Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

The chain had been founded in Lost Angeles, according to the brochure we all had to read (and were tested on!) during employee training, by one Jonathan Patort. Judging by his name he was about as Mexican as Mother Theresa, but apparently he’d hung in as CEO or stockholder for the company until they were popular enough that changing the name would have represented an unacceptable reduction in brand awareness.

In many ways, though, it was a fitting moniker, since the food we served was also about as Mexican as Mother Theresa’s Albanian gjellë. The key dish, and the one with which Señor Patort’s had made its bones, was a quesadilla grilled in such a way that none of its innards would leak out until the first bite was taken, making it perfect to-go food. Never mind that the grilling process took a $5,000 custom machine that your average Mexican was unlikely to own, or that the primary cheese in the mixture was Swiss, or that the thick slabs of bacon floating in said Swiss were unlikely to be found anywhere south of Canada.

“The problem,” Pilsudski said, chomping on his cigar, “is that people don’t come for the tumbling.”

“You’ve heard the cheering during our act,” Warmack said. “Don’t try and tell me that’s not real.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” Pilsudski continued. “The tumbling’s part of the experience. But people don’t come to the circus for highwire acts anymore. They come for elephants, lions, clowns, and the sideshow. That’s what they remember, and that’s what they ask for by name. Not the tumblers. You hear cheers? Yeah. Listen during the clowns or the critters and tell me which is louder.”

“What are you saying?”

Cigar smoke wreathed Pilsudski’s features. “I’m saying that, if you and your troupe want to continue on, I expect things to be jazzed up. The weakest link breaks the chain, you know. You’ve got my leave to try some new angles as you will, but if things stay as they are…next dry spell, you’re out of here with all the other tumblers and I use the money to get another elephant.”

One of the required strategies wasn’t in any of the books–hell, it may have existed only in the commandant’s head–but it was a required portion of the curriculum regardless. The Coakha Strategem was named after Eric Coakha, who according to the commandant had led Dutch troops deployed against the Germans in 1940.

Outnumbered and under heavy air attack, Coakha had been trapped on the wrong side of a blown-up dyke, which had created a water obstacle designed to be used as a defensive line. Most of the other commanders so trapped surrendered in the face of German artillery and armor, but Coakha did not. Instead, he broke his small command up into groups of 5-10 men and arranged hiding places for them while a screening force kept the Germans at bay. A native of the area, along with his men, Coakha knew of barns, haylofts, thick stands of trees, and other locations where his troops could easily conceal themselves, especially given the speed of the Germans’ advance thus far and their lack of familiarity with the Dutch countryside.

Once hidden, Coakha allowed the Germans to overrun his positions, which now appeared abandoned; the invaders moved on to attempt an assault crossing of the flooded area. On a pre-arranged signal–a triple blast from concealed artillery pieces–Coakha’s men fell upon the Germans’ rear, cutting off their contact with friendly units and pinning them between attacks from behind and the Dutch defenders still in place across the water. The Germans were annihilated, and Coakha’s survivng men crossed the floodwaters in their enemies’ captured assault boats. The line held until the next day when, intimidated by the terror bombing of Rotterdam, the Netherlands surrendered.

The commandant liked that story for two reasons. First, it showed the mischief a canny commander familiar with the lay of the land could wreak even when outnumbered. And second, it showed that even a convincing victory could be hollow in the larger scheme of things.

I think it’s just a natural law that children of a certain age have to fall in love with one of their teachers. It tends to be right in the spring awakening period of junior high, too; any younger and teacher is still just a substitute mommy, and any older and there are plenty of fellow students to write mushy mental love notes to.

For most males of the heterosexual persuasion who passed through Thomas Q. Dobbs Junior High, that teacher-crush role was completely spoken for thanks to Miss Lori Finivedi. Now, years removed, when I look back on her photo in the yearbook, she doesn’t seem all that interesting–pretty, certainly, but without any of the supermodel characteristics that fledgling hormones or a desk-seated perspective can bring. Her lectures were scattershot, with none of the prim organization that Mr. La France or Mrs. Knusson brought–nevertheless, every male was as enraptured as our female classmates were bored.

This led, of course, to fierce competition among boys in that class to impress Miss Lori Finivedi. and no competition was more fierce or more closely contested than the annual United States Diorama Map competition.

The note continued in the same vein:

Gertie was sometimes called Gertrude. This was her name on certificates and papers but never her real name. Anyone who called Gertie by that name was no friend of hers.

Gertie was no longer Gertie.

Gerald looked at the mountain of paperwork and heaved a tired sigh. Estate law was never pretty, but it became geometrically less so the more heirs and more money was involved.

At least the content of the various briefs was somewhat unusual. In contrast to most intestate cases, which tended to be single people or those felled by thunderbolts in their prime, the Trintles had maintained no less than two wills among them–it was only their sudden and bizarre ends, one after the other, that brought the case to court.

Harvard Trintle, who’d pulled himself up from a family of twelve to dowager head of a major accounting firm, had died simply enough–he’d had a heart attack on his motor yacht, apparently while trying to heft a gas can. The unusual thing was where the yacht was berthed: the port of Aden in Yemen, nearly 8000 miles from Trintle’s registered port of Boca Raton, FL. Harvard’s will left 100% of his estate to his widow.

