Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

“We’ve got an hour and we need someone who can sing,” Tyrone said. “The band’s there, it’s ready, and we’ll pay you what we were gonna pay Hedge. But it’s gotta be something other than Elvis.”

Tatum sat down heavily, pompadour and sequins glistening under the harsh lights. “I don’t know if I can do it.”

“Our makeup guy can…undo this whole Elvis thing you’ve got going,” Tyrone said as if he thought that could help.

That awful night onstage thirty years ago was vivid before Tatum’s eyes. “I said I don’t know if I can do it!” he cried. Elvis had been safe, a warm blanket that he could rely on to deflect criticism and those horrible rowdy boos. To do anything else…

“Look, I need an answer right now,” said Tyrone. “I wouldn’t even ask somebody like you if it wasn’t an emergency. Now either man up and sing something that this crowd will like or slink on back to your bachelor party and bar mitzvah scene.”

I’ve decided that I hate MMORPGs, despite the fact that, once upon a time, I poured dozens of hours and bushels of dollars into their gaping maws.

Look at what happened to 38 Studios. The company was created from the get-go to make an MMORPG. It retained R. A. Salvatore to write 1000 (!) years of backstory and hired Todd MacFarlane as art director, to say nothing of the talent that was attracted from all over the industry. The studio put out (almost as an afterthought) a single-player game using those assets that was a success, but given the amount of money being shoveled into the MMORPG dev furnace almost no amount of cash flow would have been enough. Just imagine what kind of single-player game, or single-player game with a multiplayer component, that could have been made with that talent for the reported $500 million debt the company rang up.

Worse, when an MMORPG fails–as 90% of them do–there is nothing left. The game is useless and can no longer be played and all player progress is lost forever. If there’s a particularly dedicated fanbase a few pirate servers might be set up, but that’s it. Given the relatively short lifespan of some of these incredibly expensive projects, like Tabula Rasa (2007-2009) or The Matrix Online (2005-2009) or Earth and Beyond (2002-2004), all that money might as well have been piled up and burned. But because Blizzard has had such success with World of Warcraft, as well as a few other niche players, developers and financiers with dollar signs in their eyes keep trying.

From a narrative standpoint, too, the games leave much to be desired. Star Wars: The Old Republic has been lauded for creating an experience that feels almost like a single-player adventure (in other words, like the single-player Knights of the Old Republic) but that came at the cost of $200 million, the most expensive video game price tag of all time. Developers without that kind of muscle are severely limited in the kind of story they can tell, often falling back on repetitive fetch/kill quests or dungeon grinding. And it goes without saying that there can never be any kind of narrative payoff, as the games have no end. When you inevitably lose interest and cancel your subscription you don’t even have the satisfaction of a narrative well-concluded.

Just imagine if some of that money and talent had been spent on a game like Mass Effect or Skyrim.

“Well, I’ll tell you,” the katydid whispered. “But you’re not going to like it. Promise you won’t squish me if you don’t like it.”

Emilee rubbed her ear near where the insect was perched. “I never squash anything that talks. That’s my policy and it’s served me well.”

“Very well. I’ve never left this cavern, you see, but I hear a lot of things from the others in the common patois of insects and other arthropods,” the katydid said. “You’re in the thermal caverns of Bakutis, deep below Marie Byrd Land in Antarctica, many unfathomable leagues from the nearest settlement of your kind.”

Emilee’s hand dropped. “What?”

“Yes, I realize those are the human names for these features,” the katydid continued, “but you must understand that we small ones have little use for names and are happy to use human ones when the need arises. Why, some of the humans who have visited us in the past have even named parts of the caves. I can show you to their dessicated remains if you’d like.”

Overcome with revulsion, Emilee flicked the katydid off her ear.

“You promised!” it cried.

“I never said anything about flicking!” Emilee cried apologetically. “Sorry!”

[a man in a white lab coat strides toward the camera]

EMUS: Hi, I’m Dr. Ray Emus. Wikipedia defines a “Mary Sue” as “a fictional character with overly idealized and hackneyed mannerisms, lacking noteworthy flaws, and primarily functioning as a wish fulfillment fantasy for the author or reader,” and they are rightly spurned and despised by all. But what happens to them when the fanfic ends and they save the Enterprise?

[the camera follows EMUS into what looks like a hospital ward, filled with people getting intravenous fluids as well as varysing stages of physical therapy]

EMUS: That’s why I started the Ray Emus Home for Mary Sues. We act as a hospital, detox, and halfway house to help these miserable, paper-thin literary creatures find respect for themselves and a purpose in life.

