Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

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“Next in line, please,” said the DMV lady. She was the latest in a long line of formidable, disinterested ladies acting as gatekeepers for conveyances, ever since her ancestors had landed at Plymouth Rock and begun working at Ye Departmente o’ Carriages & Buggys.

“Hello, hi,” said the pretty but frazzled-looking young woman who was next in line. “My name is Owena Tuttle, and I need to apply for a special exemption.”

“What kind of special exemption, ma’am?” said DMV Lady. She mentally prepared a list of all the various forms, from 37-B to 882-Y, that might need filling out in a clear hand with blue or black ink.

“Well, you see, I’m a professional euryklide or gastromancer; I prefer the former term since people tend to think the latter means I’m a cook and I can’t make Ramen noodles,” Owena babbled.

“Ma’am?” said DMV Lady, raising a formidable eyebrow. “What does that mean, and what does it have to do with a special exemption?”

“Here, see for yourself!” Owena fished around in the oversized purse she carried and reeled in two wooden dummies, male and a female. “The special exemption is for my dear friends and business partners, Llewellyn and Gwyndolyn.”

“We keep getting pulled over because they say miss Dahlia Earnhardt here doesn’t have both hands on the wheel!” quipped Llewellyn, the male dummy.

“They say having us in the car anywhere but the inside of that stinky old bag is reckless driving!” added Gwyndolyn, the female dummy. “We need a piece of paper saying we’re okay to drive even when we’re rehearsing our act!”

DMV Lady raised her other, even more formidable, eyebrow. “You want a special exemption so you can do ventriloquism in your car while you’re driving?” she said, her voice dripping with honeyed contempt.

“Uh-oh, now you’ve done it,” said Llewellyn.

“She used the V-word!” chirped Gwyndolyn. “Shouldn’t have done that!”

“Please refrain from using that vile term,” barked Owena, “especially in front of my partners. Ventriloquism is vile, popularized vaudeville with uncouth stage tricks and falsehoods. Euryklides or gastromancers like myself tap into a much more reverent and mystical tradition of prophecy, with an authentic relationship with real and animatory spirits.”

“So don’t use the V-word!” squeaked Llewellyn.

“And don’t even think of using the D-word, you dummy, or you’ll see just how windy Ms. Hot Air Balloon here can get when she’s steamed!”

“Of course, of course,” said DMV Lady, her tone unchanged. She handed Owena a manila folder with a sheet of paper inside. “Take this copy of form 665-1 through the first door on your left up the hallway.”

“’bout time we got something done around here!” sneered Llewellyn.

“Don’t be rude,” said Owena. “Thank the nice lady.”

“Thanks for the dead trees, lady!” piped Gwyndolyn. “Since we’re made of wood, that’s basically like handing us Soylent Green!”

Her “friends” in tow, Owena followed DMV Lady’s directions and went through the specified door…and found herself in the parking lot, with a locked, handle-less door slamming behind her. The manila folder, when opened, held only a blank sheet of printer paper.

“She got you too, huh?” A guy with a hand-rod puppet stood there among a crowd of other misfits, including a clown, a mime, a juggler, and a unicyclist. The puppet guy moved the rod to place a reassuring felt hand on Owena’s sagging shoulder. “There, there.”

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“You gave me 87 chips,” the woman said. The smell of cigarettes was thick on her breath, mingling with but not masked by her perfume. “I only had enough for 85 chips.”

“Just take them,” I said. I was sure she had miscounted, but the casino was raking in enough hand over foot that $2 in chips was well within the predicted shrinkage of chips that were lost or taken outside and never redeemed.

“No, no, I’m honest,” the woman said. “Take the chips back.”

The old lady was a regular, and one of the people I regularly saw going through little “luck rituals” on the casino floor. She’d tap the slot machine lever three times before every pull, ask lucky-looking passersby for numbers to bet on in roulette. If trying to manipulate what she perceived as the forces of luck in the universe with such rituals

“Ma’am, you can have the chips,” I repeated. “We’d rather you keep them than risk giving you too few.” That was another thing; giving out too few chips was a serious violation of state law. In a state that was still uncomfortable and conservative enough to maintain the legal fiction that all casinos were on riverboats, no less.

“No, I’m honest,” said the woman. “I won’t take them.”

“Ma’am…”

“I’m honest!”

It was like a mantra, a life preserver, that supposed honesty. Maybe she was convinced that getting lucky with too many chips up front would lead to disastrous losses at the tables or in the machines. Or maybe it was a desperate fiction in the face of however many thousands of dollars she had lost at our casino–dollars she probably claimed to have spent elsewhere.

Either way, there were people in line and a person urging me to rip them off. “Very well,” I said, peeling two chips off the pile. “Enjoy your stay.”

