Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

And so it was that the Center was boarded up and locked. Weeds grew in the sandy volleyball pits, and the vibrant red letters faded. Six months after its closure and the firing of Jon Eckles, the city council approved the center’s demolition as a derelict building; they cited “safety” as their primary concern. The equipment that had stocked the Youth Center was sold at auction or destroyed along with the building.

A year later, the council approved a plan to build low-income housing on the plot, saying it would increase tax revenue by attracting students from nearby college towns. That same year, ninety percent of the high school’s graduating class of 137 left the town. When the new apartments opened, 97 people had signed leases.

Jim gave a wry smile. “I see a little problem with your idea, Mary.” he said playfully.

“And what would that be, sir?” Mary asked with exaggerated care.

“You’ll have to catch me first!” Jim was gone in a flash, laughing and running.

Without a moment’s hesitation, Mary lunged after him, giggling, but Jim was already far ahead.

They chased each other about the grounds as the shadows grew long and the light golden, either ignoring the pall that hung over the next few days or willfully disregarding it.

“We have been content to watch from afar, to feed. Still, we always expected that someone would arrive,” said one of the Children.

“Just as the ruins of the old world gave birth to us, so too did we beget suffering and chaos unprecedented even in the time of its destruction,” said another, who might once have been a woman. “That was our ultimate revenge.”

“But we knew it could not last, just as the strife that burned for generations before our coming. Now that the wall has been breached, the time has come for the children of the old world to begin the next phase.”

“We have seen the suffering we have wrought echo across a hundred generations, but no more. As in all matters of revenge, we must now move on to death.” The Child who had spoken smiled, the eerie green light of the glass reflected in its eyes. “The Children of Xencobourg will sear our enemies to dust.”

Harry gnawed meditatively on the end of a pencil, leaving deep tooth marks.

“That’s a bad habit,” I reminded him, as I always did.

“And you have a bad habit of reminding me that it’s a bad habit,” came the standard reply.

Everyone has a nervous habit, and Harry simply preferred pencil-chewing. He claimed it was cheaper than smoking, and better for the environment to boot. In front of the bank of computer monitors in his apartment, there was always a fresh batch of pencils in a little jar. I once got a good laugh by replacing one with a yellow pen, which burst and gave Harry a blue mouth for a week.

Don’t get me wrong–I want to be sad about what happened. But how can I be, when every memory I have of Harry is so much fun?

No one is perfect; that’s an established fact. My idea of perfection in a person would be the right combination of personality and looks. A beautiful person with a single-digit IQ is like a Ming vase, pretty to look at but disturbingly empty. An ugly person with a winning personality isn’t bad, but it’s hard to appreciate someone who shatters mirrors and turns mortals to stone.

I’ve often noticed that people who have the power to attract a retinue will usually surround themselves with one of either type. Maria, for example, was regularly accompanied by Annabelle Schmidt and Betsy Purdue. Annabelle set the curve in chemistry class but had terrible teeth and more moles than a country garden; Betsy had near movie-star good looks, but thought General Motors was named after a war hero.

Through skillful manipulation, Maria used them both in different ways to make herself seem smarter and more attractive; I was about to get a more personal demonstration than I would have liked.

“Seven minutes…” Mack said. “What can anyone do in seven minutes? Make seven minute eggs, walk a few hundred yards, write a note, sing a song, say hello. Waste it thinking of what to spend it on.”

He kicked a stone. “People today complain too much about what they can’t change.”

The digital watch on his wrist blinked incessantly. Mack resisted looking at it for as long as he could bear before bringing it up and shielding the display from the bright light with a cupped hand.

“A minute and a half,” he sighed. “At this rate, seven minutes might as well be seven years.”

Envision, if you will, the most absurd thing you can.

Go on.

What did you come up with? Zebras playing poker, perhaps? Or is that too tame? How about a living, three-dimensional Picasso painting? Each person has their own unique concept of absurdity.

Your conception of absurdity—things so bizarre or out of place as to be almost meaningless—is intimately linked to your own personal experiences. That, in turn, causes you to see some things as beyond the pale of normal experience and therefore absurd. Another person with their own experiences would make a different observation.

But what if there existed something so far from the realm of what any person has experienced that it would induce in everyone—you, your neighbor, an Amazonian tribesman—that feeling? So far from the realm of what any person has experienced that there’s no way to process it, and the only response is an insane cackle?

The dice scattered onto the board.

Two sixes.

Walt leaned over and advanced his tiny car twelve squares. “Marvin Gardens,” he said. “Who owns it?”

“Me.” Jim held up the deed. “Thirty dollars, if you please.”

The money was grudgingly peeled off Walt’s stack and handed over. “Is this what it’s really like to be in the real estate business?”

“Sort of,” said Jim. “But good luck finding a place in Atlantic City for thirty bucks a night. And I think they left out the casino and brothel pieces by mistake.”

“You deal with casinos and brothels?”

“More often than you’d think,” Jim sighed.

The butt of his gun was smooth from constant use, and Thomas fingered it nervously as he waited, tapping out a rhythm on the hard wood.

“Do you have to do that?” Mat hissed.

“Unless you have a cigarette, yes,” Thomas said. “Yes I do.”

“You’re distracting me,” Mat replied. “We need to be ready when they get here.”

“Ha! Do you think being ready will make any difference? You know what they did to the Fifth. Rolled right over them, and shot the prisoners. And our boys will shoot you if you try to run. The great menace from the East is on its way, and we’re going to crumble before it.”

Mat fingered his own gun, worn through another man’s use. “At least I haven’t given up.”

“That, my naive friend, is what makes you a fool.”

“Well, the nanites can learn. They can adapt. But they’re also very complex; each one is subtly different. That’s why we observe their behavior in the simulation, why we occasionally interact with them–if they perform poorly, how can they be expected to repair living tissue? They have to be destroyed.”

Chris raised an eyebrow. “How do you destroy a machine a mew molecules wide? They don’t make wreaking balls that small.”

Ramirez narrowed his eyes. “Plasma incinerator, smartass. We take out the good ones and put ‘em to good use, and burn the bad ones.”

“A plasma incinerator smartass? What’ll they think up next? What an age we live in!”