer refunds. Contact your local AI representative for details.

Keagan valued his online privacy, and valued it heavily. People that knew him personally attributed this to a variety of factors, but all were impressed by the lengths he was willing to go to maintain e-anonymity in an age when it was increasingly easy to strip such away.

All his interactions were carried out through an elaborate proxy system, using server information from as far away as the Philippines and Egypt. He used a specially sanitized computer to interact with the outside, one which had never contained any personal information in any form, and was religious about not bringing over content from his personal machine, which was totally unconnected to any network at all. The entire setup was run off a university server as well, adding yet another buffer.

The reason for all this? A game.

Keagen was, unbeknownst to most, one of the world’s top-ranked players of the Dungeons of Krull MMORPG. He’d one been the number eight player worldwide based on experience points, instanced boss kills, and elite equipment but had slipped to fifteen after a number of Korean players made unexpected headway.

As the world’s most popular MMORPG, with a fanatical following at home and abroad, Dungeons of Krull could be legitimately dangerous. A player in Seoul had been killed by a guildmate who stood to inherit control of a vast amount of treasure in 2007; another had died in Seattle a year later after humiliating a much lower-ranked player in a duel. Radiant Gauntlets of the Seraphim might confer resistance to all missile attacks inside Dungeons of Krull, but they offered no protection against a Beretta.

It might seem an odd thing that Maryann Steinman was the last heir to the long-dead city of Iram of the Pillars, but as is so often the case what seems odd at first appears less so on further examination.

Iram of the Pillars had been the key oasis that made travel across the vast Rub’ al Khali desert possible. But as more trade came and went, the water table had fallen and the spring collapsed in 190 AD, leaving the vast and unforgiving desert with no water to sustain travel. The royal family and all those who could do so fled north to Parthian Ctesiphon, for they had long been vassals of the king there. Shortly thereafter, Emperor Severus of Rome had sacked the city. The king of Iram and all his sons died in the defense of the city, with his daughter carried off to Rome in chains.

Purchased by a wealthy family, she was eventually emancipated and married into a powerful family of freedmen and Christian converts. They ran afoul of the later emperor Diocletian, who ordered the family wiped out in 305 AD. Only a single child survived the massacre, hidden by family friends and eventually smuggled to Gaul, where he raised a small family in an isolated village. In time, the village came to be part of France, but during the Great War it was totally razed; those that survived suffered terribly from dysentery and typhus. In the end, the entire town perished–save one man, Marcel Durand, who had left for Paris and later emigrated to New York City.

Before perishing in a typhoid outbreak, Durand managed to conceive a child, to the scandal of many, with one Gloria Feldman in the Bronx. Marrying George Steinman provided some stability for the child, who grew to father one child of his own before a heart attack felled him: Maryann.

A long path, yes, and one beset by the tragedies great and small which determine the fate of all peoples. But it led, inexorably, to Maryann.

“You said the external hull had suffered catastrophic damage, and couldn’t be reliably identified through long range scans due to radiointerference from the black hole,” Cassowary said softly. “Are you sure about that?”

“I have the data right here,” said Burke.

“Are you sure about that?” Cassowary cried, the speaker in her suit’s helmet crackling.

“Yes, I’m sure,” Burke said, startled. “Simmons said that the time dilation this vessel experienced during its orbit has allowed some systems to stay online, but that the damage and interference made it impossible to identify. You were there.”

“I know,” said Cassowary. “He thought it was the result of a trip through a wormhole beyond the event horizon.”

“If you know, then why ask me? Why all the shouting?” Burke said.

Cassowary sank to her knees. “I was hoping that I’d made a mistake, that I’d overlooked something. But it’s all there in the computer.”

“We ought to be concentrating on reestablishing contact with the Perihelion and finding where Grant’s team went.”

