Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

Dilcher “Pipkin” Kidd had worked for the Internal Revenue Service as an auditor for nearly two years when his employers realized that he did not exist.

This fact came to light during a routine background check in the auditing department–an audit of the auditors, as it were. Pipkin Kidd’s file was found to contain a number of impossibilities, from his bizarrely unlikely name to his even more bizarrely unlikely nickname to his place of birth in a town that had been swallowed by the sea 100 years ago. The inconsistencies were too legion and too flagrant to be mere forgeries or mistakes; the IRS auditor general came to the inescapable conclusion, as did his colleagues, that Pipkin Kidd simply could not exist.

As a result, the auditor general called Kidd into his office and confronted him with the evidence of his non-existence. Kidd, unable to argue, obligingly ceased to exist at that very moment.

A thorough review of the case by special agents of the federal offices of inspectors general found no wrongdoing; as Kidd had not existed, no one could be held liable for his cessation of existence but himself. Furthermore, the inspectors general found that people like Kidd who did not exist constituted a security threat–they could be blackmailed, or maliciously cease to exist at inopportune moments.

The IRS therefore conducted a thorough existence audit and found 14 other employees, ranging from mailroom clerks to the Undersecretary of the Decimals and Fractions office. Each was duly confronted with the fact of their nonexistence, ceased to exist, and was replaced. Alarmed, the government instituted procedures to broaden the scope of the audit and began a program of thorough existence testing at regular intervals, as hiring procedures did not allow for such screening.

Critics decried this as the most vicious form of discrimination, but as the people so discriminated against did not exist, the Supreme Court upheld the decision (in a landmark case that led to three counsels ceasing to exist in chambers). In the years since, non-existence has become more difficult to prove, and accusing someone directly cannot be done without a thorough paper trail. In turn, people worried that they might be non-existent (existential crises do not seem to have the same effect as a direct accusation backed by proof) have taken to increasingly elaborate means to protect and disguise themselves.

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The sect, which flourished in Saikyo between the wars, was based on Shigeyama’s idiosyncratic reading of Japanese history and Buddhist metaphysics. Shigeyama taught that there were two worlds: the Floating World of earthly pleasure and delight, and the Sorrowful World, which overlaid, veiled, and hid the former. It’s clear that the Edo-era culture of Yoshiwara, barely a generation removed from Shigeyama’s lifetime, was the inspiration for his “Floating World” just as the Buddhist cycle of death and rebirth inspired his “Sorrowful World.”

Shigeyama preached a sort of prosperity gospel to his followers, promising them that their dedication to pleasures of the flesh and rejection of the “Sorrowful World” and its denizens would bring unprecedented prosperity. It was a philosophy that found many takers, since the postwar prosperity in Japan had given way to the Depression and austere militarism was on the rise. To be fair, Shigeyama preached a very Japanese message in Saikyo, and the things he and his followers engaged in were versions of older art forms like kabuki, geisha, and the like (albeit generally racy, sexualized versions strongly influenced by Jazz Age debauchery).

Japanese authorities tolerated Shigeyama at first, largely because of the wealth and power of his followers. However, as his movement grew, the military grew nervous over reports that the sect was stockpiling captured weapons from China and attempting to extend its power into Saikyo’s government infrastructure. When the city moved to a mayor and council form of government, all of the new positions were dominated by Shigeyama men. This was enough for the Army to begin an investigation; the mysterious deaths of the investigators two weeks later caused the General Staff Office to deploy a regiment of troops to the city to “restore order.”

Shigeyama declared that “the forces of the Sorrowful World were at the doorstep” and his followers resisted the incursion with the very weapons they had been suspected of possessing. The incident was strongly censored in the Japanese press, who referred to it only as the “Saiko Anti-Gangsterism Police Operation.” Casualties are difficult to estimate thanks to the destruction of most major archival sources, but material compiled by American occupation forces after the war indicated that as many as 1000 people may have died in intense urban combat, with military casualties being assigned to units in Manchuria and China to cover up their loss. They also uncovered evidence of an extensive tunnel network beneath the much-reduced city of Saikyo, and evidence to suggest that an armed uprising against “the forces of the Sorrowful World” was in the early planning stages.

