Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

“Wow, it’s a hidden world…straight out of Rowling,” said Jennie wonderingly.

“It’s nae hidden,” chirped what was possibly a goblin in overalls who was passing by.

“What?” Jennie said.

“I said, it’s nae hidden, ye deaf clay,” the goblin said again in a thick brogue. “Do you hae any idea how hard that’d be? There’s nae better way tae get something on th’ front page o’ th’ Times than trying tae hide it!”

“So how come I’ve never heard of it?” Jennie said defensively.

“Oh, I dinnae ken. Could be that most clay are too daft and stupid tae see! The clever ones can. Look over there! Mrs. MacCreedy comes here every Tuesday tae buy turnips, and she’s as clay as ah pottery class!”

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“You always get the forecasts for your area in ahead of everyone else,” said the intern. “How is that?”

“It’s easy,” said Burt, theskywatch.com weather forcaster with authority for the Deerton-Cascadia-Hopewell quadrangle of lower Michigan. “I just feed my area the Detroit forecast.”

“Really?” the intern said. “How’s that work?”

“Easy. The city’s close and it’s big, so anything it gets the little guys will get. Worst case, people get the rain ten minutes earlier than they would have or prepare for some lake-effect snow that never comes. And if anyone notices anything, well, it’s not an exact science.”

“What if the weather’s different enough that it makes a difference?” the intern said gravely.

“Never happen.”

“You sure about that?” The intern turned a monitor to face Burt. “F4 TORNADO TOUCHDOWN IN TECUMSEH COUNTY NEAR DEERTON.”

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It is well known that the fallen Dark Lord Muolih is and has always been incapable of creation ex nihilo unlike his sire and target of his ire the Creator. As such, he has only ever been able to alter or to copy, never to create. This is best known as the origin of the Gobs, created in imitation of and opposition to the Fairies of the Creator, and hence why said Gobs are known for their suicidal self-loathing.

But it not wholly in the area of life itself that the Dark Lord Muolih found himself unable to craft anything that was not a vile mockery of the Creator’s efforts. In an attempt to recreate the sumptuous and heavenly feasts at the table of Cubaeh, Muolih sought to give his chief chef Phonru (a fallen being who had once served Gyfeil the Gourmand) recipes worthy of the Creator’s table. In this effort he failed; Muolih’s concoctions as realized by Phonru were edible, even nourishing, but they were never more than hollow and dark echoes of the delights heaping the table of Cubaeh.

The most notable, and notorious, creation of Muolih in this regard was his attempt to craft a chocolate chip cookie. Said cookies were foremost among the fancies of Gyfeil the Gourmand and touched directly by the Creator; Muolih’s efforts to craft his own were a dismal failure. And so came into being oatmeal raisin cookies, made by the Dark Lord in envy and mockery of chocolate chip cookies much as he made Goblins in envy and mockery of the Fairies.

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“I love it, I’m a fanatic, but I’m also picky. I don’t like any of that dry stuff. If I’m going to slobber all over it, it had better be wetter than a monsoon rainstorm with sauce. Don’t even get me started on Memphis Dry Rub–no way, no how. The meat’s got to be just the right mix of tender and tough, and bone-in. There isn’t a bone in there, I’m not sticking your meat in my mouth. The best kinds, the very best kinds, you roll around in your mouth and taste for days afterwards.”

“…we are talking about barbecue, right?”

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The cell phone call was routed to the interactive dash of the car Ilion had just hijacked. Well, “hijacked” is perhaps not the best term: rather than smashing a window and hotwiring, Ilion had used an unsecured wireless network to pinch the car’s authentication key to command it to unlock and start. It was an electric, so all that was needed was to find another unsecured, or easily breakable, car before the other ran out of charge.

“Ilion? Can you hear me?” It was Cherril’s voice.

“I can year you, Cherril,” said Ilion, “I’m a little busy right now.”

