Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

When the researchers in the Cognitive Mapping Program first began sifting through memories that their volunteers couldn’t consciously recall, they found a really startling image. A creature leering over the volunteer with what could only in the loosest sense be considered a face, with features so alien and hideous that the lab techs wound up needing months of therapy to deal with their initial surprise. It was thought that the monstrosity was a simple image from a nightmare.

That was before similar images appeared in other volunteers…volunteers who had never seen the original.

In fact, out of a pool of 1000, one in every five participants had a similar image locked deep within their minds.

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Garrett King fell into blackmail quite accidentally.

You see, the men’s room at the accountancy firm where he slaved away as an underpaid auditor abutted a conference room. If the firm had been built to code, that would just have meant less running after a bladder-bursting meeting. But it was a product of the 70’s, when cheap and brutalist was the way to go.

As a result, King (and anyone else) could hear the discussions going on. Nobody ever fixed the problem because so few people used that bathroom–the executives all had private washrooms, and the rest of the menial workers in King’s unit used the ladies’ room (which let in sound from the copy room–the the great dismay of the participants in the Great Xerox Tryst of 2007).

So King was the only one who heard the brass wetting their beak on a kickback laundering scheme they were discussing with city officials. He cornered one his firm’s VPs int he supply closet later that week and issued an ultimatum: a promotion or a tape recording of the meeting would wind up on the SEC’s front desk. He was out of his cube farm by the end of the week.

But that wasn’t the end, no, not for Gary King. Not only had he found out that he was quite good at blackmail, he’d also learned that he quite enjoyed it.

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HOTSY-TOTSY INAUGURAL X CHAMPIONSHIPS SHOW DEWDROPPERS KNOW THEIR ONIONS
DATELINE: Newport, Rhode Island, June 4, 1928

With a final flourish of the ragtime jazz band on hand for the festivities, the closing ceremonies for the 1st Annual X Championships came to a raucous close amid medals, swing-dancing, and general jubilation. While Mrs. Grundy down the street and all her fellow “fire extinguishers” might frown upon the X Championships as pure applesauce or horsefeathers, a product of idle young dewdroppers bereft of industry, the crowd and sponsors clearly think it’s just ducky.

“These fine young athletes have shown us just how the spirit of the age can turn idle pursuits into virtuous exercises and healthy capitalistic competition,” said the closing speaker Mr. Harrison Dykestra. President of Dykestra’s Old No. 12 Velocipede Company and a major sponsor of the event, he personally presented a gold medal to the overall winner and crowd favorite C. Ernest “Torpedo” Coopington Jr. Coopington, 20, placed first in the dramatic Freestyle Velocipede finals as well as pocketing a silver in the highly competitive Toe-Stoppered Quad Skate event.

“It’s such a gay rub, really,” said “Torpedo” Coopington at the closing ceremonies. “I’m used to killjoys feeding all us a line about velocipeding and skating and such being something only a quiff would like, and razzing us about being no-account lollygaggers. But I think we really showed them we’re on the level and got them on the trolley today!”

Indeed, the image of “Torpedo” Coopington attacking a difficult grind in his knickerbockers and newsie cap with tied-on number and Dykestra’s Old No. 12 advertisement patches has captivated the normally sleepy Providence summer. One can hardly pass a streetcorner without seeing children playing at being their favorite X Championship athletes, despite their elders’ stern disapproval. One source, who declined to be named, said as much: “Velocipedery is but the first step on the staircase to brimstone and damnation! How long before these hellions are engaging in wanton acts of public carnality or frequenting moving picture houses?”

Still, the mood seems overwhelmingly in favor of the X Championships, and Mr. Dykestra was quick to predict that they would return next year. “As long as people are interested in acts of derring-do, the spirit of these young men and their Dykestra-brand equipment will never fade!”

