Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

May fancy in her dancing hours
Strew your lives with glowing flowers.
And after many storied springs
Have fled on time’s all-bearing wings,
May your bond be strong as ever
Spun golden threads that none can sever.

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“No, that’s just the thing! Nobody made this, ever! The game was never translated into English. Hell, it was never even released in Japan! It’s a legend, something geeks talk about when the pore over the coverage in old video game rags.”

“So what is this then? It’s clearly here; you couldn’t be holding it if nobody made it.”

“It’s either a fraud, or a hoax, or a lost and incredibly valuable piece of video game history. And there’s only one way to find out.”

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Maria Ramirez, owner and operator of Journeyman Travel Agency LLC, had helped people move all her professional life. Since she started the business in her garage just out of high school to the present day, she’d booked trips to Acapulco and Antarctica, to Zambia and Zanzibar, and all points in between.

But Maria never traveled herself. In all her years, she had left her state only once, for a wedding, and crossed a border only once, for that selfsame wedding. Most of her clients went further afield in their first trip than she had in her entire life.

Maria had a lot of excuses thought up to laugh the issue up when it was raised. She’d seen how ugly the industry could be, from jacked-up prices to stranded travelers, and that ugliness had turned her off ever leaving LA herself. She was prone to motion sickness and was afraid that any flight might make her violently ill, and the trains just didn’t run as far or as fast as they used to. She was waiting until retirement to unleash all her skills in a paroxysm of travel the likes of which few had ever witnessed.

She never told people about the dream, about the flames, about the cries hanging in the frigid air as bodies in motion tumbled, earthbound, end over end.

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By rights, Aralkum Prime shouldn’t have been habitable: it was far too far from its star, and its star was far too old and dim. Any atmosphere should have been blasted away by its solar wind, much less a habitable one.

But the planet’s composition and atmosphere were absolutely unique in that it had somehow attracted a thick atmosphere that warmed it to habitable levels through a combination of a greenhouse effect trapping what little radiation its star put out and an abundance of radioactive ores whose decay helped make up the deficit.

The overall effect was a world in the middle of the inhospitable and hostile Algol Cluster that was habitable with nothing more than a pressure suit and a supply of oxygen, and full of deposits that could be used to refuel fusion-powered starships.

Soon after its discovery, Aralkum Prime became the location of a refueling station and supporting colony. It was an extremely profitable venture, as the world was the only remotely habitable one in its cluster, and the ores and trace elements in its crust and atmosphere.

The downside of this approach should be clear: Aralkum Prime was a small world, and even though the miners were savvy enough to replace the mined-out ores with the equivalent mass, the loss of their properties led to a degredation in the atmosphere. Coupled with the atmospheric damage due to jettisoned fusion drive cores and trace element extraction, the world entered an extended period of atmosphere thinning and cooling.

By the time that the extent of the damage was realized, it was too late. The atmosphere of Aralkum Prime was progressively stripped away despite all attempts to reverse the process, and within a hundred years the world had virtually no atmosphere at all, causing the extinction of all native life and abandonment of the station.

The world is only visited by the occasional tourist now, to view the abandoned hulks of starships left on the surface and in orbit.

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Taking Stephen Jay Gould to heart, the Neoteny Society was dedicated to the idea that humans, as a species, were just the larval stage of another organism. Neoteny, meaning in this case the sexual maturity of an organism still in its larval stage rather than the retention of juvenile characteristics in the adult, was held by the Society to be an evolutionary mistake preventing humans from reaching their true potential.

In response to the claim that their beliefs were scientifically unsupportable, the Society advanced the notion that the “adult” humans has been gossamer being, capable of flight and with no tissues suitable for fossilization. This, along with the regular experimentation of Society members with hormones they believed would trigger their metamorphoses into “adults,” regularly provoked ridicule in the press and in scientific circles. The Society was awarded so many “bad science” prizes that they were eventually disqualified from further competition–a sign of the laughingstock that they had become.

That is until one day, when a building inspector found the Neoteny Society building deserted save for a hole in the roof. None of the members were ever seen again.

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TOM: I’m Tom Drake, and this is NBS Sports.

CARL: That’s right, Tom. I’m Carl Hicks. And as part of a plea bargain that Tom and I entered after the fiery bus crash on I-75 that claimed the lives of two buses full of college lacrosse team students, we have agreed to help fill otherwise dead airtime on NBS Sports 12 by covering the 2015 Great Curmudgeon Mudge-Off.