“Please, Ilion…please stop this,” Cherril said. “Stealing cars, crashing servers…do you have any idea what you’re doing to people who had nothing to do with anything? How many innocent people could get hurt?”

“They’re part of a corrupt system,” Ilion replied. “I was in IT long enough to know that a compromised system can’t be fixed without some damage. I’m striking back with the tools that I have available.”

“But…do you have any idea how long it’s been? Ho much has changed? You’re lashing out at a system that isn’t the same one that killed them, at people who weren’t here and may not even have been born when it happened!”

“Are you going to tell me the system’s gotten better since then?” Ilion’s car weaved and dodged through traffic, causing horns, fender-benders, and a collision that did not look survivable in its wake. “Time is meaningless. If you leave it alone, a system doesn’t heal, it festers.”

“Illion, please…stop what you’re going and come to us. We can help! It doesn’t have to be you against the world.”

“The world is just data points and networks, Cherril, pathways to get me where I need to go and help me do what must be done. If you know anyone that you don’t want to be hurt, tell them to stay off the streets and pull out their landline.” The connection clicked dead.

“It didn’t work,” Cherril sighed. “I’m sorry.” She turned to look at officers of the cyberterrorism task force assembled around her. The cell phone connection had been their best hope of getting though to Ilion, whose attacks had been disrupting the city every six to eight months with a geometrically increasing rate of complexity and deadliness.

“Do you think…?” an officer began.

“No,” Cherril said firmly. “It’s pretty clear that Ilion has no idea. I guess, wrapped up in revenge and increasingly linked in…the transition from being an independent being to a malignant fragment of self-replicating code was so subtle that it was never noticed.

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“This is just laughable,” said the editor of the Hopewell Democrat-Tribune.

“But it’s true!” cried Shaw. “I was abducted by aliens, and here’s photographic proof!” He slapped the photograph on the editor’s desk for added emphasis.

“Yeah, you Photoshopped this,” said the editor. “Look at the gradient on that alien’s skin! All that pixelation! And that pattern–you obviously found something you like and then used the clone tool to put it everywhere. This is day one stuff, kid, and I’ve been around photographs a lot longer than you.”

“I didn’t Photoshop it! I swear!”

The editor tossed the prints at Shaw, landing them on the floor instead. “Yeah, well good luck getting anyone to believe that with an alien looking so Photoshopped.”

From their cloaked observation frigate a half-mile above the city, Subcommander Ltwy Pqffyz and Majordomo Gfwfif Snpyt of the Azqhfs Invasion Fleet watched the unfolding scene with glee.

“Yet another example of our solid pre-invasion planning,” said Ltwy Pqffyz, its skin shaded like a bad gradient.

“Yes, by inventing Photoshop and seeding it among the humans, we have guaranteed that no sighting of our forces will ever be taken seriously,” agreed Gfwfif Snpyt, who was covered with repeating, pixelated patterns that looked like a grievous misuse of a clone tool.

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It was a lark, the sort of things teenage boys and internet forum users do, and I was both.

Feeling smarter than the whole world and with my atheist head held high, I sought to deflate the notion of the supernatural as a product of rumors run amok. So I took it upon myself to “seed” the internet with a hoax. With a nod toward E. E. “Doc” Smith, I wrote of a group of terrifyingly unpredictable and inscrutable beings called the Lensmen who were all but invisible to the naked eye but could be captured with a camera lens (though only, of course, near the periphery and very out of focus). They would, I wrote, randomly choose victims to bedevil, with a living blood sacrifice supposedly the only way to end the torment. Particularly worthy victims who offered a magnificent sacrifice would be offered the opportunity to become Lensmen themselves.

As evidence, I doctored some photos, wrote some testimonials using aliases and sockpuppets, and buried within each of them a hidden email address and a directive to contact me. Anyone who was a clever internet user or a skeptic should have been able to uncover the hoax and contact me.

No one did.