Additional results:
Homer “Cowlick” Hyde took gold in the 1200-ft. Competitive Jitterbug
Gunther Schwartz came in first place in the Regulation Hoop Roll
There was a tie in the Stickball finals, with team captains Thomas “Gunny” Gunnington and Robert R. Robertson sharing the trophy between the Boston Zozzlers and the Baltimore Blotto Boys

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TRANSCRIPT OF 911 EMERGENCY CALL TO HOPEWELL DISPATCHER
TIME: 17:27:33 EST
DATE: 5/18/2013
RESPONDING DISPATCHER: ECJ

DISPATCHER: 911 Emergency, may I help you?

CALLER: Yes, hello. I’d like to report a large snake on the loose.

DISPATCHER: A large snake?

CALLER: Yes, a large snake. About, um, fifteen feet or so. Give or take.

DISPATCHER: Do you know the name of the street or building that the snake is at?

CALLER: Oh yes, it’s in the cul-de-sac off of Brighton Street. You know, the one under the retaining wall? It’s across from Rosette’s Creperie, which is, um, 1147 Brighton.

DISPATCHER: 1147 Brighton?

CALLER: Yes, that’s right. I’m worried someone might get hurt by the snake.

DISPATCHER: Ma’am, please do not approach the snake. I’m going to send animal control to you but I need you to answer some questions for me first. First, do you have any idea where the snake came from?

CALLER: Oh, yes. I saw exactly where it came from. I was here the whole time, at the creperie.

DISPATCHER: Where did it come from?

CALLER: It came out of the wormhole–or vortex–that opened up in the retaining wall at the Brighton Road cul-de-sac.

DISPATCHER: You said the…wormhole?

CALLER: Or vortex. I don’t know if it’s meant to be there; seems like it might be a public hazard or something. The wormhole–or vortex–seems like some kind of portal to other times, places, and dimensions.

DISPATCHER: I’m sorry, did you say…a portal to other times and places?

CALLER: And dimensions. Also I’m not sure if it’s a portal or a vortex. I would have gone closer but I was afraid it would scare my schnauzer Biff.

DISPATCHER: And you’re sure there’s a large snake near this…wormhole?

CALLER: Or vortex. But yes, when I went to the creperie today–it’s been there a while but didn’t seem to be hurting anyone, I thought it might have had something to do with the arts festival downtown–there was this flash of yellow light and a big snake started crawling through the portal. Or vortex.

DISPATCHER: What…what is the snake doing?

CALLER: It’s just sitting there.

DISPATCHER: And the, um, vortex?

CALLER: Or portal. It’s just sitting there too, doing its thing. Like I said, I’d have gone closer to look at it but, um, I was afraid it’d scare my dog.

DISPATCHER: Well, animal control is on the way. Will you be able to, um, stay on the line until they arrive?

CALLER: Do warn them about the portal. Or vortex. I’d hate for them to fall in.

CALL TERMINATED BY CALLER AT 17:32:02 5/18/2013
ACTION TAKEN: Dispatch of Hopewell Animal Control Mobile Unit #5
RESULT: Hopewell Animal Control Mobile Unit #5 reported unable to locate animal. Hopewell Animal Control Mobile Unit #5 subsequently failed to report in by the time dispatch report was finalized.

Inspired by this.

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It was inevitable, really.

The parking spaces on Fraternity Row were perpendicular to the road and had been zoned in the late 1970s for tiny late 1970s cars. Instead they were regularly occupied by enormous extended-cab extended bed pickup trucks, the kind that could carry half a farm in back and pull the other half in a trailer. The fact that the kids driving them were all at least three generations removed from anything resembling farm work was immaterial–their parents had bought the trucks to keep their kids safe, even at the expense of everyone else.

Since the trucks were never used to carry anything besides furniture at move-in and move-out, the kids tended to leave the trailer hitches in, which added another six to twelve inches to their already bloated length. Throw in opposing traffic that was always late for class and backed up and, well, it was inevitable.

So when I stood by the side of the road looking at the side of my car, which had been ripped open can opener style by a trailer hitch hanging off of a massive truck whose rear end was at least two feet outside the lines…well, it wasn’t an accident.

