Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

Near as we can figure, the property had always been overrun with feral cats. Made sense: escapees and teenage cat pregnancies were probably responsible for the initial population, and apartment complexes offered plenty of shelter, warmth in the winter, and scraps to dig out of the garbage. The crazy cat ladies would often feed the strays, too, inadvertently swelling their population.

It’s the latter fact, I think, that got the cats thinking. The complex was mostly disassociated from the owners, who rarely acted except to fix reported problems or evict deadbeat tenants. If the crazy cat ladies had a little food, how much was stored away in their houses? If there was heat near the dryer vents, how much was there next to the dryer itself?

We think the cats took over the first apartment from the inside–likely a housecat convinced or coerced into opening a window or door. Tenants commented on how the strays seemed to have disappeared, but just assumed that animal control had been through on another one of their sweeps. The landlords also noticed that a tenant had started signing their checks with a stamp, but since the bank had no problems with the practice, neither did they.

After some time, people began to complain of a smell and the near-constant noise of cats issuing from one of the apartments. The landlord never got around to acting on any of the neighbors’ complaints, though, as they ceased as soon as they’d begun. In fact, it was a considerable length of time before anything more was heard out of that entire building.

No one suspected anything amiss until a rent check bounced, and no one answered the phone at the offending apartment. No one responded when eviction papers were served, so eventually the landloards got off their duffs enough to call the police. Officers had to break down the door in order to gain access.

Inside, they found over 150 cats and the remains of the former tenant, mostly just bones and gristle. A hole had been gnawed in the screen over an outside window and in the dropped ceiling, allowing for unlimited ingress to the apartment and easy access to others as well. Careful investigation revealed that all the apartments in Building 4 and seventeen other apartments across the complex had been so occupied. Nearly 1000 cats were bagged, enough to overwhelm nearby shelters, though even more escaped the purge and continue to loiter nearby.

The one thing we have so far been unable to determine is how the cats were able to stamp and seal envelopes bearing rent checks with no thumbs. All signs point to a single polydactyl cat, “Mittens,” who some suspect to be the ringleader.

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Gaines Park had no shortage of trees and no shortage of squirrels to inhabit them, rodents grown fat and entitled by living off the refuse of students from the community college or specifically put out for them by Students for a Happy Earth. In fact, the park supported two warring populations of the critters: the larger but lazier fox squirrels, and the smaller but severely ADD grey squirrels. They could often be heard chittering at each other, with the insulting nature of the exchange generally clear from context.

And, sometimes, they would chitter and chirp at nothing in particular.

“Look at that,” Isaac said. A grey squirrel was perched in the barren highest boughs of a half-dead maple, clearly exposed, and making such a rodenty cacophony that it was audible for dozens of yards in every direction. “What are you doing, squirrel? You’re just telling every predator in range that there’s a tasty rodent up that tree and that dinner is served!”

“Kuk-kuk-kuk-kuk-kuk, quaa-quaaaa!” said the squirrel. “Kuk-kuk-kuk-kuk-kuk, quaa-quaaaa!” It was staring straight at Isaac and flicking its tail like a tiny battle pennant.

“They can see you up there, you know,” Isaac continued. “No leaves. And if you run away you’ll just exhaust your nut fat and die of starvation!”

“Kuk-kuk-kuk-kuk-kuk,” said the squirrel, unmoved. “Quaa-quaaaa!”

“I give up,” Isaac said, throwing up his hands. “I tried to help, but you’re being evolutionarily maladaptive.”

“She is warning the other nearby squirrels of a potential predator, and pinpointing that predator’s location by varying her alarm call and looking at it while flecking her tail.”

Isaac had no reason to doubt the speaker beside him, as she was the avatar of Aquerna, the Norse goddess of squirrels. “Oh. I guess she’s warning the other squirrels about me, huh,” he said sheepishly. “How do you say ‘I don’t want to eat you because you’d probably taste gross’ in squirrelese?”

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Words and whispers rippled throughout the SS Mary, Queen of Steam at the speed only rifle bullets and gossip possess. Before long, curious onlookers appeared in the upper galleries of the Mary‘s luxuriant gambling parlor.

The two master card sharks who had been on the boat since the beginning of its river cruise had finally sat down to play a high-stakes game.

