Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

Reared by the last twisted branches of a denuded family tree, the heir was regaled by maiden aunts and crippled great uncles on tales of his dynasty’s former glory, now brought to ruin. All of these dry and dreadful personages put the entirety of their hopes for the family’s future on the heir and his cousin, hoping that the last ember of their once-great house would burst forth into guttering flame.

Instead, the heir grew up devouring the desiccated and dusty remains of the ancestral library and longing for the life of genteel comfort that graced the gentlemen of learning and literature in his books. So when the last of his great-aunts died, he used his legacy to take degrees in arts and humane letters at Oxbridge, seeking only to live a comfortable life as a learned gentleman. But those old tales, wheezed by firelight, and the dying light of rememberance in his family’s old eyes…they had more of an influence on the heir than he might otherwise have liked.

An idea took hold, a buzzing insect of the mind that refused to stop its chittering. The family legacy could still be salvaged. Their reputation could be pried loose from the inky tentacles of madness that had taken hold of its very name. And so the heir resolved to reclaim his birthright, little suspecting the true nightmare that awaited.

Educated for a life of indolence and foppery, he was ill-equipped for adventure in both mind and body—for the terrors of the mind and of the flesh care little for human letters. Theirs are the inhumane letters, signals carved in blood upon skin, bone, and sepulchral crypt wall. Nevertheless, fortified with both guilt and wine, the heir resolved to undertake the burden of this arduous quest.

Will he rise to the occasion, a phoenix from his family’s ashes? Or will he find inspiration only at the bottom of a bottle, retiring to a life of comfort and cats? Only time will tell.

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“The computer we have at home is junk, even by junk standards,” said Heath. “If I’m going to program, I need something with some oomph.”

“Hmph,” said Simona. “When I was last in the library, they had a bank of cheap 80/86 clones. Not even good ones from Tandy or Compaq, but rubbish units by somebody called Alpha Systems. Of course, I had a Commodore 64 at home and we used Apples for the business – only the finest!”

“Well, okay,” said Heath. “When I say ‘something with some oomph’ what I really mean is ‘something with a keyboard and an internet connection. Mom only ever uses her iPad, and programming with that is like trying to fillet a fish with bare hands.”

“Oh, I know,” Simona agreed, with a shiver that made the fur draped over her shoulders dance. “Past a certain point you simply must have a tactile interface, darling. At least, that’s what I used to tell my second husband. So that’s why you’re always in the library, dear boy?”

“Well, there’s that and they have the little lab there with a soldering iron, and all the books you could ever want. There’s a lot of old circuit stuff you can only find in books, after all. Plus Ruby makes me get stuff, even if I charge her double when I have a fine.”

“Why doesn’t she go in herself, dearie?” Simona asked.

“She’s banned. Ever since the incident.”

“The incident?”

“She won’t tell me what happened, and neither will the librarian. But I do know the cops have a standing order to arrest her for trespassing there.”

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Dangerous days lie ahead, O friends
In this city of magic and smiles
I see many ways your paths may end
But still, tarry here for awhile

Among you there is a child of gold
Beloved of one who does stalk
You’re but a key to be controlled
For a treasure untold to unlock

Another will find that what they have lost
Is really still theirs to find
But then they must ask, is it worth the cost
When the truth will lay bare their mind

The last will have truth knocked out from below
Like a hangman removing a stool
They must then decide if the reality they know
Is worth bearing a past that is cruel

A welcome I sound to the Witch Queen’s town
To all of you entering here
I hope that you all find here fame and renown
And lose nothing you hold too dear

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A thousand interfaces ago
Options abounded in menus, mice
A simpler future is in store
Hamburger menus meant for fingers
An internet of the i
If you want more features
You can learn to program yourself
In machine code or assembly

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To the sanctum innermost
No human soul may go
But human body one must boast
If one desires to know

No undead wraith nor ghost there
No puppets dance on strings
To breathe the inner sanctum air
One must be a human thing

The Witch Queen made her sanctum
And this trap it does protect
What lies within is mute and dumb
For all but its architect

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The back of Stubb’s Coffee looked out on what passed for a back alley in Deerton. There was the tail end of the Spin Cycle, where lost laundry and bad quarters went to die. Once upon a time, it had been possible to score bags of edible bread and boxed treats from Wilbur’s Bake Shop, but the building had been shuttered for two years. In fact, half of the block was vacant, now, and after dark they were pools of dark failure against the city lights and the distant blinkers of the ammonia towers at The Plant.

Ruby sighed, her exultation turning to mist in the late-night chill. She lit a cigarette, leaving it to hang on her lip as the ash grew, and pulled a small notebook from her pocket. The Rubymaximum Chronofile, or at least Volume 271b thereof, needed updating with everything that had happened across the countertop at Stubb’s. Ruby scribbled hurriedly, trying to get the information down while it was still fresh, pausing only to breathe out minor dragon-clouds or tap the ashes from her coffin nail onto the sluggish winter mud.

The fate of Rubymaximum Chronofile Volume 271a was warning enough about what happened when hot ash came up against cardboard and paper.

“Theresa Vandermeer in again, third time today. She only gets a water each time, but then uses the wireless for the maximum amount of time. I bet she lost her internet again, and is coming in to do business. The last time her boy Carlos lost his job, they were unplugged for six weeks, and made ends meet through coffee shop wi-fi and eBay.”

Ruby paused, tapping the Stubb’s-branded ballpoint on her chin.

“I think the store is going under,” she continued. “Inez cut everyone’s hours again. I’m the only one with a decent number, since I know how to fix the espresso machine. We only get about ten people during the morning rush. At school there’d be ten people per minute. The cost of internet alone probably isn’t being made up by the mud we’re slinging. Better start looking for opportunities elsewhere. No more saying ‘Deerton may be tiny but at least it has a Stubb’s!’ It’s gonna hit the library hard, too, all the internet-seekers are gonna go there and blow out their data limits. With the reduced hours and no money for computers, the city’s headed back to 1990 in more ways than one.”

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Temporal skimmers are unique in that they exist completely fluidly in the fourth dimension. This ensures that there will only be a handful, perhaps only one or two, in existence at any given time. Their massive bulk and devastating hunger is therefore not in competition with any other.

However, experts are certain that the skimmers return to a certain time period to breed. No one is sure when this is, but there is a healthy debate about whether a plague of these creatures, enough to scour the world clean, was in the past…or is in the future.

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The Vanishers

The Book of Vanishings, also known as the Vanishomicon, is the holy book of this group. Short and widely available, it lays out 22 rules for living along with a 23rd rule that encompasses the Vanishers’ philosophy:

Those that follow these rules in this world and in their heart will vanish from it. Mankind is a plague upon this world, for they do not belong to each other. In vanishing, both are made whole in separate paradises.

Vanishers spontaneously arise from those reading the Book. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, the tend to disappear. The most famous instance is probably the settlement of Beloktown, a Vanisher settlement of 5000 souls that was found vacant and abandoned some time after its last contact with the rest of the Barrier. But smaller groups and individuals also vanish.

Skeptics claim that is a self-fulfilling prophecy, that the Vanishers wander off to die or are killed by people taking advantage of Rule 2, Total Nonviolence. But the persistent vanishings do lend some credence to the belief system, and the Book of Vanishings has never gone out of print.

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