“There’s no point!” moaned Cassowary. “This is a Helios-class exploration craft, and the chronometer has been running for three thousand years. Don’t you see. Burke? It’s our ship. It’s us. We just haven’t realized it yet.”

Not even the peyadh spirits themselves could say for sure from whence they came, in the very rare instances that they deigned to communicate with the “slow folk,” who they considered inestimable bores. This mystery didn’t much perplex the peyadh, for they lived very much in the moment and were concerned primarily with entertaining themselves. An eternity of near incorporeality and nigh invisibility to the slow folk made entertainment a must for these restless beings, usually in the form of impish pranks.

One peyadh, who would have called itself a him and called himself Squout if pressed, enjoyed tweaking the patrons of a Great Plains Greyhound bus station. When Squout had first arrived in the area in the 1920’s, he had tweaked the buses’ engines so they failed in interesting and unpredictable ways–the highlight of which had been a Tulsa-bound International Harvester bus whose engine had simply dropped out a hundred miles into its trip.

Squout had eventually come to sympathize with the mechanics who were forced to remedy his tinkering, especially once they, being a superstitious lot, began leaving him small gifts, and turned his mischief on passengers. Swapping luggage tags on similar suitcases was a favorite, as was swapping suitcase contents between cases and between buses. The mill worker, headed to Topeka, was as confused at finding a set of garters in his suitcase as one Miss Anders, bound for the shady side of St. Louis, was when discovering Oshkosh overalls among her unmentionables.

“They have taken the road to Bangassou,” said Gbaya. “And they say that Mbomou is about to fall. Then men we will face today are but the first drops in a rainstorm.”

“That is why we have been placed here,” said Boganda. He stroked the heavy DShK machine gun mounted in the bed of the army Toyota. “If they come, we will kill them.”

“You are not listening,” Gbaya said, pounding the truck’s side. “The rebels are overwhelming at every point. If Bangassou is cut off, it will soon fall–it cannot be supplied by river or air, not with petrol rationed as it is. And if they take Mbomou…can Bangui be far behind?”

Boganda continued staring down the road.

“By next week, they could be sitting on the lawn of the National Assembly in Bangui. We’d be the rebels then, and they the government. Rather than a bulwark against a flood we would be an island in a sea.”

“Are you trying to get yourself shot for treason?” Boganda growled. “If the lieutenant hears that sort of talk you’ll be up against a wall.”

“No,” said Gbaya. “I’m just wondering what the hell it is we’re doing out here, expecting to stop the rising tide of a revolution with fifteen men and a technical.”

With time, the Prince grew to covet the power that he had been given while his father and brothers were at war. The poison of jealousy began to course through his veins, gradually turning his once-noble heart green with envy.

When the Sultan at last returned from a campaign ten years long, one which had brought him to the very edge of the world, he was welcomed with open arms by the people. The Prince, seeing his power slip away, was driven to action. At a grand banquet for the returned rulers, he poisoned the water. Hundreds of guests, including the kingdom’s most experienced courtiers and generals, perished. The Sultan died as well, along with six of his seven sons.

But the Prince had acted in haste, not contemplating how his subjects would react. The death of so many could not be concealed, and the existence of a single survivor made his guilt evident. The palace guards stood aside as the populace swarmed the palace, clamoring for the Prince’s blood. He was forced to flee on horseback into the deepest desert in the realm while a distant cousin was elected Sultan in his stead.

Some say that the murderer died in the desert wastes, but most maintain that through dealings with the powers of evil, the greedy royal slumbers beneath the sands, waiting for the right time to return and stake his claim. The people never refer to him by name, which due to the enormity of his crime has been expunged from history. Rather, he is known only as the Prince with a Heart of Nephrite That Sleeps in the Desert.

Over time, as their panic faded, the lost sparrows of Clan Oesoedd began to understand that they had been strangely blessed. Although sealed into the home of the giant hawks by the mysterious solid air with no hope of escape, they came to realize that it was a land of abundance.