On one side sat E. Jubal Jackson, whippet-thin and resplendent in a starched white plantation suit and bow tie, lips pursed between carefully-groomed mustache and goatee, eyes shining behind pince-nez spectacles. On the other glowered Lee B. Bragg, his clothing roughspun but clean and in immaculate repair and his hair gathered into a great swept-back mane over his tanned and unshaven face. Both had brought their own decks rather than chancing the house decks provided by the Mary, and there were already cards on the table.

Jackson squinted over his hand, carefully considering his next move, before delicately withdrawing a card and placing it on the table. “I tap three black mana cards to play Onyx Minotaur,” he said in a Carolina drawl. ” Your Quicksilver Cavalier takes three hit points of damage and is destroyed.”

Soft gasps rippled through the viewing gallery. Bragg snorted and rummaged through is own deck. “I counter with Resurrection of the Ancient Scholar,” he snarled in a voice flecked with bayou Cajun. “My Quicksilver Cavalier returns to play and is immune to damage for one turn.”

This development perplexed Jackson for a moment, but after adjusting his tie he withdrew a card and laid it down with the utmost care. This time, the gasps and crowd noise were clearly audible: the blue-bordered card and its Dali-esque skeletal denizens were distinctive and instantly recognizable.

“It’s a Time Walk card!”

“One of the Power Nine!”

“The second-rarest Magic: The Gathering card in existence!”

“It’s banned in Legacy and Commander tournaments!”

But card games on the SS Mary, Queen of Steam were no-holds-barred Vintage games, and the card was fully legal. “I play Time Walk,” Jackson said with a lip-curling smirk. “I take an extra turn.”

Two turns in a row, especially with Jackson’s powerful Black mana deck, was enough to reduce most of Bragg’s landscapes, creatures, and enchantments to rubble. Surely, the famously cutthroat riverboat Magic gambler had met his match this time.

But Bragg was coolly confident. He added chips to the pot, and played a card of his own.

The crowd wend wild. “Timetwister! He played a Timetwister!”

Indeed, Bragg had laid down a Timetwister, which required both men to return their cards to their deck to re-shuffle and re-deal. In an instant, his extraordinarily rare card–rivaling Time Warp in rarity and price, and banned from most tournament play in the same way–had leveled the playing field. His next move, though, raised the crowd’s energy level to that of a frenzy.

“Black Lotus,” said Bragg. “La fleur noire. I add three White mana to my mana pool.”

That play, with the rarest and most valuable Magic card in existence, led to absolute pandemonium. In a fell swoop, Bragg had eliminated Jackson’s advantage and given it to himself.

Most players, staring down a Black Lotus, would have despaired. Jackson, though, was stony. “May I see that card?” he asked.

“Of course,” grinned Bragg. “You’ll find it’s authentic.”

Reaching across the table, Jackson appeared to move toward the card…and then fiercely seized Bragg’s wrist. A card tumbled out–another rare Power Nine, an Ancestral Recall.

“Cheater.” The word was hissed with malice and implied threat.

In a lightning movement, Bragg reversed the hold and shook out Jackson’s sleeve. An ultra-rare Power Nine Moxen, the Mox Sapphire, flitted to the table. “Look who’s talking, mon ami,” growled Bragg.

In seconds, the table had been upended, rare and common Magic cards flurrying about, as both men drew derringers from concealed inner pockets.

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The photoshoot had gone great, Reid thought. It was rare enough to find a willing model, much less one that had the combination of good bone structure, natural-looking long blonde hair, and violet eyes.

It had gone so well, in fact, that Reid’s assistant had drawn him aside during a break. “Does something strike you as a little…odd…about this model?” he asked.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, love,” said Reid.

“I dunno. Something about her just seems a little…unnatural.”

“Well, that’s not her natural hair color, if that’s what you mean,” Reid laughed. “But you ought to know that by now, love. No human has that color naturally–it’s dye or wig or chromosome engineering from one of those fly-by-night gene labs in the Beral Lands.”

“But…her eyes, and her skin…I just don’t feel like they’re real,” Reid’s assistant persisted.

