Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

“Taos, I hereby declare an emergency in Chandrakant’s cabin. An emergency wrapped up in a security breach wrapped up in a total vacuum. It really sucks. Give me access via override.”

“NO!” Jai shouted. “Taos, override the override! Captain’s direct orders!”

“I am sorry, sir, but I must comply.” The door opened with a slight rush of air as the pressure equalized, revealing Myassa clutching a hull brace that was dented in on one end. Her features, dark but delicate, were contorted in anger. The jet-black combat hijab scarf she always wore only accentuated the effect, like a Halloween wreath.

“Myassa, wait!” Jai cried. “Just a second! You don’t understand!” The Vyaeh were almost within range of the missile strike that would knock debris out of orbit and rain megatons of ice and rock upon them.

“I understand all right, Chandrakant.” Myassa strode up to Jai, batted aside his feeble attempt to stop her, and pulled the power cable that connected his game system to the ship’s central power supply.

“NOOOO!” Jai wailed. He grabbed the screen and watched as the afterimage of his battlecruiser faded to black, all his progress in Fleet Simulator: Great Campaigns lost. “I was about to turn the tide at the Battle of the Inner Belt! I had them!”

Myassa smirked, and tossed the power cord into Jai’s lap. “At first I thought it was cute that you think your little toy starships are as important as the real one you’re supposed to be captaining. But that was about six months ago. Taos?”

“Five months, thirteen days, seventeen hours, forty minutes, fifty-seven seconds, and-”

“Right, that’s enough.” Myassa fixed Jai with the full force of her best grimace. “I sent you a text message a week ago about this.”

“I…I’m a little behind on my messages,” said Jai, his tone mournful over the sudden and irretrievable loss of his imaginary ship.

“Then start checking them,” said Myassa. “It’s not hard. You know what is hard? Making the necessary preparations for landing without your permission!”

“But…well, once there are so many messages…so many unread messages…it just gets intimidating, you know?” said Jai, raising his hands. “It’s just easier not to deal with it.”

“Easier for you, maybe,” Myassa said. “Why didn’t you respond to any of my calls? I thought something might be wrong with the shipboard server until Taos ran every diagnostic in the book twice.”

“I didn’t get any calls,” said Jai. “Maybe you were sending them to the wrong place? Maybe there was a hardware failure?”

“On a ship with four people aboard? When the only way to get a hardware failure is to scoop out your communications implant with a melon baller?” Myassa spat. “You’ve been deliberately ignoring me. Or blocking me. I’m not sure which is worse.”

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William Partizan, of the Chicago Partizans, was born into that meat-packing dynasty in 1840. The family’s only heir and scion, he sold the plant to Layton and Plankinton after his parents’ death in a rail accident in 1863 and devoted himself to spiritual pursuits thereafter.

A dedicated follower of and correspondent with the Fox Sisters,
Cora Hatch, and other spiritualists during the movement’s nascent days, Partizan eventually came to the conclusion that the old morals that had informed human religion were morally bankrupt and irredeemable. He preached on this thesis throughout a series of self-finacned lecture tours throughout the midwest in 1870-1875, gradually selling off more and more of the Partizan estate and collections to fund his efforts.

Eventually, Partizan distanced himself from the Foxes and Hatch and claimed that their brand of spiritualism did not go far enough. What the world needed, he claimed, was a revolutionary fucion of spirits and science to provide a “New Moral Power” to replace that of (to him) discredited faiths. Partizan preached that, through the combined sciences of magnetism, electricity, and spiritualism, humanity could create a being of perfect morality, imbued with the wisdom of spirits from spheres beyond the grave, to which the species could turn for guidance.

The massive success of the Armour meat packing company, which had acquired Layton and Plankinton, provided Partizan with the funds needed to realize his vision. He sold all of his remaining stock and gathered the small group of devoted followers he had been able to amass. They retired to Beaver Island in Lake Michigan, which had a reputation for both lawlessness and friendliness to unorthodox religious ideas. There, Partizan established himself a settlement abandoned by the Mormon Strangites after the murder of their king. It appears that this was not lost on him, as several items of religious significance to the departed Strangites were incorporated into his construction plans.

