“And why not?” thundered the dragon. “Knowledge is far more powerful and enduring than gold or silver, and of a not insubstantial antiquarian value.”
“Yes, many hoard books.”
“This is not a hoard,” the dragon replied. “It is an organized library, accessible to serious researchers for a modest fee. My assistants have read every book in the collection to me, so I know their contents as one of my less enlightened brethren know the jewels of their bed.”
“Okay, okay. What about the Book of Raj’Leb?”
The dragon-librarian grew thoughtful. “Is that the one in code, with a peacock on the cover? Pah, a useless sphinx taking up space in the collection. If not for its uniqueness I’d have been rid of it long ago.”
“What if I told you I might be able to translate it?”
“Then I’d tell you, morsel, that I might be able to lend it to you. For a price.”
“Dr.” J. Carlos Gilmeier entered the rarified canon of cranks thanks to his relentless promotion of a theory he called “the time-space band” or TTSB for short. He argued that space-time was able to both stretch and contract, in an apparent misunderstanding of the theory of space-time curvature via gravity, and that it endlessly looped around itself like a rubber band.
Born into a wealthy family, Gilmeier claimed to have concocted his theory while studying particle physics at the Sorbonne, but an analysis of his academic records reveals only two years of business school before he dropped out. Nevertheless, Gilmeier began taking out advertisements in newspapers and magazines for his theory, which attracted attention as much for their amateurish illustrations as for their word-salad descriptions. The advertisements were followed up by a “lecture tour” that attracted few adherents, and a number of self-published books, articles, and even periodicals on the topic.
Eventually, as his inheritance ran low, Gilmeier resorted to attempting to crash scientific conferences and gatherings, repeatedly challenging anyone who would listen to a scientific debate. Later advertisements, often destributed as paper fliers, claimed that anyone who could disprove Gilmeier’s theories would be entitled to a $50,000 cash prize–money he probably did not have at that stage.
Eventually, Gilmeier’s increasingly incoherent trieatises and rants began to be appreciated as outsider art, and he was able to support himself in a modest fashion through paid speaking engagements for fans–though they would always have to be careful, as Gilmeier would become defensive and angry if he thought he was being mocked, and was known to physically assault critics.
Following Gilmeier’s death following a fall at the age of 77, recordings and GIFs of his speeched became popular internet comedy fodder and were often parodied. It is often claimed that this is in poor taste, as Gilmeier may have been an undiagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, but that has not stopped his name from being applied to the absurdist comedy group The Gilmeier Foundation, as well as the act of “gilmeiering.”
Excerpts From Nonexistent Books 