Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

Profile: 0100010001001010 “DJ”

Among the 11001001, unambiguous numbers are used instead of personal names, which are confusing, duplicative, and convey a minuscule amount of information. While the 11001001 do have informal nicknames amongst themselves, consisting of the first 16 digits of their binary names, even those can be unwieldy for outsiders. Realizing this, young 11001001 influencer 0100010001001010 converted his nickname to Unicode characters, becoming known as DJ to his audience.

And what an audience it has become! DJ is the #1 tech streamer in the Star Confederation, with a series of reviews, modification guides, and teardowns of all the latest tech and gadgets coming onto the interstellar market. With all the collective knowledge of the 11001001 at his fingertips, DJ has the knowhow to make it work, and the savviness to make it meme.

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Profile: Kacrixl “Ixl” Rhjypes

Ebzhyna from the Combine are stereotypically a deeply spiritual people, with a natural preference for traditional remedies and wisdom and a deep mistrust of advanced technology. Ixl Rhjypes brings just that energy to their “Residoo” brand of lifestyle products and endorsements, pushing for a natural, holistic, and consciously coupled lifestyle.

The offspring of noted Ebzhyna film producer Sag Rhj and intergalactic rom-com favorite Tosp Ypes, Ixl launched their brand at the young age of 14 cycles, and with a small one million credit investment from their forebears was able to build it into a titanic brand within just a few cycles more.

Ixl’s review videos of natural and homeopathic remedies are renowned for their breezy style and high production values, while their endorsements of copper, magnets, and crystals for healing purposes has made them a devoted following among citizens of the Star Confederation who are too poor to afford medical care.

Naturally, such innate talent and success breeds resentment, and many have criticized Residoo for promoting dangerous, unhealthy, or quack products. Others have claimed that even the most benign Residoo information may lead sapients to put off actual medical procedures in favor of untested (and untestable) miracle cures. Ixl isn’t worried, though. Whenever the subject of criticism comes up, they just smile and say “whatever!.”

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Profile: Vhod Amti

The Zypger Union is well-known for its strict holonet censorship, which makes the rise of a Glitch.Holo streamer like Vhod Anti all the more unusual. And unlike many Zypger, who have been forced to move outside the Union to evade censorship, Vhod has been able to stream with the full consent and backing of the ruling Zypger Central Party.

Born to an administrator in a major province on the Home World and his wife, a major general in the Zypger Defense Force, Vhod seemed like an unlikely candidate for an interstellar gamer. But long periods left alone while his parents were involved with official business, in addition to his maternal uncle Bnuj who was an executive at a major electronics contractor, gave Vhod just the edge he needed to build a state of the art quantum gaming computer.

By the time he had reached the age of compulsory military service, Vhod had already set world records in Super Massive Black Hole Brothers and The Legend of Zetar, and his reaction videos to the jump scares in Six Orbits of Saturn had been viewed more than one quadrillion times on ClipClop.

Due to his frequent statements in favor of Zypger Union policies at home and abroad, some have accused Vhod of acting as a mouthpiece for the government. Especially when compared to dissident streamers like Sze Trast, who has been banned and auto-censored from every holonet transceiver in Union space, some argue, it seems that he is being used as a palatable alternative for more politically active streamers. Others point to his large fanbase in the Star Confederation at large to refute this, in addition to the many galactic brands he promotes in his streams and videos.

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The Aki Electronics RG-55D, sold in the United States under Aki’s “Robberson” brand as the Robberson R-55, is infamous for its supposed reception of “alien transmissions.” A piece of very high-end stereo equipment on its introduction in 1975, the RG-55 was primarily a cassette player but also featured a very basic radio set as an optional feature (the “D” part of its model name).

If a customer already had a radio in their home stereo setup, the RG-55 would pass that signal through to its headphone jack or a set of external speakers. But if the customer had no radio, the optional set replaced an otherwise decorative plate on the front of the machine. The extra cost, $50 USD for the Robberson model and ¥15,300 JPY for the Aki, was not competitive–the cheapest radio in the Aki/Robberson line, the T-24, had better reception, better range, better sound quality, and cost only $20 more. As a result, factory records show that only 66 of the optional radios were sold, 41 RG-55D units for the Japanese market, and 25 R-55D units for the American market. While a version was offered for sale in Europe (under Aki’s “Gugstein” brand as the GG-55D) none were sold.