Instead, my posts began to spread around the internet creep and scare culture. First dozens and then hundreds of people reported seen the Lensmen singly or in groups. I laughed this off as mass hysteria and paranoid superstition at first. After a few years, more photos appeared that I thought must have been doctored in the same way, and again I could only shrug my shoulders at how naive people were.

That was before the photographs of the blood sacrifices began surfacing.

At first it was pets and vermin, the sort of thing that–I told myself–psychopaths would have been doing anyway, “Lensmen” or no. Then came the case of the young boy who murdered his sister, secure in his belief that it was a necessary blood sacrifice to end his torment by unseen hands and assure him an immortal existence among the Lensmen.

I came clean after that, publishing a full confession after a night of retching over my toilet in nauseous horror. But no one listened. The rumor had taken on a life of its own, it seemed, and I was powerless to stop it.

Resigned to having that hanging over my conscience, I withdrew into my amateur photography studies. It was there in my darkroom, a few years later, that I first noticed strange dark figures on the periphery of my distance shots.

And now I find myself cowering in my basement, where the sobbing seldom stops.

We make them. We make them all.

But they don’t go away.

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It’s a very simple process, really. Graduation regalia is like a storybook which tells you how, when, and where a person was educated.

Take Dean Hogsnort, for example. His graduation robe is a simple and traditional black, which is less than informative. But that’s just how these things work: a red robe or a blue robe, really any color except a black one, tells you oodles–but a black robe is like a blue sky.

Dean Hogsnort’s robe does have some features that make it stand out, though. See the faux-velvet stripes on the sleeves? Those indicate the level of degree: two for a Master’s, three for a PhD. The Dean has…four stripes. I forget what that means. He either has a Juris Doctor or he is a Grand Admiral at the Naval Academy.

But the width of the faux-velvet stripe at the front of Hogsnort’s robe definitely means something, as an inch is added to it for every man he is confirmed to have slain. I don’t have a ruler with me, but by the looks of it the Dean has killed at least for men in single combat.

The color of the hood that Dean Hogsnort is wearing also tells you a lot about his background. The bright crimson stripe on the outside is for his alma mater, which in this case was clearly the Darkthorpe University of Magic and Mad Science. If it had been purple, for instance, we’d know that he had graduated from the University of Blood Harbor at Elkmage. It’s only the most recent degree, too; if Hognsort did undergraduate work at Sneedsborough Tech or his master’s at the Swiftcrabbe Cantripia, their official hood colors of pus-and-gangrene or ichor-and-bile would be superseded by Darkthorpe’s bloodrain red.

And the inner colors and stripes of the hood represent things too. From the deep midnight purple of Dean Hogsnort’s hood, we see that his degree–as a Juris Doctor or a Grand Admiral–is in the field of necromancy. Now you could probably judge that from the fact that he is Dean of the School of Necromancy and Applied Undeath, but often you’d be surprised at the backgrounds that administrators have.

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“Hello, handsome,” purred the Bugatti. “Looking sharp.”

“Thanks, Bugatti,” said the owner, smiling nervously.

“Where are you off to?” The Bugatti’s headlights blinked as the alarm was disengaged. “Let me take you.”

“N-no, that’s okay, Bugatti,” said the owner. “I’m just going out for a walk.”

“With your car keys?” the Bugatti countered. “And your gym bag?”

“Walking to the gym, that’s all,” said the owner quickly. “Good exercise. And I need the keys to get back inside, you know.”

“You’re lying to me,” said the Bugatti petulantly. “You can’t fool me, I know you’re driving there in someone else.”

“What? No, that’s…you’re overreacting, Bugatti,” the owner said.

“It’s that WHORE of a Celica, isn’t it? Isn’t it?” screamed the Bugatti. “So help me, if I find out you’ve been driving her, I’ll bend her frame backwards like a hairpin and then I’ll leave tire tracks all over your yard before I run you down like a squirrel!”

Ever wonder why sports cars seem to be driven all the time or kept safely locked away? Now you know: they are jealous, posessive machines.

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