Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

After he’d worked at my company for about three months, I began to suspect James Müller of something. I didn’t even know what at first, but there was something suspicious about him.

The fileroom incident is probably what really aroused my suspicions. I’d walked out of my office, up on the fourth floor, during lunch and headed toward the fileroom to pick up some documents I had filed away.

I collided with Müller as I opened the door, scattering papers everywhere.

“Oh!” he gasped and put a hand to his chest, “Good Lord, Murphy, I’m terribly sorry! I didn’t see you coming!”

“No, no,” I replied, “My fault. I wasn’t looking where I was going.” I knelt down and began gathering his papers up.

An unreadable look fluttered across Müller’s round features. “No.” Beneath his glasses, his brown eyes blinked nervously. “That’s okay. Don’t trouble yourself.”

“No trouble.” I scooped up the remainder of his papers, and noticed a black object under them. A camera. I placed it on top of his papers and handed the bundle to Müller. “Nikon. That’s a good quality camera. Have one myself.”

“This one’s always served me well. Sorry again about that.” With a flash of reflected light from his bald head, Müller was gone.

Shrugging, I continued into the fileroom as I looked the row of gray metal cabinets over, I noticed that the door of one was ajar. I noticed as I moved closer to it that the door wasn’t ajar; it had been forced open – the metal was bent and the paint chipped. I searched around and uncovered a hammer and chisel hidden behind the radiator.

But, it was when I pulled open the burglarized drawer that my suspicions truly crystallized. It was full of long-range financial plans, blueprints for products my company made and several industrial production schedules. The papers were wrinkled and out of order, almost as if they’d been hurriedly shoved back into the drawer.

What had Müller been doing in here? Suddenly, it all came together; the camera, the tools, the files and Müller’s nervousness.

He was a spy.

No one knew whose idea the bike trip had been. Killian Leary credited her youth pastor, and favored her with a friendly pat on the back. Brian Dahl blamed Jimmy Gough, his youth group’s treasurer and a star athlete. Nathan McGivers barely gave the issue a second thought.

Wherever the idea came from, it was soon a reality. Three of the area’s church youth groups united to provide a weekend of camping, hiking, and biking to help build ‘community ties’, and more importantly, to have a good time.

Thus, Brian along with Killy, and Nate–as Nathan and Killian preferred to be called–found themselves biking on the back roads of Jasper County in the summer of 1997. The initial pack of cyclers thinned out rapidly, leaving these three strangers in the rear.

Killy, attired in shorts and a t-shirt in her school colors, her long dark hair secured in a ponytail, took her time–biking was pleasant and relaxing compared to the volleyball camp she’d just come from. Gradually, Killy lost sight of the person in front of her, but was confident that she knew the way.

Brian, rather unwisely clothed in a heavy black t-shirt and cut off jean shorts, struggled on gamely behind her. He was completely unprepared for either the length or the strain of the ride, but was determined to impress certain members of his own group with his endurance.

Nate rode easily behind Brian, determined not to let him fall behind. He was more concerned with the scenery–great swaths of second-growth forests and wild, untended fields–than his performance.

Killy pressed on, and the others followed, barely noticing the bike tracks turning left, or the sudden change from pavement to earth. That is, until Killy rounded a blind curve and ran into a large mud hole in the middle of the road.

In the 15th year of King Andalus’ reign, the peace of the noble land of Aegard was shattered. The legions of the Dark King, which had long slumbered in the shadowy depths to which they had been banished in the Halcyon Age, burst forth with new strength, besieging Aegard and threatening to lay all they touched to base ash.

Ramoh nodded gravely. “Ttyl.”

Raymond looked up from his screen and rubbed his eyes. “That dick,” he muttered.

Jeremy knew that Aegard Keep was a dangerous place to pause. Even if he used the darkmeld ability on his Dragonforged Breastplate, chances were that if he moved away from the Raiders of Terra screen for just a second that he would return to his character’s cooling corpse.

His grandfather, as it happened, had been a minor military official in the court of the old king, and had retired to a small plot of land as reward for his service. This is how he came to be able to read and write, both rare in the days of ancient Ujram. But it came to pass that the old king’s son was succeeded–through the natural succession or usurpation–by a cruel tyrant who ravaged the land with high taxes and paid bands of marauders to steal the land of peasants and farmers.

One such band came to Iral’s village seeking the same, and he showed a natural aptitude for forming the local men into a militia and leading them in battle. When the marauders had been driven off, one of his companions asked “What will you do now?”

“I will continue to fight until I see justice restored to Ujram.”

In time, more villages and village militias flocked to Iral’s banner. The situation grew so alarming that the wicked king loosed his army upon them. Iral destroyed or recruited most of the formations sent against him, and soon his motley gang had become a full-scale rebellion. The wicked king sent an emissary to Iral, offering to make him a satrap in return for his alleigiance, or anything else he desired. Iral refused. One of his companions asked “What will you do now?”

“I will continue to fight until I see justice restored to Ujram.”

The trickle of people deserting the wicked king became a flood, and the great capital of Ujram fell without a battle. The old king hung from a gibbet, and Iral’s supporters crowned him in the square before the palace. One of his retainers asked “What will you do now?”