“Well, I can assure you that they are her real eyes and her real skin,” laughed Reid. “Not a skinjob, this one! But I agree, she does have a very exotic otherworldly beauty about her. Sometimes I can scarcely believe it’s real myself!” He turned away abruptly and clapped his hands. “Okay, that’s a wrap with this one! Miss, you’re been lovely. Please send out the next model from the green room, if you please.”

The model nodded, and walked into the small room that Reid had set aside for the use of his models, locking it behind her. It was completely empty, save a for a small trunk.

The model took off her hair–a very convincing nanofiber wig–and replaced it with one that was short, dark brown, and tightly curled. Then she took off her nose and ears–they were both prostheses made of nanomaterials as well. Carefully hovering over a selection of replacements, she decided on a pair of small lobeless ears and a wide nose with flared nostrils, both dark-skinned. She could have opted for more flexible shape-and-color changing nano-protheses, naturally, but custom-made ones with a single shape were less likely to stand out and had a more natural look.

As she shimmied into a fresh outfit laid out by Reid ahead of time, the model adjusted the chromatophores in her eyes and skin to fresh hues. The photographer had asked for dark skin and green eyes, and so she obliged–matching her overall hue to that of her fresh prostheses and her eyes to a color wheel with the aid of a mirror.

There was a knock on the door. “Ma’am?” said Reid’s assistant.

“Ready in a moment, dear,” the model cried, rearranging her multi-layered vocal cords to produce a much lower, huskier register.

It would be easier to have the assistant and camera crew in on the fact that their model was a Callistan, surely. But Callistans were hated, discriminated, against, even outlawed–not least because they were spies and assassins as often as they were fashion models. But–in the model’s mind, anyway–if she had the ability to change her appearance at will, and the prosthetics and wigs to make it happen, why not use it to earn a little safe money at the expense of others?

The unspoken code of Callistans was very clear on that point: it was perfectly okay to fool, rob, or kill Zeussians (as they called all other humans), so long as you didn’t abandon your secret Callistan identity or fall in love with one.

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In 2006, the average amount of time between the last entry in a film series and its next remake or reboot was 9 years, as exemplified by the 9-year gap between “Batman and Robin” and “Batman Begins.” By 2012 that gap had shrunk to 5 years, as we can see from the refraction period between “Spider-Man 3” and “The Amazing Spider-Man.” With studios gearing up to reboot Batman for inclusion in the Man of Steel sequel (said Man being a reboot itself) in 2016, only 4 years after his last screen appearance in “The Dark Knight Rises,” we can now see a definite trend.

With this in mind, here is a mathematical predictive model of when the following movies will be rebooted, based on how long it took a movie to get regurgitated in the year of its release:

Avatar – 2017
20th Century Fox will be pleased to announce a gritty new take on the tale called The Avatar. Since audiences are too savvy for something as escapist and unrealistic as humans soldiers in alien bodies, this fresh and hip new imagining will feature burned-out inner city cops in gorilla bodies, with gorilla warfare to follow.

Toy Story – 2016
Disney/Pixar, proudly bereft of artistic integrity ever since making Cars 2 in exchange for $500 million in toy merchandising rights, is already in scripting stages for a gritty new direction for this beloved franchise. Filmed in live-action, since modern audiences see through the artifice of unbelievable computer graphics, the new film will be a post-apocalyptic tale of redemption from the point of view of charred, inanimate objects. Look for TOY in summer 2016!

Harry Potter – 2015
With The Incredible Harry Potter, coming next year from Warner Bros., filmmakers go back to the basics, to the dark, gritty feel of the original books. Moviegoers these days will see right through any attempt to convey “magic;” this fresh new take sees Harry enrolled in a school for assassins and martial artists who kill from the shadows to maintain the balance of world power. The studio has strong franchise hopes for the film, and has begun casting for the part of ruthless military dictator Lord Voldemort, who Harry will assassinate in the second film of a projected nine-picture deal.

The Avengers – 2014
Coming this year to theaters, Marvel’s Avengers reboot, titled Avengers (not the lack of the “the”), will be a gritty tale of a younger, hungrier band of superheroes before they rose to prominence less than two years ago. Making concessions to today’s theatergoers, who are too intelligent to buy into ridiculous concepts like armored attack suits or thunder gods, Avengers will focus instead on the relationship between tank pilot Stark, electrician Thor, mental patient and former WWE wrestler Hulk, alongside dark and realistic young versions of all your favorites. Sources confirm that such grit and realism don’t come cheap, and the pic is budgeted at $100,000,000,000.

