Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

“I’ll be blunt, sir. Starting in 1952, we began placing the brains of specially trained cats into homo sapiens bodies tank-grown for that purpose.”

“Why would we ever do such a thing?”

“We needed agents who could be trained but were also capable of independent thought and deviousness and utter amorality. Experiments with natural-born humans ended badly since they were incapable of being trained, and dogs trained well but could not be taught amorality and were incapable of improvisation.”

“Hm. That’s not exactly what I had in mind when you said ‘classified’ but so be it. Why is this an issue? Was the program a success?”

“A smashing success, sir. Some of our best agents came from project Catmatter, though they all invariably went rogue.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“Well, one of our former agents is the current premier of Russia. And we just elected another President of the United States.”

“My God.”

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1899: Haberdasher Hans Geste, originally from Ost-München in Bavaria, begins selling purified chemicals such as mercury and arsenic out of his clothier’s shop in San Francisco. Used in making clothes, the toxins are far more refined than his competitors’ and the business flourishes.

1905: Hans Geste’s chemical business is so successful that he closes his haberdashery and sells it to Macy’s. He moves to Oakland with his seven sons to set up a more professional operation.

1906: The great San Francisco Earthquake results in the detonation and immolation of Geste’s chemicals and incinerates three of his sons. Impressed, the US Army contracts with Geste to provide chemicals and explosives to West Coast military bases.

1915: With the outbreak of war in Europe, demand for Geste chemicals skyrockets. Hans’s oldest son, Lars, incorporates GesteCo as a limited-liability company in June. His youngest son, Klaus, travels on a clandestine mission to Bavaria and incorporates GesteCo as a gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftun that same year.

1921: With its war profits and international expansion, GesteCo moves into consumer products, launching a line of mercury and radium based pharmaceuticals.

1923: GesteCo begins manufacturing appliances for the home. Its products like toasters are highly competitive due to the use of inexpensive lead paint insteaks of bakelite.

1927: Hans Geste dies of radiation poisoning after a night spent personally supervising the Radiumeal Radioactive Flour division of GesteCo. His son Lars succeeds him as president.

1934: GesteCo’s German branch becomes the largest chemical and home appliance concern in the country. As part of a promotional tour, Lars provides solid gold toasters to key government and Nazi party officials.

1942: With the entry of the United States into World War II, GesteCo expands yet again. The amphetemines provided to US troops to maintain their combat effectiveness are all GesteCo producs. The mustard gas stockpiled at Bari and subsequently released into the atmosphere during a bombing raid was proudly made at GesteCo’s Love Canal facility.

1961: GesteCo inks a deal with Washington and key universities to lend its expertise to the first attempts at genetic engineering undertaken with government funding. The result, rice enchanced with ricin, is used in an attempt to support the Bay of Pigs invasion.

1978: Lars Geste dies after accidentally being exposed to an experimental line of RNA viruses designed to combat bad breath in infants. His son Heinz becomes president, and inks a deal with the Carter administration to provide high-level aid in genetics and chemical synthesis to US ally Iran.

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Relatively few written works from the 20th century survive, thanks to their preparation on cheap pulp paper bound with cheaper acidic glue into a crude codex. Those that survive are highly prized as sources of ancient knowledge and windows into daily life before both the Deluge and the Picotech Revolution. Most are quite mundane–texts on chemistry, myths collected by the latter-day Ovid known as James Patterson, books on how to achieve a body shape that would appease the goddess known as Jennycraig, and so on. But one book has remained a puzzle to scholars ever since it appeared in a rare book dealer’s catalog in 3077 A.C.E.

The Gygaxian Manuscript.

A few things can be intuited from the thick volume. It was not originally one work, being rather 5-10 shorter books that were bound together at a later date, with their original front and end matter town out. This probably accounts for their preservation, as the resulting binding was high-quality, acid-free, and bore no title or title page. The author is identified in the damaged first pages, added in the rebinding process, as Gary of Gygax. This adds to the mystery, as no such nation or principality existed during the 1970-1980 D.C.E. date established by carbon dating. Soem have argued for an origin in Galicia or Greece, but the manuscript is written entirely in Middle Modern English, seemingly discounting this.

Far more puzzling are the contents, which explain the flora, fauna, and proscriptions for life and (especially) war in a world that bears only a tangential resemblance to our own. Fantastic creatures, some of which appear in earlier works but many of which are wholly unknown, are described in fantastic detail. Their strengths, weaknesses, and how many axe blows they take to kill are described in such detail that Gary of Gygax must surely have had some real-life analog to draw from. Yet no fossil evidence or contemporary accounts support this.