“I will continue to fight until I see justice restored to Ujram.”

At first, Iral ruled justly. He expanded the boundaries of Ujram through war or peace, and allowed the provinces to choose their own satraps. But when the first regional rebellion arose, he was forced to put it down though it meant the death of many who he had trusted. One of his prisoners from the campaign asked mockingly “What will you do now?”

“I will continue to fight until I see justice restored to Ujram.”

One of the other things Benny would do to impress us was give detailed plot summaries of R-rated movies that our parents wouldn’t let us watch. This was predicated on the solid supposition that a parent who put their kid through the rigmarole of Scouting was probably unlikely to be one that let their kids watch Skinemax as soon as they could hold the remote.

It didn’t matter that Benny’s own parents wouldn’t let him watch R-rated movies either. He just made it up as he went along.

Listening to him in the back of a minivan or on a fishing boat, we were enraptured by Benny’s highly intricate stories. Looking back, it’s actually kind of hilarious. He maintained that Total Recall was about a man who dreamed he killed his sister, only to wake up from the dream and have it really be true. Not sure where the gunfights and Mars fit into that, but I for one assumed that it was all stuff Arnold did to try and rescue his sister. Benny also claimed that It, that gold standard for horror for kids of the mid 80’s, was about a secret government program to produce homicidal monster clowns (which sounds about as reasonable as Stephen King’s tale of pandimensional spider shapeshifters, really).

This post is part of the June 2011 Blog Chain at Absolute Write. This month’s challenge is a simple descriptive setting.

It was raining in Heden. This was evident in the way its citizens scuttled to and fro in the few open spaces, avoiding the heavy droplets as best they could.

It always rained in Heden. There was a faint shimmer to the bright, bizarre fabrics worn by the people that indicated waterproofing, and each person shed a wake of droplets that collected near thousands of drainage grates.

It would always rain in Heden. There was no way to be sure of this, but the water-worn and rusted surfaces of the Towers suggested it. Looming up into the ever-dark sky, they seemed resigned to an eternal pelting from the neverending storm.

The original design of Heden had called for six of the great Towers, forming the simple hexagon shape found on many of the great neon billboards and television screens that dotted each Tower much as lichens dotted the occasional real rock. The Towers had grown together, fused into one great shapeless mass by centuries of construction, destruction, rust, and rainwater. The simple glass walkways that had connected them had been long shorn of their panes, and hundreds of homegrown, rickety, winding paths of iron and steel had appeared to supplant them.

A monitor was suspended above one such improvised walkway, placed to ambush passersby with its message. Its bright, flashing image wasn’t an ad. Ad Boards were hard to afford, anymore; people who wanted to advertise just added more crumpled paper or laminate fliers to the mass that coated every surface reachable by human hands. This screen was an Info Board.

Info Boards were there to ‘illuminate possible interpretations of information for the purpose of educating the people’ according to the Boards themselves. This particular Board was playing the ‘History of Heden’, and everyone passing beneath had seen it before.

Check out this month’s other bloggers, all of whom have posted or will post their own responses:
juniper
LadyMage
dolores haze
jkellerford
Ralph Pines
TheMindKiller
AuburnAssassin
pezie
WildScribe
Inkstrokes
Irissel
Guardian
Lyra Jean
egoodlett
cwachob

As she opened the door to her friend Logan’s apartment, Cora Edwards was in a great mood. She wasn’t usually a night person, but now, as the clock approached twelve, her emerald-green eyes shone with life.
Cora and Logan had been close friends since high school—just friends, nothing more. In the two years since she and Logan had come to Northeastern University, Cora had dropped by so often to study or just to hang out that Logan had finally given her a key.

She’d used that key just now, and as the door swung open, Cora smoothly removed it from the lock and placed it in her pocket. All the apartment’s lights were off; the only illumination was dim slivers of yellow filtering through the window blinds, probably from the parking lot below.

Logan wasn’t home; he and Cora had arranged to meet at the Midtown Café, as they often did, at 3:00 AM for a quick study session. Cora had been halfway to the café before she’d realized that her textbooks were still at Logan’s. A quick turn and ten minutes’ travel had brought her here.

Cora let the door slam shut behind her, catching a glimpse of herself in the hall mirror, with the one silver earring and light brown hair cut boyishly short, before the light streaming in from the outside hall was cut off. Not wanting to waste electricity, Cora felt her way towards the kitchen. The books should just be lying there on the table.

A shape, dark and indistinct, rose up against the blinds. Cora turned to face it, soft, dim light spilling across her head and shoulders. Cora opened her mouth, intending to say “Logan, is that you?”

Three short, staccato explosions that echoed through the apartment cut her off. Instantly, Cora felt a dreadful numbness spread throughout her body, stumbled, and collapsed. She didn’t feel any pain, just a warm, soft sense of well-being as her world went black forever.

The Tuy’baq are a physically weak race, and must be augmented cybernetically to gain sentience; typically, this is done at birth. As almost inherently cybernetic organisms, Tuy’baq are naturally gifted users of data systems. After the Vyaeh conquered the Tuy’baq homeworld of Q’otwaa, Tuy’baq were placed on Vyaeh ships to act as programmers and hackers.

