Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

The wild, loose steppes between the great empire of Ceres and the old Crimson Empire was once the territory of the trolls, beings of exceptional size, strength, and intelligence. Typically 7-9 feet tall, trolls were distinguished by their grey skin, large eyes, and lanky build. One key difference, and one only, kept them from establishing an empire or kingdom to rival that of the other sapients: their nocturnal nature.

Possessed of excellent nighttime vision and skin that was extremely sensitive to sunlight, trolls were generally unable to function during the daytime hours and would instead retreat to caves or underground dwellings. The light was enough to cause intense sunburn with long exposure, and the bloom from even a roaring bonfire was enough to blind a troll that had not had time to adjust. These traits were extremely desirable in the hot, arid steppes of west Ceres, but they came at a cost. Alone out of all the sapient races of the world, trolls never mastered fire, and they found themselves unable to make use of the wild steppe horses for riding or the great steppe aurouchs for meat and milk.

Instead, trolls hunted in organized bands, eating meat raw and also subsisting on what they could gather or steal. Since the other sapients tended to sleep during the night, troll culture regarded them as lazy and unintelligent, and therefore fit to be stolen from accordingly. Many a trade caravan, set upon by raiders at midnight, found itself relieved of most or all of its goods. The wiser caravans eventually worked out a system of trade, leaving valuables–typically forged metals or cooked meats–at designated places in exchange for safe passage.

In all other respects, trolls were formidable. They easily mastered languages and were powerful fighters and thinkers, with an oral tradition spanning thousands of years. One troll skald, or battle-poet, participated in each band, driving their fellows forward with ancient songs and rousing stories. The penalty for misremembering a single word of the old troll epics was death at sunrise. Those few trolls that were able to withstand the sun, usually due to generous clothing combined with near-blindness, were prized as scouts, diplomats, and traders.

But with their inability to make metal implements, their reputation as raiders and thieves, and the encroachment of Ceres from the east, the days of the steppe trolls were ultimately numbered. Cerean troops waged a series of extermination campaigns against the major troll groups, driving them further into the wilderness and breaking them up. In a cruel, if effective, move, the Cerean troops targeted the skalds specifically in battle, often taking them as hostages or prisoners. While this did lead to several rather complete skald-histories of the trolls being taken down by Cerean chroniclers, it also meant the distruption and destruction of their way of life.

By the beginning of the modern era, when Ceres began turning inward in a series of devastating civil wars, trolls were functionally extinct. It is possible some yet survive at the furthest edges of the great grasslands, near where the steppe turns to taiga, but if any yet live they are long since cut off from the stories and traditions of their forebears. And unlike the other sapients, their lack of mastery over fire means that the harsh winters of the taiga are an impenetrable wall of starvation and death.

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“A Madhi-Okoye converter, by the looks of it,” said Wicklow, poking the machine with the toe of his boot.

“Oh, right, I’ve heard of those,” Ortiz said. “They reverse the chirality of organic molecules, right?”

“More or less, when they’re working right,” Wicklow said. “But it’s basic stuff, amino acids at best. You need a lot more equipment to process the raw sludge into something you can eat, though I’ve seem plenty of alties desperate to suck on raw tubes of the stuff.”

“You think this was a lab?” Ortiz said. “Making illegal reverse-chirality food?”

“No, there’d be more equipment to synthesize some basic proteins. They’re keeping them separate and moving the ingredients between locations.”

“Smart,” said Ortiz. “Less chance of a fire.”

“Let them burn themselves out for all I care,” sniffed Wicklow. “As long as they don’t take any natives with them.”

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Sirik had left a note: “I am ashamed to say that I have left you now, Mr. Ames. This is the last depot on the river that is still controlled by the national government, and I have heard about what fate awaits those of us flying the national flag against the rebels. I have a wife and a child, and this is the last opportunity for me to slip away and perhaps see them once more, though I fear that in doing my duty thus far I have already made them a widow and an orphan. I hope you find the woman you are looking for, and she runs joyously into your arms. This is the story I will tell myself, even though I know in my heart of hearts it cannot be true.”

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CARL: This is Carl Drake, play-by-play commentator for NBS Broadcasting, coming at you live from the booth for this latest episode of NCAA gridiron madness!

TOM: That’s right, Carl. This is Tom Hicks, color commentator for NBS Broadcasting, and I’m going to be honest: I can’t differentiate between those ants on the field and those I’ve seen a hundred times before. I think I may be on the verge of entering a fugue state! Also, bad call by the refs there I think. That’s ten yards the offense won’t get back.

