Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

The Second Siege

In late 1011, the Second City’s leadership decided to strike first. Arming a group of Outsiders with weapons from the City, they claimed that the resulting attack was a clear violation of the bond between the two. The Second City’s army, supported by its army and air force, quickly moved down the coast toward the City. The main force of the Citizens’ Army met the Second Citizens near the mouth of the Rane River, and the result was a catastrophe. Despite outnumbering the Second Citizens nearly two to one, the City’s force was annihilated. As the Mayor and Council struggled to organize a defense, the Second City’s forces cut a swath across the Farmlands and by the end of the year had reached the outskirts of the City itself.

A heroic defense, mounted in the eleventh hour, prevented the Second Citizens from encircling the City, though the Second Navy was able to destroy the City’s docks and occupy the bay. For the next two years, the Second Citizens would fruitlessly attempt to break the defense lines around the City, and at times aimed dagger thrusts at the City center itself. The City was under constant bombardment from land and sea, and air raids occurred nightly.

As before, the City was able to trade with Outsiders for badly needed materials, and hired thousands as mercenaries with the promise of citizenship. Meanwhile, agents of the City attempted to stir the Second City’s chattel laborers to rebellion, forcing the Second Army to garrison troops throughout its own areas. In the meantime, the Citizens’ Army and Mayor built up their forces for a counterattack.

1013 saw the counterattack launched, and the brilliant maneuver shattered the besieging forces. The Second City lost the cream of its army and military material in the Battle of the Outskirts, and was soon pushed back to its own borders. The City now adapted the tactics of its adversary, and launched continual combined-arms attacks on the Second City and its environs. By 1015, the Second City and Second Farmlands were in ruins. Many of the survivors fled into the Outlands in small groups, attempting to blend in with the very people they had treated so poorly. The top military and political leaders of the Second City were executed, and its territory was annexed and appended to the Farmlands. The Second City itself, damaged beyond repair, was razed.

The New Order

The devastating events of the Second Siege led to a sea change in the City’s politics. Fear of external invasion, compounded by the massive industries built by the war, led the Mayor to begin a permanent program of Outsider pacification. While trade continued, this meant that many of the City’s goods were provided to Outsiders free of charge, provided that they did not attempt to make war on the City or the Farmlands.

In the meantime, technological development had been jump-started by the conflict, and by 1175 was approaching that which legend ascribed to the Precursor City. At the same time, life expectancy in the City began to plateau; further research determined that the City’s massive use of electricity and artificial light invariably caused terminal melanoma after a certain level of exposure, For most Citizens, this meant that the absolute limit of their life was now approximately 100 years, and for many others with less tolerance, death came much younger.

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“Welcome to the Copy Shop of Graglock the Wise! What’ll it be, sir?”

“I need 150 black and white copies of this spell, 150 color copies of this scroll, and 150 double-sided copies of these hexes.”

“Would you like them on standard parchment? We also have papyrus, vellum, 70 weight dragonskin, Dreadfiber, and mithrilstock.”

“All of it on standard parchment.”

“Are you sure? The vellum holds up better in continental climates, the papyrus is guaranteed for 3000 years, the dragonskin is fire retardant…”

“Stop trying to upsell me. Can you do it or not?”

“Well, we can have Xeroxes the scribe copy your spell with his enchanted quill, though he is low on toner and the copies are coming out a little fuzzy. It’ll be done by the end of the day.”

“And what about the rest?”

“Well, we need at least 24 hours to do color copying, since the ink takes time to mix and it takes a team of four scribes. Cee, Emm, Why, and Kay have been grumbling about overtime, too.”

“And the double-sided hexes? What about those?”

“Our double-sided color scribe isn’t working right now. We can do one side and then put it back in to do the other, but I’m not going to lie, that could cause ha;f of the hex to be upside down.”

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Pants in parking lot
Feared for what they might have seen
Forever unclaimed

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First place contestants will receive free will call front row seat tickets to one of this weekend’s events being held at Southern Michigan University’s James Newell Osterberg, Jr. Center for the Performing Arts. On Saturday, the Hopewell Philharmonic will present its annual “Atonal Days” concert, with a program of aleatoric music, musique concrète, and an innovative sonic feedback loop performance of John Cage’s 4’33”; earplugs will be sold at the door. On Sunday, the nation’s largest left-leaning publicly funded broadcaster, National Socialist Radio, will bring its acclaimed “Haughty Revue” program to SMU: a full hour of highly educated people drunk on their own sense of self-worth will follow.

