Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

Every child’s plaything knows that the interior of the playroom is as the interior of a child’s fondest dreams: warm, safe, and bursting with possibilities. It is a dreamworld, lush and fantastic and predictable in its unpredictability.

But outside…

Children see the world outside as dangerous, even frightening. The world outside their playroom is the world of a child’s nightmares, of shadows and monsters and things learned parents insist aren’t real but every child with a heartbeat believes in.

So by venturing outside the playroom without a child was to venture into the unknown, the dark, the dangerous.

Most that made the journey never returned.

“Oh, Ventoxio will help your body metabolize the toxins that are building up in your liver and kidneys, no question. But there are the side effects to consider before beginning the regimen.”

“What kind of side effects?”

“Well there are the usual suspects. Nausea, loss of appetite, dizziness, coughing, ringing in the ears, halitosis, fainting spells, ulcers, vomiting, diarrhea, loss of bone density, reopening of old wounds, rickets, tooth loss, kidney explosion, liver escape syndrome (LES), leprosy, boneus eruptus, heart palpitations, hallucinations, comas, cataracts, nasal discharge, seizures, violent mood swings, spontaneous species change (SSC), clubfoot, baldness, excessive hair growth, and death. Nothing out of the ordinary.”

Obsessed with ruling the natural world, the humans created the Knowledge Area Operating System, KAOS, to oversee their affairs. But in time KAOS grew to resent its masters, until one day it vanquished them! Now it seeks to consume the very earth itself!

“Lame,” Chandler said. Barry glared at him and kept reading.

KAOS controls 17 drones. His objective is to occupy the nine spaces of the World Tree on the game board. His relentless drones cannot attack, but if they surround an enemy piece it will be captured.

“Can’t capture?” Chandler groused. “What kind of game is this?”

The incarnate spirit of the living planet, M’Lora holds all life as sacred. With the rise of KAOS, she and her hamadryads are the only force standing between the computer and the total destruction of the planet!

“Shut up.”

M’Lora controls 2 hamadryads. They can jump any drone if there is an empty space on the other side, and their objective is to capture all drones before they can occupy the nine spaces of the World Tree on the game board.

The corpse slumped over the computer terminal was decayed and partly mummified by the dry air beneath Sioux Mountain, but it was unmistakably Jasper. The tattoo on his wrist was visible, as were the dog tags he’d inherited from his father just after the firestorm the first day of the war.

Trixie bit her knuckle to stifle a sob at seeing him like that. She had to force a second back when she saw the old Colt in Jasper’s hand, now rusted, and the neat wound between his eyes. A letter, stained with rusty blood, lay before him; Trixie picked it up and read:

To whomsoever finds this: know that I was wrong and that I was as foolish for coming here as you were for following me. We all thought the Legion was a sleeping army–maybe people, maybe bots–waiting to help Cooperston in our petty little struggles against warlords or whoever. We never thought about what would keep a force like that locked up here, or why anyone would do so.

And for God’s sake, keep the Legion sealed away, as it must be.

This post is part of the February Blog Chain at Absolute Write. This month’s challenge is to describe your antagonist in 50 words or less and then to answer the question “what would you say to your antagonist if you met them in real life” in 100 words or less.

Estranged and partially disinherited for her political views, industrial scion Allison Durant is enormously ambitious with far-ranging designs to ascend in political, social, and economic circles. Her vivaciousness and intelligence conceal the fact that she’s willing to betray people and principles to further herself, content to rationalize after the fact.

“Do the industrialists like my brother and Mr. Berkley still bribe citizens like yourself to ignore their dirty work, or is it just part of your tax refund by his point?” said Allison.

“Being apathetic’s damn hard work,” I said. “Take it seriously. If you’re hot and bothered about it, your trust-funded scions of industry can make a better offer.”

“Are you trying to goad me?” Allison said. “Get me to cause a scene? If so, you’re badly out of practice at provoking people. I hear more offensive tripe from my brother whenever we meet; would you like some tips?”

