Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

“What I am about to tell you does not leave this room,” said Whitaker. He slid another e-ink form across the table–the fifth of the conversation, for those keeping count. “Your signature to this GesteCo nondisclosure form will ensure that.”

Captain Estrada sighed and signed. “Tell me.”

“GesteCo LLC GmbH galactic teleporters have a…slight…rate of failure,” Whitaker said. “Less than .0001%, but still concerning enough for this cargo.”

“Worried about horrible transporter accidents? Mutant and meltings?” Stella laughed. “It’s still the safest way to travel, statistically speaking, isn’t it?”

“Sometimes cargo and people wind up in the wrong dimension,” Whitaker said. “And it’s recently come to our attention that some of those other dimensions’ counterparts to GesteCo might be…deliberately…slipping important things over.”

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Yoshioka Hayato sank to the ground, eyes wide. His sword clattered along with him, while Takenaka Chihiro instinctively wiped the Unmei no Fuguhiki to keep the blood from staining the blade or the handle.

“Curse you for making me do this,” said Takenaka. “To protect myself, I am willing to fight. But I abhor killing and yours is a senseless death, now. If we had just sat down to tea and sweets, like I had suggested, you would be alive and we would be solving this dispute as men do.”

Yoshioka took a few moments to bleed out, but there was nothing that anyone could do for him; the Unmei no Fuguhiki, sharp enough to make fugu sashimi and strong enough to cross blades with any katana, had done its work well. Takenaka’s practiced hands had turned the motion of gutting and preparing a fine cut of food into one of effective murder, as he had far too often in the past for his own liking.

Nakamoto Hona appeared not long after, but Takenaka was shocked by the change in her affect. She stood upright, projected confidence, and even jabbed Yoshioka several times with a small dagger that had been disguised as a fan to ensure that he was dead.

“You do not need to worry about him anymore, Nakamoto-sama,” Takenaka said. “As you predicted, he attacked recklessly and I was forced to defend myself. I must report this to the daikan.”

“Oh, that stuffy old magistrate won’t care. You acted in self-defense, and I will back you up as will anyone who was privy to the confrontation. And most importantly, Yoshioka is dead. Just as I planned.”

Takenaka looked up. “Planned?” he said.

“Think about it, cook,” said Nakamoto. “You, a wanderer, known by reputation but not personally. He, a known hothead and local ne’er-do-well. Now he is dead, and his new wife is both free to remarry with all of his assets coming to her.”

Standing, Takenaka regarded Nakamoto like a stone. “There never was any abuse,” he said flatly. “He was not starving you.”

“No one will blame you, and the daikan will see you on your way. My sob story has made it so no one has come out poorly.”

“No one but Yoshioka,” said Takenaka, sadly, looking down at the body.

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Amai

Other names: Amai-of-the-Wormholes, City at the End, Grease Trap of the Universe, Endsville, City of Wormholes

Population: Approximately one million

Size: Approximately 32 kilometers square, with some variance in the Frontiers

Government: Multiparty oligarchy, with various groups of stakeholders represented on a city council

Executive: The Entity (de facto)

Amai is a conglomeration of organic and inorganic debris that has accumulated at a neutral point in space-time, primarily consisting of material that has been lost in artificial or naturally-occurring wormholes. It has been likened to “the grease-trap of the universe” in this regard. Additional material accumulates at a steady rate, and the city has expanded several times to take advantage of the additional real estate.

The earliest inhabitants appear to have been an interdimensional survey crew from skein 1AA056K4, who gave the area its name. It means “end” in the native language of one crewmember and “sweet” in the language of another, reflecting their view of the place as the ”end of everything” but also a “sweet refuge” from being scattered to the quantum winds. This crew was en route to deliver terraforming tools to a colony, and it is their cargo of oxybushes and babel trees that is responsible for the current, habitable, state of Amai.

Over time, the population grew with accidental arrivals, refugees, explorers, and religious pilgrims. The city council eventually arose as a way to mediate disputes without violence thanks to the intervention of the Entity. During a fierce war between groups of new arrivals and entrenched inhabitants, the leaders of the largest and most powerful groups received a powerful psionic summons to the dead center of Amai. Those who did not attend were struck dead where they stood, and their lieutenants appeared in their place.

During this meeting—the First Council—the Entity manifested itself as a globe of crackling blue energy. Speaking to the assembled council for the first and only time, it told the assemblage that they were to keep order in Amai and that any unacceptable conduct would be met with banishment or death.