The great striders moved in large numbers but also dropped vast amounts of food, indifferently leaving it as they strode off to be devoured by the giant hawks. They, unlike the striders in the World Beneath, never sought to harm the Oesoedd–the only danger was their innate clumsiness. Some even fed the sparrows, and all their leavings were carried away by slow, whining strider-piloted behemoths.

Echyd busied himself exploring the vast spaces and found a number of trees. Some were mock trees of the kind old Yn had once spoken of, but others were real and suitable for nesting. Chwi and Awr put a nest together as an experiment, to see whether the great striders would react violently as they sometimes did. Filled with unfertilized eggs, the nest lay undisturbed, and Chwi was granted permission to bring forth a brood.

Perhaps the greatest benefit Echyd and the Oesoedd sparrows came to recognize was the lack of llew, predators. The giant hawks came and went, devouring striders and regurgitating them for some unseen young, but seemed to take no notice of tiny sparrows, and certainly did not hunt them as the llew hawks did in the World Beneath. Dai and Ac even took to watching the hawks’ inscrutable movements, claiming that it inspired them. And there were no llew cats or llew dogs of any kind, save the very occasional one in a cage–a situation Echyd found devastatingly funny, given Yn’s tales of sparrows held captive by the striders in such cages.

This post is part of the November Blog Chain at Absolute Write. This month’s challenge is to write a drabble: a story exactly 100 words long.

“But it seemed so real…” Ohns said, tears in his eyes.

“That’s how dreams are,” said the dark-haired child. “We make sense of them, fill in the details.”

“What’s going to happen to everyone?” Ohns cried.

“The sleeper must awaken, but nothing will be lost. We will wake up, and be whole once more.”

Ohns nodded hesitantly. “I think I’m ready.”

The sky bloomed with radiance, overwhelming everything—from the twilight city of Eswe to Clen by his lake–and gently washing it away.

In the ICU, Jackie Sullivan awoke, and Ohns’ world vanished into the recesses of his being.

Check out this month’s other bloggers, all of whom have posted or will post their own drabbles:
Bettedra (direct link to the relevant post)
FreshHell (direct link to the relevant post)
CScottMorris (direct link to the relevant post)
AuburnAssassin (direct link to the relevant post)
Aheila (direct link to the relevant post)
Bibbo (direct link to the relevant post)
hilaryjacques (direct link to the relevant post)
Proach (direct link to the relevant post)
jonbon.benjamin (direct link to the relevant post)
rmgil04 (direct link to the relevant post)
PASeasholtz (direct link to the relevant post)
Regypsy (direct link to the relevant post)
Madelein.Erwein (direct link to the relevant post)

“I don’t really have any word for it,” Tobias said. “Nobody does. Our language, your language…language itself fails the test of conveying such horror. I’m sure you’ve heard the stories about Verdun, about how units of men were fed into it like sausages into a meat grinder. Some say von Falkenhayn and Pétain conspired to bleed the other white; I don’t know. Maybe they conspired to unleash the horrors that we saw.”

“What sort of horrors?”

“You’ve seen some of it already.” Tobias replied. “In the frenzied combat around the Douaumont, the soldiers became violent, deranged. We began to lash out at each other, as did the French, until we were killing as many of our men over petty disputes as they were. Then the dead became restless and began to rise, fighting and re-fighting battles already won and lost. Units would complete an assault only to realize that half their number were corpses and specters, and tear themselves apart.”

“And then?”

“Every death was like coal on a blaze, intensifying the effect. It was like a maelstrom of death unleashed. Some of the men called it Seelesturm, or Soulstorm, and that’s as good a name as any I suppose. Once the news broke–the higher-ups believed it was hallucination and mutiny–that entire sector of the front was bombarded by artillery from both sides until everything had been churned into fetid muck. If this…if what we’re seeing here is an attempt to artificially create those same conditions…well, I can’t say I like our chances.”