Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

People tended to avoid the Tianming Hills largely because of the ruins scattered among them from the time of the Seres Empire. Superstition wasn’t as great as it had been in the old days, when the Serican ruins had been looked upon as haunted and unlucky, and the archaeological excavations at Liqian had taught the people much about their ancient and technologically advanced predecessors.

That didn’t keep people in the sticks from continuing to leave the Hills well alone, and such was fine with Antigua.

When business at her uncle’s machine shop was slow, and it was often very slow, Antigua would take to the Tianming Hills and explore. The Seres Empire had been tottering on the verge of collapse when her Daqin ancestors had arrived centuries ago, and the old empire’s disintegration after being ravaged by Daqinian diseases and the brief but fierce Dusk War meant that even in Antigua’s most scholarly history books there was little but speculation. Many of the settlers had some Seres ancestry–including Antigua herself–but little else was known aside from lists of long-dead emperors and vague tales of automata.

She’d found nothing but rusty mechanical crossbows and other things barely worth tinkering with until the Tielaohu.

There were tales, of course, about the iron automaton tigers that had decimated the Daqin army at the Battle of the Ir. Their immobile, gutted husks were found in the occasional museum. The way to deal with them in a combat situation–surrounding them with burning bales of hay and firing a cannon point-blank into the conflagration–was still in the Daqin cavalry manuals that Antigua’s cousin Barbuda brought home from the Academy.

But that warm summer day when she happened on a moss-covered Tielaohu tiger in the Tianming Hills…Antigua had never dreamed that she would find anything of the sort.

Much less return it to life.

Inspired by this.

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

One day in the parking lot I spied
Africa-shaped greased stain
The net day when my car had died
I saw an oily continent again
This time the Americas were greased out
On that lonely roadside shoulder
After that the stains did flout
As coincidences they grew bolder
Australia, Asia, Europe all appeared
Even lonely Antarctica was found
Upon pavement with auto grease smeared
If things keep up I know I’m bound
To find another stain afore long
But wonder I must at the shape
If to Earth all the stains belong
What alien landmass will next I gape?

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

Welcome, [insert name], to the GesteCo™ Cerebral Outsourcing program!

It’s a well-known fact that the spoiled and indolent people entering the workforce today are too entitled to lower themselves to the level of occupations that are necessary to keep our advanced and technological society functioning. This is why despite low trade school tuition and high pay there is a critical shortage of qualified plumbers.

The GesteCo™ Cerebral Outsourcing program aims to change that. We fill jobs that are supposedly too mind-numbing or too degrading for today’s feckless 18-35 demographic by the use of patented GesteCo™ Cerebral Nullifiers. That way, the training and on-the job experiences of these necessary but unsexy occupations do not conflict with the inflated sense of self-worth young people carry.

The process is simple: participating businesses receive a GesteCo™ Cerebral Nullifier and a crew of experienced technicians. After each workday, calculated brain damage from patented GesteCo™ Radiative Scalpels erases any memory of the day’s tedium or clogged drains while retaining any learned skills. With no memory of their day, the workers can spend their paychecks and leisure time like the entitled dilettantes they are. An expanded program is available for jobs which require vocational and/or college-level training, partnering with firms and schools across the country to erase memories of attending classes while retaining learned skills and expertise.

The following FAQ has been provided by Faqwriters Inc (A GesteCo™ Company and Cerebral Outsourcing partner for more than [insert year difference]).

Q: Does the fact that my employees can’t remember doing their work mean that I can pay them less?
A: GesteCo™ is legally obligated by the Fairness in Mindwipery Act 2014 § 12.17 to inform you that this is not officially permitted. However, given the general toothlessness of enforcement behind said Act, officially regrettable supervisory accidents and payroll errors have occurred.

Q: Can senior-level executives participate in the GesteCo™ Cerebral Outsourcing program?
A: Regrettably, the need to make strategic business decisions and pay stockholder dividends generally precludes this. However, several Fortune 500 companies have used Cerebral Outsourcing alongside the GesteCo™ Decisiontron Automated Business Machine.

Q: Can the GesteCo™ Cerebral Outsourcing program be used to enforce nondisclosure agreements and proprietary information control?
A: Yes! Ask your GesteCo™ representative about our expanded “Loose Lips” sub-program with our extended-warranty machines and maintenance teams.

