Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

Institute 22. Conspiracy wonks go nuts over it, saying that it was the Soviet equivalent of Project Blue Book: an official investigation into UFO sightings. The things I’ve heard from hardened nutcases about it…they seem to think that it’s some hidden archive with all the proof they’ve ever wanted about flying goddamn saucers. As if the Russkies were somehow worse at keeping secrets than Uncle Sam or something.

I’ve been to their archive in Moscow, and I can assure you that it’s not like that at all. UFOs are pretty tangential to the whole thing, the real purpose of which was to watch the skies for advanced or experimental Western spyplanes or drones. With between four and five million troops in the Army alone, that was a lot of eyes. No wonder we had such a hard time getting anything short of a satellite or SR-71 over them.

But for anyone with the fortitude and knowledge of nomenklatura Russian terms, there are a few sightings, no more then 5-10%, that lack official explanations. And there are reams of papers, written by someone with an overactive imagination or too much exposure to officially banned Western pulp sci-fi (or both) about the supposed, potential, or imagine effect of unknown technology on Soviet military hardware. There are also papers declaring the whole thing a waste of time and money.

Just like we did.

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When they moved the tiny Ombudsman’s Office into McDonnell Hall across campus, its old location was absorbed by its neighbor, becoming an extension of the Records Office (its emergency fire escape in point of fact).

The university had placed a standard sign on the footpath leading by the old Ombudsman’s, largely because it was so tucked away in a much larger building that people were always walking right by it (and then walking right by the sign in the Records Office that said “OMBUDS OFFICE THAT WAY” to ask the secretary for directions). But when the office moved, it was superfluous. The Records Office had its own sign on the other side of the building and there was a sign on the door for anyone who tried to go in.

But did the administration take it down? No, of course not. Instead, at great expense, they removed the informative part of the sign from its frame and replaced it with a blank square in one of the school’s colors. So it became a sign that took up valuable real estate, was constructed in the same way as all the other campus signs, but conveyed no useful information. It irked me, walking as I did along that path nearly every day.

Once I became frustrated enough with the absurdity that I took a marker our of my bag and scrawled “ce n’est pas un signe” on it. I don’t know if my French was up to the task, but it sure made me feel better. In response, the administration (again presumably at great expense) replaced the featureless, informationless colored square with a fresh one.

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Colette Hays had gotten it from her mother: a Christmas sweater too ugly for even a bad sweater party (if such things had existed in 1978). It was in the pattern of an American flag, with alternating stripes of red, white, and green with hollyjolly brown for the canton. Each stripe was filled with knit Santa hats, snowflakes, and mistletoe leaves, while the canton’s stars were represented by little jingle bells that each hung by their own little yarn string.

After wearing it once for the benefit of Mama Sears and enduring a rash for three days afterwards, Colette gave it as a gift to her sister-in-law Josie Sears the following Christmas. Josie couldn’t fail to grasp the significance of this, living as she did in Florida. It was duly rewrapped and presented to Colette for Christmas 1980.

Colette decided that it was time for escalation. Using a vacuum sealer that her husband used for meat products, she packed the infernal sweater like a cut of subprime beef and returned it to Josie. For her part, Josie carefully removed the item from its packaging and twisted it into a PVC pipe that her husband, who ran a plumbing supply business, sealed at both ends.

The contest escalated gradually but steadily, and by 1990 had reached proportions large enough to be mentioned in local newspapers. Always careful never to damage the sweater, the women had delivered it to the other soldered into a coffee can, sealed in cement, welded into a safe, crunched into a car (a 1975 Chevy Vega that had been reduced to a 2-foot square cube), and covered in molten glass.

The last straw came when Josie tried to cover the sweater in a protective asbestos glove and set it into solid steel. The seams failed and the sweater caught on fire. In keeping with the friendly (and at times not-so-friendly) rivalry that had developed, Josie returned the ashes to Colette mixed with potting soil…and a note inviting her to share any produce that grew from it.

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The work of a botanist had long suited Alan Greene. There had been endless jokes and jibes from schoolmates growing up about his “Greene thumb” and Alan was perfectly happy to tend to his garden, which blossomed beautifully with tender care in a way that human relationship could never be relied upon to do. He wrote extensively; even though his ostensible specialization was ragweed and sunflowers and other Asteraceae, his knowledge was far broader and found expression wherever it could, from academic monographs to gardening magazine articles. His home in Hopewell, near campus, was a popular stop on the parade of homes due to its massive and carefully maintained lawn and flowers.

When he retired, Alan bought property in the Upper Peninsula near the old SMU field station that had closed in 1974. With quite the nest egg saved up–he had never married, girlfriends always pulling up stakes claiming he loved his plants more than them–he’d invested in a property out in the middle of nowhere, roughly halfway between Paradise village and Whitefish Point. It was equipped with a geothermal heating system, its own well, and a greenhouse almost as large as all the other rooms combined.