Second place contestants will receive a $100 gift certificate to the Rocky Mountain Oyster Factory. Whether you like them braised or barbecued, sauteed or steamed, Rocky Mountain Oyster Factory will fix you a heaping plate of your favorites. Don’t forget a side lamb fries and a fresh-sqeezed glass of bull juice!

Third place contestants will receive a $25 gift card to Stubb’s Coffee, good at all locations in town except the one in the SMU student union (which, despite Stubb’s staffers, branding, and coffee products is not a “real” Stubb’s).

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“You know I am not Japanese, yes?” Zhang Wei had said in his interview with The Sushi Bowl, the sashimi place in the student union.

“We’re not allowed to hire based on students’ ethnic backgrounds,” the interviewer had assured him. “Plus, there aren’t enough Japanese students on campus even if we did.

So Wei found himself working the lunch rush behind The Sushi Bowl’s counter with three other students from China, smiling and nodding politely whenever he was complimented on “his” cuisine (in reality trucked in fresh from a distributor three times a day). It didn’t do wonders for Wei’s unease; in addition to facing challenges with his grasp of English every day, he was feeling very uneasy at being in an engineering class with no American students, and being one of sixteen Zhang Weis in the program (it being the mainland Chinese equivalent of “John Smith”).

He wasn’t sure if, as his grandmother had warned him, he was catching “American narcissism” like it was a disease, or if his feelings were a natural reaction to the routine absurdities that confronted him every day.

All he knew was that something had to change, or something was going to give.

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The First Siege

Over time, attitudes and divisions between the City proper and the outlying Farmlands began to diverge. The use of Outsider laborers, and their descendents, coupled with the rapid rise in the City’s population, began to worry prominent Farmlanders, who demanded greater political autonomy and bitterly resented the City’s interference in their affairs. In the City itself, opposition to the Farmlands’ labor practices became more widespread, while many in the Farmlands began to quietly stockpile arms and talk of a second revolution.

In 954, an abortive rebellion of Outsider laborers briefly seized control of a few small towns in the Farmlands. Although local militia and troops from the Citizen Army easily crushed the uprising, it quickly became a political issue. The Farmlanders demanded tighter laws on Outsider laborers and more freedom to create such laws at the local level, while the Mayor and City Council refused.

Enraged by this, a council of Farmlanders met in the spring of 955 and declared that the Farmlands would henceforth form a city to itself. The Mayor and City Council refused to recognize this, and both sides prepared for war. The Farmlanders moved first, cutting off all land routes into the City and capturing parts of the outskirts. They hoped to starve the Citizens at large into recognizing their independence; the Mayor responded by taking the unprecedented step of trading with Outsiders for food and desperately needed supplies.

In return for manufactured goods, as many Outsiders as the City’s ships could reach provided foodstuffs and raw materials. Even with this lifeline, the Siege was desperate; every inch of available space was dedicated to impromptu gardens, and heavy guns were rolled directly into battle from the Industrial District.

Eventually, the larger population of the City, coupled with its superior industrial productivity, and the Farmlanders’ refusal to trade with Outsiders, allowed the Citizens’ Army to break the siege. By 958, the war had turned to conquest of the Farmlands, and despite desperate defensive measures by the secessionists, the conflict ended by 959. A large portion of the Farmlanders chose to flee before the advancing Citizens’ Army, as did many of their surviving troops. As part of the armistice, they were allowed to leave the Farmlands for the Outlands, where after a long trek the refugees established the Second City. In the wake of their departure, the Outsider laborers were given farmland, and the current policy of admitting a select few Outsiders into the City each year was implemented.

The Second City

The Second City flourished, and conducted profitable trade with the City despite the animosity and destruction of the First Siege. Though always smaller than the City, the Second City soon developed a reputation for technological excellence that was matched only by its brutal labor policies—the practice of using Outsider labor as chattel continued under a slightly different name.

Then next fifty years saw a gradual reduction of tensions between the Cities, despite vocal minorities on both sides who clamored for revenge or renewed conflict. Despite the official trade and neutrality between the Cities, both quietly built up and modernized their armed forces; the rediscovery of heavier-than-air flight and efficient steam turbines led to an extension of this policy in the air and on the sea.

Eventually, the revaunchist party in the Second City gained power, while a weak administration and Mayor presided over the City. The Second Citizens began staging increasingly belligerent military demonstrations, and began making demands for favorable adjustments to trade and other agreements. The City’s government accede to these for a time, but growing public pressure eventually reached a boiling point, and a new Mayor and Council, hostile to the Second City, were installed.

