Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

Commandant Schukov addressed the cadets as was his wont, like a general at a review with arms clasped at ninety-degree angles.

“What’s he got to say this time?” Viktor whispered to Pyotr. “Perhaps he’ll unclench and finally let that rifle he’s had up his ass go.”

“More likely a list of floggings,” Pyotr said. “I hear Feodor got it good for daring to talk back to old Lebedev in artillery class.”

“Cadets!” barked Schukov. “As I have said before this time, despite being from some of the finest families in this oblast, you are maggots unfit for service in the Emperor’s glorious army. The strong, proud soldiers of his great-grandfather the late Emperor, they who turned back Napoleon, are rolling in their graves at such a speed it’s a wonder they haven’t been harnessed to generate electricity.”

Pyotr snickered at this. Schukov would as soon beat the freckles off you as look at you, but he did have a colorful way with words.

“Nonetheless, it was my great misfortune to recieve this morning a direct order, which I hereby obey. And that order is direct from Stavka, and thus may as well have been written in the Emperor’s own hand. To free up men who are desperately needed at the front near Riga, effective immediately the Academy’s cadets are to take up anti-bandit patrol duties.”

An excited murmur rippled through the crowd. “Holy shit in an outhouse,” breathed Viktor. “They’re putting us into action!”

“Silence!” bellowed Schukov. “Total silence!” He waited until the hubbub had died to an acceptable level in his one good ear before proceeding. “You will be armed and equipped at government expense, to do something about the deserters that have been causing chaos in the oblast.”

The old commandant thumped a step to the right on his wooden leg and puffed out his chest. “I do not expect that you will be able to perform effectively in this task, but as we have taught you, obedience is key. You will be deployed, and the good men that you free up will serve the Emperor on the front.”

“Real weapons! Real patrols! We’re not even old enough to enlist, and look at us!” Viktor bubbled. “Like real soldiers!”

“TOTAL SILENCE!” screamed Schukov, loud enough to rattle the rafters. He brushed the resulting dust off his white epaulettes. Then, in an affect more akin to his normal bellow: “I requested reinforcements to ensure that you laggards aren’t all killed, as dealing with your angry parents would be more burden that int’s worth. And, as has long been evident to me, I have been put on this earth only to endure the trials of maggots and weasels. As such, allow me to introduce to you your reinforcements…”

“Maybe a Guards unit,” Pyotr whispered. “Or veterans from the front!”

“…the Women’s Battalion of Death, Reserve Youth Auxiliary Division,” Schukov continued, spitting out the title like a bitter peachpit. “Your next instructions, AS ORDERED, will be from its local coordinator.”

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“Tell me what you recall.”

“We used to hunt for them in the garden. We’d find them, take them in–gently, always gently–and put them in a jar. Usually we gave them leaves. Once I gave some potato chips to see if they’d eat it. They died instead. Most did. We were just kids, after all. But some of them…some of them made it. We’d see them spin, and we were always so excited when the time came to release them.”

“What, exactly?”

“Caterpillars and butterflies.”

“Fascinating. Of all the things you could recall, from all your years of life, that’s it?”

“I think that all this is…something like that, don’t you? Something like them?”

“Maybe it is. But there’s no way to know until it’s too late to go back.”

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Wick bore the candle aloft. “You know what this is, don’t you?”

At the flick of a slimy finger, the frogs retreated. “Of course we do,” burbled their king. “That accursed spark is what allowed you to roast us for eating, powered the machines that drained our swamps.” He drew out his following words with thick malice: “It has brought nothing but death to my people, even here at our last outpost.”

“What if I told you,” said Wick, trying to be sly, “that this is the last flame in the world, and that the secret of its creation has been lost?”

The frog king lolled out its tongue in a moment of thought. “I would say that my people should attack you now, at all hazards, to ensure that it is drowned in the cleansing waters of the last refuge.”

“Consider this an opportunity,” Wick said. “The last fire is traveling to the summit that it might be rekindled in the souls of all my people. If you would allow me to pass, my people would be in your debt.”

“You do not have a good record of being beholden to those to whom you owe much,” sneered the frog king. “Ask the aurochs that, if you can find one.”

“The fire might be the only thing that can hold back the decay and rebuild our world,” Wick replied. “Surely you, in your wisdom, feel the end closing about all life even here in the last refuge.”

“You would have me put my trust in that which caused the decay in the first place? Perhaps it is simply time for us to fade quietly away with one last noble act.”

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The atmospheric equipment took a little while to boot up, so while it was composing itself Gelly went up to the top of a nearby ridge with Deuce.

“Look at it, Deuce,” she said, spreading her arms at the wooded valley below. “A whole planet waiting for someone to explore.”