The sect leader Shigeyama was never located. A number of tunnels had been sealed from the outside by Japanese Army Engineers during the fighting using high-explosive charges, and it’s thought that Shigeyama remains there, entombed with his most loyal followers in an eerie preview of the fate that befell many of his attackers just a few years later.

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“They look like…scarecrows,” I said. They were more detailed, sure, and wearing newer clothes, but I could see bits of straw poking out here and there and traces of the wire armature holding the whole thing up.

“Yep, that’s what they are, more or less,” said Sandra. “Do you remember Abby Woodman?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Quiet girl. Real religious. Didn’t she move away after high school?”

“Was an accountant for a while, or so I hear,” Sandra said. She turned the car onto Sycamore, passing several more posed dummies including one that looked like it was waiting in the old bus stop for a service that had been discontinued for 10 years. “Came back to Deerton to take care of her parents. The farm out on US 13, remember?”

“Yeah, that’s right,” I said, still looking at the scarecrow out of the corner of my eye as we passed it. “The Baptist Church used to use their cart and crop for hay rides.”

“Well, there wasn’t much for Abby to do when she got home, other than look after her folks,” Sandra said. “So she decided to try planting a few crops to sell in the farmer’s market over in Cascadia. The scarecrow part of that you can probably figure out for yourself.”

“Well, yeah,” I said. We were driving past the site of the old Quick Stop gas station, which had been abandoned and boarded up with snacks and magazines still on its shelves. Through dusty and cracked windows, I could see a scarecrow-employee behind the desk and a scarecrow-customer opposite them. “But it’s a long way from there to putting them up everywhere.”

“Well, you know how it’s been in Deerton. Every year more of the young people move away and more of the old folks die. Abby thought the old McGruder place next door to her seemed lonely, so she made a scarecrow to liven it up. Dressed it in some of Earl McGruder’s old things from their attic. Before you know it, she was putting them everywhere.”

“Did people…pay her for them?” I said with a shudder.

“Some did. I know that the bank bought a bunch to put in foreclosed houses at night with light timers to try and cut down on Cascadia punks coming in and wrecking up the place. But a lot of them Abby just made herself. She got pretty good with the paper-mache, a lot of the scarecrow heads look just like the people that used to live there.”

We passed another group of scarecrows, this one in front of the old firehouse. “Well, Abby’s sure been busy,” I said. “I’d like to have a chat with her about all this.”

“Well, that can be arranged. But don’t expect too much of a response, since she’s dead.”

“What?” I cried.

“Yeah. Two months back. Cerebral hemorrhage, or so they say.”

I looked back out the window. “She must have been at it right until she died,” I said sadly. “How long have those firefighters been there?”

Sandra licked her lips. “A week.”

“What?” I said. “You mean she made them before she died, and someone else put them there?”

“A week,” Sandra said again, firmly. “Which is why you and I needed to have a talk.”

Inspired by this news story.

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Most of the early incursions were in Antarctica. I don’t think anyone even noticed them, and if they did, they must have dismissed it as something natural.

They didn’t seem to completely grasp the way our communications network functioned. It was nearly two days before they swatted our satellites from the sky, and some cell towers were still standing by the end of the first week, provided you could get power. That–power–they understood very quickly.

There were some localized successes, especially on the second day when the communications network was still active and the military still had reserves of jet fuel. A few even talked of victory.

By the end of the second week, the talk was no longer of victory, but survival. We’d cost them too much, and they weren’t about to underestimate us again.

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“Sometimes I wonder if the things I see every day are signs that we’ve peaked as a society.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, look at where the money and the public interest is these days. You have more ink spilled over pro sports than politics. More kids wanting to be fashion designers and pro athletes than doctors, engineers, or even writers. The biggest thing we have going for us at the moment seems to be brain drain from other countries because our standard of living is better than theirs, but that can’t last forever. Our civilization, and the ones like it for that matter, don’t seem as hungry anymore.”

“Well, that’s literally true. We don’t have to worry about hunger and basic necessities anymore, by and large.”

“Right. And because of that it seems like we’re able to give free, safe reign to our caveman tribal instincts by investing them in new things. Like sports teams, fashion lines, other ridiculous cultural us-verses-them propositions that don’t even carry the weight of sports and fashion from a generation ago, much less things that are really important.”