One of the reasons for the radio set’s inclusion, despite its high price and general unpopularity, was that is was intended as a quiet test of a new system developed by Aki’s chief engineer Takayuki Fujimura. The innovative system used the wiring system that the unit was connected to as an amplified antenna, which promised exceptional reception range and low cost at the cost of quality, as the resulting signal was quite noisy and could be affected by other appliances or even fluctuations in the grid.

Soon after the units left the Aki factory and were delivered to customers, complaints began coming in that the radios were picking up unwanted signals. Several reported receiving air traffic control or police band transmissions, while others were able to pick up the audio portion of terrestrial television broadcasts. Others, however, reported reception of “sinister signals” that described their locations and lives in minute and disturbing detail.

Japanese customers and American customers both reported the transmissions in their native language, but despite the unit’s built-in tape recorder, recordings contained only static. Despite this, complaints continued to grow and media attention began to be devoted to the phenomenon. Rather than deal with the problem, Aki simply recalled all 66 units and mailed customers a stock 55 unit with e free T-24 radio.

Irate, Takayuki Fujimura insisted on being given an RG-55D unit to experiment with; Aki apparently obliged, while the others were destroyed, with the radios removed and crushed before being resold as stock units. Fujimora committed suicide by hanging three days later, leaving reams of notes (investigators describe them as “filling three walls”) on his findings but no answers. Officially it was believed that he was ashamed of the failure of his design and the resultant damage to his reputation, but conspiracy theorists maintain that he was silences, or perhaps so disturbed by the content of the transmissions that he took his own life.

Either way, the reports of mysterious transmissions cannot be substantiated. While a number of Aki and Robberson salespeople and service personnel said that they heard something odd demonstrated by unhappy customers, no recordings survive. Takayuki Fujimura’s RG-55D was converted into a stock RG-55 and resold after his death, with the radio unit being crushed; his notes were never seriously analyzed by the Kyoto police and were burned by the Aki corporate archivist shortly after Fujimura’s death.

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Xenia Zzazzsk

Profile: Xenia Zzazzsk of Hive #5

Conservative Fulvans live in vast planetary Hives that emphasize the collective over the individual and shun most galactic concerns except at the macro level. Reform and Orthodox Fulvans generally have a much more individualistic view, taking the ancient pronouncements of the Fulvan One as “more guidelines than actual rules.” Even though the large Reform and Orthodox Fluvan populations routinely flout the ancient hive rules, Xenia Zzazzsk has been at the forefront of mainstreaming Fulvans into galactic high society and pop culture.

Born into the Zzazzsk clan, a family which includes Fulvan tycoon Groncho Zzazzsk as well as the late holo-director Tsequ Zzazzk, Xenia’s mother famously appeared on the cover of Galaxy News Magazine holding her egg. This act is credited with reducing stigma for gravid and brooding Fulvans, and has led some commentators to quip that Xenia has been gracing magazine covers since before she was hatched.

Thanks in part to Nalia Zzazzsk’s continued media presence, the entire Star Confederation was able to see Xenia grow up, he early presence in hatchling magazines and scuttler-aged fashion shoots eventually giving way to minor roles in her great-uncle Tsequ’s final films. Xenia’s scene-stealing turn as the younger sister of Magellanic Zones’ love interest in Magellanic Zones and the Supermassive Black Hole even made it onto Star Confederation Monthly’s “100 Megasols, 100 Laughs” list.

While putting her career on hold to attend school, Xenia become an acknowledged master of the ClipClop platform, famously (or infamously) using AI-generated fakery to embarrass or prank others. Her subsequent feud with Madison R’Svask has become a social media legend, with it reportedly bringing the Fulvan Hive close to being expelled from he Star Confederation due to diplomatic pressure from the Vatna Hegemony.

Recently, Xenia has taken a short break from social media due to bombshell allegations that her parents corruptly got her into Betelgeuse University by claiming she was recruited to the liquid ammonia swimming team, despite liquid ammonia being toxic to Fulvans.

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Madison R’Svask

After attaining Vatna adulthood by hunting and killing a wild flu’Qog, with a combination Bat Mitzvah/Quinceñera on her mother’s side, Ms. R’Svask first rose to prominence through a series of ClipClop videos in which she danced and sang inside a Kragh Fleet fast food restaurant, pointing out the Vatna cultural origins of many parts of a standard Kragh Slurpy-Meal. The sixth video in the series, “Slurpy-Meal is a Killing Word,” went hyper-viral and won a Holoey Award for Best ClipClop in the Star Confederation.