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

That was it. With the manual crank shot away there was no question of a soft landing, and the dogfight had burned through the 450 rounds in each of Ryov’s ShKAS machine guns. The Messerschmitt was still on him even though the Nationalist bombers had been driven away, and still firing–apparently the Nationalists and their fascist backers were more generous with heavy machine gun ammunition than the VVS or the Spanish Republicans pulling Ryov’s strings.

Ryov was willing to bet, though, when it came down to steel on steel, the rugged mule of his Polikarpov I-16 would beat out the fascist’s dilettante Messerschmitt. Maybe he’d also get an idea of whether Pushkin’s stories about downing a Mitsubishi in Mongolia were true.

“CM-260 damaged beyond repair. Attempting to bail out.”

The Polikarpov could turn like a beast; Ryov pulled out of a shallow dive into a steep leftward bank. The fascist pilot clearly hadn’t expected a maneuver like that, since it set the tubby mule on a direct collision course. Ryov saw a pair of frightened blue eyes in the opposite cockpit; he responded with a grin and a salute before bailing.

Once his chute deployed, Ryov was able to see that his fighter had slammed into the Messerschmitt, and the two craft definitely were not living to see 1938. Locked in a fiery embrace, they were plummeting toward the Catalonian countryside. To his annoyance, though, Ryov saw another chute in the distance–the fascist had bailed too.

“No problem,” Ryov muttered to himself as he tumbled to a stop on a dusty dirt road. He cut his chute loose and unstrapped the Tokarev pistol from his side. The fascist hadn’t landed far away, perhaps five hundred meters or so.

“I see you over there!” Ryov cried in Spanish, figuring that was his best chance of being understood. “Put up your hands!”

Cresting a small rise revealed the other pilot, clearly a German, walking toward Ryov with an unholstered Luger. “Put up your own damn hands!” he replied in heavily accented Spanish.

Ryov was content to stare his enemy down for a moment, then smiled. “See those people running toward us across the field?” he said. “They’re Catalans. Unless you put yourself under my protection, they’ll tear your baby-bombing ass to shreds.”

The German glanced back and forth a few times between Ryov and the approaching Catalans before sullenly tossing his pistol to the ground. “Thank you,” Ryov said, scooping it up. “Welcome, friends!” he added to the approaching peasants. “Lt. Ryov of the Spanish Republican Air Force requires your assistance!”

His smile lasted until the peasant nearest him struck him over the head with a club. By the time he and the German had been bound up and flung into the back of a wagon, it was a dour scowl.

In the center of the nearby small town, the wagon passed a makeshift gibbet with two corpses hanging from it; one wore a placard reading FASCIST and the other a sign with COMMUNIST in bold red. Nailed above them both was a bold notice: THE IBERIAN ANARCHIST FEDERATION KEEPS WORKERS AND FARMERS SAFE FROM EXPLOITERS OF ALL SHADES.

“I think we may be in trouble,” murmured the German in his accented Spanish.

“I think you may be right.”

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

When the British captured the Libyan coast from Axis forces in 1943, the captured Germans and Italians were shipped to Camp Shelby in Mississippi, while the UK soldiers found themselves among the ancient Roman ruins of Leptis Magna. Trained archaeologists attached to the British as artillerymen did their best to keep the ruins from being damaged during the occupation.

In the course of their work trying to conserve the old ruins, the British came across a mummified corpse in one of the outbuildings, itself almost 2000 years old. They didn’t recognize the uniform the dead body wore, nor could they read the language on items it carried. Furthermore, there was no reliable way to tell how long it had been there.

Wild speculation set in, with some soldiers claiming that the body had been present for as long as the ruins had, and that it was proof of an ancient and advanced civilization. Other rumors had the chamber covered with dark symbols indicating a demonic origin.

The reality, as it often is, was more prosaic. Eventually, a British occupier with a talent for languages examined the body and declared the writing to be Russian. A little further detective work showed that the body was that of a Soviet POW, a pilot, who had been captured after bailing out over Bessarabia and shipped to North Africa as a forced laborer, working to maintain the engines and equipment of a Luftwaffe unit stationed nearby.

