Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

The primary religious faith for humans in the Kingdom of Pexate and other states that were once part of the northern Crimson Empire is the Universal Sepulcher of the Creator, also known as the Universal Sepulcher, the Sepulcher of the Creator, or the Sepulcher of the One. “Sepulcher” is an obsolete word for a lavish tomb, and this reflected the overall belief among adherents that the Creator (whose holy name it was forbidden to speak) had been slain in mortal combat with Muolih, the Destroyer.

According to the most familiar version of the narrative, after crafting the world and its inhabitants, the Creator was challenged for primacy by his one-time right hand, Muolih. Their conflict spilled over into the world at large, and many of the sapients that exist in the world are held to be the result of their battle. Many humans believe, for instance, that goblins and orcs were created by Muolih as shock troops while ascribing elves and dwarves to the Creator to bolster Its ranks. Needless to say, this view is not shared by the sapients in question.

At a final great battle, Muolih and the Creator supposedly slew each other. The Creator was laid to rest in a fabulous tomb–the search for which has incidentally consumed many an adventurer–and Its servants now act in Its name to preserve the world. For, as the stories go, the Creator promised that It would return to life after an aeon of slumber on the eve of the fateful battle. At that time, all rights would be wronged–as they would for those souls who joined the Creator in Its repose.

Conversely, Muolih was consigned to the abyss after its death, but its followers are supposedly constantly seeking to revive it with offerings of souls and wicked deeds. Thus, for the Sepulcher’s faithful, good deeds lead to notice from the Creator’s proxies and eventual redress of wrongs, while bad deeds draw the gaze of the Destroyer’s minions and the possibility of consignment to its abyssal funeral pyre.

In Pexate, as in most of its neighbors, local groups build their own Sepulchers as focuses of worship, either to the dead and dreaming Creator, to Its still-vital intermediaries, or to those noble souls felt to have joined It. Memorials are held regularly, and many choose to take their devotion still further by taking up the life of a monk or friar.

The Sepulcher is regarded with varied feeling by other sapients. Elves often find it convenient to profess belief, especially if they are in high positions, while often remaining secretly devoted to the Eternal Way. Dwarves, whose religion was thrown into turmoil by the fall of the Shattered Isles, converted to the Sepulcher in great numbers though many remain dedicated to their native Twilight Courts of Dvangchi and Qingvnir. Orcs by and large regard the Sepulcher with contempt in favor of their atheist Hamurabash, though there are some converts in larger human cities. Goblins follow the precepts of the Sepulcher but in a unique way, seeing themselves as tainted by their association with Muolih and bereft of leadership and succor but what they provide for themselves.

And it goes without saying that just as the other sapients are not monolithic blocs, neither are humans. While the Sepulcher is the majority faith, the New Order (or often simply the Order) rules unquestioned over many of the southern lands of the Crimson Empire, and the Way of Being is also popular in areas along the great trade routes.

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Envy you the artists and their chosen canvasses
The writer poised at desk with quill in hand
The painter poised over palettes of mixed oils
The composer with liqid-flowing baton in hand
The photographer with viewfinder pressed to light
Politician, diarist, singer, and architect
Cook, stylist, surgeon, and businessman
Not for their gifts, not to envy them those skills
But for the simple fact that anyone who creates
Anyone who makes, anyone who crafts, anyone at all
Has made their mark upon our world, enduring
And will live larger-than-life, forever, eternal
So long as even a single creation remains

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There it was, again: the unmistakable outline of a cuttlefish, all eyes and tentacles beneath a looming mantle. Drawn in what seemed like chalk but indelible and raised to the touch–a paint pen, perhaps, or something similar. Like the others, it was on metal rather than the surrounding pavement, a street elevator door this time rather than a drainpipe or capped steam radiator.

I added another pin to the map that was evolving on my cell. Since seeing my first cuttlefish graffiti a month ago near the Modern Times bookstore, I had noticed them proliferate across the city where I worked as a delivery driver. Always on metal, always on white, always more and more of them.

Once, I delivered a package to a deli whose owner was trying to scrub one of the glyphs off of a standpipe. It resisted his best efforts with rubbing alcohol, turpentine, and even sandpaper. I lent him a bottle of the Goobusters liquid we use to get rid of sticker residue, and not even that potent petroleum distillate made a dent.

What initially started as an idle way to pass the time on my various delivery runs quickly became a mild obsession. As I saw more and more of the things, always on metal, always on something connected to the ferrous sinews that ran beneath the city, I began to feel increasingly uneasy.

The pins on my map were beginning to resolve into a discrete form, and it was not a form that bespoke a crude campaign of stick-it-to-the-man scribbling.

