Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

The cowbird sidled up to the fence. “So here’s the deal, Garfield.”

“That’s not my name,” the cat said. “It’s–”

“No names,” the cowbird said. “It’s better that way when you’re planning a hit you know?”

“All right then,” said the cat. “Go on.”

“I want to you take out Goldie Finch,” the cowbird said.

“Why?”

“Do I need to give the assassin a reason for a hit, Garfield?” the cowbird snapped. “Let’s just say he’s a seedy character, he’s got a lot of enemies, and everybody would be better off if he stopped coming to the feeders. Permanently.”

“Easy enough,” the cat said, delicately licking his paw.

“Also, it has to look like an accident,” the cowbird added.”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me, Garfield! The humans, the ones that fill the feeders, they love Goldie Finch. They don’t know him like I know him, but they know we don’t see eye to eye. They can’t know I had him rubbed out, or they’ll stop feeding me.”

The cat considered. “And in exchange?”

“In exchange, you can eat my cousin Cowbie,” the cowbird said. “Nobody likes him.”

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“They called themselves the Puddy Muddles,” Burrowes said. “Just a neighborhood-league amateur cricket thing.”

Edwards was tapping out his report as he talked. “Any good?” he said.

“Not really, no. Middle of the league, not great, not terrible, but even the top team–Fidgets Shrewesbury–is mostly old-age pensioners and kids. There isn’t even a cash prize or trophy for winning the league. Very low stakes.”

“And forensics is sure about all this?” said Edwards.

“Very sure. Just forwarded you the report, again,” Burrowes said, a hint of annoyance peeking through. “The coach had been tampered with. Brakes. The technical details are in the report.”

“That’s all right, I trust mechanics to handle the greasemonkery. What else?”

“There were traces of accelerant in the wreck as well. Bobby with forensics has given me a peek at the report they’re working on. They think a piece of luggage was smuggled in with the team’s bags with accelerant and a mercury tip switch.”

“So the question is,” Edwards said, “who wanted an entire cricket team of pensioners and teens dead.”

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They said it was a hundred-year storm
Ten years later, it was back
Then only two weeks before another
People sorting grimly through debris
As the insurance agent denies them
Based on flood maps from 1950

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After the collapse of the Roman Empire, its heartlands in Enotria passed into foreign rule for centuries. By the time of the Great Valois Wars, the area was made up of nearly 20 squabbling petty principalities, duchies, kingdoms, and of course the States of the Church where the Pope reigned.

No one had been able to establish effective centralized control over the area for long, but it seemed that Valois might be in a position to succeed. In a string of lightning victories, the future Emperor overthrew each of the states in turn and seized their territory and assets, eventually bringing them together as the Republic of Enotria. Really more of a confederation, with each statelet theoretically entitled to a single vote, with a preeminent position for the States of the Church as the First Among Equals in that arrangement. However, while at times the Pope was in good standing with the Emperor, and troops from the States of the Church served at the forefront of the Republic’s army, eventually the Emperor annexed the area outright and imprisoned the Pope.

At that time, the area was converted into the Kingdom of Enotria, ruled by the Emperor’s brother. This represented little change, as the previous Republic had been essentially a puppet state. The Kingdom proved no more durable, and lasted for only three years before the defeat of Valois. In the aftermath of the war’s end, the various petty states, as well as the States of the Church, were restored. Unification of Enotria into a single polity would take nearly 100 years more to reach completion.

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“Now,” Fairburn said. “I understand that none of you are here by choice, but all of you have the exact set of skills that is needed for this job. In addition to allowing you to live, I will reward you each for the successful completion of this task.”

“Reward?” Sexton said, his ears perking up. “This is the first I’ve heard of a reward.”

“That is because your psychological profile indicated that it would not be useful information up to this point,” Fairburn said. The phone, featureless, nevertheless seemed to glower. “Your reward will be monetary, of course. Capt. Kunstler will be allowed to walk free with his record expunged. Mx. Appleby will be inked to a dual recording/film contract with a monopolistic player in the entertainment industry.”

Fox’s hologram shimmered. “What could you possibly reward me with?” she said.

“The data has already been transmitted,” said Fairburn, airily. “Review it yourself.

A pause. “I’m in,” Fox replied.

“Good. As to the substance of your assignment: there is a sealed laboratory deep beneath the Mojave Desert Proving Grounds, a top-secret base nominally controlled by the government but in reality controlled only by itself. A nest of secrets, black ops, wetwork, and plausible deniability. You will access it for me.”

“Are you…are you asking us to break into Area 51?” Sexton said.

“Of course not. Area 51 is an urban myth that has nothing to do with reality or its supposed location. The place I want you to break into is real.”

