Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

“Should we get out?”

“No, we wait here until they come for us,” sighed Liam Colman, the driver, who was answering the question for at least the 17th time.

He had been taking a safari vehicle with six Gisnep Resort guests through the animal preserve area of Gisnep’s Wild Kingdom theme park. The tour was designed to obfuscate the electric rails powering the vehicles and gloss over the fact that the enclosures were essentially a glorified zoo. That meant, however, that when the power failed, they were stuck mid-tour until the gas-powered tow vehicle could reach them.

Until then, Colman was stuck babysitting four adults and two children in the midst of a grey and rainy day, the sort that never appeared in Gisnep Resort pamphlets. He’d passed out plastic cups of water from the vehicle’s emergency stores, and was now stuck answering inane questions.

“Did you feel that?” said one of the kids in back.

Colman was about to roll his eyes, silently thinking that the rugrat just needed a diaper change, when he felt it too. Ripples were visible in the cups of water still on his dash.

“Maybe it’s the power trying to come back on,” said one of the older tourists, sounding not at all convinced.

Colman gripped the steering wheel tightly. “It’s an…an impact tremor, that’s what it is,” he said to himself quietly. “I’m fairly alarmed here.”

A moment later, the nearby foliage gave way as a mature African bull elephant noisily emerged. Colman’s passengers, white with fright, shrieked even as he tried to quiet them down.

“Keep absolutely quiet,” he hissed. “Its aural acuity is based on sound!”

Despite his admonitions, the elephant continued to walk at the tour vehicle…and straight past it, continuing into the brush further down the trail.

“I thought…I thought it was going to eat us!” one of the kids gasped.

“It’s a herbivore, kid,” said Colman, wondering anew when the rescue vehicle would arrive.

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INTERVIEWER: Welcome once again to Spirit Guides, the talk show where we channel the spirits of the deceased for the edification and amusement of the living. I’m your host, Madame Epicurie, and I have a very special guest with me here today, the shimmering spectral form of Walpert “Walp” Gisnep. Mr. Gisnep, as you know, died of pancreatic cancer in 1969 but the entertainment empire he built in the form of the famously family friendly Walp Gisnep Company, survives to this day. Welcome, Mr. Gisnep.

GISNEP: Please, call me Walp. Glad to be here, Madame Epicurie.

INTERVIEWER: I thought I would begin by airing some of the most common criticisms of the Walp Gisnep Company, to give you a chance to respond in person to them. First, what do you say to the accusation that the company you founded is a stultifying force of conformity, forcing media consumers into a conservative and heteronormative mold?

GISNEP: Companies are products of their time and reflect the attitudes thereof, with few exceptions. Big companies like mine are bigger targets, but even ones that are the darling of the critics, like Gaggle Inc. or Pear Computer, are guilty of this to one degree or another but are better at spinning the media to deflect criticism. Those companies steal and use personal data for their own nefarious purposes, yet Gisnep is a more tempting target because of its visibility. You’ll note that many of my competitors, like Working Dreams XLG, have failed to attract the same criticisms despite aggressively gunning for the same market segments.

INTERVIEWER: So you hold the Walp Gisnep Company blameless?

GISNEP: Not blameless, Madame Epicurie. No one is blameless. But everyone aims for the biggest target, and there is an innate human need to see the mighty brought low.

INTERVIEWER: Fair enough, Walp. What about the accusation that your company is anti-union and anti-Semitic?

GISNEP: That’s partly my fault, I will admit, for making some rather tasteless jokes in my earlier animations that were the product of a less culturally sensitive age. But if you look at the top employees and top actors in my company, you’ll find plenty of yordim among them. It’s an easy criticism to make, and a hard one to disprove, and so an easy stick to beat someone with.

INTERVIEWER: And anti-union?

GISNEP: Again, that is mea culpa. I always saw my company more as a family than a business, and anyone who has ever worked for a family business will tell you how lousy the pay is. But you have to admit that the key incidents in that rumor are older than the Second World War at this point. And I challenge you to find a pro-union attitude among employees at Working Dreams XLG, Gaggle Inc., or Pear Computer.

INTERVIEWER: Interesting. Is there anything you’d like to add before we go to our audience for questions?

GISNEP: Only that rumors of my cryogenic preservation are completely false. Do you think someone who spent most of their life in California and Florida could stomach the idea of such cold for so long? Anaheim forecasters call a week of 45-degree weather an “arctic blast,” for chrissakes.

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And so, thinking to outsmart the terrible truth that men with all their material desires fulfilled live lives of misery, he made the following wish: “I wish that I might meet the love of my life, my perfect match, with whom I might happily live out my days on this earth.”

The djinn, its spectral features unreadable, acquiesced with a simple nod. The man’s other two wishes, for a healthful long life and to spare the life of his father who had been condemned to death, came true so far as the man could see, so he had no reason to doubt that the djinn had made good on its promise.

But as time wore on, the man realized that he had made a fatal mistake: he had failed to specify when or where he might meet the love of his life, or a sign by which he might know them. He was therefore wracked with unease upon every fist meeting, every spark, fearing that the perfect match for which he had wished might still be ahead of him.

They say that, from then on, he led a lonely life, and that he left no descendants to carry on his line despite his long and healthy life. Some say that in a final twist of fate he met his perfect match in a kindly nurse or a fellow sufferer on his deathbed. Some say that the love of his life was sent away out of fear, that there was no provision in the wish for this eventuality, the language being strictly conditional.

All agree that he stands as a sad example of the inability of man to control fate, even with infinite power available to do so.

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