Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

The Official Explanation

Authorities were initially at a loss to explain the deaths of so many seemingly healthy people, albeit in harsh weather conditions, and a deputy’s offhand remark that they had been killed by an “unidentified sinister force” did much to spread the story in paranormal circles. However, after autopsies and interviews, the Idaho State Police released their official explanation in late 1998 at a press conference.

According to the investigators, the trip had been delayed repeatedly from May 1997 by a variety of circumstances, causing Patricia Mercer to become frustrated. The further work she put in to get students excused from class and work for the trip led to a “sunk cost” feeling that led her to continue the hike even as conditions deteriorated. The group also initially planned to link up with another hiking group near the Trout River, one led by Patricia Mercer’s long-distance boyfriend that she had not seen in nearly a year. This, investigators believe, led her to not only continue the hike but to push her hikers harder than they were able to safely move.

Conditions had been worsening for some time, and it is believed that the final deaths took place in an unseasonably early snow flurry with below-freezing temperatures. The campsite remains suggest that it had only been partially erected when it was abandoned. Though each hiker had plentiful food, stomach content analysis indicated that they had eaten relatively little before death. Authorities believe that this was the result of Mercer keeping a stiff pace with her hikers despite the weather.

William Reznik was believed to have had a previously undiagnosed heart defect, variously called an arrhythmia or a murmur in the press, which likely led to his sudden death in the official report. Fatigued, stressed, and borderline malnourished after days of struggling in the elements, his heart simply gave out. This led the others to enter a “fugue state” of “mass hysteria,” the culmination of several days of stress and malnutrition, which led them to variously attack each other, self-mutilate, or freeze to death in a catatonic state.

As for the initial survival of Cassidy Daniels and Carrie Mercer, it is speculated that they were better-fed than the others, as Carrie was Patricia’s daughter and Cassidy was her close friend. But after escaping the scene with no food and no other supplies, authorities contend that Ms. Mercer succumbed to the elements some time later. They also blame this malnutrition and exposure for Ms. Daniels’ later death from multiple organ failure.

Criticisms of this theory abound. Patricia Mercer was known to be extremely understanding and supportive of her current and former students, far from the harsh taskmaster suggested in the official version of events. Multiple reports suggest that Mercer was actually harder in her own daughter than the others, and that Cassidy and Carrie were not particularly good friends. In fact, some accounts insist they were often seen to be rivals, with Cassidy taking on a “surrogate daughter” role that made Carrie intensely jealous.

Furthermore, the hike planned by Arthur O’Neill, Patricia Mercer’s boyfriend, had been canceled due to adverse weather the day before Mercer’s group set out. There are conflicting accounts as to weather a telephone message O’Neill left for Mercer was ever received, but those who knew her said she was fastidious in that respect.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly in the eyes of the skeptics, the weather did not turn until the hike was past its point of no return according to some available weather data. It may have been cool and foggy–the “greasy fog”mentioned by Daniels—but the weather may not have been dangerous until it was too late to turn back. The lack of good meteorological data and in-person observations on Sagebrush Mountain during the crucial period (the Trout River rafters were at a far lower altitude and shielded by trees) makes this a point of contention as well.

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The incident report from the Idaho State Police was released, heavily redacted, when the case was declared closed in summer 1999. Its official findings as to the disposition of each hiker are summarized below.

Patricia Mercer, 44
High school teacher and local mentor volunteer. Found face-up near remains of tent. Eyes and tongue missing, with other signs of scavenger predation. No obvious trauma.

Carrie Mercer, 17
Daughter of Patricia Mercer and high school senior. Remains never located. Presumed to have died from exposure after wandering away from Cassidy Daniels in the aftermath of the incident.

Cassidy Daniels, 19
Community college student who had arranged time off from class. Rescued. Died in Boise approximately one month later. Remains were disturbed several times by conspiracy theorists, and was therefore cremated in early 1999 with ashes scattered in Trout River.

Thomas Aaron, 21
One of two former Boy Scouts, a veteran of Philmont Scout Ranch hikes, and a part-time salesman at his father’s car dealership. Found some distance from the others with traumatic injuries to the face and head believed to be self-inflicted.

Jose Ramirez Jr., 22
The other former Boy Scout, and experienced Grand Canyon hiker. Unemployed at time of death, living off of a legacy from maternal grandfather. Found near the body of Shawna Blois, with blunt force trauma that seemed to indicate she had beaten him to death with a rock.