All of the leaders of the First Council died within a standard year of various exotic and aggressive cancers, but their successors kept the loose structure of the council in place. Understandably, the Entity’s silence in the millennia since has been seen as a blessing by the current council.

The Entity still appears from time to time, wandering in or above Amai, seemingly at random, seemingly unimpeded by any form of matter or energy. Those who get too close are annihilated, even if they stumble onto the Entity by mistake, while those who stare too long at its eerie blue light inevitably succumb to cancer or stroke soon after.

These “inspections” or “sojourns” serve to remind Amaians that the Entity remains in ultimate control of the area. Other than that, there are few hard and fast rules—the Entity occasionally alters Amai to suit its whims, and any sort of organized invasion or attempted coup has failed within seconds, though armed troops seem to be permitted if there by accident or to keep the peace.

Other than the terraforming performed by the First Ship, another habitable curiosity of Amai is its gravitation—precisely .904 G. This seems to be comfortable for a majority of living beings that stumble across it, but there is no mercy for those for whom .904 G is too strong or too weak; they die on arrival. There is also a day-night cycle of a sort, with a gradual illumination building up, fading away, and returning with a period of 1479.5874 minutes. It does not vary with any seasonal cycle, though the incandescence does bring with it a certain heat. While plants and solar panels will readily accept the light thus generated, for some reason it will not cause tanning or burns, and will not cause reactions in the photosensitive.

Near the edges of Amai, there is an area called the Frontier. Here, the density of the material on which the sixty is founded gradually tails off, as does the gravity. There is no hard and fast border, but those who stray too far will find themselves drifting away into the endless void. Those who do are ever seen again, although objects with known vectors have been tracked for years.

A popular theory making the rounds is that there is a group of near-parallel universes—a “Local Skein”—from which most material is deposited in Amai. This would go a long way toward explaining the prevalence of generally-compatible forms of life within the city, and suggests that other groups of skeins may have their own Amai-like structure as well. For the moment, though, this remains conjecture. An astrophysicist once attempted to approach the Entity to ask about this issue; she was known to have shouted “Of course!” before she died, in agony, of cerebral hemorrhaging.

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“I was top of my class at flight school, and I woulda had my schooling, and my ship, paid off within five years.” Stella kicked up her boots and put them on the table. “Care to guess what happened?”

“The galactic teleporter?”

“THE GALACTIC TELEPORTER.” Stella kicked her drink back. “Now the only business I can get is short-range milk runs to places when their teleporters are on the fritz or under construction, and a few luddites who don’t want their molecules scrambled. You know how long it’ll take to pay off my loans at this rate?”

Whitaker never took out loans, as a rule, but then again he’d never had to. He shook his head.

“127 years. Thank you very much, Geste-fucking-Co.”

“So you’re saying…?”

“I’m saying that GesteCo LLC GmbH had better be willing to put up the cash, in advance, at a markup,” said Stella. “And GesteCo LLC GmbH had better be willing to put up with a lot of lip, too. Because I may be desperate but I also hate you.”

“Done,” said Whitaker. He put an e-ink form before Stella. “Fill in whatever amount you’d like. We’ll calculate additional expenses at the conclusion of the voyage as enumerated in Section III.”

The boots were off the table now, and Stella was reading the e-ink with rapt attention. “And the lip?”

“As an outside contractor, you are not subject to GesteCo LLC GmbH’s Professional Conduct Policy,” Whitaker said. “You’ll be responsible for the consequences of your utterances without access to GesteCo LLC GmbH’s legal team, of course.”

“You really are serious,” said Stella. She signed the form with a flourish and a fingerprint. “What could possibly be so important that you don’t want to just teleport there in this day and age?”

“Just a hunch,” Whitaker said. “But if I’m right, you might be seeing a lot more business very soon.”

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“It’s all right,” the docent said. “You’re all right. Thank you for using the GesteCo Galactic Teleporter Network.”

“Wh-what?” the woman said. “Where am I? What is GesteCo?”

“You’ve just experienced a rare but significant side effect of galactic teleportation,” said the docent. “You’ve materialized in a nearby quantum skein.”

“A…a what?”

“A parallel dimension. Come, let us get you to the GesteCo Recovery Room and talk about your options.”

Whittaker shook his head. “Shouldn’t they just be told about the parallel dimension first off? What is this ‘quantum skein’ nonsense?”