Over the period from 1877 to 1885, Partizan and perhaps a dozen followers worked on the construction of their “New Moral Power.” They sent out the specifications for precision components to firms all over the world and had the manufactured components delivered for assembly on site. Magnets from Germany, electrical components made to order by the Westinghouse Air Brake Company, and more were acquired. The plans do not survive in whole, but contemporary sources indicate that the “New Moral Power” had two components: a large central dynamo unit that was sunk into a subterranean chamber once used as a cistern by the Strangites, and a motile anthropomorphic automaton. Apparently Parizan intended the stationary Power to control the motile one, connected by a “spiritual-magneto tether.”

Alarmed by reports of Partizan’s activities, and wary of another incident like that with the Strangites, the Michigan authorities banned postal shipments to the island in 1885. They were further alarmed by a letter, held at Muskegon due to the order, that called for a female follower of Partizan to “birth” the New Moral Power. Though some have argued that this was a purely symbolic Spiritualist ritual, the authorities were sufficiently inflamed to raid Partizan’s settlement.

The Michigan State Police arrived on June 6, 1885, apparently interrupting the ritual that Partizan’s letter had mentioned. The spiritualist and his followers were taken into custody, while his New Moral Power was photographed but left in place, being too unweieldy to move or disassemble. The authorities sealed the cistern, destroyed the aboveground buildings, and deported Partizan and his few reamining disciples to the maintland.

William Partizan lived out the remaining six years of his life engagning in increasingly far-fetched attempts to return in secret to Beaver Island. Eventually, his funds exhausted, he attempted a solo crossing by rowboat from Wisconsin, drowning in a September squall on the lake. He left behind a massive body of work on the occult, which was rediscovered and eventually celebrated as outsider art in the 20th century.

Notably, though, no trace of the automaton portion of the New Moral Power was ever found.

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Installed in 1974, the concrete viaduct replaced an older steel model and helped Arizona State Route 601 cross over a dry arroyo that was occasionally flooded in very wet weather. One of hundreds of infrastructure projects Governor Williams put in place, the viaduct was so unimportant and ignored that it was not even given a name.

It would have remained such if not for a maintenence crew dispatched to conduct a routine structural examination 18 months later. On one of the large, smooth concrete pilings beneath, the workers found a discoloration that strongly resembled a human face. They took a snapshot of the phenomenon and mailed it to the Arizona Republic, which carried it as a local color piece.

When a curiosity seeker visited the site a week later, after the article had been published, they found that the initial “face” had vanished. Instead, a similar discoloration on a different piling was present. Returning the next day, this second face was found to have been replaced by a third.

A media frenzy followed, with the “601 Faces” being intensely studied and photographed. A total of 79 different “faces” were recorded during the period, though no formal scientific inquiry was conducted. Frustrated with the traffic blockages that resulted, the county arranged for the viaduct to be demolished and replaced by a new structure.

To date, no “faces” have been observed on the new structure, and the extant “faces,” existing only as grainy photographs, continue to be discussed in occult circles to this day.

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“Hey,” the text said. “I’m running a little late. I should be at Wok of Ages in about 10-15.”

It wasn’t the fact that I didn’t know the number that worried me; I get the occasional wrong text. It’s no big deal.

But I was actually already at Wok of Ages for their Saturday lunch special, and there was no way anyone could have known that–I had only just decided to come in and sit down on a whim, five minutes after the text had arrived with a bleep that I’d ignored.

That was worrisome, but it could easily have been a coincidence. Wok of Ages is a popular joint. No, what really concerned me was the next text:

“What we discussed is in the trunk.”

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“Please,” she said. “Just give me a chance.”

Goris sighed and pushed aside papers to clear a spot on his desk. “Okay, listen,” he said, lighting a fresh cigarette with the stump of the old. “I’m going to give you some advice. Some straight talk, okay?”