He’d fled as soon as he was able, only to die of thirst hiding in the ruins nearly a year before his body was discovered.

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

Late in his life, playwright Richard Cawnpore became convinced that he’d lost his wellspring of inspiration. He was soon obsessed with the idea of chance as an impetus to creativity, and would sit in his study and endlessly roll dice to match together plot points he’d written out beforehand. Cawnpore wrote reams and reams every day, but according to his housekeeper every sheet that he wasn’t satisfied with wound up in the incinerator.

In the nearly seven years of his retirement, not a single sheet escaped the fire until the final weeks of Cawnpore’s life.

A letter to his ex-wife, dated July 1979, claims that an obsession with “chance theater” has yielded a breakthrough. Cawnpore’s housekeeper later confirmed that no more pages were sent to the incinerator after Independence Day. The playwright contacted a local law firm to hire clerks, who he had assist him in collating a large body of information sourced from local libraries and universities. Southern Michigan University filled many of the requests, and their records confirm that 90% of the loan requests received on behalf of Cawnpore were about bees–generally honeybees.

The clerks who gathered the information never spoke out about its contents; by 1982 they had all died of unrelated illnesses and accidents.

In his final letter, the playwright mentioned finishing a grueling composition process, and plans to celebrate with his traditional bottle of aged port.

After Cawnpore died of a cerebral hemorrhage in January 1980, his manuscripts were handed over to his estranged family despite a living will asking that they be destroyed. The works from earlier in his retirement were anthologized and still occasionally performed, but the Cawnpore family refused to public or produce or even allow scholars to read the author’s final play. Other than a title in a list of personal papers–An Apiary–the final work of the artist who had dazzles audiences with the likes of Roaring Against Babylon and The Tidewater Mark has remained completely obscure.

The mere rumor that a copy of the play was mailed to an international address before Cawnpore’s death set off a frenzied international hunt among scholars. The trust that inherited its house reluctantly allowed parts of it to be dismantled in hopes that a copy might have been secreted away. Nothing.

It didn’t help that the legal status of An Apiary was murky. None of Cawnpore’s family, even his children, lived to see 1985, and more distant relations generally refused to disturb the playwright’s papers. The last known person to view An Apiary was Cawnpore’s great-uncle Hiram who agreed to be interviewed on its contents for a considerable advance sum.

He died in a traffic accident one week before the scheduled broadcast.

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

Dear {Webmaster | Web Owner | Universal Spider of the Web}

I could not {resist | refrain from | fight the Earwig People driving me to} commenting. I’ve been {surfing | browsing | sproggling} more than {100 | 1,000 | 10,000} hours on the {internet | global inter-connected web | Inconvenienced Electrons Local 420} today, yet I never found any interesting article like yours. It is pretty worth enough for me. {In my opinion | In my view | Tremble at my opinioning, mortal}, if all webbers and bloggers made good content as you did, the {internets | blogosphere | Grand Duchy of Tumblr} will be {much more | a lot more | really really really really} useful than ever before.

I will right away {take hold of | clutch | kidnap} your RSS as I can not in finding your {email | subscribe button | psychic link}. I am sure this {article | post | papyrus} has touched all the internet {users | viewers | cyborg overlords}, its really really {nice | fastidious | obsessive-compulsive} paragraph on building up new {blog | web site | independent fiefdom}.

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

[Sad music plays. SPOKESMAN looks mournfully at the camera.]

SPOKESMAN: I thought it was safe. I mean, I did it behind the wheel and all my friends did. But then came the accident.

[SPOKESMAN holds up a used kleenex.]

SPOKEMAN: This is the booger I was picking when I got in the crash that changed my life. My legs had to be amputated below the butt, there’s a steel rod where my spine used to be, and I sent a bus full of Roman Catholic nuns into the gulch off Sharkwater Bay.

NARRATOR: Drivers picking their noses are 1 billion times more likely to get in an automobile accident, and drivers looking for someplace inconspicuous to wipe boogers are 1 trillion times more likely to cause murder and mayhem on a Michael Bay scale.

SPOKESMAN: Pull off the road if you have to, or just wait. No booger is worth mass slaughter and alien leg syndrome.

[Camera zooms in on used kleenex.]

NARRATOR: Your life is worth more than a bucket of warn snot. Don’t pick and drive.