“We’re trying to keep them overwhelmed and confused until we can get them to sign the waiver,” said Mattheson. “Once GesteCo LLC GmbH has been relieved of liability in perpetuity throughout the multiverse, we can be a bit more real with them.”

“What’s done with them?” The executive watched the woman being led away. “Are they sent back?”

“It depends,” Mattheson said.

“Depends? Depends on what?”

Mattheson had the look of someone discussing an unpleasant memory or an upcoming colonoscopy. “Well, some of the…travelers…are from realities that are incompatible with their form of life. They of course are usually terminated through natural causes and taken for study. The others are given a thorough interrogation by GesteCo archivists and intelligence officers—the more you know, right?—before we attempt to match their quantum resonance to a carrier wave to send them back.”

Whitaker looked Mattheson in the eye. “And does it work?”

“Hell if I know. But they’ve never come back, so we have to assume that the problem has been handled. And GesteCo LLC GmbH has no liability either way.”

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I looked at it, hypnotized, as it gave off a warm glow that illuminated a large corner of Presdigo’s atelier. The lambent worms, glowing a pale blue, rose to the top of the flask, ate their fill of the meal bobbing at the surface, and then turned a satisfied yellow before sinking to the bottom.

“You like that, do you?” Presdigo said, thumping over with his wizard’s staff, my surrendered sword still in his hand.

“It’s mesmerizing,” I said.

“Yes, the lampyris noctiluca phantasmagoria is a sight, isn’t it? The young are these glowing worms, and the color of their glow reflects their satiety. I suspend them in nutrient-rich water, put feed at the top periodically, and they’re happy to light my way.”

“What do you call it?”

“It’s my larva lamp,” said Presdigo.

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Happy Apocalypse Friends Animated Series Pitch
Paul McGonnagall had a long, rough night of drinking, and missed the alert of an incoming, mysterious, thermonuclear weapon. The city was totally evacuated into bunkers by the estimated Missile impact at 12:47, but MC doesn’t wake up until 3:15. Luckily for him, the Missile was a dud, city’s population is in long-term shelters underground with no way to get through to them

Characters
Paul McGonnagall– Hung-over twenty something who turned to drink to cope with the tedium of office job, slept through the apocalypse

Clara Gross – Love interest, ladytype from a couple doors down who worked in nuclear physics – another heavy sleeper

Forrest “Twig” Schmidt – mid-40s redneck doomsday prepper which didn’t pan out quite as he planned – had his own one-man bomb shelter

Cyrus E. Johnston, Jr. – crotchety 90-year-old WWII vet who was in a medically-induced coma and so unpopular with the nurses that he was left behind, but is excellent at scavenging and surviving

Maya Shivaprima – lady programmer by day, hardcore gamer by night, was deep into a “hard mode” run and missed the evacuation but has to come to terms with the total lack of computer systems

General John J. O’Neill (retired) – Bumbling sheriff-type, ex-military man who was left in nominal command of the city and sees the disaster as his chance to impose his own vision of extremely petty law and orders. Has gathered other survivors as followers, mostly cooks and laundry workers, but has no access to weapons and mostly relies on harsh language

Series Outline
Main characters’ goal is to reach the bunkered survivors, disarm the nuclear dud, and get everything working again before the city’s infrastructure decays beyond repair. They are opposed by the villian’s attempts at frontier justice and their own bickering over supplies and encounters with other “sleepers.” Each episode is almost like “The Walking Dead” but with the twist that nothing is THAT wrong and nobody has actually died.

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The briefest month, in fullest flower
Briefest of sun, briefest of hours

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“Hey man,” the bartender said. “Welcome to the Squinky Flippet. What’ll you have?”

“That’s a funny name, isn’t it?” I said. “Where’s it come from?”

“Oh, the Squinky Flippet is a bar where everything has a name generated by a neural net, including the place itself,” the bartender said. “Can I get you a nice Luzdl Snick? Or maybe some Velvet Fill on tap?”

“Uh, what’s in them?”

“The Snick is dust and gold with powdered sugar, served with a fruit slice–lemon, in this case–and garnished with a large flintlock. The Fill is ice-squeezed ice over ice on the rocks.”

“Uh…huh,” I said. “Are the drinks themselves generated by neural nets too?”

“Of course not.” The bartender looked up, quizzically, from a drink he was making by stirring gin, brandy, cream, sugar, Tabasco sauce, and Egyptian noodles. “Now if you’re not going to order anything, I have to finish making this Ral Chonk and get started on mixing a Dinosauste.”

Inspired by this.

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