Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

The first song sung itself, and in so doing brought the world into existence. The world then sang its song, which created they sky above it, to offer it succor and ease its loneliness. The sky then sang back to the earth, and this song fell as rain with unified the two. The rain and water sang the songs that raised trees and plants, that the puddles and oceans would not want for company.

It was these trees, these plants, that themselves began to sing, and each song brought about new life. The lily pads sang frogs into existence, reeds serenaded of flies, and the mighty trees sang of birds, who soon took flight and sang songs of their own. but from the birds’ songs, nothing arose but younger birds. They were not able to create as earth had, as sea had, as sky had.

The birds approached the earth, and asked its counsel. Why, they asked, could they not sing their wishes into being as so many others had? The earth answered that the song of creation had faded with each singing since the first song, and that the recent refrain would allow only young to be created. The birds would have to be happy with that, or else cease their song and create no more.

Most birds accepted this, and departed the audience. But mockingbirds asked whether it would be possible to sing a song of creation once more. The earth asked what they would change, if they could but sing it so. The mockingbirds replied that they would bring about abundant food, plentiful nesting, and an absence of predators. The earth asked where the food would come from, what the nesting would consist of, and what the predators could be expected to eat instead; the mockingbirds had no answer to this.

Since it had been a difficult question, the earth gave them a difficult answer: of the mockingbirds wanted to sing a song of creation, they must first master the song of every other bird. Only then would they prove themselves worthy of singing such a song, and only then would they have the wisdom to use it properly.

And so it is today that mockingbirds seek to learn every song of every bird, so that they may sing the first song of creation in a thousand generations. Though they may know that theirs is an impossible task, they nevertheless try.

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In May of 1973, a group of scientists from [Redacted] University were conducting experiments with a towed array sonar in the vicinity of the former Pacific Proving Grounds nuclear test site. The towed array sonar was used for seafloor mapping and detecting seismic signals, with the goal of developing civilian uses for the technology and investigating a magnitude 5.7 earthquake detected in the area in February.

The sonar began to experience a series of difficulties when the [Redacted] University crew attempted to map an area roughly bounded by [Redacted]º N and [Redacted]º E. Rather than showing the seafloor that might have been expected, the array instead showed a flat and featureless plain that seemed unnaturally smooth other than for a series of raised “dots.” In a later report delivered to [Redacted], the crew estimated that these “dots” would have been approximately 10m tall and 10m in diameter. A total of 17 were noted, in a pattern that the same report described as “[Redacted]-shaped.”

Once three passes over the area had been made, each confirming the readings of the previous one, the [Redacted] University crew left the area, intending to return with more sensitive equipment. This was prevented by the unseasonable Typhoon TD, a storm that formed outside the usual typhoon season and struck the area with gale-force winds for nearly two weeks. After the storm had subsided, the researchers were able to return to the area in June.

To their surprise, there was no sign of the previously “smooth” seafloor, nor of the “dots” that the sonar had previously found. The survey found, instead, ordinary terrain that was wholly unremarkable in the area. Samples were taken at seven sites within the area and sent to [Redacted] for analysis, and the towed array sonar was returned to its manufacturer, [Redacted], for examination. The samples indicted unusually high levels of [Redacted], [Redacted], and Strontium-90, but it is impossible to discern whether this is contamination from testing in the Pacific Proving Grounds. The towed array was found to be completely intact, with no flaws or damage.

Two final notes:

1. The [Redacted] shape of the “dots” corresponds to the inverse of the [Redacted] Signal, though as this is a basic shape found in many natural forms this is not conclusive in and of itself.

2. Despite technicians at [Redacted] finding no problems with the towed array, it never worked again. It failed on startup during every attempted use after the second trip to [Redacted]º N and [Redacted]º E and was eventually scrapped. A report from Col. [Redacted], indicating that the array was tested and found to be working in that area, but only in that area, cannot be substantiated at this time.

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Argument 4
While taking down the oral history of the nwo’Khala people, Lutheran missionary Ernst Neider noted a number of sayings attributed to a long-dead elder referred to as !Nwo. In the nwo’Khala syllablery assembled by Dr. Neider, now is the particle for “first” and koala that for “people,” hence nwo’Khala, “first people.” The addition of a click consonant before a word appears to have modified it into a personal adjective or honorific; Dr. Neider thus rendered !Nwo as “the First.”