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My problem isn’t so much that I think to much, but that I think too *hard*. You know the type–people that are lost in concentration over the smallest decisions, grappling with what kind of coffee to order like the fate of the free world hangs in the balance.

Though I will allow that the fact I have massive latent psychic potential does complicate things a dash.

After what happened to Uncle Grey in the Great Meltdown of ’02, which could be felt by psi-actives as far away as Irkutsk and leveled an area of the Montana Badlands the size of Rhode Island, I’ve been on a strict regiment of zen and GesteCo Psi-Suppresitol. But it doesn’t always work when I’m a thinky mood.

Like the time I was trying to decide between cheese and pepperoni at Herculaneum Pizzeria and the gas tanks of six parked cars exploded simultaneously.

Or the time I was decided whether to reply to *mastrlvr1066* on Cupyd’s Arrow dot com and caused a waterspout in my complex’s pool.

Or the time I was taking the GRE and caused eighteen nosebleeds and a six-week coma.

But they all pale in comparison to the time Jimmy Drummond asked me upstairs at Phi Qoppa Beta.

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Hopewell was, as most college towns are, full of students who were wealthy or spoiled enough that they routinely abandoned their possessions when leaving town for good. Most ended up curbside, fodder for the pickers and incoming students savvy enough to look.

But the more conscientious, if still spoiled, Southern Michigan University students would deposit their castoffs at one of Hopewell’s many thrift stores. In many places that would have meant a Salvation Army or a Goodwill, but the various policies of the organizations behind those chains had let them to wither in the face of a boycott by many students. So it fell to the large store at the corner of Lafayette and Kalamazoo, the one which had until 1975 been Harwich’s Department Store.

It had been known by many names throughout its history, but since 2004 it had been Tokyo Thrift.

An experienced shopper could find all manner of low-cost treasures there, from DVDs in their original shrinkwrap to cast-off mint-in-box action figures, signed first editions, vintage clothes, antique furniture, and original artwork. For some time, a group of students at SMU had kept a blog called “Tokyo Treasures” with all the various finds that canny shoppers had unearthed.

On June 17, 2010, an item went up on the Tokyo Treasures blog: “Authentic Egyptian Statue – Mafdet, Goddess of Cats.” It had been purchased for $0.99 and authenticated by an Egyptology graduate student. One week later, the blog post was taken down without notice or explanation.

The author, a prolific blog contributor, was never heard from again.

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That’s just the thing…every reference to Liehlton is a reference to Stanville, every signpost points to Liehlton instead of Y. Even everybody who has a friend in Liehlton has a friend in Stanville. It’s like it’s the only difference between the two worlds.

And that’s the strangest part–you’d think that there would be, I dunno, a butterfly effect where a change to Liehlton would have effects everywhere. That’s just not the case! As near as I can tell, for everything that doesn’t directly involve Liehlton or Stanville, there is no difference at all!

You haven’t even heard the strangest part. I took a topographic map from the Stanville public library–without checking it out, I know, but these are desperate times. The topography and buildings fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. Nothing overlaps.

What I’m saying is that they have a hill where we have a ravine, they have brambles where we have a building. If you were to crop one city on top of the other, no one would notice but the trees and the deer.

What I’m saying is that it’s obvious to me that Liehlton and Stanville were, at one point, the same city.

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Easton spread out a set of dossiers, each with a glossy photograph attached. “Danica Paterson, Annita Pescador, Cantina Spadero, Dianne Scarpato,” he said, pointing at each one in turn. “It is imperative that they be captured and brought back to the Institute.”

The bounty hunter, wearing clean but inconspicuous civilian clothes, leafed through each file in turn. “You’ll pay the agreed-upon bounty for each one, plus all expenses incurred in each successful hunt.” It wasn’t a question.

“And the unsuccessful ones?”

“Those are on me. But there won’t be any.”

“Fair enough,” said Easton. “Do you have any questions?”

“I’m a professional,” said the bounty hunter. “All I need to know is who and where. I don’t need to know why.”

“If you say so.” Easton took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “But I should warn you that all four of them will resist you tooth and claw. And once one of them knows you’re coming, they all will.”

“They moving as a group?”

“No, certainly not.”

“They in close contact by phone or internet?”

“I wouldn’t think so. They want to distance themselves from each other at almost any cost.”

The bounty hunter sighed. “Then why don’t you be square with me and say why, exactly, they will all know what one knows?”

Easton fingered a paperclip nervously. “Well…the fact of the matter is…they are the same person. All of them.”

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