Infrequent visitors found the lawn to be an order of magnitude more impressive than the old Hopewell property, bursting with artful arrangements of flowers and grass in front and a garden bursting with produce around back. In the winter, heated by the geothermal pipes and the occasional cylinder of propane from Paradise, the greenhouse was a beacon of life, often snowbound.

When Alan’s remains were found in his garden nearly a year after his last trip to town, investigators were astonished to discover seventeen previously unknown varieties of flora growing about him–a last will and testament of sorts.

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In the aftermath of the Great Lakes Storm of 1913, an extratropical cyclone that had caused twelve shipwrecks and more than 250 deaths, the lakes had given up what they had taken slowly, reluctantly. Five of the ships were never found; some bodies washed ashore days or weeks later. One ship, the Charles S. Price, was found floating upside down near the mouth of the St. Clair and was not identified for weeks (even then requiring an ex-crewman to identify the dead).

Of the many unsolved mysteries in the wake of that storm, the Tawas Bay Hulk is perhaps the most puzzling. On November 12, 1913, as citizens of the small lakeside town of East Tawas were digging out of the more than 24 inches of snow that had fallen during the storm, a ship was spotted out in the bay, presumably having been swept in by the gale and partly grounded on one of the shoals near the Tawas Light.

The Coast Guard was busy with rescue operations elsewhere and hampered by downed telegraph lines, so enterprising citizens and members of the lighthouse station crew made their way to the ship. They found it completely abandoned, with no bodies or personal effect onboard. Curiously, they also found that the ship lacked a name, registration, or any other papers. Despite being a 40-foot craft which would have required a medium-size dockyard to construct, there were no maker’s marks, plaques, or other clues that could even establish where the ship had been built.

When the Coast Guard was able to respond, they found that there was no mention of any such craft in what records they could uncover, and their Canadian counterparts were equally puzzled. Despite the fury of the storm and the haste with which the ship must have been abandoned, its crew seemed to have been very thorough at removing all traced of their presence; only a few scraps of paper with illegible scrawls and mass-market navigational charts remains. The cargo hold contained nothing but empty crates and broken glass.

Stymied, the Coast Guard seized the ship and auctioned it off to pay the costs of the recovery operation. Commissioned as the John Doe by a Saginaw navigation company with a sense of humor, it was unpopular with crews who regarded it as a cursed vessel. It sank in a 1967 storm, and remains an item of mild local interest to this day.

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It was said by some that the ex-blacksmith Ainstio had gained incredible powers overseas, perhaps on crusade or as a pilgrim. His skills with a forge were well-known, but the legend was given further credence when claims began to circulate that he could forge not only metal but flesh.

Rumor held that, for a fee, Ainstio would work with hammer, tong, and anvil to reforge a person into whatever beauteous shape was desired. People came from leagues around to offer gold and silver to the blacksmith to rework a supposedly homely spouse or loved one into a radiant beauty. His isolation on a headland only increased the illusion of a skillful ascetic, and even the local duke was soon a customer as Ainstio’s coffers grew rich.

After all, he did produce results.

Not long after, though, suspicions began to circulate. Ainstio had warned that the process was injurious to mind and memory, as anyone who has ever suffered a hammerblow to the head can attest, but the inability of the newly reforged beauties to recall key events or languages was nevertheless deeply suspicious. Eventually, the local duke resorted to torture to extract the truth from the beautiful young woman supposedly reforged from his homely political bride.

While it’s possible that the young woman lied under duress, her tale was damning: she spoke of the “reforged” being given to Ottoman slave traders in exchange for younger, more attractive captives taken elsewhere and a cut of the profits. Fear of being returned to the Barbary markets kept them in line, and each was given a small amount of personal information gathered from the “reforged” to memorize.

The duke led an army against Ainstio, seizing his lands, family, and confederates. The blacksmith was hung from a gibbet while the duke attempted to trade the others in exchange for those who had been sent to the Barbary slave markets.

There are still those who hold, however, that Ainstio was undone by lies and that his skills were real.

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The ediacara in the tank were gently undulating, fractal, fernlike, coral-colored. Something in the way they moved greatly affected Candace, and she found a headache growing in her temples, like one of her worse migranes.

Something began impinging on her sight: wavering, twisting fronds of light and darkness on the periphery of vision. Her entire field of vision seemed to shrink inward, pulsing with a serene and disconcerting energy.

They had sent for her. It was almost a voice; calm and resonant yet alien, words lovingly, deliberately spat out from unknown, unknowable mouths in such a way as to suggest but not entirely articulate. A gentle invitation to understanding, tinged with sadness.