Dr. Neider’s letters to his brother, a physicist in Leipzig at the Hanseatic University, are preserved in the archives, and once scholarly access was granted in 1990, researchers and fringe figures soon noted the similarity of !Nwo’s teachings to principles of thermodynamics. “One cannot unstir a stew,” “a thrown spear wants to fly, a held spear wants to sleep,” and so on. Even if the similarities between !Nwo’s recorded aphorisms and physics are overblown, they represent a fascinating collection of anthropological anecdotes.

!Nwo also reportedly taught the “fable of the beasts.” Every beast, he said, has a larger beast that eats it. Even man is occasionally hunted by lions, he says. The story goes that a doubting relative responded that while a man may be eaten, men as a group can kill and eat lions if they wish. !Nwo responded that even then, the men will be eaten by worms when they die. The doubter responded that the men’s sons would live on, and it is here that !Nwo’s account becomes of great interest to fringe studies.

Mankind is like a game animal, fattening itself. But one day, an even greater predator will arrive and gobble mankind up. It may be quick, like a lion, or slow, like a disease, but !Nwo expresses absolute certainty in this destruction and urges his people to live in the moment.

Some have used this exchange as evidence that !Nwo was contacted by an extraterrestrial intelligence, but even the most prosaic student of anthropology has to admit that he was right. The nwo’Khala rose in rebellion shortly after Dr. Neider arrived, killing the missionary and other German officials. The response from the colonial authorities was full-blown genocide; by 1910 only a handful of people of people with partial nwo’Khala ancestry remained, and the language was extinct.

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The Classical Maya city-state of Sokal flourished for around 300 years, with a golden age lasting roughly 150 years before it was swept up and largely destroyed in the chaos at the end of the Classical period. During that golden age, however, Sokal was noted for the skill and precision of its astronomers and mathematicians, and their work was considered to be of such value that several Sokal codices survive, having been rescued from the city for use by other Mayan polities.

Codex 117b, recovered in fragments from the library at Tiquil, is written in an unusual form and has attracted mild scholarly interest, especially in the lead-up to 2012 and the popular hysteria about the “end” of the Mayan calendar.

Excavations at Sokal, which was largely destroyed and plundered for stone before being reclaimed by the jungle, have suggested that the author of Codex 117b was an astronomer referred to as Cloud Jaguar in funerary inscriptions. Cloud Jaguar, if he is indeed the author, claims in 117b that the Mayan Short and Long Counts are natural cycles disconnected from human experience, a controversial opinion for a Classical Maya to hold. He argues for what is essentially a fractal view of history: much as a human will age from youth to decrepitude and inevitably die, so too will city-states, peoples, and the global civilization as a whole.

Some fringe groups have argued that Cloud Jaguar must have known of civilizations on other continents as a result of that assertion, but a close reading of the text shows that he does not mention any groups by name that the Classical Maya would not have been familiar with, and that the implication that there are other unknown peoples further afield is not unique. In any case, Cloud Jaguar cites what some believe to be an early version of later Aztec myth as proof of his theory: namely, that other worlds with other inhabitants arose and were laid low before the new human world replaced them utterly. He apparently goes on to speculate that the process has already begun for humans, and that their world will inevitably be totally destroyed and replaced with a new and wholly alien people.

Despite the scholarly interest in Codex 117b, it has not been examined using modern techniques due to its location in a private collection. It is worth noting that the best sources for its contents remain a series of black and white photographs taken at the Universidad Columbiana de Guatemala in 1949-1950.

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Ali Abdul Malik was an apprentice to the court astronomer in Baghdad during the height of the Islamic Golden Age. It is likely his name is incorrectly attested, and that many other minor details may be garbled, as the only surviving records are Greek translations of lost originals made after the sack of Baghdad in the court of Emperor Theophilios.

In any case, surviving accounts state that Ali Abdul Malik became engrossed in stellar observations and algebraic calculations around the time of the legendary Dark Comet, a natural phenomenon that he became obsessed with explaining. Modern-day scholarly consensus is that the Dark Comet was mass hysteria and that Malik never witnessed it in person, but in any event he became withdrawn and disheveled as he plunged down a mathematical rabbit hole.

Concerned, the court astronomer consulted with the Sultan, who decreed that Ali Abdul Malik be examined by the physicians at the medical school. Unexpectedly, Malik ferociously resisted being removed from his quarters, and killed three of the Sultan’s men before he was reluctantly killed.