CARL: It’s a good thing no one more than half-listens to what we say up here, Tom! And since this is a non-conference game, where the lesser team is basically being paid good money to act as a punching bag, we’re only being carried on NBS radio, which has a about the same nationwide audience as C-SPAN. Oh, look at that drive! That’s a turnover, possession goes to the away team!

TOM: That’s right, Carl, these ringers from outside the conference are making an uncommonly good show of things here today. If they win the game they’re essentially paid to lose, do you think they have not done their job and shouldn’t get paid? Discuss.

CARL: They’ve earned their money with an upset, all right, even if their exploited and basically enslaved student athletes never see one red cent of it. No, a loss here–as seems to be the case, with the box score 29-8 against the home team–merely serves to add one more log of thousand-dollar bills to the incandescent blaze that is NCAA sports. In among all the other money being burnt to make sure the people at the top stay in Learjets and thousand-dollar suits, it’s all but unnoticed.

TOM: That’s right, Carl, and let’s not forget that a loss in a non-conference game is blood in the water to other teams in the conference. They’ll be circling like sharks now, determined to beat a wounded and unresisting opponent to burnish their own programs before being defeated by the five-time national champions.

CARL: It’s almost like the system is set up so that the rich programs get richer and the poorer ones get poorer, with nothing but the hope of a bolt from the blue upset against a conference opponent, or enough fattened-cow sacrifices from out-of-conference opponents to make themselves seem viable.

TOM: That’s right, Carl. The best way to build a dynasty in the NCAA is to already have a dynasty. And it’s worth adding, I think, that the $175 million dollars per year price tag of the current dynasty makes it a tough sell considering that figure exceeds the GDP of at least three small countries.

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The tiny sprite hovered on gossamer wings above Timmy’s bed. It was impossible to miss the tooth motif; her vestments were crowned by knitted marching molars, with incisor inlays and a wisdom tooth atop the rod she daintily clutched.

“Wow,” Timmy said. “The Tooth Fairy! But wait, I lost my tooth on the playground, there’s nothing under my pillow!”

“I heard your wish.” With a knowing smile, the fairy waved her wand. Timmy immediately felt incredible pain followed by a stark pop in his lower jaw.

“OWWW!”

Running over the affected area with his tongue, Timmy felt that his baby tooth had returned, as solidly planted as ever in its old socket.

“I’m the Reverse Tooth Fairy,” the pixie said, floating off on the wind. “Enjoy your new chomper.”

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“And, the next option is to file jointly with your spouse,” said the accountant softly, prodding the relevant section of the paper. “It won’t let you write off business expenses like an LLC will, but-”

“I don’t have time for this,” said Burkette. “Just tell me about the cheapest option.”

The accountant paused, lip quivering. “You interrupted me.”

“Yes, yes I did, because I don’t like having my time was-”

“If you interrupt me again,” the accountant said, still very soft and flat, “I will carve your heart out of your living chest and show it to you before I eat it while you bleed out on the floor.”

Burkette’s jaw came abruptly unhinged. “What?”

The accountant, whose expression and tone of voice had not changed, looked back uncomprehendingly. “What?”

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The ship was made almost in mockery of what the humans sailed, appearing at a distance as a square-rigged three-masted ship of the line. But it revealed itself on closer inspection to be a haphazard conglomeration of trees uprooted and coaxed into strange shapes, dead leaves and dry twigs held in place by old magic, and gunwales bristling not with cannons but with catapults laden with explosive dynamite tree fruit.

But the skull-and-crossbones the fae crew carried was clear enough, as was the shot across the bow that left the Scarper‘s foredeck littered with caustic fruit pulp. Her master ordered the white flag aloft, and as the fae pirates pulled alongside, boarding hooks at the ready, he stood at the helm to receive them. Looking over the diverse shapes opposite him–elves, pixies, pookas, and far stranger things on gossamer wings–he turned to his quartermaster.

“What sort of thing,” he asked, “would a fairy plunder from a mortal ship?”

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The farmer toiled every day in his fields, sweating and laboring to bring forth his master’s crops from the rich muck of the Nile floodplain. But from where he toiled, the great Pharaoh’s compound was visible across the river. At dawn and at dusk, glittering across the river, the farmer could see the lights. When the winds were right, he could hear the singing of the priests and the shouted ablutions offered up to Osiris and Ra.

Local priests kept the farmer and his fellows well informed as to what the Pharaoh meant, a living link to the gods. But the farmer came to think, in time, that he knew the gods as well as anyone did. Perhaps they would deign to accept a substitute to speak to, and incidentally to offer a life of leisure with honeyed wines.