Deuce wagged his tail and barked through his breather mask, which kept the argon-heavy air from slowly suffocating them both.

“As soon as everything is calibrated, we’ll go back to the portal and report this place,” Gelly continued. “Who’d have thought it, a planet with so much argon in the air that nothing can breathe except plants?”

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“He has googly eyes,” said Mavis. “Why does he have googly eyes?”

“Googly eyes are cheap,” said Gerry. “Marbles are expensive.”

“Still, with the pose that they have him in, holding his golf club on the range, it looks like he’s psyching out over the shot.”

They moved to the next display. “This is a really unnatural pose,” said Gerry. “Do you think they didn’t have enough skin to work with?”

“She’s awfully fat,” replied Mavis. “I think they were just lousy taxidermists.”

“But a ballet move, en pointe? That’s a stretch.”

“What about this one ever here?” Mavis pointed. “This one’s not so bad.”

“Humans don’t have three arms,” sneered Gerry. “I think this entire display is just crap taxidermy. The Betelgeusians are hardly even trying.”

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“She didn’t suffer,” said Dr. Honecker. “That much is clear. Death was…instantaneous. Really, we ought to be grateful for that.”

Maya dropped her perspex helmet and kicked it across the room, where it clattered into a stainless steel tray. “The hell it was!” she screamed.

“Look, I understand how you must feel,” said Honecker, his hands up and splayed. “Really. I lost a brother to explosive decompression in the Harper Abyss.”

“And what did you do,” growled Maya, “when the doctor told you that he didn’t suffer, that being ripped apart by the laws of physics wasn’t such a bad way to go?”

“No one told me that,” said Honecker softly. “I was the attending physician. Dr. Kian-To got a bloody nose when he suggested I recuse myself.”

“Well, in that case, I do appreciate what you’re trying to do,” Maya said, still breathing heavily. “But you’ll also understand if you aren’t getting very far with a disturbed and emotional family member!”

“Of course,” said Honecker. “Please, knock over whatever you like. But once you have, I think there is something you should know.”

“What’s that?”

“Your sister’s submersible was sabotaged. And not in a simple way, either; they replaced one of her valves with one that had been withdrawn from service for excessive dives. I knew to look for it because the same thing claimed my brother. And when I tried to question the maintenance tech in SubCon, I found him dead of a heart attack.”

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Do dreamlings exist?

If so, are they alive?

No one’s arguing that these interlopers have been on the rise over the last two decades. From the first reported dreamling to the current climate, in which two-thirds of people have seen one, it’s been a meteoric rise. But how can you quantify something from a half-remembered dream?

The only requirement for a dreamling to be classified is for the same agent to appear in two different dreams, especially when the dreamers share no frame of reference. But this leads to a proliferation of false reports; who can say for sure what is coincidence and what isn’t? The number of dreamlings conclusively established through sustained observation is far lower.

Naturally, the most pervasive and agreed-upon dreamlings are the ones that invite the most speculation. The Dark Man has appeared in hundreds of thousands of dreams, and appears to react to stimuli. It resists attempts to investigate it and seeks to remain elusive. Are these the actions of a living being, or simply a common psychological response?

The same could be said of the other 1,742 most common dreamlings.

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“There’s just one problem with these property records.”

“Oh? What’s that?”

“There’s no death date for the former owner.”

“That’s no problem. You see, I never die.”

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“I’m not a citizen,” Myassa said. “Kinda funny to think about it, but all I ever had was a green card. I was kind of hoping to get naturalized, but I never got around to it. My brothers are, of course, since they were born in Detroit. I was supposed to be born there too, but I was early. They have–had–a good hospital in Damascus, but you don’t get citizenship for being born there.”

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“No data was recovered from your skimmer,” Tallow said. “Nothing but you, and that’s a miracle in and of itself.”

“Are we still in atmo?” cried Remy. “Please tell me we’ve left.”

“No, of course not,” said Tallow. “This is a class three skimmer, it’s not capable of breaking atmo. We’re a few days out from Neptune Central Station, we can transfer you to a trans-atmo skiff there.”

“You don’t understand,” cried Remy. “The flux is still scrambling your communications. She’s still out there.”

“She? Your skimmer had an all-male crew, if I’m reading this manifest correctly.”

“We never saw more than shadows,” Remy said. “Shadows in the clouds. But there’s no other way to describe what we saw.”

“Another skimmer? Maybe a crew member from an illegal claim jumper?”

“To see it from lower atmo like that…no, no,” Remy said. “She would have had to be as big as a cruiser, or a continent. Maybe that’s why she never came close…the atmo is too thin…”

Tallow shook her head. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.” Behind her, a shadow of humanoid and vaguely feminine shape reared beneath the Neptunian clouds.

The second-to-last thing Tallow heard was Remy screaming.

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