“Hang on a sec. Is this just because your favorite team didn’t get into one of the 700 bowl games they have in the postseason now for revenue purposes?”

“…no comment.”

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Vyaeh Skirmish Flotilla 21 consisted of a single cruiser, three frigates, and twelve auxiliary vessels including barracks ships, tenders, and a prize of war recently captured from a rebellious Krne settlement. The cruiser was known as the Cunynak, after the Old Vyaeh god of mercy, and like all Vyaeh vessels had been purchased by a private citizen and manned with recruits and “conscripted races” they had mustered themselves. In this case, a wealthy trader from the Vyaeh Core with connections to the Silent Court had purchased the ship, named himself commander, and recruited the officers from veteran and recently graduated members of the small but potent military class.

Though the merchant herself maintained official command, and her donation had earned her the rank and pay of Commander, she remained safely in the core and actual day-to-day command rested with Subcommander Lhayr. A dedicated lifer, but one who was from a poor family from far outside the Core, Lhayr herself could aspire to no further advancement unless by an extraordinary act of the Silent Court itself.

Such honors were only earned in battle, which the Skirmish Flotillas were well-equipped to provide.

The flotilla had not seen much action; swatting down a rebellious Krne settlement and “conscripting” the surviving adults of military age was hardly an action worth noting. The Krne were stupid brutes who rose at least once per decade per colony, and the single frigate defending the settlement had not even possessed any ship-to-ship weapons, trying instead to ram the Cunynak at sublight speed. Lhayr ached for meatier foes and more glittering prizes, and had written frequent dispatches to the Core requesting such, or information that might lead to such. Given the sorry state of Vyaeh bureaucracy and the billions of similar petitions clogging the Silent Court’s docket, she had no doubt that her missives continued to circulate endlessly in the encrypted Vyaeh FTL communications network–her civilization’s greatest shining achievement aside from its wealth.

So when Aspirant Ryll, Lhayr’s communications and liaison officer, reported an incoming message detailing the location of a lightly defended human colony, the Subcommander was all to anxious to hear.

First, she demanded to know the source. Ryll had none to give, as the message had come through the FTL network with no sender and no metadata. Lhayr then requested a targeted long-range scan of the world in question; when the results same in, they confirmed the message’s content: a human colony on the specified world, with only a handful of light vessels in orbit.

Lhayr called for opinions from her command staff and the adjutants in charge of the other vessels in the flotilla. Ryll himself urged caution, warning of a possible trap given the duplicitous behavior for which humans were known. Each of the three frigates were of the opinion that the continuing low-level conflict over systems and resources required sharp, savage blows to be struck against the humans–either to bring them back to the negotiating table or, ideally, to bring about a conflict in which the Vyaeh could assert their rightful suzerainty or reduce the impudent humans to the status of a “conscripted” race like the Krne. The auxiliary ships advised caution as well, given that the location in question was at the extreme limits of the flotilla’s range and as such they could expect no reinforcements. And the barracks ships, predictably, inquired only as to what percentage of any prizes of war they could expect.

At the end of the deliberations, Lhayr silenced her subordinates and addressed the flotilla over an open channel. The humans, she said, had too long behaved as if they were equals of the Vyaeh. History had shown that they could only be taught the error of their ways through terror, and as such terror was what they would receive. Skirmish Flotilla 21 would be the instrument for delivering a powerful and unambiguous message on behalf of the Silent Court.

And if it so happened that this message, this terror, this victory brought them glory and advancement in the eyes of any who would care to take notice…so much the better.

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The Captain’s crew explored the reef and lagoon for several hours, many of them marveling at the long-silent technology and well-preserved relics of the Bygone Age that still littered the beach. The tower at the center of the lagoon was at an unsteady angle, and exploration was limited to ten minutes at a time by the Captain’s orders. He also opened the arms locker to make sure that none of his men attempted to make off with a valuable antique, as he fully intended to see anything they took from the islands placed in a museum or given over for a thorough examination.

“Look at this, Cap’n,” said the bosun upon returning from his shift exploring the unsteady tower. “A message in a bottle.”