Shawna Blois, 16
The youngest hiker, a high school sophomore and amateur ballet dancer and gymnast. Found near the body of Jose Ramirez Jr. and believed to have killed him but had no visible external injuries. Eyes and tongue were missing, presumably taken by scavengers.

Marcus Washington, 20
A former football player who had dropped out of college after a career-ending injury his freshman year, working part-time as an assistant coach for the local high school. Body found in small stream near the site, face-down. Some indication of trauma to the face and hands, but the poor condition of the body made analysis difficult. Missing eyes and tongue, indicating the body had perhaps fallen into the stream after death.

William Reznik, 19
High school “super-senior” who was repeating his senior year in an attempt to graduate. In a romantic relationship with Maria Cruz, the only such relationship known among the hikers. Body was found near the tent, with no outward signs of injury. Missing eyes and tongue, presumably from scavengers. Cassidy Daniels indicated that he was the first to die and that Patricia Mercer attempted CPR.

Maria Cruz, 18
High school senior who had already been accepted as a scholarship student to Boise State University. She was found near Reznik’s body, with severe bruising on areas of her body suggestive of an intense struggle or epileptic fit. Missing eyes and tongue, presumably from scavengers.

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The Smithson Tape, recorded by whitewater rafter John Smithson in the hours following his group’s rescue of Cassidy Daniels, represents the only eyewitness account to the events of the Sagebrush Mountain Incident. Smithson recorded over several of his personal rock-and-roll tapes in an attempt to preserve Ms. Daniels’ statements, and bootleg recordings remain popular on the internet to this day.

Daniels is only semi-lucid throughout, veering between repeated requests for Smithson not to tell her mother about what had happened to detailed answers to questions about the remainder of her group. Both of these are focal points of later conspiracy theories, as Daniels’ mother, Sheila, had been dead for 10 years by 1997 and Smithson should not have known about the Sagebrush Mountain hiking group, which was not affiliated with his whitewater tour. For his part, Smithson maintains that Daniels volunteered the information unbidden.

According to Daniels’ account of events, the group led by gym and shop teacher Patricia Mercer and including her daughter Carrie Mercer, had encountered extreme weather within hours of beginning the hike. She described high winds, intermittent snow, low temperatures, and a “greasy” fog which clung to the skin of the hikers. Nevertheless, Mercer insisted they push on, albeit allowing for a slower pace with more stops.

Near the relatively low peak of Sagebrush Mountain, the group made their final camp. It was shortly after that the youngest member of the group complained of chest pains before abruptly dying, according to Daniels. This, along with frenzied attempts at CPR by Mercer, seemed to set off a chain of events that led to the deaths of most of the other hikers.

Daniels claimed that, after Mercer gave up her attempt to resuscitate the fallen student, the teacher seemed to suffer a sort of fit, foaming at the mouth and writhing uncontrollably. This was followed shortly by five of the others reaching in similarly violent ways, thrashing about, screaming, pounding their heads against nearby rocks, and even attacking one another.

In Daniels’ account, seven of the hikers were dead within a few minutes. There was no warning, and no explanation; she and Carrie Mercer survived only by fleeing into the wilderness. Daniels and the younger Mercer attempted to make for the Trout River, which they knew was relatively nearby, only to face further extreme weather conditions. They sheltered for a time in a “shack near a big radio antenna” but were constantly dogged by “dark shapes” that they could not see clearly. Mercer disappeared with these shapes, declaring that she was “going up.”

Only when the weather cleared was Daniels able to make it to the Trout River, and she lay on the bank for up to a day before rescue arrived.

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The facts of the so-called Sagebrush Mountain Incident are easy enough to establish. On September 15, 1997, a group of nine hikers set out on a trip through central Idaho, near the town of Findlay. Their route was not a marked trail, but one well-known to other groups and noted on maps and in guidebooks as a medium-difficulty ascent.

Led by a high school physical education and wood shop teacher, whose daughter was one of the hikers, the remainder of the group was all under the age of 21 and were either current or former students at Glen Creek High School, in nearby Westmont. Two of the hikers were former Boy Scouts, a third was a former Girl Scout, and all but one had extensive hiking experience in areas of similar elevation.