Agnes Trintle had thus inherited millions in cash and real estate…a fact which she had only learned two days after being committed by her only child. Agnes had apparently had a psychotic break, and had been brought in raving about how a being named “Repre Demanoni” was conspiring to send the children of Earth, including her son Harold, to the moon. This would, according to Agnes, revitalize the flagging lunar radiance at the cost of billions of innocent lives. She died not long afterwards, apparently after an allergic reaction to her medication–or, rather, the peanut butter that it had been hidden in. Her will left everything to Harvard, or–if he predeceased her–to Harold.

And Harold Trintle, the last of his line, had no will at all, being as he was only 35 years old and unmarried. He spent wildly of his parents’ cash, having apparently been kept on a rather tight leash up to that point. He had apparently perished in the crash of a newly-purchased Lamborghini on a road near Bristol some months later–“apparently” being the operative word because the car had been plastered against a cement barrier to such an extent that identification of the occupants was more art than science. As an adoptee, Harold had no DNA to test against, though his personal effects were found in the car and he was booked into a local inn under the curious name “Finello Unsubject.”

“State your name.”

“Paul Trudits.”

A pause. “We have no record of you,” the computerized voice said. “Please stand by.”

“No record? I’ve been in the system for years.” Paul’s protest elicited no response.

“We will need to determine which Trudits family you belong to,” the voice said at length. “Please answer yes if any of the following statements pertain to you.”

“Okay, but I’m not sure how-”

“I grew up at Briscombe House in Surence, Stuttery.”

“What? No!”

“My aunt was originally from Unteart village in Gauscierry.”

Paul scratched his head. “What is that supposed to mean? I don’t-”

“My father was stationed at Suarkend in Zamastrahar Province during the war.”

“Where the hell are you getting this? I don’t even know what that means!”

You have been, for the past several weeks, bothered by a restless disquiet. Not a physical malady, but an emotional one, a tight knot in the middle chest, near where one feels a broken heart but felt nowhere near as keenly. It is an empty feeling, dull yet with edges of glass.

Filling it has been difficult. Normally, busywork or strenuous leisure is enough to keep emotional pain of that sort at an arm’s length, but that has had no effect–indeed, the effect of trying to ignore it seems to make the disquiet all the stronger. Neither exercise nor food seems to have an effect, and weekends to not dull the sting as they so often do for doldrums of other sorts.

Asking around, you find that many have experienced the same before, as if in a long-forgotten dream, but are at a loss to describe how it was conquered. All they are sure of is that it’s a malady born of complacency, of stasis, of rut and routine. To break free is to step outside the ordinary.

But the ordinary is all you know.

“We’re still waiting for Schoss to turn in his story on the Greek Formal,” said Jamie. “It’s the front page tomorrow.”

“You sent Schoss to cover the formal?” said Pam, incredulous. “The same Schoss that disappeared last finals week and wound up calling his roommate from Munising?”

“The very same. He has connections to the community, and always writes positive articles,” Pam said. “Whenever I send someone like Loam, I get an anti-Greek diatribe the next day, and an avalanche of angry letters from various and sundry Mu Delta Qoppas.”

“Schoss is probably passed out under a beer pong table after throwing up on his camera and/or date,” cried Pam. “Hell, the Greek Formal will just be getting swinging at press time! We’ll have to go with Loam’s story on financial aid or the SMU Times will run with a big white spot where the cover story should be.”

“Hell no,” replied Jamie. “The Greek Formal story is going up tonight . We just need someone to go out and find Schoss: you.”

“What?”

“I need to typset and handle ads,” said Jamie. “If you know how to do that, you’re welcome to take it over.”

“I don’t get it,” Albert said. “Why can’t you continue to collaborate after he grows up? I thought Neltoq was grown up already.”

“You don’t read much, do ya, kid?” said Gelb. He flicked ash from his cigarette onto the station floor. “For the Ultoq, growing up’s the same as death.”

The Ultoq homeworld was a global mass of structures not unlike mangrove swamps on Earth, with only shallow seas and upland plains in between. Competition was fierce, so Ultoqs had evolved a complex life cycle to prevent their young from competing with adults. Ultoq newborns were planktonic, released in vast numbers with only a few reaching the second stage and moving back to shore. After a metamorphosis, the primate-like Ultoq that most humans were familiar with emerged. With binocular vision, a highly-developed forebrain, and opposable fingers on all seven limbs to facilitate moving and feeding in the vast and complex root structures, the second stage was intelligent enough to develop a civilization and tools if it lasted longer. Evolution, however, had dictated that the second stage existed merely to gather food; once a certain stage of growth was reached, the Ultoq returned to the sea and underwent a final metamorphosis into a sessile, mindless tunicate-like filter feeder, which lived only to send out vast quantities of sperm or eggs into the sea to begin the cycle anew.

It wasn’t until, by chance, a second-stage Ultoq discovered the grinyth plant that their civilization had developed. Grinyth fruit and leaves produced a compound that retarded the onset of the final metamorphosis–as long as there was grinyth in its system, an Ultoq would not proceed to the last stage of its life. Even as Ultoq Civilization developed, though, the need to maintain their numbers was paramount. Thus, after a time, they would all cease intake of grinyth–or its synthesized derivatives–and “grow up,” losing all memory and ability to propagate the species.

“Heavy stuff, man,” said Albert. “Heavy stuff.”