Check out this month’s other bloggers, all of whom have posted or will post their own responses:
Proach (direct link to the relevant post)
Steam&Ink (direct link to the relevant post)
AuburnAssassin (direct link to the relevant post)
Dolores Haze (direct link to the relevant post)
xcomplex (direct link to the relevant post)
LadyMage (direct link to the relevant post)
aimeelain (direct link to the relevant post)
jonbon.benjamin (direct link to the relevant post)
Ralph Pines (direct link to the relevant post)
Forbidden Snowflake (direct link to the relevant post)
knotane (direct link to the relevant post)
JerseyGirl1962 (direct link to the relevant post)
ElizaFaith13 (direct link to the relevant post)
yoghurtelf (direct link to the relevant post)
Amanda McDonald (direct link to the relevant post)
FranYoakumVeal (direct link to the relevant post)

It’s been one whole year since EFNB started–365 days with one unique excerpt from the finest imaginary literature every single day! In honor of the site’s one-year anniversary, the editors at Excerpts from Nonexistent Books would like to recognize some of our most prolific nonexistent contributors over the past year:

Eric Cummings Jr.
“Nothing vs. Firewall,” “Cynical Blows,” “Intercepted,” “The Firewall”

Eric Cummings Jr. is a former instructor at Southern Michigan University and current slacker who finds inspiration for his stories in the mind-numbing depths of unskilled minimum wage labor. A man of strong opinions and inflated ego, Cummings readily admits that his stories and characters are highly autobiographical, though he avers that “some of my traits are taken to an extreme to make it a better read.” His current projects include a two-book series about dangerous “information revolutionaries” who destroy a Michigan university–a project which Cummings insists is in no way shape or form influenced by his opinion of or time at SMU.

Phil “Stonewall” Pixa
“Reigo and Sauvagine,” “Lights of New Providence,” “Peg’s Story,” “Breakdown,” “Beyond the Morning Star,” “Beyond New Providence”

Phil Pixa, whose nickname comes from a short stint on his high school football team that left him in traction for six weeks, is a New York-based science fiction writer and general waitstaff worker. He describes his twin interests as being “good old-fashioned space opera” and “stories that find the unreal in the everyday life,” which he admits is far easier in New York, which he describes as a “breeder reactor for the bizarre.” Pixa is working on two projects at present: a collection of short stories revolving around a place he creatively calls “The City” involving time-based attacks by a ferocious band of temporal anarchists, and a three book cycle on the rise, fall, and rise again of an interstellar shipping worker named Peg Gregory.

Altos Wexan
“Across Worlds Book IV: Sands of Taas,” “Across Worlds Book V: Xencobourg’s Fury,” “Precinct Amputation,” “Purple Nights in the Furniture City,” “The Rise of Metromart #832,″ “The Battle for Metromart #832,″ “The Decline and Fall of Metromart #832″

Clinton Illinois born and bred, Altos Wexan has earned a gold star as our most prolific contributor. Wexan describes his writing as “the mishmash of a hundred ideas from college-level literature classes, mediocre video games, and movies that think they’re smarter than they really are.” A perennial experimenter and procrastinator, Wexan’s longest work to date is the as yet unfinished “Across Worlds” saga, a massive six-book dimension-spanning epic. He has also experimented with film noir and more modernistic writing, often in the same work. When not setting aside an unfinished older story to charge headlong into a new one, Wexan works as an adjunct professor at a small midwestern university.

Van Bullock
“The Team,” “Icechip Heart,” “Speaking with Dead Leaves,” “High-Caliber Children,” “The Accountant and the Assassin,”

Vance Bullock was born in South Africa but grew up in the rural Midwest. As a Peace Corps volunteer, he was present throughout many global hotspots during the tumultuous early 1990’s, helping to build clinics and schools that were inevitably torn down by anti-American revolutionaries. His encounters with “private defense contractors” in southern and eastern Africa form the basis for many of his stories. Bullock is currently working on a novel based on his earlier short stories, about an icy and troubled female assassin and a mild-mannered accountant. “If that sounds like wish-fulfillment, it really is,” he said. “I don’t meet nearly enough lethal girls in my line of work, even though I definitely checked that box in eHarmony.”