The group was declared overdue on September 21, a day after they should have checked in at the fire watch station near Sagebrush Mountain, and a search was launched that eventually included locals, police, forest rangers, and the Idaho Air National Guard. The area was scoured on foot and by air for two days before any trace of the hikers were found. Conditions on the ground, which included wind and snow as well as fog and rain, were described as the worst in 30 years and an unseasonably early start to winter by local standards.

Rather than being located by a search party, the sole survivor of the group, 19-year-old Cassidy Daniels, was located by a whitewater rafting group on the upper reaches of the Trout River, far off any route that the group was likely to have taken. The rafters brought Ms. Daniels to the nearest settlement they could find, and awaited a medical evacuation helicopter. During this time, the leader of the rafting party, John Smithson, used his Sony Walkman to record Daniels’ responses to questions and her rambling account of what had happened.

By the time rescue arrived, Ms. Daniels was unconscious and she never regained consciousness, dying in a Boise hospital three weeks later, officially from multiple organ failure. Based on her comments, however, rescuers were able to locate most of the remainder of the group, recovering seven bodies between October 1 and October 7–hindered by the same early and severe winter conditions that had hampered the search.

The recovered bodies were all disturbed by wild animals to some extent, which made determining the time and cause of death difficult. At inquest, the coroner recorded the causes of death as a combination of hypothermia, malnutrition, and blunt-force trauma from falls.

Those are the facts. But it is the great grey spaces between them that have raised the most questions and kept the Sagebrush Mountain Incident in the public imagination for more than twenty years afterwards.

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The great T’Sugote declared that, as the first and proudest of its creations, that they would enjoy a favored status among the peoples of creation. Thus, when the first wars broke out among the sapient peoples, the elves came and petitioned T’Sugote for aid.

A dilemma was thus presented: by giving the elves too much power, T’Sugote would give them dominion and rule over the others, which it did not wish to do. But if it did nothing, its favorite and first creations would be slaughtered.

Thus did T’Sugote decree that the elves would be the hardiest survivors of the lands, the best suited to every environment, such that they would be unable to rule outside their kingdoms but be powerful within them.

This is how the forest elves, soft and fleshy because they were surrounded by life and the living, gave rise to the stone elves, with hard skin and mineral oil coursing the rough their veins. The brine elves arose also, moving through seawater as others move through air. Wherever elves settled, they would adapt within a few generations to their new home.

One exception was cities. T’Sugote withdrew from its creations in sorrow long before the first great cities arose, so they alone had no effect on elves–only the natural world would lead to adaptations.

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Pollocona County was dry for a decade after Mississippi repealed statewide prohibition in 1966, but folks always seemed to find their way over the county line to pick up some beer in “wet” Cahawba County. But even when Pollocona went “moist” in 1976, it included a set of rules that the First Baptist Church in Davis had demanded in exchange for their acquiescence. Chief among them was that alcohol had to be sold at room temperature, and could not be offered on Sundays.

That’s where the Beer Barn came into its own.

Located on a blind corner off of Division St, the Beer Barn was cannily designed as a drive-through in the familiar red-sided slope-roof style. It was, essentially, a giant walk-in freezer, with employees showing up to work in gloves and parkas. But since the beer was being served at “room temperature” it was within the latter of the law, if not the spirit. Old-timers well remember the old Beer Barn drive-thru line spilling out onto Division on days when there was a football game, and it changed hands several times commanding an increased price each time.

And then, in 2009, Pollocona County bowed to the inevitable and legalized chilled alcohol sales as well as Sunday sales. Davis First Baptist had since changed its tune, being the church of choice for wealthy restaurant and bar owners who wanted the booze money and had long looked upon the Beer Barn with envious eyes. Within a year, the Barn’s sales had dropped by 95% and it had shuttered. But that was only the beginning of its odyssey.

Perhaps remembering the long lines and thinking the location right on Division to be ideal, it was soon snapped up. But it turned out that making a difficult right turn and an even tougher left was something most were unwilling to do when they could get beer just about anyplace. So when the new incarnation, the BBQ Barn, failed within a year, it began a revolving door of tenants. The Butter Barn, a boutique for local butters and milks. The Blizzard Barn, an ice creamery. By some estimates, the property changed place every 18 months, and locals began to regard it as being cursed.