“Aye, that it is. And a fine way of keeping the note from being corroded by salt water and spray.” Uncorking it, the Captain read the missive aloud:

To all who may read this, know that I have struck out in search of something bigger than my island and myself. I do not regret taking this chance over a life of safety and comfort. All I ask of anyone who finds this note is to honor my choice and to do what they can to see that our little home, and the years we spent there, are not wholly forgotten.

-Nerissa-of-the-Sea
-5734-MY

“What do you make of that, Cap’n?” said the bosun, noting his commander’s silence after the last words faded away amid the roar of surf and sky.

“I suppose that whoever lived here made the same choice we all did,” the Captain said thoughtfully. “We’ll do our best to honor their wishes.”

“Do you suppose they found their way? Found another shore?”

The Captain looked out to sea, taking in the green swells, the dark shape of his own vessel, and the towering clouds on the far-distant horizon. “I’d like to think so,” he said after a time. “I’d like to think so.”

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What do many words using Y and W instead of proper vowels have in common? They’re Welsh, of course. Wales was systematically looted of its vowels after its conquest to feed the English hunger for unnecessary vowelery after the French fashion. That’s right, the “u” in “colour” doesn’t just make its natural pronunciation “coh-lure,” it’s also a blood vowel stolen from a people so vowel-poor that they had to scrape by with Y and W.

Yes, the vowel-mines of Wales were long the envy of English monarchs, as England itself exhausted its own vowel reserves during the ongoing and debilitating Shouting Wars against France. The Welsh at first were able to simply sell their vowels to an England anxious to be able to match French words like “eau” or “nouveau.” English looting and purchase of vowels was so prevalent that even the last leader of Wales, Llywelyn, was forced to make do with a single vowel in his name while his English conqueror, Edward, has two.

England is not alone in the exploitative harvesting of vowels. French and Italian vowels mines, long the most productive in the world, had all but run out by the 1700s, forcing them to look elsewhere. For a time the French were able to import vowels taken from North America by force or trade, but with the cession of their vowel-rich territory of Quebec, they were forced to look elsewhere. That somewhere was Poland, which was rich in vowel mines but had been undergoing a language crisis since looting the Ottoman camp at the Siege of Vienna, as Ottoman Turkish was at the time written without vowels altogether.

As a result, Poland was partitioned, with the lion’s share of the territory going to the Russian Empire. With no need for Poland’s Latin vowels, having their own Cyrillic vowel mines deep in the Urals, the Russians instead exploited Polish vowels for export, selling them to the French and Italians. Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Russia to guarantee his vowel supply, as he needed eight vowels to say his own name alone, and a steady supply of Polish blood vowels were guaranteed in the later French-Russian alliance. All the while, Poland was so looted of vowels that they had to make do with words like “wszystko” and “cześć.” The downtrodden Polish made creative use of diacritics to make up for their looted syllabary, but their vowel mines were ultimately entirely depleted.

Of course, Americans are not blameless. The constant insertion of British-style blood vowels into words to make them seem sophisticated is a constant bane, and many of the blood vowels so used now come from Africa, where once vowel-rich places like Ouagadougou are now exploited for foreign sale by warlords.

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Author Adriana Schmeidler’s provocative new book was a fictionalized tale of her struggle with eating disorders. Provocative partly because of its subject matter and partly because of the way it commingled the serious health risks of “the Nervosa Twins,” anorexia and bulimia, with a light and breezy comic tone.

Accordingly, the book’s publisher–mindful of the enormous success of Schmeidler’s past three books–decided on an aggressive advertising campaign. With the mantra that no press could be bad press, and attempting to trade as much as possible on Schmeidler’s newfound literary fame, they made her the centerpiece of said ad campaign. “Adriana Schmeidler Must Diet” trumpeted the ads, which featured the waifish author looking decidedly malnourished. The implication, naturally, was that a woman as slight as Schmeidler had no need of a diet.

The publisher had expected–indeed, they had counted on–a firestorm of protest. Schmeidler herself had a few reservations, but ultimately saw the novel’s comic tone and controversial content as the best way to start a national conversation on a topic she held near and dear.

What none of them had counted on was a simple printer’s error: the ad copy went to print and banner ads reading, instead, “Adriana Schmeidler Must Die.”

And it was only a matter of time before someone took her up on that apparent request.

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“You’re very fetching.”

“Thank you, madame.”

“Like a dog. Now go run off and fetch a stick or something.”

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