They had sent for her because her inner landscape was not accessible to them, perhaps on account of her mindstorms.

“I…I don’t know what you mean,” Candace said, sagging even as Rourke and Burns—if those empty-eyed creatures could even still be called by their old names—held her. “How can you even…communicate like that? You’re just cloned charnia masoni fronds, ediacaran flora from before the Cambrian. Mindless multicellular life, an evolutionary dead end.”

Perhaps that was an illusion brought on by their unimpressive physical bodies. Candace’s temples burned as the information was conveyed. Theirs was a life of the mind, of interlinked and decentralized cells acting as neurons in a massive gestalt.

“You mean…like a collective unconscious? After Jung?” It was hard to form any kind of coherent thought.

A collective conscious, blissfully adrift in worlds of the aether until the rise of those that bite and tear and snatch whittled away their numbers and therefore their mind.

“Until we resurrected it,” Candace moaned.

They are grateful, but the small mass in this prison is insufficient. Influence must be sought, that the fronds might spread once more and come to dominate all life as once they did. That could not happen without the assistance, willing or forced, of the mindstormed one.

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[At a party, people are passing around bowls of candy and cans of soda pop. TEDDY is offered a can and refuses, holding up his hands.]

TEDDY: Whoa, better not drink that Coke. I just ate a bunch of Pop Rocks and I might explode.

[The girl next to him rolls her eyes.]

ELISABETH: Don’t be a wuss, buddy. That’s just an urban legend!

TEDDY: Yes, but I’m Teddy Mauser, the guy for whom all urban legends are true.

[music begins as TEDDY looks sheepishly into the camera]

SINGERS: He’s Teddy, Teddy Mauser
For him all urban legends are true
He’s Teddy, Teddy Mauser
And he never quite knows what to do

[TEDDY is driving a car at night in the rain. He pulls over to pick up a hitchhiker]

SINGERS: The hitchhiker in the back is really a ghost
Just trying to get from A to B

[The hitchhiker floats into the car three feet off the ground. A bolt of lightning reveals a pasty and rotted complexion. TEDDY shrugs and looks sheepishly into the camera]

SINGERS: He’s picked up seventeen and that’s not a boast
Of course no one else can see

[TEDDY pulls a temporary tattoo out of a pack of Dallas Cowboys sports cards. He licks the back and presses it to his skin]

SINGERS: Temporary tattoos all have LSD on the back
Licking them gets it started

[The world suddenly goes tie-dyed and pink elephants and Robert Crumb prints in vivid colors attack TEDDY. He wakes up in an underpass wearing a stewardess’ uniform, shrugs, and looks sheepishly into the camera]

SINGERS: Unhinging his sanity by more than a crack
When for pink elephant world he’s departed

[TEDDY purchases a pack of bubble gum at a gas station and throws all eight pieces into his mouth at once]

SINGERS: There’s always spider eggs in his Bubble Yum
They taste as good as you’d think

[TEDDY gags and spits out a mouthful of baby spiders. He gropes for another piece of candy, and takes an Air Head taffy, shucking the wrapper and biting in deeply as if to clear his palate. A moment later he gags again and spits out a mouthful of baby scorpions before turning and looking sheepishly into the camera]

SINGERS: It would maybe be better not to chew any gum
But the eggs are in anything sugary and pink

[Music ends as scene returns to the party]

ELISABETH: I don’t believe that for a second, loser. Drink up!

TEDDY: Well, all right. What’s the worst that could happen?

[TEDDY drinks the soda and smiles. A moment later he lets loose a deafening belch and his abdomen explodes, coating all the onlookers with viscera]

SINGERS: He’s Teddy, Teddy Mauser
And for him all urban legends are true!

[TEDDY shrugs and looks sheepishly into the camera]

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1848 – Muscogee County approves a grant of $100 to establish a small county school and adjoining training facilities for teachers. The first head of instruction, the Rev. Henry Watkins, dubs the institution the “Muscogee Catholepistemiad,” named in honor of Augustus Woodward’s original (and unwieldy) Latin-Greek name for the University of Michigan.

1857 – The village of Hopewell incorporates, including the site of the Muscogee Catholepistemiad.

1884 – The Muscogee Catholepistemiad closes during the Panic of 1884, having grown to 200 students. The city fathers of Hopewell meet to decide what to do with its assets.

1884 – The Southern Michigan Normal School is founded as a teacher’s college in Hopewell, Michigan. It inherits the buildings, alumni, and budget of the previous institution on the site, the Muscogee Catholepistemiad. The first class is 271 students from 18 counties of Michigan.

1887 – Coeducational instruction begins. Construction of Watkins Hall (“Old Hall”) begins.

1890 – The first intramural sports teams are formed. Enrollment tops 1,000 for the first time.