Six months ago, it re-re-re-re opened as the Daquiri Drive-Thru, dropping the “barn” name and painting the edifice a matte black. Offering powerful mixed drinks at a drive-thru didn’t seem wise–or legal–but, mysteriously, it has remained in business despite few customers ever being seen nearby.

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My research has been quite clear.

Everyone knows the world-ending prophecies found in the Holy Theonomicon; their stories are taught to us from a young age. Even those that no longer believe in the Flock of the First Deity can recite the poetic descriptions of oceans boiling away and the like.

But I feel that this description of the apocalypse describes a real, and imminent, event. And my research backs me up.

Looking at the information available, it is clear to me that the phlogiston power that has been driving our society’s prosperity for the last two hundred years is also flooding the atmosphere with heat energy, and draining the land of its ability to produce food.

My first thought was that perhaps, by stopping phlogiston extraction immediately, we might avert catastrophe. But the latest findings have led me to despair of even that end. The process is beyond any human means of control; it is a runaway cycle now.

Curiously, the Theonomicon’s tales of apocalypse fall in line with what I foresee. The oceans may not boil per se, but they will heat up and act as a giant thermal battery. Famines will sweep the land as our most productive farmlands fail, just like the Hungry Devourer in the book. And, of course, as resources and climate fail, people will begin to fight over the remaining, dwindling resources. If that is not the Lastwar written of by the prophets, I do not know what is.

Sitting here, in my laboratory, I am not sure if this notion gives me comfort or fills me with terror and fear. Is the First Deity real, ignoring our sufferings? Or were the Prophets somehow interpreting through poetry a future they saw but could not comprehend?

In either case, it seems that whatever mysterious force is behind these coincidences has given us a roadmap to our own extinction.

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Consider the example of the R’de.

Upon first contact with the Vyeah, the R’de were not numerous but their technology was considerably more advanced in many areas, particularly in propulsion, anti-entropic fields, and macro-scale engineering. Apparently, the Vyaeh had been monitoring their communications network for some time before receiving orders to attack.

The Orphaned Court had made its decision, and the pheromone-stamped orders were unambiguous. Rather than placing them under imperial domination, or even giving them the option, the R’de were to be exterminated. The technologically-advanced R’de were able to defeat the Vyaeh in several smaller-scale encounters, but they were ultimately scattered and their home world occupied.

Even now, millennia after the last living R’de was killed attempting to flee a pursuing Vyaeh naval detachment, standing orders remain to kill them and smash their technology wherever it may be found.

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The real thing that keeps Vyaeh policymakers awake at night is the thought of meeting a species that is technologically advanced and numerous enough to put them at a disadvantage. To this end, they ruthlessly exterminate species with technology or even theoretical knowledge that they consider to be uncontrollable or threatening.

Vyaeh reasoning and decision-making at the highest levels are notoriously opaque, as the Orphaned Court communicates only through intermediaries, and only in a limited and archaic register. What a particular species has done to merit extinction is rarely clear and seldom discussed.

The maintenance of a status quo in which the Vyaeh are ascendant is the ultimate goal of the Orphaned Court, and while they are likely not so foolish as to think that status quo can remain forever in a finite universe, they are nevertheless committed to its maintenance.

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Vyaeh imperial policy is best defined as “economic domination.” Lower-technology worlds are simply blockaded and made to grant the Vyaeh monopolies on off-world travel and trade, which are strictly controlled and taxed. By trickling advanced technologies into the populace, usually as upgrades of existing, native, devices, the Vyeah can further concentrate power into the hands of a local elite, through which they prefer to rule. If such a species develops its own advanced technologies or spaceflight as a result, the Vyaeh simply tax it, or require an allotment of troops or ships to bolster their own forces.

More advanced species, able to meet Vyaeh fleets on more or less equal terms, are generally unable to match the numerical superiority that Vyaeh imperial policy grants. Supplemented with numerous, if not entirely reliable, conscripted troops from client worlds, a Vyaeh fleet will often enjoy a ten to one supremacy over foes. Generally, a series of short, sharp defeats are enough to bring foes to the negotiating table.

However, in the face of protracted resistance, the Vyaeh will not hesitate to make an example of the offender and drive them into extinction. The imperial policy, after all, is less about creating a functioning galactic economy than it is enforcing control with a minimum of military expenditure. If an occasional extinction of an intelligent species is necessary to reach that goal, the Vyaeh are all too willing.

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