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One year indoors, in isolation, in quarantine.
38 years old today, pushing forty.
The first shot of a two-stage vaccine in me.
And yet, a mighty shudder goes through me.
I think of going back to “normal.”
Out of the house.
Behind a desk.
And I wonder.
I really do.
Was it a blessing in disguise?
Or am I just rationalizing.

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Our shredder broke down
Just as the world was doing the same
During the last year
The most stressful year of our privileged lives
Secrets built up in a shoebox
Secret numbers, secret checks, even secret plastics
We had no way to destroy them
And money seemed so very precious at the time
This afternoon I burned them all
In the backyard of the house we, and the bank, now own
Raking coals over secrets
Spring sunshine raining down upon us from above
Half a vaccine in my arm
Is it a purge, a cleansing, or a simple ritual
To stand outside in the light
Burning to ash secrets that could hurt us both
In the wrong hands
Ashes borne high on springtime wings
I look at the embers, smile
We have survived; we have survived; we have survived

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One year hence, and
Is it Stockholmish to say
I rather like my world contracted
Office in the back, entertainment out front
Strangers only on video screens, in the news
My garden, my birds, my pets, my spouse, all here
Available 24/7 yet just as easily withdrawn from when
The nagging, if gentle, drone of anxiety reaches a crescendo
I should be happy at the needle slid into my arm, jubilant even
But when I think of the world, the work, that waits outside my home
The terror I feel is not from any plague, nor from any politics or politicians

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Attracting funding and followers from a well-publicized lecture tour, Dr. Pike preached that he had conducted intensive seances with a variety of innovators, scientists, and prophets, from Benjamin Franklin to Elijah. Enumerating a total of 23 luminaries that he had been able to contact from beyond the grave using his “electro-bio-mechanical spiritual energy amplifier,” Pike began to build a base of followers. With their donations and his continued popularity on the lecture circuit guaranteeing his financial security (he was by all accounts a genial, humorous, and entertaining orator with a mesmerizing effect on audiences), Pike closed his medial practice and set about completing what he at first called “The Project.”

At various times it was also known as “Project 23,” “The Electro-Mechanical Messiah Project,” the “Bio-Electro-Mechanical Project 23” and so on. For the remainder of his life, Pike continued rearranging various permutations of “electric,” “mechanical,” “biology,” “messiah,” and “23” to suit his ever-evolving purposes and plan. Thankfully, the project had a relatively simple elevator pitch, which Pike continuously delivered to rapt audiences. An excerpt from an 1877 speech perhaps explains his goals best:

“Our first messiah was a messiah of flesh, holy and incorruptible, for all the human race knew at the time was flesh, machines being in their infancy and electricity even more so. And, like some infants you may personally know, they were a long time a-raising! But that time has now come, with electricity and machinery past those first few wobbly steps. This is a new world dawning; a world of energy and a world of steel joining the world of flesh. You might expect, then, a messiah of volts, a messiah of metal, to each arise about two thousand years distant from the other. But we have seen that spiritual energy, like electricity, moves quickly, and the Father of All is increasing His pace to match ours. Thus I say to you: look for the coming of a messiah that is not just electricity, not just machinery, not just flesh, but all three in holy trinity. It will be inhabited by a messiah, yes, but we will not wait on another virgin birth. The going rate of one every five thousand years is simply too slow. No, my friends: the electro-mechanical messiah approaches, and I know this because we are going to build it, together.”

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Dr. James MacDonald Pike was a renowned–perhaps ‘infamous’ is a better word–figure in the early Spiritualist movement. A trained physician and amateur machinist, he served with distinction as a field medic during the American Civil War, and was able to patent and sell a design for a breech-loading carbine as well as an electrically-detonated torpedo to the Union government. Nearly 1,000 “Pike Pattern” carbines were made for Union cavalrymen, and a further 2,500 “Torpikedoes” were made for harbor defense by 1865; though the weapons never saw combat and were quickly mothballed after the war, royalties left Dr. Pike a wealthy man.

He was wounded at Fort Stedman near Petersburg in the closing stages of the war, shot at close range in the head by a Confederate attacker during the breakout attempt there. The wound should have been catastrophic, fatal, but Dr. Pike miraculously survived. The lead ball was never removed, and the wound bothered him for the rest of his life, but nevertheless he regained consciousness in a Union field hospital shortly after the surrender at Appomattox.

Pike claimed in later writings that he had a vision during his convalescence, with “the voices of the pioneers of our current electro-mechanical age singing into my head a song of light like unto a heavenly choir.” Subsequent correspondence with other leading Spiritualists of the time, such as Graceline Kelly Andrews and John Murray Spear (both of whom later fell out with Pike) convinced the doctor that he had been divinely ordained to create a new “electro-mechanical messiah” which, once imbued with a spark of life, would be apart from and above human concerns and able to lead mankind to a new age of spiritual reason and progress.

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