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“Welcome to Us Transportation and Logistics LLC,” said the company representative. He pronounced “us” like the pronoun rather than as the acronym that Johns had expected.

“Oh, it’s ‘us’ as in ‘all of us?'” Johns said, mildly surprised. “I thought it was ‘US’ as in ‘United States.'”

“Oh, we get that a lot,” said the rep. “We’re used to it, though, so pay it no mind. We do have one final part of orientation to go through before we can get your rig out on the road with cargo, though.”

“What’s that?” said Johns, a little annoyed that the rep kept on using the ‘royal we’ to refer to himself.

“Oh, just a little company tradition that we have here at Us LLC,” the rep said. “We call it The Joining.”

Instantly, Johns was surrounded by other reps and truckers, each with eyes wide and speaking in perfect synch. “One of us! One of us! One of us!”

Johns’ eyes went wide, but there was nothing he could do before his individual consciousness was blown away and subsumed by the gestalt hive mind responsible for Us LLC’s legendary efficiency and timeliness.

“We are as one,” said Johns, after a pause for the hive mind to adjust to his memories and the direct psychic intercranial link. “We are as Us.”

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“No! Please!” cried the elderly motorist from within the guillotine.

“You said you wanted fresh tomatoes,” said the roadside vendor. “The sign was very clear: fresh tomatoes a head. One head for one bushel of tomatoes.”

“I thought it was just a misspelling!” the motorist said.

“It’s not my fault that you didn’t read the terms of the legally binding contract you entered into upon accepting my tomatoes,” replied the vendor.

“The license is at the bottom of the basket! How could I have read it before I had the basket?”

“That’s a matter for the courts, I’m afraid.” The roadside tomato-seller yanked the cord and sent the blade on its way.

He gave the bushel of tomatoes to the motorist’s headless body, which accepted them gratefully and toddled back to the car before driving erratically off down the highway. As for the head, he threw it with the others in the back of his pickup truck…the Creature was hungry, after all.

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“Yo, this one’s easy!” cried Gordon from his seat at the upper end of the lecture hall.

“Easy peasy! You know it’s 2πr if there’s a circumference involved!” I yelled in response.

“That’s it!” cried Dr. Phillips. “My office, after class!”

“Man, it’s not my fault I’m excited about math all of a sudden,” I said, sullenly, waiting for another student to exit Dr. Phillips’ office after class.

“It’s not like it was the wrong answer,” said Gordon. “He can’t do anything to take down your mad mathin’ skillz.”

“Next!” cried Phillips, as the other student–a female Dean’s Lister–took their leave.

“Look,” the professor said once Gordon and I had seated ourselves. “I can’t have outbursts like that from you in class anymore. It’s disrupting the learning process for everyone.”

“I got the right answer!” I said. “Is it my fault that I’ve suddenly got enthusiasm for math, after years of hating its filthy guts?”

“Right on!” said Gordon. “Preach it!”

“Disrupting class isn’t just about the right answer, Paul,” said Phillips.

“What about Gordon?” I said. “Why is this always just about me?”

The professor looked at me askance. “Gordon?” he said. “I don’t have a Gordon this semester.”

Suddenly, I had the shock of blinding revelation–no one had ever spoken to Gordon other than me, my replies had always had the right answer in them, and everything I’d said in public had been ambiguous enough to refer to myself without the need for a third party present. My hatred for mathematics had been so strong that I had created Gordon just to help get me through it.

“Crap,” I said. “I just pulled a Tyler Durden.”

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My lines won’t remain apart
Even if extended to infinity
They keep curving back to the start
And sowing insanity

I’ve got the non-Euclidean blues
Playing them up the R’lyeh streets
Gonna have to pay my dues
As the gibbering horrors bleat

Oh, I’ve got the non-Euclidean blues
And my mind is starting to crack
It can’t process the maddening views
Of Cthulhu’s scaly back

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“Go on, Ms. Curry. Please load and fire the weapon at the target downrange.” Mr. Klint held out a pair of shooter’s earplugs, which the “applicant” took with a trembling hand.

Curry desperately hoped that her hosts couldn’t see the sweat beginning to bead along her upper lip, the hairs on her forearms prickling alarmedly. She was in over her head, and those kindly and dapper assassins had told her not minutes ago that failing the test would lead to her immediate death.

“Why, whatever is the matter, Ms. Curry?” said Mr. Wyd with exceptional politeness. “Would you prefer a different weapon, or a different load? The Imanishi 9 is our standard pistol…”

“…but you could use a Moses Model 19…” added Mr. Klint.

“…or a Grünwald KPK if that is your preference,” finished Mr. Wyd.