[EMUS gestures to a nearby young woman in a frayed sweater vest]

EMUS: Mary here started life as a thinly written Gryffindor in a wretched Harry Potter fanfic.

MARY: I was created solely so a 14-year-old girl could vicariously kiss Draco Malfoy, even though he’s a freaking toolbox!

EMUS: But thanks to our therapy and outpatient treatment sessions, Mary now works as an extra in Harlequin romances.

MARY: I still have no characteristics, but at least people take me seriously as a barista or bus driver in the background! I can finally sleep at night.

[EMUS moves outside, where largely indistinguishable young people in hospital gowns are sitting on benches amid topiary sculptures or playing pickup basketball]

EMUS: But we can’t do it alone. Hundreds of new Mary Sues are generated every month, especially in the crucial prom season. We need donations from people like you to keep helping thinly-written narrative stand-ins for insecure authors. People like Harry here.

[a young man with a disturbingly familiar look approaches the camera]

HARRY: A lot of people said that coming from a past like mine, in an unauthorized erotic Doctor Who novella, I didn’t have a future. But thanks to Dr. Emus and 100 hours of weekly therapy sessions, I’m beginning to develop actual personality flaws and rough edges. Also the night terrors have ceased!

EMUS: Don’t wait. There are so many in need, and every donation matters. For less than cost of a cup of coffee each day, you can allow the Home to help a single unwitting Cylon find inner peace and minimum wage work as a skeptical investigator in a James Patterson novel.

[music swells and the Home’s logo appears on the screen]

EMUS: The Ray Emus Home for Mary Sues. The prose may be unbearable but their lives don’t have to be.

If it wasn’t one thing it was another.

“What have we got here?” Harriet said, grumpy. She’d spent all morning trying to find an online buyer for a plasma screen TV that had a tendency to distort picture and color. It had looked good enough when the thing had been pawned, but Harriet was sure the shop was going to take a $500 bath on the thing.

A younger woman, college age, had come in with an item wrapped in brown paper. “You guys buy and sell everything, right?”

Harriet rolled her eyes. “You tell me,” she said, pointing to a buzzing neon sign that read WE BUY AND SELL ANYTHING in the front window, wedged between an electric guitar and a Mossberg 500 with the firing pin removed.

“Okay,” the girl said. She pulled off the paper and set a heavy wooden staff on the countertop. “What’ll you give me for this magic staff?”

Harriet sighed and fished for her jeweler’s eyepiece. “What is this, oak?” she said.

“Ash,” the girl said. “It’s an heirloom, a 1927 Wandchester with the optional black onyx gem and leyline engravings.”

“A ’27? Hardly,” Harriet groused. “See the mark here, on the butt? Wandchester didn’t use that until after the war. It’s a ’48 or maybe a ’51.”

The woman reddened. “Okay, it might not be as old as Gammy said it was, but it’s still a top of the line staff. That’s real black onyx and the carvings make the staff shatterproof.”

Harriet took a closer look. “Either you don’t know what you’re talking about or you’re trying to bankrupt me, kid. That stone’s a cheap one, obsidian. You ever see an old Wandchester catalog? Obsidian’s at the bottom, cheapest stone that’ll hold a charge. And this enchantment? It’s custom-engraved all right, but it’s for stain maintenance, not shatterproofery. Again, cheapest one in the catalog.”

“Are you sure about that?” the girl said, sounding wounded.

“Look, I bought a 1901 Tiffany staff last week for thirty-two thousand dollars, kid. I know what I’m talking about.” Harriet looked her customer in the eye. “I’ll give you $250 cash for it or pawn it for a $500 loan payable in 90 days.”

“Even if what you say is true, it’s still a good piece!” the girl cried. “It’s old and in great shape.”

“The shaft in nicked, the enchantment is wearing off in three places, and the obsidian is being held in with cheap-ass glue.”

“Can you give me at least $1000 for a pawn?” the girl said. “I won’t need it until the new term starts and I’ve gotta make rent!”

“$600. Final offer,” Harriet said. “It’s a buyer’s market, and unless you want it ground up for pixie dust by weight that’s the best you’re going to get.”

You are convalescing in a small bungalow or summer cottage behind a much larger house and attached to it by an open decked walkway. You’re feeling very under the weather, perhaps from a bad cold or recently healed wound.