The Hunger Games – 2013
In a bold decision, Lionsgate bowed to the inevitable and rebooted the critical and popular darling The Hunger Games before the series had even finished its projected four-film run. In stark contrast to the lighthearted and campy tone from the original series, something increasingly rejected by the savvy moviewatching public, last year’s reboot Hunger Begins was dark and gritty, a bleak vision of the future. A sequel to the reboot is currently scheduled for release in 2012; Lionsgate is apparently not concerned that this will somehow draw viewers away from the original Hunger Games, also released in 2012.

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It wasn’t until seven months after his disappearance that Joan began to suspect that her brother had been crazy.

The case was still open, and publicly the police had expressed confidence in a number of leads. Privately, though, the chief had told Joan and her parents that, barring a miracle, things looked grim. Her parents had balked at first, but Joan had dated the chief’s son in high school, before she had left town for school and work in the city.

Her parents’ certainty had waned with each passing day, until Joan found herself driving up for the ultimate concession that her brother was gone for good—selling his house. It had been their parents’ house, originally, but after they converted to snowbirds and fled south, Gil had kept it up and lived there. He had always been devoted to the place, and kept it in good shape; selling it was the final step in moving on.

Joan found herself upstairs, cleaning out her brother’s room. It was hard, and her cheeks often glistened with tears as she boxed up Gil’s cherished mementos—that silly junior karate medal from 3rd grade, the plastic Pinewood Derby trophy from the scouts whose size belied its modest standing of 4th place.

Worst of all were the mounds and mounds of paper. Gil had fancied himself a writer, and his desk, closet and dresser were crammed with sheets ranging from handwriting on notebook paper to computer printouts. Throwing it all away would have been like throwing him away, and Joan had a vague idea that she could edit some of it into a usable form to publish as a memorial tribute. But that meant looking over every scrap, sorting them into piles, and feeling the enormity of Gil’s absence with each word.

“Oh, Gil, Gil, Gil,” Joan said to no one in particular. “Why couldn’t you ever finish anything?”

In her perusal, she had found incomplete drafts of half a dozen novels, one running to over a hundred handwritten pages. There was a poem Gil had written when he started shaving, “Ode to an Electric Razor,” that cut off in mid-stanza where the author couldn’t think of anything that rhymed with “month.” And there were no less than three journals, each of which started strongly with daily entries before devolving into thin and desperate summaries of months or even years.

But it was the final piece Joan found that gave her pause. It had been apart from the others, tucked between Gil’s unkempt sheets, written in an unsteady hand and dated shortly before he had vanished.

The soft pencil writing was deeply smudged; Joan had to smooth it out on the newly-cleared desk and turn the lamp to its highest setting to make out what was there:

“Yesterday, I ripped a hole in the membrane of existence. No problem at all; just held up my hand, got a firm grip on the cosmos, and tugged. And do you know what I saw?”

“Galaxies alight with a billion fires, washing over me like a breaking wave. A city carved from the trunks of trees whose purple branches scraped the moons. A rusted-out gas station sign in a language I can’t read, attended on all sides by a vast sea of sand dunes. The corner of Upham and Stroesser downtown.”

“So I decided to step out—just for a little while. There’s something to be said for the paper-thin fabric of the mundane that ties everything up for us in a neat brown package, for perceiving only what you can see.”

“But for the time being, I’m content to dance among planetary rings in the spiral arm of a distant galaxy, to skate across the molten surface of a world consumed in solar fire, to break like a wave across far-distant Pacific shores thrilling with every undulation.”

“I’m stepping out. I may be back, but I will never be the same.”

Joan set the paper down, and lowered herself into Gil’s office chair. “That doesn’t even sound like him,” she said, glancing at the paper through which she had been sorting. “It’s his handwriting, but…that doesn’t make any sense.” She chewed her lip. Gil had always been a little strange, a little out there, even when they were children playing in the old barn out back. Could that have come roaring back with a vengeance, bearing her brother away on a tide of madness?

The doorbell rang downstairs, and Joan started, almost falling into—and knocking over—her carefully sorted piles.

