Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

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.

“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.