You have a visitor: a very attractive someone named Riley that you knew in school years ago. They seem unusually interested in staying and talking (a major change from when you knew them before) and goes on and on about personal topics like political beliefs, the cochlear implants they need to hear, and other facts that you already know (both in waking life and in the dream). You listen politely.

Eventually Riley sits on the bed and becomes rather aggressively forward, beginning with personal conversation before moving to heavy petting. You reciprocate after some hesitation; things don’t go any further. The whole time, though, you are preoccupied with what Jordan (who is away on business) would think if they knew; you try telling yourself that it’s just a harmless dalliance with no sex and no consequences, but the guilt is still there.

You’re interrupted by the sheriff, who is the last person you expected to see, but he has even worse news: he’s just let Jordan into the house after they arrived home early and found it locked. The look of shock and betrayal on Jordan’s face is shattering. Riley runs off, redfaced, and you pursue Jordan to the front door, protesting that the situation isn’t what it seemed. They scream that they’re sorry they ever thought you were different than the others, that you were worthwhile, and leaves with a slam.

You sit down heavily and realize, with horror, that neither Jordan nor Riley will ever want to have anything to do with you again. At that moment, the skies open up with a torrent of rain and thunder.

This post is part of the June 2012 Blog Chain at Absolute Write. This month’s prompt is “weird worlds”.

“You’re sure this is the entryway to the High King’s Causeway?” Jennie said. “It looks more like a graffiti-covered outhouse that was so far beyond human control it was simply abandoned.”

The Fáidh took a fresh puff of pipeweed and coughed. “Who’s to say it can’t be both? As anyone who was at Woodstock will agree, an outhouse’s worth lies not without but within. Though some nose-plugging may be advised; remind me to tell you the harrowing tale of Outhouse Row at Woodstock ’94 someday.”

Jennie stuck out her tongue. “Ew. Remind me not to listen.”

“I’ll need absolute concentration to coax the link back from the the Gentle Embrace, unless you fancy using the next terminus over which is a sewer runoff pipe. Keep the others quiet.” The Fáidh breathed deeply from his pipe once more, swayed gently, and began the ritual.

To Jennie it looked like he was pressing his hands to that unspeakable surface and singing the Rolling Stones in a loud, out-of-tune voice. “I’m just mortal clay, what do I know?” she sighed. In the meantime, it occurred to her that the Fáidh’s request might be a tad difficult.

Syke the androdryad paced sullenly near the wall, looking uncomfortable in the track suit Jennie had thrown on him and glaring at any of the tourists and other passersby who stared at the fig sapling poking out of his knapsack. “Oy, clay!” he cried at one particularly pernicious starer. “What are you glaring at? The son of Oxylus and Hamadryas isn’t a spectacle for rubbernecking clay like yourself!”

Jennie rushed over to calm him down. Considering that the fig tree was his actual substance, and the young man only its metaphysical spirit given form, she tried not to be too rough (or, heaven forbid, knock any leaves off the sapling). When Syke grabbed the offending tourist by his Arsenal FC jersey, though, Jennie all but tackled him as she pushed them apart.

Behind her, Jennie could make out Cary the motile caryatid column accosting another passerby. As a 3000-year-old stone statue, Cary’s disguise was already flimsy: thrift store clothes, foundation makeup, a hat and sunglasses. Cary’d reminded Jennie of a sorority girl earlier, gushing over the fabrics and weaves of people who had visited the Orb of Prophecy the column had been sworn to guard (until it was stolen out from under her). Now Cary was acting like one, trying to persuade a tourist to swap a designer top for a bulk thrift store sweater.

“Oh, that’s such a cute top! Is it sea silk or maybe saffron or gold thread? I just love fabrics, all kinds, every kind, always, forever! Do you think I could try it on? You can have my ratty old secondhand dump sweater for collateral; it’d look so cute on you! But not as cute at that top would look on me…”

Jennie had barely set the Arsenal FC fan on his way before she had to sprint over and keep Cary from bodily snatching the poor tourist’s clothes—easier said than done when the statue weighed somewhere north of a thousand pounds. But she was able to interject herself in such a way that the harried pedestrian could make her escape.

“At least tell me where you got it!” Cary cried forlornly to no reply.

Jennie corralled the two mythological malefactors back to the Fáidh just as the older man completed his incantation. Muttering something about he and Jennie having very different definitions of “quiet,” he flung the outhouse door open, revealing not an unspeakable loo but a long stone corridor paved with hexagons and lit by the lazily drifting blue fireflies. The Fáidh entered, as did Syke and Cary.