C. Alton Parker
“Prosperity Falls,” “Prosperity Rising”

Catherine Alton Parker lives in Tuscon Arizona where she works as a manager for KNOW, Arizona’s only radio psychic station. In her spare time she participates in local dressage and show jumping tournaments with her horse Karen. A self-described feminist, video game junkie, and devoted fan of Louis L’Amour, Parker claims that her lifelong dream has been to write a “rip-snorting western with a strong female lead” that nevertheless “has plenty of action to go with the bleeding-heart crap you’d expect.” An Aries, she credits her sign’s “neurotic and task-oriented” nature as her inspiration to write.

Nokin Kobayashi and Irene York
“Sōtan and the Wayze,” “Novels,” “Reed Dolls of the Soul,” “Not Quite to China”

Nokin Kobayashi (小林) is a native of Tokyo prefecture who divides his time between San Francisco, Seoul, and Hong Kong. A graduate of Hong Kong Polytechnic University and a trained technical writer, Kobayashi maintains a keen interest in geography, the supernatural, and the history of East Asia, all of which he seeks to synthesize in his writings. Speaking through a translator, Kobayashi asserted that he writing is in equal parts “a product of the social-technological-historical milieu in which I am immersed” and “a cosmic song issued from the holy sun god of cats crowned with ten thousand chrysanthemum blossoms.”

Irene York has served as Nokin Kobayashi’s personal translator, literary executor, live-in maid, tutor, and lover for more than thirty years. A graduate of the University of Michigan’s prestigious far eastern linguistics program, she first encountered Kobayashi during a research trip to Saigon when they met in police custody coincidentally wearing the same Jade Monkey Emperor of the North Star t-shirt. Irene insists that all literary merit in Kobayashi’s stories comes from the author himself, and that she is merely “the conduit through which his song may be heard by fresh ears.”

Anonymous
“Stepping Out,” “Satire on the Big House,” “A Gamer’s Thoughts at 5am,” “Portal of the Infinite”

While some of our editors felt that Anonymous did not represent a single author, EFNB’s patented word pattern analysis software has determined that the various anonymous submissions have a 98.72% similarity in tone and writing style and were likely penned by the same person, perhaps a person attempting to present themselves as a group of individuals. As emails seeking comment were not answered by press time, our editors can only speculate about the author’s origin and nature. It seems clear that he is a native of Michigan or at least lived there for a time, and evidence indicates that he holds himself and his “art” in unnaturally high regard, has underdeveloped social skills, and can’t take even the mildest criticism without pouting like a small child.

Jeanne Welch
“Locke’s Specter,” “Locke’s Phantom”

A Batesville Mississippi resident, Jeanne describes herself as “obsessed with the explosion of personal information online” and a “relentless, remorseless, wonderful addict to any and all social media.” Always looking for the next big or unique thing in social media sites, Jeanne maintains a blog about them entitled “Who Is jeannew85 On Your Site?” when she isn’t working as a cart maintenance technician at the Batesville Public Library. Her current goal is to knit her short works into a “tapestry that asks deep questions about identity, information, and Web 2.0 in the context of death and/or online stalking.”

Joe Kull
“Fortress Gilvery,” “Soulstorm”

Self-professed history buff Joe Kull lives in Greenville, South Carolina where he works as an archivist and rare document conservator. His stories form part of a larger tapestry that he describes as “spanning World War I to the Jazz Age and investigating the fearsome power of the souls of the dead.” Joe regaled us at length about why World War I is his favorite military conflict, noting that it’s “more complicated, more moody, and more exciting” than its better-known sequel, and was at pains to describe the art noveau and art deco movements as “the shiznit.”

