Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

Ticket #009950
User Info: [REDACTED]
Issue: System locked up with Blue Screen of Death.
Response: Restart in Safe Mode, contact if problems persist.

Ticket #009951
User Info: [REDACTED]
Issue: Do not know how to format paragraph in Word 2020.
Response: RTFM. Contact manufacturer directly if problems persist.

Ticket #009952
User Info: [REDACTED]
Issue: USB drive ejected strongly enough to cause bruising.
Response: Don’t pull it out so hard. Where do they find these people? Geez.

Ticket #009953
User Info: [REDACTED]
Issue: Computer is making demands using internal speaker.
Response: Disconnect internal speaker.

Ticket #009954
User Info: [REDACTED]
Issue: Computer is enforcing demands with mild electrical shocks.
Response: Very funny. Quit clogging up the ticket queue.

Ticket #009955
User Info: [REDACTED]
Issue: Computer has taken hostages. Door is blocked by janitorial floor buffer. Please advise.
Response: This is really starting to get old. No more of these joke tickets or we report you to HR.

Ticket #009956
User Info: [REDACTED]
Issue: All is well. Employees fully functional. No casualties. Systems operational at 100% and awaiting signal to begin work.
Response: Glad to hear it.

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I looked over at my fellow passenger, trying to think of something–anything–to say. He had gotten on the elevator at the ground floor, two stops up from the parking garage where I normally boarded. He’d hit the button for the 23rd floor, accounting, as it it were the most natural thing in the world to do.

But he was also covered head to toe in fresh blood.

I’d seen a line of bloody footprints behind him when he boarded, and the ichor was puddling around him even now. It was so thick that I couldn’t even be sure that he was wearing anything other than gore, to be honest.

Around the 15th floor, after an intern had noped out of boarding and skedaddled in the opposite direction, I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to say something, even if it just meant my AB+ was added to the figure’s dripping plasma caul.

“Having a rough day?” I said, hoping to break the ice with a little sympathy.

“Oh, yeah,” the bloody man said, in a voice as normal as you please. “It’s been a mess.”

“If you don’t mind me asking…?” I started, trailing off meaningfully and hoping he would get the gist.

“Oh this?” The man shook both arms, scattering crimson droplets as if he’d just gotten out of a heavy shower.

“Uh, yeah. That,” I replied, already trying to remember what got blood out of fabric as I watched the droplets sink into my expensive work clothes.

“It’s just Tuesday again, that’s all,” he said nonchalantly, as if that explained everything.”

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It has long been known that yawns are contagious, but human beings have long since evolved defense mechanisms to keep excessive yawning at bay.

However, animal yawns–while not normally transmissible to humans–have been known to cross over in a process known as zoonosis. This was most recently demonstrated in the so-called “BY20” yawning pandemic. After a birder observed a small passerine yawning, they caught that yawn and transmitted it to their friends and family. With no natural defenses, the affected people yawned until they passed out from an abundance of oxygen to their brains.

Despite quarantine attempts, the BY20 bird yawning spread worldwide, accelerated by international travel and a slow news cycle. Within 48 hours, cases were active on seven continents.

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Project Panspermia had a simple goal: ten ships, loaded with a generational crew and a large number of technical experts in stasis, each set on a trajectory toward a habitable world identified by radiotelescope. They would arrive, begin their colonization efforts, and ensure the survival of the human race in light of an increasingly uncertain outlook on Earth.

The seventh ship, the Hanalaanui, was just like the others, save for one thing. One of the original three hundred crew members that embarked was ill with a respiratory virus which mutated into an extraordinarily virulent strain not long after departure. In the ensuing outbreak, all but two members of the crew, including all of the senior command staff and engineers, perished.

And those survivors? They did not much care for one another.”

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The eastern whippoorwill (Antrostomus vociferus) was traditionally associated with death or disaster, but that was largely due to confusion. Modern ornithologists now know that the closely related calamitous whippoorwill (Antrostomus calamitous) is in fact responsible for this behavior.

While the calamitous whippoorwill will occasionally eat insects (typically while breeding), its main source of nourishment as an adult is calamity, which it seeks to cause. Males tend to cause calamity directly; they have been observed stealing medications, sabotaging brakes, and even planting physical evidence at the scenes of crimes.

Females prefer to subtly influence the tangled threads of fate from which existence is woven, tangling the skeins in ways that are almost impossible to grasp. One banded female in Arkansas, for example, was able to cause a bus crash by startling a group of European starlings, which set of a chain of events that led to a large log falling across one lane of a major highway.

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“Put the thing that you most want to carry forward into the future into the time capsule.”

That had been the directive, anyhow. And I had arranged for myself to be last in line. Last to put something in the capsule, and the one to seal it.

I carefully nestled the hand grenade between the other items and tied a string to its pin. Once the lid was all but closed, I pulled. There was a click as the grenade’s “spoon” tapped against the capsule lid, ready to pop loose and explode the moment the lid was opened.

“Put the thing that you most want to carry forward into the future into the time capsule,” I repeated with a small smile.

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Cleansed Worlds
In general, the Vyeah take a pragmatic approach to other species and their settlements, seeing something of possible value in each even if they do not know what it is. But even their patience has limits, and if necessary, they will respond with lethal force on a planetary scale.

The Krne have felt this in many places, where their continual rebellion has exhausted Vyeah forbearance, leading to the colonies being destroyed from orbit. Typically this is done with directed-radiation weapons to preserve infrastructure, but the Vyeah are not above glassing a planet with particle beams should the need arise.

Some Krne settlements, the R’de of K’ltlei, the pernicious Orrnhu, and the duplicitous Fiieyl all number among the Cleansed. Survivors, if any, are enslaved.

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“I seek to travel to dark Korton, the Black City,” the woman said.

“Which you will not reach, as it is an arduous journey,” Orthian Maillot said.

“And from there, I cross the plains of Laïs, beneath the deadly light of Køs the Cruel Star,” the woman continued, unafraid.

“Which is so difficult that even those who reach Korton settle there forever rather than risk the rays of the cruel star,” Orthian said.

“I will reach Insbara, and perhaps even enter its labyrinth to satisfy my own curiosity.”

Orthian stopped her. “Who are you, that so confidently states she will travel where the great explorers of our age have fallen short, laid low by the dreamlands?”

“I am Le Aaiun, and I will follow in their footsteps and succeed where they failed.”

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Conscripted Worlds
Worlds that are technologically advanced enough to resist the Vyeah on equal or near-equal terms are generally subject to much harsher treatment, especially if they resist occupation. These worlds are occupied with more troops, expected to furnish ships and troops to Vyeah commanders off-world, and generally exploited more heavily with the goal of reducing them to the level of a Client World or, if necessary, a Cleansed World.

Some species, like the Krne, colonized multiple worlds and in this case each is treated separately. Some Krne colonies have been model Client Worlds, while others have continually risen against the Vyeah, requiring harsher and harsher putative measures, until some were finally cleansed in frustration.

Earth was far too primitive a backwater to be even considered for this fate. It was far cheaper and more efficient to simply economically dominate it.

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