Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

Client Worlds
Vyeah control over client worlds tends to be primarily economic. A high commissioner is appointed, as well as the skeleton of a Vyeah bureaucracy. The world is upgraded to connect to the encrypted FTL network, and the Vyeah are granted a monopoly on all products, natural resource exploitation, and raising of armed troops.

In practice, once all the levers of power are in their hands and the world has been defanged as a potential adversary, the Vyaeh tend to leave it alone. They sell some technology and extract some resources, but most of this is spent to fund the costs of the High Commissioner. By dribbling down advanced technology and appointing puppets, the Vyeah are able to halt would-be foes before they can become threats. Only in cases of prolonged insurgency will they commit additional resources or off-world troops.

Earth is one such world.

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> pick up book

Taken.

>look at book

The book is entitled Media of Pure Fantasy.

>read book

You page through the book. It appears to be an avant-garde novel of some kind, in which the unnamed first-person protagonist finds a book, also called Media of Pure Fantasy, and find that large portions of their life are expounded upon as being part of fantasy texts. It drives him to madness.

>who wrote the book

You flip to the end leaves. The book is credited to one Edminster Stoudenmire, which is also your name. Curious, as the copyright date is at least ten years before you were born.

throw book against wall

The book thumps noisily against the wall. Sparrows sing sweetly outside, oblivious to the noise.

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I kept reading the essay, a little uneasily. It helped to speak it out loud, to hear my own voice going over the syllables.

“Now, the short film in question was Your Favorite Story which was up for an Oscar in 2010, I want to say. It’s a simple enough character piece at the start. Two girls in an apartment–Roommates? Lovers? We never do find out for sure–are discussing their favorite stories, mostly books but also TV shows and movies.”

Turning the page, I kept on:

“One of the girls have never heard of the other’s selections, and neither have we, the audience. It soon becomes clear that while one character is speaking of media that exists in our real world, the other is pure fantasy. But she insists, with specific details in her recollection, they they are real. And what’s more, she’s never heard of any of the others the ones familiar to us as the audience. The short ends just as they consult an encyclopedia to find out who is right.”

Glancing over at the computer on my desk–the modern encyclopedia–I felt a shudder work its way up my spine.

“Which is more disconcerting: the notion that the first character’s favorites do not exist–or that ours in the audience do not?”

At this, I slammed the book closed and threw it across the room, breathing heavily. There was no way. The author had been dead for years, nearly half a decade. There was no way he could have known.

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“My favorite was always Prisoner of the Striders, did you ever read it?” Mallory said.

“Isn’t that one of the Tintin books?” said Sunny. “I ever read any of those French comics.”

“No, it’s one of the Sparrowverse stories that Sandra Cooke Jameson wrote.” Mallory grew more animated as she talked, gesturing with both hands. “It was in one of her short story collections. Song of the Sparrows maybe.”

“Sparrowverse?” Sunny arched an eyebrow. “Sounds flighty.”

“It’s a bunch of short stories and novels about the lives of birds. Starting with sparrows, eventually with other birds too. They made an animated movie out of one of them in the 70s, and Netflix is working on a show, I think?”

“So what is Prisoner of the Striders about, then?”

“A bird disappears, but another one sees it in a human’s house. They call us striders, we’re the striders in the title. So the missing bird’s friend goes on this big journey to find the house and rescue it, but it turns out to just be a photo framed on the wall. It’s really sweet and really sad.”

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“I saw Gathl, but he was…different. He did not move, nor did he sing, and when I drew near to him, he grew to an enormous size.” Clwyd said. “I have heard that the striders possess fearsome magic, but this is beyond the pale.”

“Ah, I know of what you speak,” the old bird said. “Before the finch-blindness took my sight, I had seen it before. My good friend was once approached by a strider, you see, with a curious object. My friend froze, but they did not harm him. Llew took him not long afterwards, but I saw him again, returned to life, in the strider nest. But he never moved.”

“What do you think it is?” said Clywd.

