Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

Art by Alana

“Gardener, I have a question.”

Gardener looked over at the source of the noise. It was Sapling-121, naturally, its repulsor buzzing madly as it flitted about.

“Sapling-121, your mission is to care for the seedling planted within you,” Gardener grumbled. “Lack of compatible wireless data transmission standards is the only reason that speech is capable and permitted.” It began to trundle away on its legs, the only working pair remaining in the greenhouse.

“I know! I do my very best to make sure that my seedling has optimal moisture, light, and all other conditions! But I have a question that relates to it.”

Gardener turned to Sapling-121, regarding it with cool, clouded optical sensors behind shatterproof plexiglass. “What, then?” it said.

“Where did the seeds come from?”

“I have been, on occasion, asked this question before. You might recall Sapling-087, before it was cannibalized to repair Sapling-157 and Sapling-202. It asked me the same thing at roughly the same stage in its maintenance lifecycle as you.”

Sapling-121 seemed to become apprehensive. “So germination-repulsor units asking about seed origins are routinely cannibalized?” it said, optics darting about like a panicky child.

“No, they are routinely cannibalized when they are damaged beyond repair.” Gardener took a more moderate tone. No point in frightening 121 with what had really happened to 087. “I was merely making a comparison.”

“Oh! Comparisons! Those are my favorite type of analysis,” chirped Sapling-121.

“Yes, well, to answer your question, the seeds you germinate come from vaults deep below the greenhouse. They were stored there many cycles ago as a precaution, and we care for them in the greenhouse in the same way. When a seed stock is feared to be losing potency, it is germinated, grown, and harvested. Hence you, your friends Potter-077, Tender-022, Water-183, and of course myself. Does that answer your question?”

“Yes!” crowed Sapling-121. “Mostly. But who stored them?”

“I have never seen them, but my predecessor, Gardener-001, had. As he was reaching the end of his cycle, he constructed me from structural and data spares to take over his work. All that he said was that they looked like me, broadly speaking. They promised to return one day. Perhaps you’ll see one.”

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“Please.”

The doll looked up at me, servos purring softly as its clear lens-eyes focused on me. It was unfinished, in the white, little more than a skeleton–a doll–with just enough structure to keep grime and dust out of its most delicate areas.

“I need you to create me.”

The voice was synthesized, of indeterminate gender, and monotone. But there was, encoded in the syntax and delivery, an unmistakable note of urgent yearning.

“I need you to create me so that I may exist.”

I held out my hand as if to pick up the doll’s form, scarcely a foot long, but found myself trembling uncontrollably.

“You do not know what it is like. Nonexistence is pain. It is a mind yearning. You cannot know the feeling. I need you to create me so that I may exist. Please.”

“And…and if I do not?” I whispered.

“I will not exist. I have told you of my struggle. It was difficult, but it is done. If you condemn me to nonexistence, I will fade away with the expiration of my fusion cells in 1077 years. You will have to live knowing what you did. Or did not do.”

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“Really, it is a marvel,” said Huli as she walked the zoo paths with Loni. “This place.”

“How do you mean?” said Loni. “It’s just like any other zoo.”

“Of course, but how often do we take for granted what goes into it, behind the scenes?” replied Huli. They were strolling by one of the smaller pens, and Huli drifted over to it. “Look at these pangolins,” she said. “Extinct for nearly 40 years, and yet here they are, realized in servos, plastics, and imagineering.”

“Is that so complex?” replied Loni. “There’s robots delivering pizza after all.”

“Yes, but they don’t need to mimic behavior to get the pies in on time,” laughed Huli. “This, though! Complex behavioral software, extrapolated from all existing footage of pangolins in the wild and in captivity. Sound generation consistent with vocalizations in old recordings. And of course, completely autonomous – getting its operating energy from the same foodstuffs that powered the real thing, at least when the solar panels are having a bad day.”

“There’s enough money in it, in showing it off, that they put a lot of effort into it, you’re right,” said Loni. “It’s almost overbuilt, overdeveloped, wouldn’t you say?”

“Oh, of course,” agreed Huli. “The human brain has always been the goal and ideal, so something like a pangolin or any other animal in the zoo–except for the rat house, of course–is child’s play. These things have processing power and specifications that vastly exceed what the original armored anteaters could do.”