This post is parody, but the campaign against texting and driving is a good thing and deserves your support.

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

This post is part of the May 2013 Blog Chain at Absolute Write. This month’s prompt is “Dialogue Only” with a secondary prompt of “Wrong Place, Right Time.”

“So tell me, Cummings, how’s it feel to be in the pocket of the system, doing its dirty work? You know, I’m actually glad you turned up tonight. As Œ says, the true measure of any movement is in the enemies it makes. In you, we’ve got someone who stands for a thoroughly corrupt and rotten plutocracy, making our ideals stand out in stronger relief, and someone who’s so wretchedly incompetent that victory is less a question of why than of when.”

“You trying to goad me into a fight, Strasser? I think you’ve got me beaten there with those Christmas hams you call fists. It’s just like your so-called ‘movement’—violence and intimidation and thuggery dressed up with a few ten-dollar words.”

“You’re one to talk about ten-dollar words,” he grinned. “That’s all you write for the Guardian after all. Bankrupt ideas and lazy support for oppression and inequity wrapped up in some vocabulary words with a light glaze of sarcasm.”

“You’d rather I was breaking and entering? Hacking and stealing? Framing and lying?”

“At least then I’d know you were serious about what you believed in.”

“I don’t believe in anything! It’s all just rhetoric people use as an excuse to do what they please. Ideology and politics—of any kind—are poison, and just because you drank that particular kool-aid that doesn’t make it any less toxic!”

“Ooh, got you a little riled up there, have I? Easy, tiger. You know as well as I do that saying you don’t have any politics is just a chickenshit way of saying you don’t have the balls to fess up to the politics you’ve had all along. If you don’t believe in anything, why were you out with that camera and your little brute squad trying to catch the Nothing doing whatever you think we were doing?”

“Because you’ve been making a fool of me pretty much constantly ever since you sprayed that first bit of terrible graffiti on campus.”

“As if you need help to make a fool of yourself. Did it ever occur to you that we were screwing with you not out of any grudge but because you’re an easy target? You’re a representative of everything that campus culture has degenerated into, Eric Cummings: a lazy self-centered slacker who stands by a system built on repression and misery because it’s easy.”

“I don’t think tracking you and your cronies is something a slacker would do. I’ve got a nice big stack of unfinished video games at home and an even bigger stack of books I could finish writing. Hell, if I had a big stack of nails to pound through my forehead it would be more pleasant that being within a 50-yard radius of you and yours.”

“That’s the typical reactionary mindset. You’re trying to swat away the forces of change so you can go back to your little cocoon of brain-rotting, mind-numbing opiates and keep implicitly condoning and colluding with the abuses of the edifice that makes it possible. But the thing you and Mayfield and those stooges in your cell don’t want to face is that the Nothing is lightning in a bottle. Once it’s out, there’s no putting it back.”

Check out this month’s other bloggers, all of whom have posted or will post their own responses:
Ralph Pines
pushingfordream
articshark
pyrosama
Sudo_One
Nissie
Angyl78
Lady Cat
U2Girl
MsLaylaCakes
SuzanneSeese
LanaK

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

And at one point the Azala began to collect, to catalog, to organize. Nothing that anyone would miss, for as near as can be ascertained the Azala only scavenged from refuse piles and debris fields.

It’s speculated that manufactured items appeal to the Azala more than natural ones, though why this might be so is unknown. Just as the Azala has never been observed, it has never been communicated with. Indeed, it may be that communication is impossible.

But it is clear that the items are collected, because they can be seen on display in what can only be described as the Azala’s home, a glen that can only be entered when the sun is at the right height on a fourth Tuesday. Sometimes it is an island and others it is seamlessly part of a surrounding landscape.

Trees fill it, but not the trees that exist in normal or ordered space-time. Rather they bear boughs of old and broken human invention: cameras, tape recorders, VHS tapes, hubcaps, wastebaskets. Serial number checks have confirmed that the items are of human origin, and their broken lenses or cracked cases indicate their cast-off origins.

But just as no one has been able to explain so much about the Azala, none can say how the trees’ branches become fused to the inorganic detritus.

Nor can anyone offer more than speculation about why every piece of human writing save numbers is mercilessly scratched out.

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!