The Sultan ordered a search of Ali Abdul Malik’s quarters, and retrieved an incomplete manuscript, now lost, that was entitled “Of Light and Dark Comets.” A summary of the work appears in the Byzantine Codex Nemeses, however.

According to the Codex, which again is a summary of a translation of an incomplete and lost original, Ali Abdul Malik had accurately determined the orbital period of a comet, but the time scales and distances involved had consumed him. “Of Light and Dark Comets” quickly veers off topic, and posits a metaphor for human civilization: as it approaches its zenith, it burns brightly but is also partly consumed, and a long slow inevitable decline into darkness follows. The dark comet is then replaced, or perhaps subsumed, by another.

The Byzantines saw this as a prediction of the sack of Baghdad, but others since–notably Stenos of Athos–have argued that Ali Abdul Malik’s mathematics applied to civilization as a whole, and that his lost original manuscript represents a Rosetta Stone into the lifespan of human civilization worldwide.

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Shin Huyei, court poet and administrator in the Shuyin Dynasty, became withdrawn and reclusive in the last months of his life. Out of respect for his decades of loyal service, the Panglong Emperor allowed Shin to retire to his quarters and had servants provide whatever he required. The result was a manuscript entitled “Age of Iron, Age of Rust.”

In it, Shin Huyei argues that regardless of what may happen in the heavens or in nature, intelligent beings like mankind operate on a never-ending cycle of two parts. The first part, which Shin called the “Age of Iron,” resulted in the intelligence building itself up through technology and toil. The second, which he termed the “Age of Rust,” involved the gradual decay of natural and artificial systems from the Age of Iron until all has literally rusted away and the people are extinguished.

As an example, Shin used the people of Suremu Island, a location otherwise attested only in a few records from the Nu period. He details their Age of Iron, in which they grew wealthy and powerful by building weapons and boats from the fine timber on their island. He also details their Age of Rust, in which they clear-cut their island and destroyed themselves in war over their few remaining resources, with the final few survivors living out their days as curiosities in the imperial menagerie.

Shin Huyei ends by asserting that the world is in its own Age of Iron, but that the Age or Rust is inevitable and imminent. Most translations include a note that the manuscript was discovered by servants near Shin’s body, with the scholar having written himself to death, but this is not confirmed (or denied) by surviving Shuyin Dynasty records.

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Named after its founder, John Christmas, Christmasville is unusual in that it does not lean into its holiday-themed name in the slightest. There are no year-round holiday decorations, no tree farms, and the local Santa only works two weeks per year as is traditional. Many attribute this attitude to the longtime mayor William Christmas III, who was in office for nearly 40 years. A deeply religious man, he nevertheless disdained seasonal trappings as the crass commercialization of what ought to be a solemn and dignified holiday. When asked about his town’s lack of Christmas shush, Mayor Christmas would always remark that there were hundreds of other cities trying to be Christmas City USA and no hope of beating them; the only option was to be a good town and leave Christmas in the hands of the Lord.

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The Consolidated Truck Stop and Gas Station was formed from the merger of three smaller gas stations and was a beacon of the interstate for many years. Business was good enough to erect large steel letters on poles by the interstate reading “GAS STATION” and “TRUCK STOP.” Crippled by the early-2000s increase in fuel prices, the station closed in 2003. Its owners simply abandoned it, and years of neglect led the steel letters to begin falling off one by one. By the late 2010s, “GAS STATION” had deteriorated to “AS S ION” with plant growth largely obscuring the “ION.” This led to a short-lived popularity as a piece of urban decay photography, with the dilapidated station being framed behind what appeared to be a sign reading “ASS.”

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Camden Parsons’ dreams of being an influencer had to accommodate her rural upbringing and the lack of local glamor. Undeterred, she set out to be the world’s first professional bass fishing influencer, combining fishing trips to local hot spots with family and relatives with glamor shots and pinups in waders. Surprisingly, the strategy has somewhat worked, and Camden has thousands of followers and several minor endorsement deals to her credit. Her current goal is to court a national-level sponsor to compete in, and pose at, the regional bass fishing championships.

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Originally intended to be “Valiant Storage,” the owners realized too late that the name was already taken after printing all their signage. Converting the “L” to an “R” meant limiting their losses, but also led to much bemusement over what variants were being stored there. The facility fields multiple calls per day from collectors mistaking it for a specialized facility for storing rare variant comic books or action figures.

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