“I…would prefer the Grünwald,” said Curry. She hoped that the Germans’ reputation for engineering would mean that such a gun would be easier to use for someone who’d never fired one in her life, but any hope of successfully bluffing her way into the organization and getting an idea of where they’d taken Chris seemed to be swiftly fading.

“Very well!” Mr. Wyd swapped out the gun with blistering speed; Curry tried to see how he unloaded the Imanishi and popped a bullet from the top part of the gun by pulling it back, but the master assassin’s hands were a blur.”

“Would you prefer a full metal jacket load, or hollow-point?” asked Mr. Klint, holding up two magazines.

“We’ve depleted uranium, sabot, and ratshot as well,” chimed Mr. Wyd, “but I’m sure you’ll agree that they are nor suitable for such a demonstration.”

“Of…of course…” stammered Curry. “I’ll take the hollow-point.”

The assassin chose one of the magazines–not the one Curry thought she’d chosen, but he didn’t seem to notice–and, to her great relief, loaded it for her and made it ready to fire. With trembling hands, she took aim.

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Javaman was created by Reggie O’Donald (art) and Nate Grimaldi (writing) as part of IC Comics Group’s “New Consumers” lineup. The New Consumers were originally intended as a group of foodstuff-related heroes that could provide IC with another revenue source through distribution to local restaurants and eateries. Most of the heroes from that lineup, like Pastaman or the Burger Avengers, were unpopular and quickly canned. Javaman alone survived the cut.

As with many of the IC heroes, Javaman has several origin stories. In the Golden and Silver Age continuity IC used through 1987, he was born Jan Van Aman, an American-Dutch wealthy playboy and heir to the Van Aman coffee fortune. While overseeing a plantation in Malaya that was run like a slave-labor camp, Jan was kidnapped by native laborers and held prisoner. Moved by their plight, he agreed to be infused with the Sacred Coffee Beans of Fuol Gerre, which granted him the power to control coffee-based substances, super-speed, and super strength at the cost of having to constantly drink potent coffee to maintain his powers.

In the rebooted continuity promulgated by IC starting in 1988, Javaman was John Avaman, the owner of an independent Seattle coffee. Upset with his popularity and scruples, agents of the local Stubb’s Coffee empire (changed to the fictional Queequeg’s Coffee after a lawsuit) attempted to assassinate him by puncturing vats full of an experimental super-potent coffee and drowning him. Instead, John Avaman’s cells were hyper-saturated with caffeine, granting him more or less the same powers. Some later limited series and one-shots (like Javaman #391) tried to establish a link between the Golden Age Javaman and the Modern Age one, positing that Jan Van Aman was variously John Avaman’s uncle, surrogate father, wealthy benefactor, or inspiration.

For all the changes in his continuity, Javaman’s rogues’ gallery has been relatively consistent. His most persistent foe has been Unfair Trade, since Javaman #1 an unscrupulous plutocrat with designs on the worldwide coffee market and armies of hired goons and technology at his disposal. The ambiguous Decaffinatrix, a burglar waging a one-woman war on caffeine after a traumatic accident left her unable to enjoy coffee, has been both friend and foe ever since her first appearance in Javaman #55. And the Expressonator, introduced in Javaman #271, has been a perennial favorite as well.

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The shadow’s voice dripped with irony-laced joy, its words battered with equal parts honey and poison. “Do you really think that such a thing is possible? The ritual of key and coin is a farce, a trap! You came willingly to the down below, as have many before you, seeking the impossible, only to find yourself in the same trap as those you would rescue.”

“That’s not true!” Ellis growled between teeth clenched against the chill of the down below. It was no only a cold that knew no warmth, it was a cold that suggested warmth was a lie, that it had never been, that it was a pleasant dream scattered upon the winds of wakefulness.

“It howls at you, doesn’t it? Tears at your very soul, ribbons it into threadbare rags, this idea of yours that there’s something that can be done for your lover, your brat,” continued the shadow, ever in the periphery of Ellis’s vision and never in the center. “But every lead, every whisper, every ley line you followed was just a way to bring you into the down below. To rip at you with ice and rock unending, to cut at you with wind that will bear no warmth and light that is neither day nor darkness.”

“You would have me lay down in the snow and subject myself to this forever?” spat Ellis, the moisture condensing to ice upon his very lips.

“I would have you face reality. It was all just a way to bring you to the despair that never would have been yours had you allowed things to proceed as they were, to take your rest as it came. In trying to reach beyond it and break the order of things, you have condemned yourself as surely as those you seek to save.”

“I still have hope.”

The shadow laughed gleefully amidst the flurries and driving snow. “And that, that false and misguided hope, is as the sweetest of rare wines to me, to mine. Do you not see? Whether you suffer, whether you hope, or whether you do both, it matters not. You are but a battery, a soul in chains, and every move you might make will only bring us pleasures untold.”

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