TOM: Sponsored by Hillman’s Hickory Walking Sticks, Artisinal Rocking Chairs of Peoria, Poli-Grip denture cream, Ensure omni-drink, and newspapers everywhere.

CARL: That’s right, Tom. We’re down to the final three contestants: Columbus Ellison, age 73, of Porphyria, ME; Isaiah Hester, age 80, of Rayne, WA; and Marcello Martinez, age 66, from Gumption, OK.

TOM: Ellison has the overall lead in points, but Martinez has won more events. Hester is hot on both their tails, so it’s anybody’s game at the moment. I’m sure our viewers at home remember the photo finish to the 2013 Mudge-Off when the late Stanford Gilmore came from behind to win even as he was dying of a heart attack.

CARL: That’s right, Tom. Next up we have the most pivotal events in our competition. First up is Hostile Reading, where the object is to read a newspaper in such a way as to deter bothersome interlopers, and to respond to any such interlopers in a way that immediately dissuades them from further communication. Next will be Throat Clearing, and after that, Lawn Defense. Complaining About Kids These Days is, as always, the capstone. Thoughts, Tom?

TOM: Martinez stands to dominate Newspaper Reading, as he worked as a newspaper editor in Gumption before his forced retirement, but his town’s low population density stands to hurt him in Lawn Defense and Throat Clearing. Hester’s a smoker, which gives him an edge in Throat Clearing and the gravel he needs for Lawn Defense, though his oxygen will be a liability there as well. Ellison, thanks to his location, is well-positioned for a come-from-behind mudging in all the events. It’s an exciting time and anybody’s game.

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“It’s not much of a living,” said Nadine over the glass counter of her mall kiosk. “But I’ve been saving up.”

“But the jewelry looks very fine,” Duane said, admiring the finely-wrought, if gaudy, pieces on display. “Surely you must do very well.”

“The cost of materials and the rent of this place takes a stiff bite out of everything I do,” said Nadine sadly. “But I’ve almost got enough saved up for the next phase.”

Duane nodded. “May I ask what that is?”

“Moving to Seattle with my mother,” Nadine said, her eyes glittering. “We’ve got a lead on a place there that costs half as much, and suppliers that are cheaper too. It’ll be a better life for both of us.”

“Well, best of luck to the both of you, then,” said Duane. “I’m sure you’ll do well.”

“Thank you.”

A dark tunnel enveloped Duane’s vision and he was wrenched out of his deep dive into the here and the now. “Seattle,” he said to Carla after catching his breath. “Look for your mother in Seattle.”

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“There’s not much to tell. ‘Jai’ means ‘victory’ in Hindi and ‘Chandrakant’ means ‘moonstone.’ My family had been jewelers for a long time, and we’ve always been famous for grinding moonstones.”

“I’m sure you’ve heard me give my full name as Myassa bint Leya bint Raaheel al-Thurayya,” said Myassa, “usually when I want to piss somebody off.”

“Well, ‘bint’ means ‘daughter of.’ In most names you’d say ‘son of X, daughter of Y,’ or ‘son of X, grandson of Y’ but I decided to mix it up. So I have my mother Leya and grandmother Raaheel, which you will almost never see in a real name.”

“And ‘al-Thurayya’ means ‘of the Pleiades,’ which is fitting given where I came from.”

“What about Myasssa?”

“Well, it’s not the given name they slapped on me when I was born, if that’s what you’re asking. That name meant ‘chaste,’ which doesn’t really fit in with Dad’s obsession for grandchildren, but whatever.”

“So why’d you choose it?”

“Well, believe it or not, my family was actually descended from the rules of a tribe. Not close enough to actually get many perks, but we were well-off enough that we qualified for the honorific ‘sheikh’ for the lads and ‘shaykhah’ for the ladies.”

“You’ve lost me,”

“Well, as a shaykhah, it only makes sense for me to be known as Shaykhah Myassa,” Myassa laughed.

Jai, perplexed, turned the syllables over in his mouth. “Shake-a my-ass-a,” he said at length, comprehension breaking like dawn across his face before he collapsed in helpless laughter.

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“I’m trying to decide between these two. What do you think?”

The editor took the copy and read over it. The first read:

Did you ever hear about the guy who refused to follow the rules of grammar? He’s a rebel without a clause.

And the second:

Timmy says he’s too old to believe in Santa. He’s a rebel without a Klaus.

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