“Could you get that?” Joan’s mother called from the basement, where she was packing up family heirlooms and antiques. “I think it’s the mailman. Ask him for a mail forwarding form!”

Joan folded Gil’s strange note and slipped into her hip pocket before charging down the stairs to the front door. The rhythm was the same as it had been years before, having stair-races with Gil: two stairs at a time until the landing, then three quick thumps to cover the last five stairs. The two-three shuffle, Gil had called it.

Sure enough, the mailman was at the old ornate oak door, waving and holding up an envelope. It wasn’t Mr. MacReedy, who had been the mailman for years, but rather a younger and more familiar face, possibly the older brother of someone Joan had gone to school with. That was the constant with her hometown, the thing that had driven her to the city—even though people died and retired as always, you still knew them all.

The mailman flashed a flirtatious grin, but Joan wasn’t in the mood. “We are selling this house soon,” she said. “Can I have a mail forwarding form?”

“I’m sorry about what happened to Gil,” the mailman said, ignoring the question. “This package is actually for him.”

“Who’d send him something? Everyone knows he’s gone.”

“He sent it.” The mailman held up the package, which had Gil’s name as the return address. “It was send on a wild goose chase, bouncing from place to place until finally being kicked back. Here, you need to sign for it”

Sure enough, the package was covered with exotic stamps, including one in Spanish and one in what looked like Chinese, and six “return to sender” labels.

Joan signed and took it, closing the door on the mailman before he could make the rest of his delivery (and before she could ask for another mail forwarding form). She made a beeline for the kitchen table, and sawed Gil’s package open with a serrated bread knife. A thick bundle of paper, wrapped in tissue and thoroughly rubberbanded, lay inside. There was no title, no cover page, only Gil’s name and block upon block of neatly printed text.

Glancing over it, Joan thought about calling her parents up but decided to read the pages herself. If they were an extension of the crazy ravings she had found upstairs, into the barbecue pit with them—the family had suffered enough without the fresh burden of insanity.

She pulled up a chair, and began to read.

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Q: How does French cheese get its distinct flavor?

A: From age.

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Secret of the Dragon Fantasy FAQ v. 3.141592653589793238462643383
for the Nonysoft PlayBox
by zzXXsaiyankillaXXzz
dbzsux@takeiteasy.ntz
© 2004 by Notta Realman

***WARNING***
This FAQ is ª, ©, and ¨ by me, zzXXsaiyankillaXXzz. Any attempt at stealing it will be met with long, whiny protest emails and the submission of offending email accounts to multiple spam retailers. It may only be displayed at:

antisocialart dot com (because all my work is art!)
gamesparkcheatsharkspot dot net (because all the cool FAQs hang out there)

Contact me if you plan on distributing, publishing, spell checking, or otherwise molesting my precious words. Don’t think that I won’t sic the lawyers on your sorry asses for stealing my work that manipulates someone else’s intellectual property for the purposes of cheating!

***Table of Contents***
1. FAQ Title
2. WARNING
3. Table of Contents
4. Revision History
5. Characters
6. Walkthrough
7. Side Quests

***Revision History***
v. 3.141592653589793238462643383
Leetgames hired me to do their official strategy manual, so I reverted to an earlier version and spell-checked it.

v. 3
Lots of little fixes, mostly emoticon-related.

v. 2
Added a Table of Contents, since people were whining that they had no idea what was where. No my fault if you’re too damn lazy to read the whole thing.

v. 1
Added Characters and contact information. I was getting a ton of snail mail from disgruntled FAQ readers wondering where everything other than my snazzy intro is, and the fact that my postal address is so widely known fills me with fear and unease. I am therefore moving and providing an email contact. I have left no forwarding address; those of you who threatened to send bombs and live anthrax will have to make do with sending a virus or ads for gonad enlargers.

Removed the chili con carne recipe.

v. 0
Behold, the almighty act of creation! Yea, tremble as zzXXsaiyankillaXXzz forms order out of the chaos and brings light to the blind! Witness, as he brings forth his greatest creation since that 27-part epic Evanglion fanfic back in 2000! Fear me, mortals, for you shall soon be enthralled to the Dread Lord of the Secret Dragon Fantasy FAQ!