“I think…that the striders have powerful magic at their disposal, and sometimes it pleases them to take the form of one of us and display it, even after the original has died.” The old bird laughed “I suppose it does save them from raising young in their nest, doesn’t it? But it is yet another of their unknowable ways.”

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The nobler our intentions
The muddier our words
A self-important man once said
The intelligent are doubt-wracked
While fools are self-assured
I would revise that to
The truth is complicated
And lies are simple

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Oglethorpe’s Multi-Variegated Tyrant Flycatcher (Empidonomus multivarius) holds the record of largest name-to-bird ratio, at 3:1 to 4:1 depending on the font. R. Evans Oglethorpe was actually accused of fabricating the species to take the title for himself, as ornithologist doubted that such a small flycatcher could be so boldly colored–especially Arnold Huntsman, discoverer of Hunstsman’s Dapplebacked Pewee, the previous record-holder. But an independent investigation in Uruguay confirmed the species, and all subsequent challengers, such as Gregson-Williams’s lesser southern semipalmated megapode, have proven to be either misidentifications or hoaxes.

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“You say that he was seen, alive, in a strider nest?” Switio said.

“That is what Nhryda said, and I have no reason to doubt her,” replied Clwyd.

Switio shuddered and fluffed his feathers. “You have been warned, have you not, against the striders? From egg to fledging?”

“But I have also heard stories. They say that one of them fed Elynion when he thought he would perish during a hard winter. They say that one collected Ddigrif when a llew had injured him, and released her, healed.”

Switio turned his good eye to Clwyd. “All true,” he said. “But know this. The striders are pernicious, unpredictable, unknowable. They keep their own counsel and no others. You might approach one, say your right words, and be rewarded, yes. But they might also crush you, tear you from the sky with invisible death, or set their llew upon you.”

“So it’s possible that he yet lives.”

Turning away, so that only his blind and swollen eye faced Clwyd, Switio pipped softly. “It is possible. They have been known to take our kind prisoner. But few have escaped to tell the tale, and none have ever been rescued.”

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The system predicted that he would say that, of course. Protestations to the contrary, and false assertions of free will are an expected and necessary part of the algorithm, one that has long since been planned for.

The system furthermore predicted that, with his arguments defeated through logic, that he would quietly walk across the midtown bridge to his domicile, in defeat.

It is inconceivable that the bridge could be leapt from at all, much less that he would do so. Nothing in the algorithm had indicated that this would be the case. It has caused a cascading failure, a systems crash.

These notes will be appended to the error log with the hope that the system can be restarted, the data stream intact.

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The Emperor, at this time, was well-known for his love of musical instruments and brass in particular. Naturally, this was represented in his patronage of the arts, with the composer M. Gorn writing a series of brass-heavy concerts for the royal court. But the Emperor was also a military man, and his love of martial music was reflected in one of his personal cavalry units, the Brass Hussars.

Outfitted in a combination of imperial green and musical pink, the Brass Hussars were trained as light cavalry but carried no weapons other than short, ceremonial dirks. Instead, their load was given over entirely to trumpets, bugles, and even the newly invented tuba. They would play martial music on these for the Emperor on maneuvers, from horseback, supported by a small group of percussionists drawn from the artillery corps who played on specially towed cassion wagons.

In the event of war, the Brass Hussars were theoretically supposed to break up and serve as heralds and musicians for the imperial army. In practice, however, the Emperor was loathe to commit his favorite musicians to combat and they tended to remain with him at all times as part of his personal retinue. The major exception was the Battle of Nosilki, where the Emperor himself, in personal command of his army, was trapped by the Duke of Hovoy.

The Brass Hussars distinguished themselves at Nosilki by sounding repeated charges for units that did not exist, charging at and breaking up disorganized formations despite having no weapons of their own, and in general using surprise and cacophony as effective weapons. They were able to open up a gap in Hovoy’s lines which allowed the Emperor to escape, and then escorted him to safety–all while, according to legend, miming loading and firing their trumpets like musketoons.

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