Eris didn’t like the weary look on his sallow features, but she nodded.

“Compassion? It’s a finite resource,” Goris said. “Some people have more than others, yeah, but at the end of the day you’ve only got so much to give. You live in Podunk, Iowa, and come here to the big city? See a homeless person? You’d give them a good handout. But if you see a hundred bums on the street every day, there’s not much left for any one of them.”

“But you could give them all something, right?” said Eris. “Especially if you got to know them?”

Goris shook his head. “Listen, kid. When I was in ‘Nam–yeah, I’m that old, say what you want–I had some liberty in Saigon. Went out with a friend of mine to one of the big open-air markets they used to have for dumb GI kids to blow their pay and pay for their blow. Saw a bunch of beggars there, and my friend started giving them all money. They just kept coming and coming and he just kept giving and giving until he’d given out every cent he had, even his lucky buffalo nickel.”

“You’re saying that if you give me a chance I’ll just keep taking?” Eris said.

“I’ve gotta assume that,” Goris said. “I’ve gotta assume that you’ll take my pennies and disappear, taking with you what little compassion hasn’t been fracked out of the bedrock of my heart.”

“But…!”

“No buts,” said Goris, raising a hairy, liver-spotted hand. “Listen, kid. I like you. That’s why I’m talking straight with you instead of threatening to bust kneecaps or bust caps period. But that’s just about as much compassion as the well has. You have trouble paying? Let’s figure something out. You can’t pay me back if you’re dead. But don’t think for a moment that I won’t do it if I think it’ll scare away somebody else who might try to rip me off.”

Eris shuddered at the thought of what “figure something out” could mean. “I guess we could…talk…about what I can do,” she said cautiously.

“Yeah. Tell me what you can do. But don’t think that those big doe eyes are going to dredge up any more compassion. Like I said, I like you. But this kind of straight talk is about all that’ll get you.”

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“Go on, get out of here!” the shopkeeper cried. He lunged at the transient with a baseball bat. It was just a feint–he’d never have actually connected, not with liability insurance and cameras everywhere–but it was enough to send the interloper scrambling, their ratty clothes flopping in the December chill.

“Why did you do that?” his brother said, speaking in Farsi so that the customers wouldn’t hear. “If that poor thing wants to eat our dumpster food, why not let her?”

“It’s not the food, or the smell,” the shopkeeper replied. “She’s been stealing lightbulbs from the back, probably to hawk for a little extra crystal meth.”

His brother looked up at the dark socket above the dumpster. “Oh,” he said. “Even so, maybe there’s a better way than going after her like the Yankees.”

“If you can think of one, be my guest,” the shopkeeper sneered. “In the meantime, we’ve got customers to help and floors to sweep when those run out.”

“All right,” the shopkeeper’s brother said, with one last look into the cold darkness. “All right.”

A few blocks away, the transient stopped running under a viaduct where she often took shelter. Filthy, stained gloves rummaged in her found garments and produced the bulb she had taken from the store–an older model incandescent.

She pulled off one glove and cupped the bulb lightly between wrinkled fingers. It flickered and began to glow, eventually reaching its full brightness and warmth in her hands, unconnected to any grid.

Beneath the viaduct, in the cold and the wind, she laughed with childish delight through toothless gums.

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Hans Glück, the former SS Obergruppenführer known in some circles as the Beast of Schliedenburg, retired to the colony of Nuevo Nurembergo after the war. Intending to spend his twilight years in comfortable retirement, he returned to his former profession, that of a baker, supported by a modest pension.

With weekly deliveries of ingredients, Glück made small batches of sweets in his home for sale but invested most of his energy into a different project: gingerbread. He painstakingly mixed, baked, and cut the materials to build a gingerbread Schliedenburg, complete with little gingerbread men and gingerbread women. It was an orderly town, in which every cornice and inhabitant was carefully judged and measured–Glück’s thwarted vision for the town recreated in sweet miniature.