Added the intro, disclaimer, warning, and chili con carne recipe.

***Intro***
So, you want to prepare for your epic journey into the land of Clichea, do you? Well, hold on! Stand back, unsheathe that sword, ready a superpotion, and prepare to dive in headfirst!

Avast ye, ye scurvy sea dogs! There be golden spoilers the likes o’ which ye never seen on your scurvy course.

[Yes, I know that the Intro isn’t in the Table of Contents. It doesn’t need to be, dammit! It’s just an unexpected bonus chance to relish my verbal wit.]

***Walkthrough***
COMING SOON! [I do have a life outside this FAQ, you know. I occasionally play other games, once in a while on other systems!]

***Side Quests***
COMING SOON! [Stop bugging me about this! There is no way to unfreeze the Zarg on level thirteen of the Endless Dungeon! And Carmina stays dead!

***Item List***
COMING SOON! [I do have a full-time fast-food job in addition to hundreds of hours spent zombie-eyed in front of the tube! Hold your horses! And no, you can only find three PrestoDrinks in the whole game. There aren’t any more. I don’t care how many Chitterers you kill.]

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#374285

Description: Subject can control streetlights, turning them on or off at will or when suitably distracted or startled. The effects do not extend to any other form of illumination–just streetlamps. Oddly, gaslight lamps are affected where they can be found. In fact, any light installed in a streetlight mounting will be affected provided subject does not witness its installation.

Tactical Uses: Negligible. Subject can, with great concentration, cause the lights to burst or burn out, which may have minor usefulness during certain kinds of night operations.

#125570

Description: Subject can cause localized light rain after ingesting raindrops that they caught themselves. No other form of water, distilled, undistilled, or rain capture, will work: subject must catch drops themselves, though they appear to be able to use a receptacle and store said drops once caught. Depending on the quality and quantity of ingested rainwater, effect will cover anywhere from one square meter to five square kilometers, will begin anywhere from one minute to one hour after ingestion, and will last fifteen minutes to just under two hours.

Tactical Uses: Limited. Rain can sometimes serve as camouflage, distraction, or emergency potable water supply.

#283992

Description: If so inclined, and if allowed to speak at length, subject is capable of inducing temporary depression in listeners. The content of said speech is unimportant, but subjects must be actively listening. Resulting depression lasts anywhere from one hour to one week and is not severe enough to produce bodily harm, only deep discomfort and unease.

Tactical Uses: Nil

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Detective Montgomery, Vice, met Detective Hanson, Homicide, at the latter’s request. Monty appeared at the Costanzo Bros. Bakery, which was at least as well known for being a front to the local Cosa Nostra mobsters as for making the best jelly donuts in the city.

Hanson was leaned against the counter, which was empty; Monty slapped down a five and took a few choice selections off the fresh donut tray.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” said Hanson drily.

“They can keep the change,” said Monty. “So what did you call me here for? You know the chief doesn’t like us buying donuts at Costanzo Bros., even if they are the best.”

“You remember a kid called Remo Aiolfi?” Hanson said. “Twenties, dropout, mellow to the point he probably took Ambien to wake up? Kid was baked, and baked hard.”

“Yeah, I remember him,” said Monty. “Kid was busted multiple times for pot, always was able to slip the charge or get it knocked down to community service. Don Colombera’s boys used him as a bagman, didn’t they?”

“My snitches have it on good authority that the kid was playing both sides, letting Don Anselmetti have a taste occasionally or selling him information,” Hanson said.

“Boy must have been toked to try something like that.” Monty took a meaty bite of a jelly donut, splattering filling all over the place. “God, this isn’t the Costanzos’ best batch, is it?”

Hanson shrugged. “That’s probably why Remo Aiolfi turned up dead,” he said. “Maybe the Colomberas did it, maybe the Anselmettis, maybe they both decided it would be better for business if he went away.”

“I’ll say,” Monty agreed through a faceful of donut. “How’d they off him?”

“Best as we can tell, they put him through a wood chipper and used him as a filler in the Costanzos’ latest batch.”

Monty stopped chewing, held out his donut at an arm’s length, and paled visibly.

“I told you the kid was baked, and baked hard,” Hanson said. “What did you think I meant?”

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