It was fate.

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“Well, that’s it,” said Rostov. “Trail’s cold.”

“Not so fast,” replied Sokolov. “There’s one witness we haven’t interviewed.”

“What witness?” Rostov cast his arms wide as his words echoed off the abandoned and run-down buildings around him. “Not even a rat to interrogate!”

“True enough,” said Sokolov. “But if these walls could talk…”

He ignored Rostov’s puzzled look and dipped once more into his rucksack of tricks. This time, he produced a small palette studded with oil paint pots and a brush. Walking to a boarded-up shack nearby, he began to paint.

“What is this, finger-painting time in art class?”

“No. Interrogation!”

Sokolov didn’t look up until he’d finished; he’d painted over the boarded windows with eerily lifelike eyes, and the door with a mouth of the same consistency.

A moment later, the shack sprang to life with an audible yawn like a settling old house.

“Good morning, friend,” said Sokolov.

“And good morning to you, stranger,” the shack said, its voice tinder-dry old shingles and rusting hinges. For his part. Rostov’s mouth was a gaping, broken window.

“Tell me, friend,” continued Sokolov. “Did you see a suspicious-looking fellow come through here about a day ago?”

Inspired by this.

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He’d lived a remarkable life, being born sometime in the 1850s when his tribe still practiced their traditional way of life as farmers and herders and dying well into his 90s (at least) in 1941. His real name was long-forgotten, lost with most of his people when they were moved to a reservation; people mostly called him John Green.

From the time his people were forcibly resettled around 1885 until his death, John Green lived a quiet life in his ramshackle government-provided reservation house, tending to his true passion: gardening. As a youth he’d been trained in the cultivation of the Three Sisters: squash, corn, and beans.

Finding himself with nothing but time on his hands, John Green set out to perfect them.

He carefully bred and nurtured new varieties of each in his garden, year after year, decade after decade. The cultivars that worked were sold out of a small booth in the nearest town every other Sunday. John Green was intensely private, but did show the occasional interested party around his garden; a notebook from a state official that visited him in 1927 is the best source for many of the varieties he created.

Ordinarily, that’s where it would have stopped; John Green, the interesting footnote in botanical history, the humble man responsible for over 45 varieties of corn, beans, and squash.

But that was before the contagion that began sweeping through the cornfields of Middle America, resulting in massive crop failures and the specter of a supply chain collapse for the first time in centuries. The only strains resistant to it?

John Green’s.

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The Admiral enjoyed long walks along the battlements of the Imperial Palace. Situated high on a cliff overlooking the old seaport, it offered a clear view of the water below without the industrial haze that lingered over Newtown, walled off by a spur of the bluffs. But this was no sightseeing walk.

“I only mentioned it to you as a curiosity, Sir,” the Admiral’s trailing adjutant whined. “A face-to-face meeting could be dangerous, or embarrassing…”

He was cut off by a stern look from the Admiral, who continued through the Elevated Gardens and the Imperial Fountain to the guard post. Imperial Marines saluted him at every turn; the Emperor had a deep and oft-irrational love of the sea and his pet navy, so every point was patrolled by naval infantry instead of the Praetorians the old emperor had used.

A young Marine was trussed up in the guardhouse, watched by two armed peers. The Admiral had expected the young man to be dirtying his trousers, but he was instead collected if excited.

“Tell me, son,” the Admiral said. “What is it you saw?”

“Claim you saw,” his adjutant added; the Admiral cuffed him with a glove.

“I saw…the Imperial Fountain, sir. A lady climbed out of it as it it were a dozen feet deep when there’s nothing but scullery maids in the Elevated Gardens. Her eyes were the bay on a good summer morning, and she wore a dress that was a neap tide.”

“Probably a soused noblewoman from last night’s ball,” said the Admiral’s adjutant. “Wearing a sea-blue dress that reminded this dolt of the sea.”