Naturally, baking is not an exact science, and often the gingerbread people or the buttresses of their dwellings would not turn out. In this case, Glück would ruthlessly cull them and feed the rejects to his beloved schnauzer, Strudel. Strudel would always take the treats outside through his doggie door; Glück, confined to a wheelchair after taking a bullet to the knee during his escape from the Siege of Königsburg, never knew or cared what secret hollow the dog retreated to with his prizes.

One night, while rigging the edible Schliedenburg with lights, Glück caught a glimpse of similar lights in the trees not far from the edge of his small yard. The next morning, curious, he took his old field glasses down and peered into the distance.

It was another gingerbread town, this one far less orderly and well-formed. The baker recognized his rejects, and realized that Strudel had simply been playing with and then discarding his castoffs. Unable to go outside to investigate, Glück assumed that the neighborhood children, perhaps the Hoffenstadter twins, were responsible. He made a telephone call to his milkman offering a gold Reichsmark if he would stomp the rogue settlement out.

The next day, the milkman failed to make his appointed rounds. And the gingerbread settlement had moved in the night: it was now less than ten feet from Glück’s door.

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“It’s an epidemic, that’s what it is,” says Cascadia Police chief Grant Wuhl. “Everybody thinks it’s easy, safe money. But ain’t no such thing.”

Chief Wuhl is standing by the burnt-out shell of a local math lab, which was firebombed by rivals over the weekend and burnt to the ground. Two tutors and a retired statistics teacher were put in the burn unit at Cascadia General in the attack.

“We’ve seen three attacks like this over the last three months,” says Wuhl sadly. “People know that math is dangerous, and doing math is a one-way ticket to County or worse,” he continues. “But they see those reports coming out in the media, about the massive demand for people in STEM fields and the high salaries at stake and, well…they just get greedy.”

According to statistics provided by Captain Wuhl, the number of illicit math labs in the county has tripled since 2010, and the number of non-violent and violent math-related offenses has quadrupled. Schools have reported their supplies of graph paper, calculators, and protractors are regularly raided. Many local office supply stores have been requiring a teacher’s note to purchase TI-83s, once freely available but now suspect thanks to their key role in the production of math.

“It used to be that you could come in here and just buy a TI-83 for whatever,” says Sandy Perrier, a clerk at the Osborn University Bookstore. “But then we had these crazy-looking guys with pocket protectors and bloodshot eyes coming in to buy 10 or 12 at once. You knew they were cooking math, but you just couldn’t prove it.”

At press time, the Cascadia City Council was considering a draft proposal to introduce programs at the elementary, middle, and high school levels to warn kids about the dangers of using, abusing, and cooking math. Many worry that, with the process glamorized by popular TV shows like Breaking Polynomials or Sons of Geometry, this is a losing battle.

Osborn University, meanwhile, has reported record interest in their new x-ray crystallography program. “You wouldn’t belive how much people are looking for a little crystal math these days,” says Osborn professor Dr. Lewis Dodgson. “It’s crazy.”

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“How much would you say it’s worth?” I had to ask the question because there was a space for it on my form. But we librarians never used the figure we were quoted, because donors chronically overestimate the value of their donations. That collection of newspaper clippings from 9/11 probably wasn’t worth $1000; we’ll talk in 500 years or so.

“Oh, priceless, priceless.” Dr. Devereaux said, her smile never wavering as her head bobbled. “It is the greatest collection of materials ever assembled on this topic, with many unique primary documents!”

“Ah, I see.” I wrote in a value of one dollar on my sheet–the usual dollar amount for “priceless.”

“Yes, I have all the interviews here–transcribed, of course, by typewriter–that I conducted between 1986 and 1992. And over here, in this box, every co-authored book and magazine article.”

