Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

“Let me ask you something you may have been asked before. You say you believe there’s something inherently good in people, despite wretched examples to the contrary. How is that?”

“Let me put it to you this way. An antelope can walk as soon as it’s born; insects begin to feed as soon as they’re hatched. But humans are born helpless. If you abandon one of us after a day, a month, a year…we will die. And yet the world is full of adults who were raised, with all the care an nourishment that implies. Someone loved each and every adult enough to see to it that they didn’t perish. It might not have been a pure love, it might even have been a love born out of fear. But what else can one call the effort required to bring forth a complete human being? With that indelible love a requirement, for all of us, how can we not have a similar spark of compassion?”

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

On June 28, a middle manager at Highner-Coburn, a manufacturer of valves and o-ring seals, went into the parking lot. He locked himself in his late-model Takuro Phantom, at around 10:45 that morning.

Around noon, the fire department responded to a call about a car fire. They arrived to find the Takuro an inferno, utterly consuming the middle manager and three other nearby cars. In the news the following day, it was assumed to be an accident. But an investigation found traces of accelerant, and a reciept for acetone was found in the man’s desk.

It was, apparently, a grisly form of suicide.

And that would have been all, a gruesome sideline for a slow news day. And then on July 4–Independence Day–a woman who worked for a midtown DMV got into her Powell sedan with a can of hairspray and a lighter. The Powell took about half an hour to burn to cinders, and eyewitnesses report that the victim sat placidly behind the wheel as she, and her car, were immolated.

Between the first incident on June 28 and the final one on September 23, a total of 38 people were burned up in their cars. They represented a wide range of occupations, men and women, and all races. But they were predominantly middle-aged, white-collar workers, albeit ones without histories of depression or suicidal thoughts. The only commonality, if it can be called that, was that all of the cars were older models and tended to be from manufacturers that either no longer existed or no longer sold cars in the USA, like Takura or Powell.

The authorities were only able to rescue one victim before they were killed: Gabriel Hernandez, a 41-year-old assistant manager at OfficeSmart. Hernandez was unable to speak due to severe damage to his lungs due to smoke inhalation, and he lingered for three months before dying in November–the last official victim of the Summer of Burning Cars.

Police attempted to interview him using a letter board all the same. In response to their questions, Hernandez spelled out a single word: SPARK.

It’s still unknown what he meant.

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

Swid is a new, intensely luscious, combination of three distinct and differing things.

Tangy, soft, and sweet, Swid charms in a European manner.

Designed to tantalize, Swid is or soon will be available everywhere.

Swid is safe, all-natural, and harmless.

Swid is love.

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

“There was a fortress town here on the island, with an abbey and everything. And then, in 1421, it was just abandoned.”

“Why’s that?”

“The sea-cliff collapsed and blocked the only beach access. People had to climb over ropes to get into fishing boats to take them to the mainland once the food started to run out. There was nowhere safe to land anymore.”

“But people still got onto the island.”

“Oh yes, it’s pretty dangerous to land but you can do it if you don’t mind possibly holing your skiff and getting stranded. You can see graffiti and all that up there, and the locals have been nabbing the choicest stones for their own uses for ages. But not anymore.”

“Why not?”

“They arrest people now, after some poor kids drowned trying to save their mate who broke his arm up there.”

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

“Yes, the surveyor told him, but the Colonel was a man who knew what he wanted and meant to get it. He asked how long it would be before Cliffsby fell into the sea, and the surveyor told him fifty years. To that, the colonel replied that he was a sixty-year-old man and he wouldn’t live another fifty even if he took up residence in the operating theatre at St. Bedford’s.”

“And now that time has come?”

“Soon enough. You’ve seen the cracks. The Colonel wanted Cliffsby as a retreat, as a symbol, and as a place to put all of his money so that his children, whom he loathed, wouldn’t see a cent.”

“That’s where I come in, I suppose. His daughter Bertha wants all the furniture appraised so it can be sold. I’ve one week to do it.”

“Ha! Ten years ago that never would’ve happened. But now that Agnes and Clara have died, and Doris is an invalid drooling at a wall, I suppose Bertha sees her way clear.”