Jennie hesitated on the threshold. “I’m about to follow a stoner wizard, an angry young fig tree, and a sorority girl made from solid marble through an outhouse door into a mythical realm to follow a wax model of Éamon de Valera that stole from me in the National Irish Wax Museum. Somewhere, somehow, my decision-making paradigm took a real turn for the weird.”

Check out this month’s other bloggers, all of whom have posted or will post their own responses:
dclary (comic)
Proach
MelodySRV
pyrosama
areteus
Diana_Rajchel
writingismypassion
randi.lee
magicmint
Sweetwheat
AFord
dclary (blog)

I could see his silhouette in the frosted glass of the front door, and opened it before he could knock.

“No, no,” he said, pulling it closed. “You’re doing it all wrong, sis. It’s got to be a big production, a surprise.” I’d caught a snatch of khaki and crease before the latch clicked, though, so I had some idea what I was in for.

A moment passed, and Caleb knocked. I opened the door and took him in, wearing a khaki uniform and a fresh buzz cut. I’d never seen him look anywhere near as polished.

“Well?” he said. “What do you think, sis?”

I know you’re supposed to be supportive, and respect the thin red line and all, but I have kind of a bad habit of shooting from the hip in situations like that. “Is this a joke? What were you thinking? What will Mom and Dad say? What about your music?”

The last question seemed to sting the most–Caleb had, after all, long held ideas of making a career as a singer or performer, with many a lazy summer day spent strumming a guitar in the park.

“This doesn’t mean I’m giving up any of that,” Caleb said. “But I want to try something with a little structure, to be part of something bigger than me, get a little money for myself and college.” He set his peaked cap on an end table. “Is that so wrong?”

I didn’t answer; instead, I just looked at that cap. It would return to the end table many times over the following years, each time with a little bit more gold.

You are brought into a large and gothic library with a high ceiling and a long bench along one wall. An older man begins going down the row, speaking with and examining each of the large number of people seated along with me in turn. You have a sense that you’re not supposed to be there, one that is exacerbated by your realization that the people on either side of you have six fingers on at least one of their visible hands. Fearing that is some kind of required sign, you hide your hands in your robe before the older examiner can get to you.

When he approaches, he smiles warmly and hands you a golden box. You know instantly that he has seen through you, and knows that you are not supposed to be there, but that hardly seems to matter as you and the other “rejects” begin to float skyward: the old man seems to have abolished gravity for all of you. The others begin to converse while you and the “rejects” cavort in the air above them, unable to hear what they are saying no matter how close you get.

For a while you are content to float about joyously, kicking off of the ornate fixtures near the ceiling in a glorious ballet of weightlessness, but soon you become curious about the meeting below and what it entails. You decide to take some small books from a shelf immediately above where the older man is now seated. You have a vague notion of reading them to discover their secrets, or perhaps trading them (and others) for answers.

You remove the books and attempt to show them to the others that were rejected from the gathering and float nearby. You’re interrupted from a cry down below; the old man mournfully, vengefully declares that the meeting and all its business must cease because of the injury inflicted on the library. You look back at the sconce from which the books were taken, and see that there is ink on the shelf, red ink, like blood from a fresh wound. It’s as if the library is a living organism and you have cut off a finger.

A sudden, overwhelming feeling of guilt strikes you, washing away the former desire to know the secrets of the meeting. You convince the other floaters to help you in cleaning the library and restoring the books to their rightful place, but the old man’s sullen expression indicates that it’s not enough.

Max was on a town street that is lined with expansive bookstores with a student group. He enters one of the larger stores, which is very airy and open, only to find that the place is packed with customers and employees who are equally rude. He climbs up to a second level into a reading area that has bright windows overlooking the street below on two sides, and sees a rather famous actor there giving a lecture. The actor is in an altercation (not quite an argument) with a younger woman who appears to have written a book about him. This is clearly the reverse of what he expected.

The woman begins to read the book, and Max can see the images vividly as she describes them. She speaks of the actor’s difficult childhood as a Yiddish speaker in New York City, which is true enough from what Max has heard about the actor’s life, but the woman has inserted herself into the narrative at odd spots. She is the actor’s nurse, a street vendor, a character and meta-narrator. It’s a fascinating blend of biography and literature, but a little creepy.

The actor snatches the book from the woman and gives it to the nearest bystander, Max. Max notes that some of the pages are printed on what look like foreign banknotes in all their Monopoly money glory, shiny and with security strips. The actor nods as if satisfied by his confirmation of this.