Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

Why happens when we
bump against a mechanical dustbin
the one that contains everything we’ve
ever thrown out as useless
The instructions read like
they were assembled by an electorate
maddened against a sinister they
can’t grasp
Before this
the domestic likelihood of finding a
lasting mate
A machine
Safe brains miss the obsolete
even as they
practice an Occam’s of pragmatic
worth
The old rockets into the trash
another prospective razor held against it
the simplest is the best
Beneath whatever abstract speculations
what we discard
lies unwelcome
its service forgotten
entombment
in earth
its only
fate

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It looks human enough, with feminine curves and limbs, but all made of feathery tendrils bound tight. We think that the seadragons have pressed themselves into a form similar to ours, but why? We don’t fish for them, and they’re clever enough to avoid being bycatch.

The thing–the “seadragon queen” as the boys have taken to calling it–appeared again as we were putting out our nets. It mimed some of our actions under the water but didn’t touch the food we threw. It didn’t interfere with the nets, either, but just swum around them. Even though it doesn’t–can’t have–eyes like ours, it turns its head to “look” at us.

Our gaffer knows signs–his brother can’t hear–and he’s been teaching them to the seadragon queen as it swims around us. It’s begun signing back, though he says that it’s touch to understand as its mushy “fingers” are the equivalent of an atrocious accent for signs. Since it seems determined to be near us whenever we’re netting, I’ve taken him off his duties to keep an eye on it.

The “seadragon queen” asked us for something. The gaffer says “she” just wanted some food, but she’s never shown any interest in what we’ve thrown her before. I’ve told the men that they can give her anything that we don’t need.

She asked for a knife, and the damn fools gave it to her. We needed it–they don’t come cheap–but now for the first time she has the ability to do more than fascinate the men. She can kill them.

My gaffer is gone. He disappeared sometime after lunch. He’d taught some of the linemen signs, so we’re not completely blind, but I don’t have a good feeling. Why did he have to give her that knife?

Our fishing lines have been cut, clean through. I suspected the seadragon queen until I saw the parting myself–done at an angle, like a fisherman. There’s no way she could have known that.

Three more men missing, even though I’ve set a watch. We got a report of a second seadragon-thing around the new nets, and a third. They say that they aren’t as curvy as the first one. I’m not sure what to think, but I don’t care. The boat goes up for sale tomorrow. Let the new captain figure this out.

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The last boat arrived in October, and the captain reported that the situation was desperate. A failed harvest, exhausted stocks of seals and fish, and only one serviceable vessel to collect timber from the forests beyond and below.

Our lord sent out a rescue party, but it was turned back by snow and sea ice. A second was also turned back, while a third never returned. In response, he declared that the settlement was lost, and a funeral was held for every settler that could be named.

More than a year later, in March, a relative of one of the settlers was able to fund a boat to set out in balmy weather. They found the settlement ravaged and burned, with no sign of the boat and no sign of the settlers. All that was left was an inscription, carved in what had been the great hall:

THE LAST ONES OF THE NORTH

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You can tell when the mother rabbit is ready to give birth because she will swell up very noticeably. Make sure to move her outside at this point, because within a day or two she will violently explode and scatter baby bunnies all over a half-mile radius. This ensures that the babies which survive will be well-scattered and hardy enough to survive.

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People say old Greenwood farm is haunted. I’ve heard stories of chickens crowing there even though there hasn’t been a flock in years. But that was before Chapek moved in there, set up all those lightning rods. Seems friendly enough, but nobody goes to visit.

We’re pretty sure that Greenwood is now a robot farm.

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Are YOU sick of pizzas that are too expensive? Are you tired of outrageous delivery fees, state and local taxes when all you want is a cheap pizza pie?

We were too, and that’s why we founded Deep Dish Deep Discount Pizza.

The finest ingredients? Fresh supplies? Artisan? That’s just a fancy word for expensive and wasteful. Our philosophy is to make ’em quick and make ’em cheap. We use lightly expired cheese, tomato sauce bought in bulk from Kyrgyzstan, and pepperoni damaged in shipment. Our toppings are fresh enough that we can bake most of the rancid out of them most of the time. We don’t pay our drivers because we don’t HAVE any drivers! All of our pizzas are taken to you by our cooks, and they get paid by the pie. If you get a bad pie, don’t worry! The symptoms won’t last more than a day or so, and our waiver means we’re legally unassailable.

That’s Deep Dish Deep Discount Pizza, corner of 5th and E.

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SQÜIBBLI
This stuffed squid will perch on your nightstand and remind you of the cosmic horrors of your own insignificance every time you behold its inky visage upon waking.

VALMÖR
This Romanian-inspired bed for one is made of classic planks with steep angled sides, a privacy lid, and storage underneath for earth from your home churchyard.

