Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

The old Segumbi empire had, before its destruction, employed a group of warriors called the Kersaati to protect the royal family and the nobles in charge of each of the empire’s seven traditional provinces. They had led the fiercest resistance to the encroachment of outsiders; most of the Kersaati had been wiped out in the Battle of Quri in 1677 by the Portuguese. In a sign of how closely fought the battle had been, the Kersaati had actually made it to the musketeers firing on them and engaged in melee combat; the Portuguese had lost 110 musketeers, while the entire company of Kersaati, over 1000 warriors, was slaughtered.

After the old Segumbi heartland gained its independence from France as la République de Côte d’Ébène, the first president attempted to link the tradition of the new state to the old, forming the Kersaati Guard and stocking it with the country’s most experienced soldiers, many of them veterans of World War II. The Guard were to form not only the official bodyguard for government officials but also the nucleus of the new state’s army. A link both to the past and a prosperous democratic future, much like the constitution that was based in equal parts on the US Constitution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man.

Two years later, in July of 1964, the Kersaati Guard murdered the president, who had suspended the constitution and declared himself in office for life, and seized power for the military.

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The Volodnes call themselves the Deigra (“who lives here”) and their language is called Deigrap (“of who lives here”). Deigrap is a language isolate that has attracted intense study of the few (less than 10) remaining speakers.

Linguists are especially intrigued by the fact that there are separate number systems and declensions for physical and metaphysical concepts. The Deigrap word for “many physical things” (“proticu”) and “many spirits” (“epsych”) are completely different, for instance. This distinction extends throughout the language; Dr. Andscun of the Broughton Institute for Comparative Linguistics has even made the controversial claim that Deigrap is essentially two languages, one for the mundane world and one for the spiritual.

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“They found a greenish residue all over the place, though.”

“Greenish? What…what did the lab work say?”

“You’re not gonna believe this.”

“Not if you don’t tell me. What did the lab work say?”

“It’s…cornstarch, water, and food coloring. Someone was messing with us, chief.”

“Is…is that all? Don’t scare me like that. I…just don’t.”

“What’s the matter, chief? Expecting it to be something else? I hate to tell you but chances are the perp isn’t a giant snail or a ghost.”

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The treaty could only be described as one that angered everyone equally. Creatures borne of the Creator, such as man, were to live in the logical world of Terra while those borne of the Cycle, including most of the fair and mystical beings, were to live in the illogical Ether, and the realms were to be separated so as to make travel between them difficult and so prevent another war. As part of the treaty, all the fair beings on Terra and the mortals in the Ether were rounded up and forcibly exchanged.

For the most part the arrangement worked well, save in one place: a village in the Riftlands called Mirage. As the Rift was a chaotic admixture of Terra and Ether, with aspects of both, neither side could agree to whom Mirage belonged. Its population included all sorts of creatures from both sides of the divide, most of whom strongly resisted any attempt to break up uncountable years of peaceful coexistence. War loomed again and the treaty was imperiled by a village with less than 1/20th the population of the great cities for which hundreds had fought in the war.

Eventually, a compromise was forged: the Riftlands were to be set apart from both Terra and the Ether, to exist in a sort of betwixt and between. All who remained were bound to stay, though all who wished could leave before the treaty took effect. Unsurprisingly, most of the inhabitants chose to stay and were accordingly sealed away. They remain so to this day.

But just as the chinks between Terra and the Ether were never completely closed, the occasional link between Mirage and the other worlds can sometimes be found…

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Dear [name unreadable],

Well, here’s the thing. The Dark Lord Eden Soulrune was supposed to attempt to take over the word and from thus the cosmos in 1988 as foretold by the great prophet Victor Paradox. You might have heard of him; he had a stage show in Vegas for a while.

Anyway, prophecies are generally pretty ironclad about stuff like that, but there was a…well, a hiccup. Let’s just say that two things no prophet has ever been able to predict are the Dow Jones Industrial Average and stress-induced myocardial infarctions. Lord Eden’s financial empire was wiped out by Black Monday in 1987, and he died of a heart attack (the man was evil but he did love his donuts) while raising money and manpower in Zaire.

So the upshot is, there won’t be a need for another Chosen One until the next Dark Lord arises after the next Great Cycle of Being starts in 2024. And the thing about Chosen Ones is that thy kinda need to develop their powers before a certain age. You know how kids can’t talk if they don’t get taught before a certain age? It’s kind of like that.

So we’ve kind of got a Chosen One that we can’t really do anything with. Sorry about getting your hopes up and all that. Mind living an ordinary life from here on out? Thanks.

Yours,
No-Au Ogkrug
Grand Celestial Architect Wizard Esquire

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Ethical Question the Fifth:

You are in a store and a nearby customer drops a cheap glass cup, which shatters. They pretend to ignore it, and no one witnessed the accident except you. Do you:

A. Confront the customer and demand that they take responsibility for their actions? They can easily afford to pay for a cheap piece of glass and should learn a lesson about honesty.

B. Report the customer to the store? It is the store’s merchandise and they should be the ones to decide what action to take, if any, against the customer.

C. Report the breakage to the store but not mention the customer? The broken glass could injure someone and its cleanup is the main priority.

D. Do nothing? The glass is not valuable enough to justify doing anything; the story will discover it in time and confrontation with the customer is pointless.

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I was thrust into a back room, illuminated only by a single overhead bulb. I think Œ sat casually slouched on a folding chair directly beneath it; I’m not sure because the figure there was clad in baggy cargo jeans, an oversized hoodie, a ragged baseball cap, big dark Ray-Bans, and a drawn bandana with a skeletal grin printed on it. It was impossible to tell their age, gender, or anything else about them, other than the fact that some kind of flesh filled those tattered raiments.

