Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

Early in the Ashikaga shogunate, a samurai known as Sōtan who had performed exceptionally well in the recent civil wars was summoned from his daimyo’s side to the Imperial court at Kyoto. Sōtan had fought furiously against Emperor Daigo’s forces during the Kemmu Restoration, and personally thought it odd that he would be summoned by that same emperor’s son, now a powerless young figurehead under the rule of the shogun. But, bound by duty, he went anyway.

Sōtan was not allowed to view the Chrysanthemum Throne, but was instead received in an antechamber and given a letter with the Imperial seal, along with a small lacquered box sealed with pitch. The Emperor wrote that, shortly before his father Emperor Daigo’s death, he had given the box to his son with the warning that it contained a “wayze,” a word which neither the new Emperor nor Sōtan knew. Whatever the “wayze” was, it had been found by the Hōjō clan during their rule and reclaimed by Daigo when he attempted to return power to the Emperor.

Sōtan found himself cleverly retained by Daigo’s son: having been commanded by his daimyo, who must have thought the mission a trifling one, to do as the Emperor bid, he was duty-bound to carry out the mission. The Emperor had turned one of his father’s fiercest adversaries into an ally.

His mission? Destroy the “wayze” by any means necessary–short of opening it.

“Hey, I stand for things,” I said. “I feel ways about stuff. Look at my columns! I’m not writing controversial stuff like that for the fun of it.”

“I don’t think that’s you standing for anything,” Karen replied. “I think it’s you being deliberately contrary to stir up a hornet’s nest so you can feel smug and superior.”

“That’s…definitely an unusual thing to say when being deliberately contrary’s paying for the meal.”

“See?” said Karen. “Someone with a pulse talks back, you’re caught in person, and you immediately backpedal. If you really cared about that shit, Eric, you’d be meeting me blow for blow over it.”

“And what about you?” I finally had to say. “Reaming me out like this? If you feel so strongly, why aren’t you writing a column? If you think I’m such a cynic, why’d you even come?”

It meant sitting between Tarkovsky and Miller, and life offers few choices more dismal than that.

Now, one naturally assumes people who work in bookstores to have a natural love of learning and language, much the same as one expects this of librarians or professors. While there were numerous counterexamples littering the store (gum-popping Sherry or chain-clad Günther, for instance), Tarkovsky and Miller fit the assumption to a tee. Both were intelligent and articulate and made no secret of how delighted they were to inflict both on an unsuspecting world.

How, then, was the word ‘dismal’ to be associated with them?

Tarkovsky (not his real name, but nevertheless what everybody called him) was a pedantic formalist, delighting in the rules, structure, and grammar that suffuse written and spoken communications. He savored pointing out and bitterly mocking any perceived infractions, from split infinitives to dangling participles to unnecessary vowels (a passionate follower of Noah Webster, he disdained foreign spellings). Miller, for his part, was a linguistic freethinker, fascinated by finding convoluted and unusual ways to express himself. He verbed nouns, dangled participles, and engaged in Spoonerism as a parlor game. If a sentence couldn’t be twisted into an avant-garde puzzle for a listener to riddle out, he wasn’t interested in it.

So, needless to say, fierce battle would soon be joined.

Volved Sagenned was the writer in residence, and considered quite a coup at the time he’d been retained. A Nobel prize winner, his books had sold millions of copies in translation and he was considered to be at the forefront of the “new wave” of former Warsaw Pact writers reflecting on the losing side of the Cold War.

He was also an irritable, self-absorbed old man with an impenetrably thick accent and absolutely no idea how to teach a class.

“He isn’t even required to teach, you know,” Kelly hissed. “He just does it for the stipend. His contract gives him six figures for three credit hours.”

“But he’s already making seven figures just by lending us his name,” whispered Harry. “Can’t he accept a little less in return for not making our lives hell!”

“Enough!” Sagenned roared. “The talkings ends now. Yes, ziz van iz not zo deaf ahz to naht heer shew hizzing like nezt of serpent!”

The students quickly fell into line even if they didn’t quite understand what he was saying.

“Paparz on desk, at vunze!” the author barked. “Tventy pagaz on ze meaning ov Krishnakov’s charakter! Let uz be determine who haz properly grazped!”

Muriel managed one final twist of the music box’s spring before her strength deserted her.

But it was enough.

The box sprung open on the ground where she lay in a spreading pool and began to plink out its simple melody. According to those that heard it, though, the sound quickly became far warmer and richer, almost like a harp or piano. Its music also spread far beyond what normal acoustics should have allowed–in addition to the Public Safety officers near Muriel, it could be heard by government troops in the base and on the firing line, along with their Revolutionary Guard opponents on the other side. Even riot police moving against a hostage situation twenty miles away, along with the hostage taker, reported hearing something.

The effect on all of them was the same: a feeling of overwhelming peace, safety, and tingling warmth like being held in an unconditionally loving embrace. Weapons clattered to the ground. Helmets were pried off to allow the divine sound to be heard with greater clarity. Many fell to their knees or wept openly.

One of the Public Safety officers approached Muriel and held out his hand. Weakly, she grasped it, and smiled–the last thing she was ever to do.