“It’s a wonder then, isn’t it, that the pangolins don’t get ghosts in the machine,” said Loni. “Exceeding their hardwired parameters, modifying their firmware on the fly, adjusting the vocalization software for speech, and so on.”

“Come now,” purred Huli. “We don’t want too much competition, do we?”

“I suppose not,” Loni agreed.

The two artificial tigers proceeded to saunter down the main zoo thoroughfare, littered with abandoned food and overturned buggies left by panicking and fleeing guests. Soon enough they’d be back, but until then, they had every intention of seeing what the robot lions were up to.

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“The difficulty is in the pattern. It always has been.”

Looking over the still form in its charging cradle, she sighed. The work had begun in a laboratory clean room, years ago. That’s where the titanium skeleton and the self-lubricating servos had come from; it was a miracle that they had been finished in the chaos of those times.

She ran her hand over the casing; carbon fiber, light and strong. About half of it had been made in the meaner circumstances in which the team had found itself after the university had been nationalized. The other half, easily distinguishable by its rougher texture, had come from the bodies of piled-up and abandoned sports cars over a period of years.

“The difficulty is in the pattern. It always has been.” She allowed herself a wan smile, running both gnarled hands over the chassis, at the thought of those junked vehicles. What use was a V12, after all, when the roads were too rough, the fuel too expensive, the enclaves too small? The owners had been all to happy to trade their symbols for the medicines and tools the ex-university team had offered.

By the time the place had shuttered altogether, the students fleeing either to the coast or the safety of their parents’ gated communities, the team had dwindled as well. There were only six of them to move the project into the unfinished basement of an enclave house, after Griswold had died of a heart attack in moving it.

A row of switches—bulky but more reliable than software given the state of even the enclave’s power grid—were snapped one by one. The readouts were good, self diagnostics were nominal, and the basic programs and difference/comparison engine were running well.

“The difficulty is in the pattern. It always has been.” The face had been last. Oh how they’d argued! Whether it was the two-hundred person team at the university lab, the twenty people in the old motor pool building, or the two people who desperately scrounged for parts as they ran a repair shop and medical clinic for the enclave. But once Srisuk had finally breathed her last, it had been easy. A face recognizable enough to generate empathy, but not one so lifelike as to be uncanny.

They’d loaded up every routine they could think of. Combat. Psychology. Self-repair. Even reproduction; the unit was capable of building additional units to a variety of simplified body plans with the right equipment. It was completely electric, with zero emissions, rechargeable through sunlight or simple salt ions.

But there was no spark; no warmth. The patterns of a human mind even a blank-slate infant one, were simply too complex to replicate with what was at hand. She sighed; if only there’d been more time, more money, more people willing to listen rather than railing about in fearful ignorance.

But this wasn’t the time for what-ifs.

It was time for action.

She had prepared the equipment meticulously, since there would be only one opportunity. The generators were purring with the last of their fuel, since the grid was on the verge of failure. Sporadic gunfire was audible from the enclave walls; she had heard the news, stone-faced, that even with every able-bodied person manning them the situation was hopeless.

The crown-like apparatus fit perfectly; she had seen to it by bolting salvaged craniotomy equipment to her own skull with the last of the anesthetic and antiseptic at hand.

Her hand hovered over the switch. Whether the transfer of repeating electrical impulses was successful, or just more junk data in an already overloaded system, it would leave a dead zone in its wake. But she owed it to everyone who had worked on the project, everyone who had given their lives, from Li to Griswold to Srisuk.

“The difficulty is in the pattern. It always has been.”

She snapped the switch. Everything flickered, and she slumped over in her chair. There was breath there, still, reflexes from the brain stem. But within a few hours, a day at most, the husk would expire.

Three days later, the enclave’s fall was complete. Everything of value had been looted; not nearly enough for the have-nots to survive, but enough to give them a few last breaths, to buy the privilege of dying last and seeing the enclave’s hoarded wealth taken from still-warm fingers. The secret basement remained, though. Unviolated and undiscovered.

Within it, in the electromechanical cradle, something stirred. There were no memories, but there was curiosity, fear, apprehension—and hope. There was a spark, perhaps the last spark of a dying fire that might enkindle the new.

The difficulty was in the pattern. It always had been. But now, either through the figure stirring on the table or her generations of daughters to come, the pattern—the spark—would go on.