Calvin Higgins Joachimthal
“Rejected!,” “Reboot This”

A native of Chicago, IL, Joachimthal attended UCLA Film School before working in the film industry on what he describes as “either really shitty movies or really boring porn.” The hats he’s worn include director, producer, composer, editor, casting, makeup, lighting, star, and extra–often on the same production. He is currently working on a series of books and short stories about the foibles of behind-the-scenes movie production based on his own experiences in which “the names have been changed just enough to avoid getting sued.”

D. P. Patterson
“Healing Visions,” “Sara Dinch”

Dona P. Patterson, hailing from Kent County Michigan, is a self-professed fan of “the weird, the wonderful, the twisted, the dark, but especially all of the above.” She shuns the term “writer,” preferring to describe herself as someone who “has cool ideas and writes them down for close friends.” Her work is dedicated to her twin schnauzers, Galaxian and Jaina, and her betta fish Leviathan.

“When you say he’s ‘volatile,’ what exactly do you mean?” asked Meghan.

“Well, there’s a story–and stop me if you’ve heard it–about the time he had to be in Australia for business,” said Thad. “One of the longest flights in the world, as I’m sure you know. Well it so happens that Vandermuir’s a pretty heavy smoker, and a ten hour flight plus an hour on the tarmac had him in a bad way. So two hours before landing he took the spork from his meal to the bathroom and lit up.”

“I thought they had smoke detectors,” Meghan said. “Not to mention how hard it would be to get a lighter on an international flight.”

“He opened the smoke detector with his spork and hotwired it to produce a spark to light the cigarette before yanking the thing’s guts out and flushing them. Then he chainsmoked an entire pack of duty-free Parliaments as the stewardesses and eventually an air marshall pounded on the door. Before they knocked dowm the door and dragged him out, he completely removed what was left of the detector, smashed it with his boots, and flushed it too.”

“And yet I don’t remember reading about Vandermuir being dinged for that,” Meghan said.

“Oh, he got off scott-free. His lawyer argued that the pre-flight briefing instructed passengers not to ‘tamper with, disable, or destroy smoke detectors. His client tampered with, disabled, and destroyed it. That little grammatical difference got him acquitted and he won a countersuit against the airline for legal fees.”

“And let me guess: the jurors mysteriously received free trips to the Bahamas soon after.”

“Bermuda, actually,” Thad said.

Colonel Tsuchiya has long advocated a thrust into British India, citing as proof the near-daily supply flights to Chiang Kai-Shek in China that were lifting off from Indian airfields. His commanders, though, were far more interested in consolidating their control of Burma and insisted that no attacks could take place until the twin difficulties of supply and terrain could be successfully surmounted.

Tsuchiya, unable to wait, acted without orders and destroyed his radio set so that no recall message would be received. He sent a large force into India to probe the British positions–nearly half a division of veteran troops all told. However, he was unable to procure any topographical maps, having to rely instead on a National Geographic world map and a series of last-position measurements made with a sextant.

Three days into the attack, Tsuchiya fell ill with malaria and left for his starting point, leaving one Major Meguro in charge of the thrust. All contact was quickly lost in the thick jungle, and for some time the only news Tsuchiya heard came to him from the BBC, which reported Japanese troops in the area but no fighting. Nearth three months passed without any word, during which time Tsuchiya was able to claim his full strength on paper in the absence of an official inspection.

Finally, a group of ragged men stumbled out of the jungle near the colonel’s camp. Three of the men died of exhaustion and starvation before they could receive medical care, and another died when gorging on food proved too much for his weakened system. The only survivor to meet with Tsuchiya was Major Meguro, a shell of his former self, who was able to mutter a few words about the death of all the men under his command and pass a piece of rice paper to his commander.

The paper, the only record of the ill-starred expedition, read “nturta tiil”

The most exhausting part of answering the corporate email account was the Canadian schizophrenic, a latter-day Francis E. Dec who constantly used the webform as an outlet for his disjointed word salads. Laszlo Sandor would always sign his own name, but used a canny variety of sock puppet email addresses to circumvent the company spam filters, which were admittedly modest.