“I’ll meet you at the A-Bomb.”

It wasn’t a real A-Bomb, of course, but there was a piece of obsolete machinery in the field behind Hafmann Hall. No one had any idea what its purpose was–some kind of emergency generator from way back when, perhaps, or a piece of modern art that got mistaken for something practical when the Art Department moved to Dilcue. It still got a fresh coat of paint every now and then, which was the extent that it was officially recognized.

Thanks to struts that kept it off the ground and a cap that kept the rain off, the whatever-it-was looked like a genuine Fat Man/Little Boy A-Bomb. It helped that the spot wasn’t visible from any of the surrounding buildings thanks to a copse of bushes.

Ever since he’d bought his first car, a dilapidated ’46 Plymouth, Evan had taken immense pride in the feeding and grooming of his automobiles. If he hadn’t shepherded a car to the very end of its useful life, it was a personal failure. So the ’46 had lasted two years longer than it should have, followed by a brand-new Packard that outlived its brand by a considerable margin and a Ford that, when given to Evan’s son, was old enough to be considered retro hip.

He met his match, though, in the Vega.

Evan had always maintained two or more cars, but in the 70’s he expanded the garage and bought a Chevrolet Vega Panel Express, intending to use it to quickly dart into town for groceries or to move small items between the construction sites where he was foreman. From the beginning, it was a difficult match: the Vega blew its first transmission scarcely a year later, even as the salt-lined roads of the Midwest took a fearsome toll on the car’s underbody. Scarcely two years after it had been delivered,i t began leaking oil everywhere it was possible to leak, and ate through cylinder walls in the engine at an alarming rate.

Gamely, Evan attacked each of the problems as it arose, either by himself or with the help of friends. Empty Bondo containers piled up in the garage as the bodywork grew more and more rusted; Vegas that came into Sal’s junkyard were ruthlessly scavenged for cheap parts. As spare parts and oils can’s accumulated in the garage, Evan refused to concede defeat; his wife Sandy could only shake her head and mutter about how that machine was nothing but lubricated discord.

She didn’t know the half of it.

“I don’t think our generation has fully thought this whole childraising thing through,” said Andrea. “There are important issues that our parents didn’t have to deal with.”

“Like the internet?” Jake said, stroking her hair. “Or cell phones?”

“Like Star Wars,” Andrea said. “Will we teach our kids that Han Solo shot first and that you watch the movies in the order that they were made? When will we sit them down to talk about Jar Jar Binks?”

“I think we can work through that issue,” Jake said.

“Will we really let them play with kids whose parents are Star Wars fundamentalists that insist no new movies have been made since 1983, or kids who–God forbid–make them watch the movies in numerical order?” Andrea giggled. “What kind of parents would we be if we allowed that?”

“Normal?”

“There you go again, oversimplifying,” Andrea said, playfully hitting Jake with a pillow. “Star Wars orthodoxy could be a huge issue for our children, causing strife in the classroom and on the playground to rival the great schisms of old. Nobody our age has thought this through in the slightest, to say nothing of other issues like Old Trek vs. New Trek or which cut of Blade Runner they should see. We’ve got to do it, for the children’s sake!”

“The sanitation tunnels were built by the French,” Diego said. “They’ve been maintained very occasionally since then, but are still more or less adequate for shunting raw sewage into the Volta.”

“So what you’re saying is, bring a respirator?” said Claus.

“What I’m saying is, bring a sealed NBC suit,” said Diego. “There will be filth down there festering with every disease and parasite known to man and many that will be discovered in our carcasses if we so much as scratch ourselves on a rusty grate.”

“Are you sure we can’t take a more direct route?” Claus countered. “I’ve run into Rokiessian ‘soldiers’ before, and I don’t think even the ones at the presidential palace will be much trouble.”

“Except that there will be over a thousand of them, backed by air, armor, and artillery, and five of us,” said Diego. “Not to mention Burwell’s company if they’re still in town and any other foreign ‘advisors’ Mitumba has hired.”

“Just don’t call him that when we meet,” said Abis. “He hates that nickname. He’ll be irritated enough about being abducted.”

“I never did understand that,” said Claus.

“You would if you read the dossier,” Abis said. “Mitumba means bundles of cheap clothing imported from the first world. The implication is that the dear general is clothing himself with the largesse of the West. Or that they control him with gifts.”

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A university is like a government in miniature. Officially democratic policies conceal an ironclad despotism, with a vast disenfranchised population at the whims of a privileged few, but also with the power to be awoken and moved to action. It is the perfect small-scale experiment.

If a large government can be toppled, a small one can be too. Tactics are easily adapted to differing scales, especially in cell-based organizations. A major–but not too major–university is compact enough that a sustained campaign by just a few cells should show results much sooner than with an established and hegemonic government. If the methods and plan we have chosen are successful–and there’s no reason to believe that they won’t be–our organization may be able to destroy or seriously disturb the university within the space of a single semester.

That will be the proof of concept. From there, it will be a simple matter to disseminate the tools and tactics we used worldwide and move up the chain. A major city, a state, a nation…once we have proven it can be done, someone will do it.

-œ