So one night, when the moon was full, the farmer swam the Nile to reach the palace. With him, on his back, he carried a feral cat from the fields, a fine mouser who had earned the respect of those whose grain she saved. With the cat as his sacred guide, the farmer sought to enter the palace and speak to the gods, begging them to at least let him attempt the role of a pharaoh himself. Other than the clothes on his back, he carried nothing else but a small knife for emergencies.

The compound was not strongly held, with the few guards easily avoided by one who had years to practice hiding in darkened fields. Perhaps, the farmer thought, the Pharaoh relied entirely too much on his people’s worship to keep him safe. In the vast pools of darkness between the few lit oil lamps inside, the farmer was able to find his way to what he reckoned to be the royal chamber. There, he began to make his ablutions and obeisances, imploring any god who would listen. Ra, Osiris, even forgotten Aten were all beseeched in turn, but their answers were only insect song and frogs along the river.

When a shape approached in the dark, roused perhaps by the farmer’s devotions, instinct took over. The knife glinted in reflected moonlight, and the shape fell to the floor, gurgling its last. When the guards came, drawn by a startled cry, they found the farmer standing over the Pharaoh with a dripping knife and a cat slung over his back.

Naturally, he was struck down at once. But the high priest, noting the presence of an auspicious cat with the assassin, decreed that both the farmer and his feline companion be mummified, to be buried with the Pharaoh and to serve him eternally in the hereafter as penance. The new Pharaoh, desiring an auspicious start and no questions about the light guard his father had been assigned, went along with the plan. The farmer was duly embalmed, as was his field cat, and placed in the Pharaoh’s burial chamber.

Not long after, grave robbers who had helped to build the tomb arrived and dug it up, plundering the riches that had been laid to rest with their dead king. Unable to separate the Pharaoh’s mummy from his jewels, they simply took the body with them to be dismembered and burned at their leisure. They left the crypt in disarray, leaving the farmer’s body contemptuously untouched, for it had no jewels or adornments.

And that is how, centuries later, the body of the humble farmer came to be displayed in a great and famous museum under the name of the pharaoh he had accidentally slain. His prayers to Osiris, Ra, and Aten had not gone unheard, it seemed. Rather, they had been answered with the patience and subtlety only very old gods can muster.

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After almost drowning in a freak accident in Tribeca, Daniel Feldman had a vision of holy light and oneness with celestial beings. He was able to recapture it through a series of meditations involving breath-holding and free-association writing about the heavenly visions that followed. Dubbing himself “David the Teacher,” he quickly acctracted acolytes, or “pupils,” who joined him in a small but growing Bronx commune, which raised the ire of local authorities who saw it as a Communist plot. Yet Davis was frustrated that the most persistent of the heavenly beings in his visions refuses to reveal its name, driving him to ever-more-stringent meditations and ever-more-dangerous levels of oxygen starvation.

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“If you’re gonna tell the story, best get it right.”

Emerging from the oil-lamp shadows and parting the hushed crowd, Baha limped over to the table and sat down heavily. Without asking, she took the bottle of hooch from Dickenson and poured herself a double shot in Mariah’s glass, downing it before proceeding.

“I was a young woman,” she said. Then, stabbing a finger in Mariah’s direction: “Scarcely older than this tot.”

“I beg your-” Mariah began.

“My lover was a whaling captain, tall and proud. And even though the men thought a lady terrible bad luck on a ship, my man smuggled me aboard, such was our love for one another.”

Dickenson looked at Baha’s scarred visage and embroidered eyepatch, as well as the silvery barbed claw that took the place of her left hand. “Can’t imagine what that must have been like,” he muttered.

“Believe it,” snapped Baha. “Once upon a time this face lured men like him to their doom. But it was not to be, for this time it was true love torn asunder too soon.”

She slammed her good hand on the table, rattling the others’ drinks. “The whalers attacked an eldritch horror from beyond the stars thinking it was a whale, realizing their mistake only when the unearthly tentacles arose, black and billious, from the waves, driving some mad by the mere sight of them.”

Baha took another drink, this time bypassing Mariah’s glass altogether and simply drinking rum from the bottle. “I took command after my lover was killed,” she said, “as I was the only one with the werewithal to fight back after he was enveloped and consumed by that maw. But it still took every man jack of the crew to the bottom.”

“So you’ve come to kill it, then?” Mariah said. “The lurker at the threshold, the thing on the doorstep, that we’re all here to see put down for good and all?”

“Aye. I call it the ‘weird whale’ and ever since I was hauled aboard a Nantucket square-rig from a whaleboat, I have sailed the seven seas with a new crew in search of the ‘weird whale.’ I mean to avenge myself upon it.”

“Kill that which scarred you physically and emotionally, is that it?” said Dickenson.

“Aye. Finding an equally weird being here…what can it be but the “weird whale” arisen anew, somehow?”

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