TRAVEST
The TRAVEST Tea Set is a groundbreaking ceramic product that appears to be made entirely out of tiny nude statues. It’s an illusion, of course, but what could be more whimsical than picking up a handle made of twisted human forms to dispense liquid from a spout that appears to be made of the same?

KAVINGBY
This shelf unit is designed to hold anything your mind can conceive. You would think that it would have to be no more than 20cm x 20cm, but this actually isn’t true! The KAVINGBY is larger on the inside than it is on the outside.

ALLÅBODA
This train set is made from sustainably-harvested lumber from the Spirit Forest of Mu and is guaranteed to entertain your little engineer for hours on end with its incredibly lifelike movement and decals. Any resemblance the decal passengers have to lost souls burned into the ancient cursed wood is a pure coincidence.

DANZKLUB
The DANZKLUB light is the only illumination solution on the market with a built-in strobe effect. Why pay for a fancy strobe light when a simple plastic and cardboard DANZKLUB can do it all for you from any socket? NOTE: Not advised for customers with photosensitive epilepsy.

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Each soul is a droplet, a point of mist. When its shell expires, it rises, unnoticed, and returns to the well. There is it absorbed, mixed, reborn. The mist that can be seen rising off of the well is that of souls outgoing and souls incoming.

The collected knowledge and experiences of the well are the energies that power the world within the crystal. Everything inside the impenetrable shell crafted by the Glazier springs from and returns to the well.

But this has not always been the case. Many times throughout the history of the crystal, beings have sought to redirect souls away from the well for their own purposes, or to use the well’s energies for their own desires.

Everyone knows the tale of Erdall, who created her own well in mockery of the true one and built a mighty empire on its back. They know the story of her destruction and annihilation–never to return to the well herself–just as fluently. Perhaps its equal is the tale of Revinger, who sought to harness the power of the well to pierce the crystal and free the world from its “prison.” It is not for those within the crystal to know what he found when the howling void beyond sucked him in.

Is the rise of the Denier and its followers a peer to Erdall and Revinger, the two great enemies of the well? This remains to be seen.

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The Pundigrion is a book of immense power. Many have gone mad scrying deeply into its pages, expecting as they often do a mere book of very good puns. But those are a dime a dozen, from The Funomicon to The Wit’s Endgemot, and have no power over the insane (merely the inane).

But The Pundigrion works on a different principle. It open’s the reader’s mind to the inner working of language, the web of phonemes and graphemes that make up language at its most base. It tears away the veil of individual language to expose the underlying code that makes puns possible. And, in this way, it drives readers to gibbering madness.

We can trace the oldest known copy of The Pundigrion to Moshe Abraham, the Mad Israeli, who composed a scroll in Aramaic in the year 135. Taken by the victorious Romans, it was later copied in Athens into Greek and Latin by Leonidas the Loony Lacedaemonian. The Latin copy ended up in the Vatican archives, where numerous vulgate copies were made by Innocentius the Insane Italian. The Greek copy was captured by the Ottomans and sent to Constantinople, where Turkish and Arabic versions can be traced to Taranuz the Touched Turk.

In total, nine copies of The Pundigrion are known to have existed, in Aramaic, Latin, Greek, Turkish, Arabic, Italian, French, German, and English. Each has had its exact whereabouts lost over time, largely because it reduces those who study it to gibbering lunatics capable of speaking only in elaborate puns. These people tend not to dispose of their estates very rationally; the 18th-century scholar Berthold the Batty Berliner tossed his copy of The Pundigrion from the dome of St Hedwig’s, for instance. It was rather quickly followed by the rest of his library, his clothes, and Berthold himself.

Chroniclers record his last words as “Singt ein Vogel auswendig? Nein, am meisten singt er vom Blatt!” A rough translation would be “Does a bird sing from memory?
No, it mostly reads from the sheet music.”

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“You can’t leave!” the first hooded figure, the one in a purple robe, cried. “It is a violation of the Tuvo Principle, the Society’s most cherished precept!”

“Wait a moment,” said the second hoodie, this one in crimson. “I thought free will was the centerpiece of the Tuvo Principle!”

“Free will aside from total subservience to the Society and the Tuvo Principle,” added a third member wearing forest green.

Crimson shook their head, as evidenced by the bobbing of their robe. “How can your will be free if you’re subservient?”

“Yeah,” said Yellow. “That’s dumb.”

“Well, if the Tuvo Principle isn’t what I say it is, then what is it?” Purple shouted.

“It’s absolute free will!” said Crimson.

“It’s absolute subservience!” shouted Green.

“I’ll show you who’s subservient!” Yellow followed these fighting words with an actual physical blow aimed at Purple.

The argument quickly degenerated into a melee after this. Forgotten amidst the Society’s shouting, Chris worked the bindings free and cut Avery loose with the sacrificial dagger.

“What the heck is the Tuvo Principle, anyway?” Said Avery as they fled.

“I don’t even think they know.”

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