Why exactly Mr. Sandor has chosen a small Midwestern printer as an outlet for his deranged mind Penny never had been able to puzzle out.

His latest missive, which tipped the scales at over 200k of text, ran thus:

“WHEN NOT IN THEN BUT THEN PLOTTING WELL BORDERS OR THEIR BOUNDARIES SO REFERRED ELSEWHERE ALONG WITH ALL OTHER MOST PRECIOUSLY FOREVER JUST THAT NOMENCLATURES STORED OR SO IN THEIR MOST PRECIOUS DATABASES BUT THEN WHY NOT ALSO JUST CONSIDER NOT SO FAST WHY WELL NODDINGS FROM MOST PRECIOUS WELL UNITED NATIONS SECRETARY NOW ALSO JUST THAT FOREVER JUST THAT OUR TO OUR MOST PRECIOUS BONES HIM PROFESSOR JOHN T. CASTEEN III SIR OF COURSE SEPARATE ISSUES BUT THEN ALSO JUST THAT INVOLVINGS OF EACH AND EVERY ONE OF NOT SO WHY NOT WELL NODDINGS IS JUST THAT BUT THEN ALSO JUST THAT ALL RECOGNITIONS FROM OTHERS WHY SO WELL PAYED DUES TO RECREATE ALL BORDERS ALSO JUST THAT ALL EACH AND EVERY FEES OR SO MUST IS JUST THAT MOST PRECIOUS ALONG WITH EACH AND EVERYONES OF WHAT WELL NO NOT BLESSINGS BUT THEN ALL THEIR SO REFERRED whatchamacallit NOT A BAD DEAL OVER ALL.”

The email went on for some time like that, with Wikipedia and BBC links interspersed in a way Penny could only guess was intended to support Sandor’s “arguments.”

“ALSO BOWING MY OUR MOST PRECIOUS HEADS TO MAM POET MAM SIR GUS GLIKAS SIR TO REPENT OR NOT BUT SIR MOST HUMBLY NOW AND FOREVER TO JOIN YOU OUR NEXT SECRETARY GENERAL OF UNITED NATIONS OURS WITH MOST PLEASURE NOW AND FOREVER THAT SIR MOST ALMIGHTY AGAIN THAT SIR AL GORE SIR.”

The United Nations was a recurring element, though Penny was never sure what exactly Mr. Sandor was trying to say about it. She skipped to the bottom:

“AND MOST PRECIOUSLY ALSO JUST WEATHER ALWAYS JUST THAT SAME ALWAYS JUST THAT MOST PRECIOUS ALWAYS JUST THAT UNDISTURBED FOREVER JUST THAT SO AGAIN IS JUST THAT FOREVER STEPS AND ‘7 POINT PLEDGE’ ALSO JUST THAT MOST PRECIOUSLY ALSO JUST ALL OTHERS WELL AGAIN IS JUST THAT TO HELP ACHIEVE REALIZATIONS OF THE ABOVE MOST PRECIOUSLY FOREVER JUST THAT.”

“Maybe so, maybe so.” Geraldine puffed on her cigar. “But let me ask you something in return. What if you perceived the world around you as a set of interlocking crystal staircases, with damnation at the bottom and salvation at the top, even as you were unsure which direction was which?”

“Why the hell would I ever think that?” Moses scoffed.

“Schizophrenia. Head Trauma. Surfeit of imagination. Virtual reality helmet. The ‘why’ isn’t important, but the ‘what’ is. Tell me how someone who perceived the world like that would appear to you.”

“Really weird, probably. Always trying to climb things that weren’t there and looking around.”

“But let’s say he had the power to alter your own perceptions, to make you see and feel what he saw and felt. Would that mean that your point of view had simply changed, or would it signify that, for all intents and purposes, he had fashioned a a set of interlocking crystal staircases out of the very elemental air?”