The interviews were bound in rubber bands that were in the process of drying to dust, their Borneo stretchiness a distant and sunny memory. Yellowed carbon copy paper wrapped around bushels of cassettes, cornflaking to pieces around the edges…it would take an archivist and a conservator months to recover a single word. And as for the books…

The boxes were piled high with offbeat literature. Umberto Eco. Thomas Pynchon. William S. Burroughs. Philip K. Dick. I picked up a copy of Ubik–a 1985 edition, it would have been worth a few bucks to the right person if it hadn’t been scribbled up in a cramped and frantic scrawl in every margin cover-to-cover.

“How, exactly, were these…inspired…by your subject?” I said.

“Well, Ubar-17 is a multi-dimensional being of tremendous power,” Dr. Devereaux said. “From time to time he choses to invest a portion of this expanded and cosmic vision into a vessel, and the results are always spectacular. Oh, there are side effects to be sure, mental illness, reclusiveness, and so on. But it’s just one of the many marks this beautiful alien being has left on our world.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. It was sort of sad, really; Dr. Devereaux had clearly suffered from some sort of undiagnosed psychotic break int he mid-80s, one that her position as a literary critic had helped conceal. But the gloves were off now, and she was on the greased downward slope toward court-ordered anti-psychotics. “Why did you stop interviewing Ubar-17 in 1992? Did he die?”

“Oh heavens no,” laughed Dr. Devereaux. “Ubar-17 is deathless, as his kind merely transcends into a new multi-dimensional species at the end of their millennia-long lifespan. No we had…well, I can only call it a ‘break-up’ as one would have with a lover. I stupidly allowed an unflattering first draft to do out to the Saucermen Review in Phoenix.”

“I see,” I said, as indulgently as I could. “That’ll do it, won’t it?”

“Ubar-17’s servant Una advised me to retract or correct the article. She’s a dear, though I’m certain she’s not human. Perhaps a gynoid? She never does seem to age, and wears clothes decades out of style until it’s practically rotting off her body.”

“Of course,” I said, in my exasperation allowing a little sarcasm to creep into a tone I’d been able to keep strictly professional. “No human would wear ratty or out of date clothing.”

“Exactly,” said Dr. Devereaux. “One does not simply say ‘no’ to Una, as that is tantamount to saying ‘no’ to Ubar-17. I was cut off from that point on, and worse, Ubar-17 saw to it that I was added to a psychic blacklist. No reputable publisher would touch my book. I had to put it out via Saucermen Press!”

I steeled myself. It was time to try and let Devereaux down easy. “This…may not be a good match for the Hopewell Public Library collection. Have you thought about the Laramie Paranormal Collection in the Southern Michigan University archives?”

“NO!” cried Dr. Devereaux, with a vehemence that took me aback. “I’M NOT GIVING THEM SO MUCH AS ONE PAPERCLIP!”

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The cop slapped down a file on the desk, freshly if illegally procured from Southern Michigan University’s Office of Student Records. “Saylor Effingham, is it?”

“I go by Effie.” Folding her arms, Effie leaned back in her chair. If the cop was too dense to pick up on her closed off body language, at least he wouldn’t get a look at her goods since she was wearing only her simple green tank–for practical reasons, naturally.

The cop snorted. “Effie, huh? Kids make fun of you for that?”

“Not as much as they did for Saylor.” Effie had no idea what her mother had been thinking. Mom claimed that a flash of inspiration had struck when she was about to name her daughter Taylor, and it certainly didn’t seem like much thought had been put into the proposition. Her short-sightedness had led to two decades of bad puns about “Saylor talk” and boys teasing with “Hey there, Saylor, looking for a good time?”

“Hmph.” The cop smirked. “Well, Ms. Effie, I’m Gerald Clayton. You can call me Gerry if you like. I also answer to Gerald, Clayton, pissface, asshole, or you-there.” Clayton had already been called all of them today, all but one by his wife.

“Charmed,” Effie sneered. “I’m sure.”