More puzzling still is the manual of arms, which seems to reduce martial combat to pure mathematics, a feat which even modern kinetics cannot manage. Many have toiled to find the constant that Gary of Gygax includes in his calculations, d, but none have succeeded thus far. Though many have claimed to solve some of the equations like d12+10 or 2d6, none have yet stood up to careful scrutiny.

Nevertheless, even with its mysteries unresolved, the Gygaxian Manuscript continues to excite curiosity, admiration, and horror among scholars of ancient papers.

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GesteCo has long been at the forefront of technologies for a cleaner, more sustainable Earth–a process complicated by the fact that many of our consumer products are packaged in compounds so volatile we’re slightly surprised they don’t burst into fire on store shelves more often. After years of dilligent effort, though, GesteCo is pleased to announce our new Terracycle program–a sustainable solution for Mother Terra.

Look for the Terracycle “T” logo on the backs of all of the fine GesteCo products you have come to rely on, from NummNumm-brand snack nuggets to FluroSure indistrial anti-organic solvents. If it’s there, that means that you haven’t just made a smart purchase–you’ve made an Earth-friendly one!

Terracycle products can be recycled at specially designated collection points run by, and on behalf of, GesteCo. You may ask why these products cannot be recycled at existing collection points, or whether the cost of the gasoline needed to transport them there in a post-rail-transit world might still represent a net loss for the Earth Mother. But rest assured, only GesteCo can handle these volatiles in a way that limits the release of explosive and corrosive gasses and byproducts.

Best of all, once the items have been collected, they will be recycled. They said it couldn’t be done, but the smart cookies as GesteCo has hit upon a solution to turn our own toxic byproducts, richer in heavy metal than Scandinavia, to the service of Terra. Your Terracycle refuse will be remanufactured into indestructable Recycloids, using the heavy metals to form toughened alloy armor and the volatiles for fuel and weapons payloads. These Recycloids, which know neither love nor mercy, will then be deployed across the globe to ensure that everyone is doing their part to recycle.

You may ask if using Recycloids to, in essence, make more Recycloids isn’t tantamount to the long-awaited robot revolution. You may even ask if it is not handing over the keys to the globe to a gang of Von Neumann machines that cannot be turned off. But rest assured, GesteCo actuaries have run the numbers and all possible outcomes, from cheerful recycling to robotic armageddon, ultimately serve the purposes of Mother Terra.

The GesteCo Terracycle Program: Save the Earth, or Else!

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Be ye warned!
Cook not these golden nuggets with other meats!
Contaminate them not with lesser foods!
Failure to do so will break the Old Covenant, by which the flesh of the fowl was traded to mankind in exchange for power.
It will invoke the wrathe of Nuggetor, the Chicken God, and he will turn his attention to you.

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“Look, the requirement is simple: to merge the teams, we have to do it.”

“I don’t care.”

“Both teams are losing money. A merger is the only way to perserve any of their legacy going forward. The new city’s already agreed to build a stadium, for Pete’s sake!”

“That’s fantastic, and I’m very excited about it. But I’m not going to budge on this.”

“It’s a simple contractua thing. We have to name the new team something that incorporates the name of the old teams, and this is the only possibility.”

“I don’t care! I don’t care if it scuppers the whole deal, I’m not going to manage a professional sports team called the Thundernuggets.”

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Daranikone’s favorite watering hole was the Mangy Dog. It was so for many reasons: the unpleasant name tended to keep the spineless at bay and out of his hair, for one. The water was murky but free of contaminants thanks to Canem’s skillfull distilling. The food was tolerable, if bland, and it was seared well enough to kill parasites that swarmed in more flavorful but less well-cooked meats.

But most of all, Daranikone liked the Mangy Dog because it served as a filter for those that wished to avail themselves of her services. If the name didn’t scare them away, Canem’s growly baritone often did. The murky water and carbonized meat chased away their fair share. And Daranikone’s familiarity with the regulars meant that the odd loose zipper that came in looking to “prove” his manhood by conquering a tough-as-nails ladytype more often than not left with that same manhood bruised, bleeding, and birdshot.