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

GesteCo’s colonization scheme was simple: seeding barren worlds in the habitable zones of stars with hardy terraforming plants, then shipping in a jump gate for an official survey crew. The planets were each given marketing-friendly names coined by a dedicated AI, and the survey crew would lay out an initial colony for investors and settlers. With any luck, GesteCo would recieve a 1000% return on its investment within 25 years, to say nothing of longer-term profits.

Aerna (original designation: J20383259+4601983 c) was one such planet, and the survey crew found the terraforming plants to have succeeded brilliantly, warming the world such that its ice caps had shrunk and generated a terrain of stark waterfalls and caverns. It was in one of these caverns near the colony site that the crew discovered the spheres.

They ranged from just a few centimeters to tens of meters in diameter, featureless and stony, and most strikingly they hovered 1-2 meters off the ground without any visible means of support.

GesteCo, panicked at possibly violating their contract not to develop worlds of “historical or biological interest,” immediately called for a government investigation. It was found that the spheres were of the same composition and age as the rocks around them, there were no indications of tool marks, and that their floating was the result of an anomaly in Aerna’s magnetic field combined with a very ferrous composition in the rocks.

The Spheres of Aerna quickly became a tourist attraction, but the debate as to their origin remains open. It’s possible they formed naturally through some unlikely geological process, or that they were placed by an unknown intelligence.

In the meantime, GesteCo has been content to pocket the results of tourist spending and scientific analysis alike.

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

Day 28: Stay home from work and school from now until the end of the challenge.

Day 29: Go up to your high place. Take a selfie and post it with the hashtag #Emergence. Stay there until dawn the following morning.

Day 30: Jump.

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

Day 19: Contact your sponsor. Make sure they know how far you have come, and they will confirm your Cocoon status.

Day 20: Your sponsor will send you a film. Watch it.

Day 21: Watch the film all day, from when you get up to when you go to sleep.

Day 22: Delete the film. You will never need to watch it again.

Day 23: Locate a high-up place that is also secret. A railroad bridge or an abandoned building are good candidates.

Day 24: Take a selfie in your high-up place. Post it with the hashtag #CocoonGoesHere.

Day 25: Take a razor blade and cut yourself on your inner lip, your inner arm, and your inner thigh. Do not take a picture of this.

Day 26: Write down a date four days from today. Leave it in a place where it can be found, but not easily, in your room.

Day 27: Go to the high place you found and stand on the very edge for one hour. If you are seen, you fail the test and must go back and find another high place.

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

Day 10: Call or Skype your sponsor. Make sure they have seen everything up to this point. They will give you a task to do as confirmation of your Caterpillar status. Do it without question.

Day 11: Your sponsor will send you a piece of music today. Listen to it.

Day 12: Listen to the piece of music from yesterday for 1 hour.

Day 13: Listen to the piece of music from yesterday all day. Have it on in the background or in your headphones from when you wake up to when you go to sleep.

Day 14: Delete the song. You will never need to listen to it again.

Day 15: Choose a spot on your body that no one will notice, like the inside of your arm. Draw a butterfly with permanent marker and take a picture. Do not wash it off afterwards.

Day 16: Post your body art with the hashtag #Larva.

Day 17: Cut the form of a butterfly into your flesh, lightly, with the tip of a razor. Follow the drawing from Day 15. Take a picture.

Day 18: Post your carved butterfly with the hashtag #Cocooning.

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

Day 1: Contact your sponsor and give them your information. They’ll keep you honest! Check in with them every day, or you’ll lose the Cocoon Challenge!

Day 2: Draw a butterfly on a piece of paper.

Day 3: Post your butterfly with the hashtag #CocoonChallenge

Day 4: Find a picture of a butterfly somewhere around your house or your town. Take a selfie with it.

Day 5: Post your selfie with the hashtag #IAmAButterfly.

Day 6: Using the same piece of paper from Day 2, draw yourself.

Day 7: Post your two drawings with the hashtag #Yolk.

Day 8: Find a clear sidewalk or other piece of cement, put your drawing on it, and burn the drawing. Take a picture or video of it.

Day 9: Post your picture or video with the hashtag #TheEggIsHatching

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!