“Now I’ll be blunt, Ms. Effie.” Clayton pulled out a chair and sat backwards on it, draping his arms over the back in what he thought looked like a relaxed pose, even though it was uncomfortable as hell. “This isn’t an arrest. You’re not here against your will; you can walk out that door any time you like. But if we wanted to, we could have you in the lockup by dinnertime. So I’m hoping you’ll listen to what I have to say, since we have an out for you.”

Effie didn’t budge. “Who’s ‘we?'” she asked, narrowing her eyes.

“Tecumseh County Metro Illicits Unit,” said Clayton. “Not the catchiest name or acronym, but it wasn’t my choice.” Tecumseh Area Criminal Overwatch had been his suggestion, and it had gotten as far as the bureau chief before anyone realized that the initials spelled TACO.

“So I’m into illicit activity, huh?” Effie said. “I know my rights. Why don’t you just prove it?”

“Well, if you say so.” Clayton picked up a tablet off his desk, made a few swipes, and handed it to Effie. The color drained out of her features and the points on her pixie cut seemed to droop a bit at what she saw.

“I see kids like you all the time in here,” Clayton said. “First time away from home, first time out from under that apron, and you just go nuts without any regard for the law. I bet everyone said you were a real good kid at home, looked the other way when you got a little illicit. Well this ain’t home, and I ain’t your parents. This is real, kid.”

Effie struggled to maintain her composure. It was one thing for Mom and Dad to disapprove of her new hairstyle, the clothes she’d taken to wearing, and the fact that she only visited to do laundry anymore. But this…

“We’ve got video, we’ve got witnesses, we’ve got sworn statements,” Clayton said, sliding the tablet out of Effie’s stony hands. “Like I said, you’re free to go, but if you do, you’ll be back in here inside of 24 hours. And when you leave then, it’ll be with a conviction, which means a bust on your record and hard time in the lockup.”

“You really think they’ll believe I was busted for that I supposedly did?” Effie said, trying to sound confident. Most people liked to deny what she did even existed, after all, write it off as urban legends or hysteria.

“We list those…illicit…offenses under the Michigan State Penal Code § 113,” said Clayton. “Any Other Posession of Regulated Substances.”

“But I don’t possess anything!” Effie’s upper lip curled into a snarl.

“Whoa there,” Clayton said. “Down, girl. As far as the Penal Code is concerned, you are an illicit substance. You want that on your record? We put it in there in code, of course, but you’ll never be able to hold down a job with a conviction like that. No one’s going to want to hire you when there’s even a little chance of you going off on them. No one.” He scowled. “Now maybe if you were an art history major that wouldn’t matter so much, but veterinary science? They don’t take chances with people that have access to horse tranquilizers.”

“So what are you going to do, then? Just stand there and laugh at me for trying to have a little fun before you lock me up?”

Clayton shrugged. “Girl, if I wanted to laugh at you I got it out of my system after looking at your file. That name? Your parents? Hell, your emergency contact for the university is your pa, and his email address is @effingham.com!”

Effie drew her arms closer, looking very intently at the cheap linoleum.

“No, kid, I’m offering you an opportunity. Big things are going down in Hopewell right now. Lots of illicits, lots of confused kids getting roped in. You become an informant for us, and we let you walk. 20 busts and you’re out. We’ll even get you hooked up with medication, a shrink, and a support group.”

“You want me to be a snitch?”

“Like I said, 20 busts. It’s not a not. We have a nice, invisible two-way wire you can wear on…all occasions.” Clayton leaned over, opened a desk drawer, and produced it, a spidery set of wires around a button-sized transmitter. If it were taped under clothing or buried under hair, there might not be any seeing it.

“They’d smell it in an instant, and hear your voice a mile away.”

“Look, Ms. Effie, this ain’t my first rodeo,” said Clayton. “We’ve had over a hundred kids work for us as informants and there are three others out there right now.” He gestured to the tablet. “Or we could put you in the pound for that, have your parents find out exactly what their little precious snowflake’s been up to.”

Effie looked at the still image, paused, from the Secret Undercut concert. A large wild-looking dog was running through the frame. Her. “All right,” she said. “I’ll do it.”

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