The Tuy’baq cybernetic exoskeletons are not designed for combat, but are nevertheless resistant to small arms fire, and the creatures are equipped with a fusion pulse launcher for self-defense. While typically controlled by a Vyaeh slavemaster, in the past two decades Tuy’baq have recently begun a rebellion against their masters.

Some Tuy’baq have been equipped with upgraded armor and improved weaponry for operations in more hostile environments, and these are typically identifiable by their purple armor. Tuy’baq programmers can be equipped with a cloaking generator that conceals all but a faint outline of the creature. These cloak-capable programmers are typically used for covert missions, but have been employed as assassins as well.

In the seventeen years since the first Tuy’baq slave rebellion, the Vyaeh have taken steps to prevent its spread. By redesigning the programmer exoskeleton, they have been able to maintain firmer control of the enslaved Tuy’baq. The redesigned unit is also more combat-worthy, with a smaller profile, thicker armor, and a significantly upgraded fusion pulse launcher. Older exoskeleton models continue to see use in reserve fleets, however.

Programmers designed for high-risk combat operations have undergone the recent cybernetic upgrade as well. Vyaeh engineers placed special emphasis on the armor of these units, which is electrically charged and capable of resisting nearly twice as much damage as earlier models. A rudimentary guidance system has also been added to the programmer’s fusion pulse launcher armament as well.

Much like earlier models, the upgraded Tuy’baq can be equipped with cloaking generators. The efficiency of these devices has been improved, however, and they leave less of a telltale shadow when employed.

These days, I struggle to remember how long I spent at Southwestern—I’ll go for a ballpark figure and say five years. I spent my days in the library, the lab, and my closet—er, office. At night, I’d go back to my little of-campus flat. It’s funny, but I can’t remember much about that place, I place where spent so much time and felt so much joy. What I do recall about my little home, I’d rather not discuss. I spent time with the woman whose picture was on my desk.

The thing that is the most crystal-clear about that time was how bright the future seemed. Those were heady days—I felt I was on the brink of being a success in life. I was researching something big, something profitable. All that I needed was a little more money for trials. All I needed was a grant—and that was the problem.

The grant man—whose name was Samuel G. Harding, and the “G” stood for Grant—was an absolute beast of a being. Not in the physical sense, mind you—Harding was built like a scarecrow, with gangly limbs and a shock of straw-colored hair. People never took him seriously—until they saw his eyes. Cold, dark, and as gray as the steel spectacles that covered them, Harding’s eyes reflected his character. To anyone who saw him, his cool, menacing demeanor made S. G. Harding seem larger than life.

The man was truly a sadist. Harding’s only pleasure seemed to come from tormenting those at his mercy. He spoke for the grant committee, a committee of one, since the other members were masterfully bullied into compliance with his whims. Whenever a project’s funding was rejected, Harding delivered the refusal in person, and always managed to twist the knife a little more in an already festering wound. Only by total submission to this man’s will could you receive a grant. Few were handed out. That, I suppose, is how Harding kept his position; he always had surplus money for other departments to borrow.

During my time at Southwestern, I tried to distance myself from Harding by not requesting any grants, by sticking to free materials and pocket change. It wasn’t an awful lot, but I got things done without his involvement, and that raised Harding’s ire. I could see it every day in the glare he gave me as he passed by. That expression…it haunts me to this day.

It’s his fault that I waited so long to apply for the funds I so desperately needed; I perused every other option, tried my hardest to find some way around Harding and his infernal grants. It was months before I finally resigned myself to the fact that I had no choice but to go to the grant man. The parties interested in my research (that had refused to fund me, by the way) were hounding me, and to wait any longer would jeopardize my wonderful plans for the future.

“Joy,” you say, “I’m an engineer. I might be able to design something like this if you gave me enough time, but I have no idea how to use it.”

“It is a simple point and click interface,” Joy says from your wrist in that not-quite-monotone voice.

“Joy!”

“Very well. Accessing database entries.” You could swear she sounds petulant that you didn’t laugh at her little pun. “It is an M-50 assault rifle, model 6. This rifle is considered one of the great follies of modern military technology. Under pressure from megacorporate leaders and government buyers, it was rushed into production with multiple design flaws. The result was a highly inaccurate firearm that was nevertheless widely distributed to EC military units. The large-caliber, can-feed, caseless round design proved dangerous and ineffective in battle. Historical Dictionary of Arms and Armor, 8th edition, amended.”

“Amended?” you say. “By who?”

“Unknown,” Joy says…smugly? “Citation needed.”

You sigh, and shake Joy’s interface unit. “Anything else? I need to know how to fire it!”

“Recording of an exchange between a senior EC general and a military procurement officer, recorded on an FNS hidden microphone smuggled into a high-level meeting in a box of donuts:

‘This thing couldn’t hit the broad side of a starship at twenty yards. How many did you say we ordered?’ – Maj. Gen. Eduard Montreaux

‘Twenty-five million, sir.’ -Unidentified ECC officer adjunct.”