As Daranikone’s father had said when he was still teaching her to shoot: “It ain’t right, but a lady’s got to defend herself twice as often with half as much. That’s why you gotta give yourself every ‘lil advantage. Shoot first, shoot fast, shoot hard, yeah. But also know that sooner or later that gun’s gonna jam up, that bullet’s gonna misfire, or some trash that ain’t worthy of the name ‘man’ is gonna get the drop on you. And when that happens…the only way you’re gonna come out on top is if there’s people who got your back.”

The regulars at the Mangy Dog had Daranikone’s back. So when yet another man with a strange look came poking around with her name on his lips and on his lisp, she made sure he found here there, in her usual spot, back to the wall and hands on her holsters.

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George and Georgia were products of the 1960s, specifically their parents’ disinclinations to embrace the counterculture. Both their parents had been adamant that their children would recieve “normal names” in maternity wards full of children named Freedom, Autumn, or Elle S. Dee. There were no “Georges” or “Georgias” further up either family tree; both parents just decided to ground their children’s names as much as they knew how short of naming them “John” and “Mary.”

The result was that they both stood out in exactly the same way.

George was the only George in his class, and he was constantly made fun of for having an “old man’s name.” Kids would mock him behind (and often in front of) his back by putting a hand on their spine and gimping about like an elder statesman. Georgia, for her part, got a similar treatment but with poor puns in the mix “Georgia, you are in such a state today,” “Georgia, you are just a peach, aren’t you?”

By the time they met in college, both had enough.

The first thing to do, naturally, was to adopt a last name that differentiated them from the pack. They did this when they got married in 1985, adopting a name that, to their ears, sounded cool but had no prior meaning or association. The next thing was to name their child something that would make them stand out in the right way–bold and distinctive, but not too common or too uncommon. It took a few years, but in 1988 their plan came to squealing life.

This was how Alexandra Quint Dragonir came to be, and how her parents wrote a check with her name that she would struggle to cash for most of her young life–until opportunity and destiny came together to the door like Mormon missionaries.

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During General Hood’s aggressive attack on General Sherman at Mossy Oaks, a Union counterattack broke the Confederate lines and sent them to the rear in disarray. this was the first time in the battle for and investment of Atlanta that one of its key outposts was threatened: the Hartfield-Jackson International Airport.

By 1864, close to 90% of Confederate aircraft running the Union air blockade went through Hartfield-Jackson, with the chance of incredible profits luring pilots despite mounting losses. When the Battle of Mossy Oaks spilled over into the airport, the airline attendants and ground crew armed themselves with Enfield muskets smuggled in from Heathrow to help reform the lines and repulse the Union thrust.

They succeeded, but the front line had moved close enough for Union artillery to begin a bombardment of the Hartfield-Jackson runways. General Sherman’s men did not have the special anti-fortification shells needed to inflict permanent damage on the masonry, so they were unable to blast the airfield into closure. Instead, the Union artillerymen began carefully timing volleys of explosive shot to land just as aircraft were making their final approach. This crude but effective tactic led to nearly 50% of the incoming and outgoing aircraft sustaining direct hits.

True to his nature, General Hood attempted two further attacks to dislodge General Sherman from his positions around the airport, bolstering his forces with the security guards and gate agents freed by the lack of incoming or outgoing traffic. Each attack, made against well-entrenched Union troops, brought devastating losses the Confederates could ill afford. After an attempt to impound the remaining aircraft and fly them into the Union lines failed for lack of volunteers, the airport was closed.

General Sherman’s troops finally took the Hartfield-Jackson International Airport three days before Hood was forced to evacuate the city. They faced a skeleton crew of Confederates who nevertheless made the Union troops pay dearly in blood for each step. Resistance was particularly heavy in the food court and Cinnabon, to the point that an exasperated Sherman ordered the area to be leveled by point-blank double canister fire. One of the cannons used in this operation (the “Cinnabomb”), which cleared the remaing Confederate defenders in a matter of twenty minutes, is still on display at the airport today.

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“My name is Pearl,” said Pearl. “I wear these pearls because, well, people expect it with a name like mine. ‘Look for Pearl in the Pearls,’ they always say.”

“Well, my given name is Beatrix,” said Pearl, “but I’ve always loved pearls ever since I was a little girl. Go my family got to calling me ‘Pearl’ and that’s the name I’ve answered to for 40 years.”

“That’s all well and good,” said the man at the lost and found. “But it still doesn’t tell me who these pearls belong to. The guy that dropped it off just said ‘Pearl’s pearls,’ and that’s it.”

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