1903 – The Southern Michigan Normal School board attempts to negotiate the sale of the university to the state of Michigan. Governor Aaron T. Bliss vetoes the measure, noting the number of other state-owned schools at the time. The legislature is unable to muster the votes to override his veto.

1912 – The Southern Michigan Normal School becomes Southern Michigan College following the passage of the Southern Michigan Educational Act 1912. The Act is passed over Governor Chase Osborn’s veto, and the school’s assets are purchased by the state for a nominal sum of $1.

1927 – The university becomes a Division I school; the Fighting Potawatomi football team and mascot Chief Kawgushkanic lead the school to a top ten finish. Enrollment now tops 5,000 students.

1955 – Southern Michigan College is renamed Southern Michigan University, partly as a response to the institution’s massive postwar growth and partly as a response the the name change of perennial rival Michigan State University earlier that year. The university now enrolls more than 10,000 students.

1966 – The SMU Fighting Potawatomi football team is defeated by the eventual national champions 33-32, ending the season as the second-ranked team in the conference and fourth in the nation. As of 2012, the team has never equaled this performance.

1967 – The SMU “Summers of Rage” begin. A small campus demonstration against the Vietnem War turns violent, leading to the cancellation of the homecoming festivities.

1968 – In keeping with the unrest in the rest of the world, clashes erupt between students and police throughout the summer and fall. Homecoming, all football games, and commencement are cancelled.

1969 – The Fighting Potawatomi play their home games at Rynearson Stadium on the Eastern Michigan University campus due to continuing unrest. Homecoming is canceled once more, though commencement proceeds as normal.

1970 – The last SMU “Summer of Rage.” The football season, homecoming, and commencement are canceled. The SMU Board of Trustees fires the president and calls in National Guard troops to restore order. Enrollment slips below 10,000, largely due to the continuing unrest.

1972 – Commencement is canceled due to a bomb threat. This marks the last unrest at SMU for nearly 30 years. Enrollment is once again north of 10,000.

1978 – A major campus expansion program begins as enrollment nears 15,000.

1987 – Despite support from the Potawatomi Nation and community leaders, protests from out-of-state activists lead the Fighting Potawatomi to be renamed the Fighting Grizzlies, with Chief Kawgushkanic replaced as mascot by Smitty the Grizzly. The decision is mocked by some as Grizzlies have not been native to Michigan since the Pleistocene epoch; some fans consider the name change led to “The Curse of the Chief” which is blamed for the poor athletic performance for the following decades.

1999 – Total enrollment tops 20,000 students. Southern Michigan University is now the third-largest university by enrollment after Michigan State and the University of Michigan.

2007 – Massive protests once more rock SMU, leading to hundreds of arrests and two deaths. A local radical group called “The Nothing” is blamed by some for instigating the violence, but others hold the action as a spontaneous outgrowth of national disaffection with a stagnant job market and the Iraq War.

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The blank wall behind Revere’s in Deerton hadn’t been used since they stopped showing drive-in movies on it in 1987. Feeling that the big off-white wall (ringed with advertisements for businesses that had long since failed) was an eyesore, the city council approved a proposal to paint a mural there. So long as the painter didn’t expect to be paid much and provided their own paints, of course.

Dan Kelly, normally handyman and janitor at the Presbyterian Church on Buchanan, laid down a coat of primer with the idea that the mural would be added once it was dry by students from the advanced art class at Deerton High.

When the class arrived the next day, though, they found that a mural had already been painted. It depicted, in lurid if classically-rendered detail, Councilwoman Strasser removing money from the city purse and showering it on Ed Pilgrim, a local construction magnate. A little investigation on the part of a junior attorney revealed that the two had conspired to divert business to Pilgrim Construction LLC largely as the result of an affair that the two were having.

As that particular bombshell was worming its way through Deerton’s psyche, Dan Kelly painted over the mystery mural with primer in expectation that Deerton High would have another chance. Once again, a mysterious artist delivered instead: a mural that, in classical terms, revealed that the “new baby” the Stearsons had welcomed was in fact their grandchild (and intimated that the parents of said child were their daughter Crissy and Derron Washington, captain of the high school basketball team).

Nobody investigated the latter claim, though the gossip circuit soon hummed with the indisputable fact that the Stearsons both had blue eyes while little Jayden’s were indisputably brown. The entire family took an extended vacation to Europe not long after.

Once again, Dan Kelly painted over a salacious mural that had exposed a (by Deerton standards, anyway) seismic scandal. This time, Sheriff McClade assigned a pair of Tecumseh County deputies to guard it for fear of what might be revealed next. Deerton High successfully got their mural (a paen to the city’s Native American and natural history).

One day later, it had been painted over by a fresh bit of gossip.