It was a form that suggested the closing of the world in a maelstrom of madness.

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All of the various sapients–humans, elves, dwarves, orcs, goblins, and others–share a relatively recent common ancestor. As such, hybrids between them can be and often are concieved. However, the number of chromosomes involved varies considerably: humans have 32, elves 38, dwarves 36, orcs 34, and goblins 30. This means that any offspring will have an odd number of chromosomes and therefore be sterile and unable to produce any offspring of their own.

As such, sapient hybrids tend to be called “mules” by analogy and have never formed more than a small percentage of the general population. Genetics being what they are, mules can favor either parent but generally appear to be an admixture of traits falling between the two extremes.

Mules with an elvish parent, for instance, generally have a faster metabolism and thus shorter lifespan than an elf but a slower metabolism and thus longer life than their other parent. Mules with an orcish or goblin parent will often have a greenish tinge to their skin but will lack the chlorophyll to actually convert the sun’s energy into nutrients with the same efficiency.

In societal terms, mules are often seen as outsiders or perversions of nature and viewed with suspicion or outright hostility. Elvish culture demands that any mule and their elvish parent be ejected from the family for such a lapse, for instance. Dwarven mules are typically regarded as useful warriors with heads full of rocks and little else, while mules with a goblin parent may find themselves ejected from both cultures.

Sadly, mules are often exploited because of their cultural vulnerability. Elven-human mules, for instance, are sterotyped as courtesans and prostitutes because of their legendary beauty and inability to concieve, leading to many unfortunate cases of kidnapping and sexual slavery. Dwarven-orcish mules are believed to be the finest warriors in the world, and are therefore the subject of intense recruiting efforts from sports and mercenary organizations despite the relative paucity of dwarves and orcs living in close proximity.

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Goblins’ origins are obscure and surrounded by many myths and legends, but it seems likely that they evolved in a similar arid environment to that of the orcs as they share the chlorophyll-laced skin of the latter, though they lack similar dentition. They also have only four fingers and four toes on each limb, a trait unique to their biology.

Another uniue biological curiosity is that unlike other sapients, goblins do not undergo a growth spurt at puberty. Instead, they continue to grow at a steady rate that slows slightly as they age. Their often impoverished and violent lives mean that the average goblin is shorter than man-sized, though particularly old or renowned goblins are able to reach impressive heights: Aepebo Manbynk (“Treeboy”), the great leader of the Goblin Revolt, was six-foot-five by the time he was captured and executed.

Goblin religion is a unique variant of the Sepulcher of the Creator, the faith embraced by a significant portion of humans. Goblins believe that they were created by the dark lord Muolih, the fallen left hand of the Creator, as his servants. They regard this as an act of blasphemy that forever stained their people, and so with the deaths of Muolih and the Creator in the Greatwar of legend, goblins generally hold themselves bereft of purpose and of any divine influences whatsoever aside from minor spirits. They believe that, due to Muolih’s taint, they are owed nothing and entitled to nothing but what the can get for themselves.

As such, goblin culture is based around achievement; individuals are born without a name and must earn one through their deeds. Unnamed goblins are referred to using a variety of workarounds: the word bac (“you there”), adjectives (“tall,” “sister”), and as often as not, simply “goblin” or “gob.” A goblin who has earned a name is stripped of it upon surviving a defeat but is allowed to keep it if they perish during said defeat, a cultural convention that leads to the often suicidal disregard for self seen in goblin battle formations.

Stereotyped as crude, stupid, and weak, goblins are actually as intelligent and creative as any other sapient. Their low position in societies and their unique culture of self-depreciation belies their general aptitude for construction, chemistry, and mathematics. The arquebus is their most notable arm, and goblin arquebusiers (ottaobynk, “gun boys”) were and are common sights across battlefields.

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The hearse arrived at midnight, rolling quietly down the cul-de-sac. A thing of night even in daylight, it was like an oily distortion in the dark air, recognizable only in the dim lights reflected in its gloss and the pair of rheumy beams it cast forward.

It pulls up in the dark, further than can be seen. Up to the house where the police cruisers and an ambulance clustered, flashed, a few hours before? Not the way things were usually done, but perhaps. A false alarm might have turned into the real thing, with nothing left to do but summon the last limousine.

A lone relative, without a car, dropped off from a ceremony where they were the soule mourner? The kindness that one ought to be grateful for turned into icy unease by the thick empty weight of the compartment behind. They rode in the same car just last week, only not like this. Not like this.

Suppose that the late hour and the light are just right that it’s the great Hearse itself, the one driven by the Man in Black who awaits at each crossroad. Come to collect, trading scythe for side panels and robes for road but still inky, still inscrutable, still inevitable. Cut him off in late-night traffic if you dare.