“A little theatrical, don’t you think?” I said. One of the others, dressed similarly to Œ, set out a folded chair for me and I took a seat. “If you really wanted to be anonymous we could have talked more on the phone.”

“But you want theatricality, Mr. Cummings,” Œ said. Their voice was distorted by one of those vox boxes you sometimes hear in cheap horror movies, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little disconcerted by it. “You’re enough of a narcissist that you have to see your little investigation as a titanic struggle between you, the hero, and us, the blackest evil. If I were sitting here, ordinary and unmasked, you’d be devastated.”

I stung a little from that observation. “I just want the truth. What is this ‘Project’ you’re working on, and how do all these little bits and pieces fit together?”

“The truth?” Œ’s laughter was modified into an ominous chuckle. “It’s never been about the truth. It’s been you tilting at windmills from the start, sacrificing what little journalistic integrity you had for the sake of bad puns. The fact that you can’t see the bigger picture is indicative of your failings as a person: petty, narcissistic, lazy, with a latent but distinct fascist bent.”

Who was that rag-clad hobo to call me all that? I was trembling by now, the way I always do during any kind of a confrontation. “If you wanted to insult me you could have just sent a letter to the editor. Now either give me something about your ‘Project’ or crawl back into whatever hole you came out of and go back to sharpening your hammer and sickle.”

Œ laughed again. “The Project is the perfect small-scale experiment. What is a university but an ironclad despotism, with a vast disenfranchised population at the whims of a privileged few, just like any other system? Those people have the power to be awakened and moved to action. That’s what we’re doing, and it’s just the start.”

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“I came from Wonderworld,” the traveler said, leaning back against the crumbling cinderblock wall while helping himself to Elmer’s bean stew.

“Wonderworld? The amusement park?” Elmer remembered the TV ads and that tagline (“The most fun on planet Earth”) from those long-ago halcyon days before the Crash.

“That’s right,” the traveler said. “It’s one of the biggest and most prosperous settlements on the coast these days.”

“You’re joking,” Elmer scoffed. “What, are the guys in costumes enough to scare away the superstitious post-Crashers, mutants, and skinmelters?”

“Laugh if you want, but it makes sense if you use your brain. Think about it: it was already walled before the Crash. Lots of weapons and trained guys for security. Lots of food, lots of water, its own power grid and staff. Big parking lots all around and nice tall roller coasters to spot and snipe anyone who looks up to no good. We beat back about an attack a week, easily.”

“So what you’re saying is it’s still the most fun on planet Earth?” Elmer said, half-serious.

“Never heard that one before,” the traveler groused, mouth full of beans. “But yeah.”

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John had thought that an engagement at the Association of American English Teachers would be just the thing he needed to help get his book off the ground. His publisher had crowed that he’d be autographing and selling books on the exhibition floor to people who routinely bought 23 copies each. In addition to the hefty amount he’d sunk into promotion, John sprang for boxes of copies to autograph and sell.

The reality? He’d sold, and signed, maybe 3 books.

John’s publisher had neglected to mention that, at any one time, there were dozens of authors on the exhibit floor. And when one of those authors was Jenny Norman, author of the acclaimed YA “Otherwheres” series, and another was fantasy author Michael C. McConnolly, whose books were on their third blockbuster miniseries…

In fact, the only real movement on John’s end had been passing teachers stealing copies of his book when he went to the bathroom or was in any way distracted for the briefest of moments (the Elsigraw Publishers staff ostensibly manning the booth had long since snuck off to meet up with other vendors for drinks). He’d lost 30 copies that way, and while the thought that they might end up in a library was some consolation, each of those books was a good $5 walking merrily away.

A booth runner from Scholar Specialty Imprints next door offered the only assistance. “These English teachers are underfunded parasites,” he said. “They have so little money for textbooks and libraries that they fill their bags with books here to make up for it. The big companies give away so many handfuls of free books that they get all glaze-eyed, taking everything that isn’t nailed down.”

“What do we do, then?” John asked.

“The big boys have a staff to keep an eye on their tchotchkes and keep the teachers from sneaking away with any swag unless they listen to a sales pitch. Us? Just hope that one or two interested customers show up amidst the leeches.”

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Zines. Short for magazine or fanzine. Small-circulation publications, usually made on a cheap library photocopier. Usually a thousand copies or less of each issue, if there is in fact more than one issue. You’d think that they’d be the sort of thing that would slip under the radar, but as Underwater Basket Weaving proved, academics can study anything. As it happens, the Graphic Arts department at SMU is lousy with people that study zines; it falls to me, as the SMU Archivist for Visual Arts and Ephemera, to collect them.

Time was, most of the zines were outlets for paranoid schizophrenia on the Francis E. Dec level or extreme right- or left-wing conspiracy nuts. That was still true for a lot of them, but of course those weren’t the ones my faculty wanted me to collect. Like everything else that had once been an authentic mode of expression, zines have also been appropriated by hipsters. Now the field is full of people with art, design, philosophy, or literature degrees taking an inordinate amount of time and their parents’ money to try and design an zine that looks like it cost $0.50 to xerox.

So I write to peers in Berkley, New York, Austin, Ann Arbor asking for them to collect what zines they can find and mail them to me. I get piles of zine comics (the creators spell it with an X, comix, but I reserve that term for authentic stuff) trying desperately to be edgy and relevant and socially conscious. They typically wind up somewhere around “pretentious” instead. Then there’s the reams of bad prose poetry, cut up and pasted onto a sheet of notebook paper before xeroxing to make the tired odes to revolutionary consciousness and Free Tibet seem more authentic than the regurgitated leavings of petit bourgeoisie in denial.

I carefully place them into big acid free boxes while people come by to look and write impressive-sounding papers about these grassroots artforms. I haven’t the heart to tell them it’s astroturf.

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