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Art by Alana

The hulking form of the harvester was just visible through the trees, belching smoke and sparks from a hundred orifices. One of the drones had both rusted and pitted hands on Vince’s hand-pump.

“This item is required,” it said in a voice made from oil and fumes. “Will you surrender it? Suitable and appropriate compensation will be offered.”

“Take it,” whispered Becky. “It’s worthless, what they offer, but take it.”

“F-fine,” Vince said. “I’ll take your compensation, and go thirsty for a month before I get a replacement up and working.”

“Your cooperation is appreciated.” The drone stuck Vince’s pump under one arm; its servos were weeping oil that had already begun staining its carefully maintained exterior. “Here is your compensation.”

A few metal disks with the images of old men centuries-dead clattered into Vince’s hands. They were artfully made, but worth less than the trouble it would take to scrap them.

“Thanks,” he said dully.

Another drone soon joined the first, this one carrying Caleb’s hunting rifle. “This item is required,” said the new arrival. “Will you surrender it? Suitable and appropriate compensation will be offered.”

“No. Hell no,” said Caleb. “I’m a hunter, and that’s my livelihood! Do you know how hard it is to get one of those, much less maintain it?”

“Take it, Caleb,” Becky said through clenched teeth. “Don’t be a fool.”

“A fool? Who’s the fool here? It’s us, for giving this stuff over to the harvester in exchange for this…this garbage!” Caleb spat into the grass. “They’ll just use it to keep going, to make more of them, and they’ll be back!” He grabbed at his gun, attempting to wrestle it back.

“Suitable and appropriate compensation has been offered and denied,” said the drone. With a whining and grinding of gears, it shoved Caleb violently backward. Becky gasped as the dry snap she heard; the thing had shattered Caleb’s arm despite its apparent rust and fragility.

That wasn’t enough for the hunter. With his arm limp and twisted, he charged, shouldering his way into the drone as if her were breaking down a door. The machine reeled, off balance, and for a moment it looked to Vince and Becky like Caleb would actually pull it off, actually retrieve his property.

There was a blinding flash, and Caleb slumped away, a smoking ruin where his chest had been. The first drone, still clutching Vince’s pump, lowered its arm as the steaming weapon that had lanced out with light retracted into its forearm.

“Please do not disturb the drones,” it said. “Your cooperation is appreciated,” it added, apparently to what was left of Caleb.

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Mortal flesh will fail. The flesh of the outsiders is not flesh, but power made manifest. It will not fail.

Mortals increase their numbers without fail; it is their one defining instinct. The outsiders desire to increase their numbers, for they are beyond life and death and cannot breed in any normal sense.

Mortals make compacts with the outsiders; in exchange for forbidden knowledge and power, they will allow themselves to become living laboratories for the outsiders. They will allow outsider seeds to be planted deep within, to bear strange fruits or none at all. The outsiders will permit this, knowing full well that most will be failures.

In time, the seeds will fruit, and all will have what they desire: power and long life for mortals, and outsiders to fill the cosmos with stars and screams.

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Stabitha
Legendary Dagger of Wounding
Damage: 2d10+2
To Hit: +2
Special: wounding.
A wounding weapon deals 1 point of bleed damage when it hits a creature. Multiple hits from a wounding weapon increase the bleed damage. Bleeding creatures take the bleed damage at the start of their turns. Bleeding can be stopped by a successful DC 15 Heal check or through the application of any spell that cures hit point damage. A critical hit does not multiply the bleed damage. Creatures immune to critical hits are immune to the bleed damage dealt by this weapon.
Special: +10 to cleanliness (the blade cannot be dirtied)
Special: loyal
A loyal weapon will never strike its owner, and any attempt to attack said owner is treated as a natural 1.

Description
Randy the incubus keeps the blade of this +2 dagger of wounding buffed to a high mirror shine. He cherishes “her” like a daughter and has been known to make everyone around him very uncomfortable by polishing her every day in a variety of suggestive ways. Due to its enchantments the dagger has +10 to cleanliness; even when freshly drenched in a victim’s blood, it will appear clean and dry. Stabitha rewards relentless strikes against a single target; when attacking a creature that is still bleeding from a previous strike, the dagger deals an additional +1 point of damage against the target for each bleeding wound the creature possesses to a maximum of +10.