Sleep comes on heavy wings; the hearse does not reappear. A metaphor, if nothing else, of the uncertainty at the end of our own rides therein, no matter how certain we be of our destinations.

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And, yea, did He cast out his Palms. And, yea, upon those same Palms were the Marks of which much has been written, the Stigmata. On His left Hand He bore the oozing Facsimile of a 1, and on his right Hand bore he a similarly crimson 0.

By rapidly alternating His hands, could he replicate any Program in existence. At this Sight, yea, the assembled Debuggers and Programmers did fall to their Knees (excepting those many whose Fat precluded this, who instead, yea, fell into their Chairs or Rascals).

In the fullness of Time, though, a thorough Examination was made and the bearer of the Stigmata was found to have an additional one on His ankles, that of the Number 2. And, yea, did they cast Him out from among their Number, rejecting His Code and His rights.

For, as any Coder will tell you, there is no such Thing as 2.

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“This is our rare book room, where we keep our most valuable tomes untouched and raw, just as they were when they came to us, with only a bare minimum of alteration to keep them–and us–safe. Let’s move on.”

“What’s that room next door? The one where the books are all burned and mangled on the outside, but some of the pages look like they might still be readable?”

“Oh, that’s our medium-rare book room. If you think that’s something, wait until you see our well-done book room!”

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On Tuesday, our town passed a rather grim milestone: the 20,000th prisoner was incarcinated here. Now, many people have written about mass incarcination throughout the media, and there are a lot of understandably intense opinions on the subject from all parts of the political spectrum. What I’d like to do here is to take a step back.

Academic exercises about our “carcinal society” tend to seem very remote and ivory tower to average citizens, especially those that do not known an incarcinated person or persons. This, along with a relatively simple “crime should equal incarcination” philosophy winds up completely obfuscating the issue.

So what exactly is mass incarcination? When you boil it down, incarcination is nothing more or nothing less than feeding those convicted of crimes to gigantic land-crabs. And mass incarcination is feeding a lot of those convicted of crimes to a lot of giant land-crabs.

Now, surely you’ve all seen Cl-Clickrr, Tecumseh County Incarcination Crab #3, making its scuttling rounds outside the city limits or carefully guarding its clutch of gigantic eggs in the hollow near Collie Hill. You might have even seen an escapee, stained with digestive juices, that was able to escape incarcination when Cl-Clickrr attempted to regurgitate for its young.

But have you ever thought of the lasting effects of incarcination inside Cl-Clickrr?

What of the few that are paroled after serving their time submerged in hemolymph, that no longer have any hair or limbs? What about those who come home with an insatiable lust for crab meat and wind up robbing a Red Lobster? Those institutional men who immediately violate their parole or cover themselves with rotting shellfish?

Mass incarcination destroyes lives, destroys homes, destroys societies. All it does is protect the powerful giant land-crabs with a vested interest in the status quo. That’s why we need a saner system, one with fewer giant land-crabs, one with fewer convicts fed to those land-crabs, and one with land-crabs bred for rehabilitation rather than digestion.

Only then can we reap the benefits of other societies that have reduced or abolished giant land-crabs altogether. Only then can we shed the embarrassment of being second only to China and its infamous pandarisons in the feeding of our own people to gigantic organisms.

It’s time, people. It’s time.

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“I am Senior Subject Librarian Lea Manhardt, and from now on you will speak only when spoken to. The first and last words out of your thesauri will be “Ma’am”. Do you bookworms read me?”

“Ma’am, yes ma’am!”

“This is a library! They can hear you in the crypt under the chapel. You will WHISPER, you filthy bookworms, and you will do it so quietly that my cat will not be able to hear you, and she’s woken up by her own farts! Now whisper like a castrato!”

“Ma’am, yes ma’am.”

“If you filthy bookworms leave my library, if you survive basic training, you will be an open book. You will be a font of knowledge and expertise fit to advise the lowliest hobo and the freshmanniest of freshmen. But until that day you are trade paperbacks. You are the lowest form of literature on Earth. You are not even books, you are pamphlets. Handouts! Ephemera! You are nothing but beat-up, stained romance novels at an old lady’s estate sale, do you read me?”

“Ma’am, yes ma’am.”

“Because I am like unto a hardback book with archival quality leather binding, you will not like me. I am not an easy read. But the more you hate me, the more you will retain. I am hard read but I am a fair one, and my orders are to weed out all the paperbacks and self-published poetry from this sorry box of library donations. Do you bookworms read that?”

“Ma’am, yes ma’am.”

With apologies to Stanley Kubrick and R. Lee Ermey

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