“No…no, I didn’t say that,” the marine protested. “Her eyes, her dress…they weren’t like the sea, they were the sea. It was like seeing a goddess. She gave me a message for you, Admiral.”

“The man’s clearly delusional and possibly insane,” said the adjutant. “He’ll be flogged and released to a mental asylum before he can waste anyone else’s time with his blasphemy.”

The admiral nodded. “Yes, I think a flogging is called for.” He turned to one of the escorting Imperial Marines. “Have my adjutant flogged for his insolence.”

Once the man had been dragged, protesting, away, the Admiral knelt down by the young marine. “What was the message?”

“She said…that the ships of the Empire were driving the seas toward a great and catastrophic loss,” the young man said. “She said that the great song of the oceans would be soured by war if we did not alter from our present course.”

The Admiral was silent for a moment. “I have always said that war is a great and terrible symphony,” he said at length. “I was at Jushima and the Carlist Sea, and I know the roar and glow, the merciless beauty, of a hard-fought contest of shrapnel and steel. Tell me, son: do you know how I, son of a burgher, came to be an admiral?”

The marine shook his head.

“It was love, for a long-distant and half-remembered woman who sang to me the great song of the oceans, using the words you’ve just now spoken to me. Release him, and let us go speak to the Emperor together.”

Regrettably, such a message finds few willing ears no matter its bearer. On the advice of his adjutant, who was a cousin to the Imperial family, the Admiral was forcibly retired. His warnings about the size of the Imperial Fleet went unheeded, and the young marine who had borne them disappeared. When the enemies of the Empire, unnerved by the size of its fleet and its army, descended upon it in a mechanized war, many perished.

It is said that toward the end of the conflict, the old Admiral wandered the Elevated Gardens as revolutionaries battered down the palace doors below, speaking in a low voice to the distant and imperishable sea.

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“How does that happen?” said Mr. Gruenfeld, the morning’s newspaper in hand. “How do they catch someone with 2,300 rare turtles for the illegal pet trade when they’re coming into the country? Don’t you think someone would notice when they were leaving wherever they came from?”

Republic of San Martin, two days earlier

“Excuse me, sir,” said one of the Sanmartinese airport guards. “Your cargo pants seem to be…moving.”

“Oh, that’s just my medical condition. I have something that clears it right up.” The guy proffered a roll of colorful Sanmartinese currency.

“I feel better already,” said the guard. “Have a nice flight.”

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Anagrams and translations were always a welcome means of obfuscation. So even though Solanine Aubrionne’s name was build from the same building blocks as Nina Leos O’Brien’s, no one made any connection between the two. No one ever made the connection between her assumed name and the toxin in deadly nightshade (as well as potatoes), either. She laughed at that sometimes, before realizing how few people in the Rim had ever seen a potato.

Then again, it was nice to be able to hold onto a small part of that silly girl who’d worked 80-hour weeks in a coffee shop to fund a lifestyle she couldn’t afford, even if it was obscure. Sol had made a more or less definitive break when she’d walked out on her job and her apartment and hopped a shuttle, but the long hours and utterly alien environment of her new life made contemplative nostalgia a daily phenomenon.

“Scan for fuel sources.” The words were muffled by Sol’s environment suit.

Globe shot toward the rusty and hulking ruin ahead. “You know that it’s not a scan, right? It’s basically Geiger counting.”

“That doesn’t sound as cool.” Globe was a bog-standard prospecting assistant drone, but Sol had installed an aftermarket personality simulator and tweaked its settings so she’d have an occasional bout of faux conversation.

Globe vanished into the hulk. It was a relic from the old first-wave homesteaders, abandoned planetside when it became clear that the toxic spores in just about everything couldn’t be easily terraformed away. Thrown out with power sources still intact…it was hard to imagine an age that had been that wasteful. Then again, people had thought that mined unbihexium would never run out, and had no idea that commercially synthesizing it would be so impractical.

Sol could sympathize. She’d once thrown out a perfectly serviceable life and was still struggling with the decision years later.

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