After a few years of endorsing products and services, most notably SkinSoSoft™ Cremes from Earth and Battle Commander Glukh’s War Paint from Vatna, Ms. R’Svask live-blogged her way through the campaign of conquest required to earn the title of Warmaiden and the right to command a Vatna battlecruiser. Her campaign against the non-Star-Confederation-aligned Cetuccan Establishment was notable for its restraint and emphasis on diplomacy, with only one major and two minor battles and a few thousand dead.

Currently, in addition to her part-time internship with the Vatna First Battlefleet, Ms. R’Svask writes a weekly advice column for Star Confederation Today and has 1×10^27 followers on ClipClop.

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Madison R’Svask

Profile: Warmaiden Madison R’Svask

The youngest Warmaiden in the elite gyu’Vatna ruling class, Ms. R’Svask is half-human and half-Vatna. She and her brother Cooper R’Svask were the product of the brief marriage of Warlord Zadias R’Svask, commander of the First Fleet of the Vatna Hegemony, and Cindi Feldman-Spruance, lifestyles columnist for Star Confederation Today.

Viewers of a certain age may remember the R’Svask/Feldman-Spruance wedding, the “Wedding of the Century,” which was widely simulcast on the holonet and presented as a fairy tale romance between a commoner and a military commander with more battlecruisers than living enemies. The entire courtship was followed closely by the tabloids, from a meet cute during the Glassing of Gift-3 to Warlord R’Svask’s use of the Quantum Galaxy, set in a Dior band, as an engagement ring.

They may also remember the subsequent “Divorce of the Century,” in which R’Svask and Feldman-Spruance acrimoniously split over his affair with a subordinate captain and her infamous leaked call with a 11001001 friend (the so-called “U+2665 call”). This led to the R’Svask children being the subject of a bitter custody dispute that almost exploded into interstellar war until a shared custody arrangement was reached that is still cited as a foundational treaty in interplanetary relations due to its scope and completeness.

This led to a unique multicultural perspective in Ms. R’Svask’s upbringing that, many later argued, was essential to her later success as an influencer.

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Named after her birthplace after Mrs. East went into slightly premature labor at Granny East’s old place, she tended to go by Victoria or Vicky, but was known to sign as B.V. East if she felt it would impress anybody. In her daydreams, “B.V. East” would adorn the cover of a bestselling novel, both for the cachet that came with double initial writing (just ask E.L. James or George R.R. Martin!) and to keep the elder members of the East clan from being shocked.

They were the sort of folks who wrote greeting cards and Bible studies, nothing else, and even though Vicky joined them in the pews every Sunday and Wednesday as Granny East insisted, her mind was always elsewhere. Not on her job as a medical transcriptionist, but on the elaborate fictions that lived in her head. Vicky wrote prolifically on AO3, delightedly sprinkling supernatural beings into mundane shows and films and chronicling the ensuing chaos and romance.

In fact, “bje_222” had close to a hundred followers. But whenever she tried to give life to her own characters and ideas, the things she desperately wanted to write, to sell, to own, nothing was ever good enough. Things would be revised into oblivion because they were never as good on paper. One day though–one day her skull would crack open, hatch the ideas that had been percolating inside, and give life to a work that would bring fame, fortune, fulfillment.

One day.

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“Slouchy, overstuffed gourds, all,” the stranger sniffed. “Large, perhaps, but hardly pumpkins.”

“I suppose you think you can show me a larger one than the prizewinners I see every fall, eh?”

“Of course I can,” said the stranger. “Look now to the east, where the great gourd slowly rises against the horizon. The dawn of a new age, where all will pump and all will be kin.”

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Narrator: Dr. Srko’s next patient is a pet chupacabra, Sucky, who has been off its food. His worried owner brought it in to the practice.

Dr. Janos Srko, DVM: So how did you know that something was wrong with Sucky here?

Patient: He barely touched his food. I gave him a full sized billy goat from the pet shop for dinner, like I always do, and he hardly drained it at all.

Dr. Janos Srko, DVM: Less than a pint of blood from the goat?

Patient: Yeah, it didn’t even die. Just a little anemia.

Dr. Janos Srko, DVM: How long has this been going on?

Patient: A month, maybe? I’m not sure.

Dr. Janos Srko, DVM: Did you get Sucky fixed?

Patient: No, I was hoping to put him out to stud.

Dr. Janos Srko, DVM: Well, there’s your problem! Sucky is pregnant. Parthogenesis, probably; chupacabrae are known to do that sometimes. You really ought to get your pet fixed to cut down on the stray kaiju population.

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