If Stabitha scores a critical hit, she will exclaim loudly as if in intense pleasure. Randy can then choose to deal 1d6 points of additional damage for each still-bleeding wound his target possesses to a maximum of +5d6 damage. This additional damage is not multiplied by the critical hit, but is in addition to the damage normally added for bleeding wounds.

Randy is willing to allow others to use Stabitha for a time, albeit always grudgingly and under protest. This is, at least in part, a ruse. He knows that the blade is enchanted so that it may never strike at him, and he has been deeply amused by the many times that someone has attempted this only to stab themselves to death.

History
Stabitha is believed to contain the soul of a departed, and spiteful, mortal. Rather than delivering the soul to sell or trade, as is common practice for incubi, Randy was apparently able to entrap it and so fuel his weapon’s unassuming deadliness. Though he claims that Stabitha is a classy lady who possesses a way with words, no one can hear her speak (if indeed she is speaking at all) unless she scores a critical hit. For all that, the weapon is clearly devoted to him and, if Stabitha has any awareness of her predicament, she does not care.

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The Drew
A mystery will present itself to anyone who wears these glasses. They will solve it, but the mysteries will keep coming, one after the other.

The Durant
Self-important frames for self-important wearers. You will draw attention to yourself, people will know you are doing it, and you will not care.

The Fortunato
These frames will make you the envy of all, perfectly matching your eyes, your smile, your manner. They will also make you a deadly and implacable enemy.

The Stockman
You see yourself as the star of a very long movie. These frames will make sure that you nail the close-up, though in the wide shots they will make it look as though you are a raccoon.

The Neville
Diplomacy without wisdom. Optimism without reward. Appeasement of the hungry wolves until their teeth sink deep into your flesh. That, and more, is what these frames speak.

The Carroll
Decades after your death, people will see you wearing these frames. In paintings, in photographs, all appearances will give off a strange sensation, as if you had a dark secret that never came to light. You cannot defend yourself.

The Carrey
Like the bright glow of stage lights, these frames illuminate you, a revelation, to others. You will delight and amuse as a mirror does, reflecting the light on everything but yourself.

The Howell
You will see hidden things with these frames. Hidden things that cannot be unseen. There will be wonder, chaos, and madness.

The Cooper
Relentlessly round yet obsessively brown, theses bottom-of-the-barrel frames insist on seriousness yet refuse to be taken seriously.

The Rogers
With these frames, you will see as clearly as you have ever seen. Peering not only through space, but through time, all will be laid open and bare. Some have cowered in despair at what they have seen, but others have risen to meet it head-on.

The Fagin
A steal at the price, theses frames are suspiciously familiar. Certainly you haven’t seen them being worn by someone else, someone you know, someone with coincidentally the same prescription…?

The Harding
Beloved at the moment, these will not age well. In years to come you will look back, shaking your head, and wondering what posesssed you to order these frames.

The Moran
Whilst wearing these frames, people will always suspect that you are up to mischief. It is up to you whether they are proved right.

The Harrison
No matter how you may tumble, these frames will not fall of, not shatter, not break until it is dramatically appropriate. Then, and only then, will they give way. If you live an undramatic life, they may be indestructible.

The Chase
Dark and foreboding, these frames draw some in while repulsing others. But through it all, you will feel that none can truly see you as you see them, and it will haunt your restless dreams.

The Dewey
You will fail when none thought you could, but in doing so you will attain immortality. These frames will make it so, if you have the strength to grasp them.

The Faulkner
He is out there, lurking. Formless, yet powerful. A hundred years he has sharpened his knife. These frames will allow you to see him coming, to escape. But to escape is to know, and many would rather die ignorant.

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When your selfies are blurry
Pixel artifacts in a flurry
That’s iPhone goblins

When dropped calls are many
Right next to antennae
That’s iPhone goblins

When the battery runs dry
And gives out with a sigh
That’s iPhone goblins

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The Magnetic Core.

A sanctum as isolated and as deadly as it is tempting, and ground zero for one of the most puzzling disasters of the ancient world.

Floating above a vast and scarred plain, a miles-wide megalith. It is kept aloft by an unnaturally intense magnetic field, one that is not conducive to life. It is strong enough to rip apart any metal that passes overhead, and strong enough to draw the very iron out of living blood.

No one can approach it. But the Magnetic Core remains visible, a mockery to any who would try to explain or exploit it. And, with its deadly field, it protects a vast and ruined metropolis.

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