Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

The visit to Burrito Belfry had been a mistake. It wasn’t just that Janelle went of flike a firecracker once she got a little spice down her gullet, or that Marquan would bounce off the walls once he’d had a bag of churros. No, it was the pink drink, the damned pink drink.

All three kids would clamor for it, since the only place you could get it was at a fountain in Burrito Belfry LLC GmbH. They would beg and beg and beg for the largest cup that the Belfry carried. And then they’d take two sips and carry the things around like great pink talismans for the rest of the day, violently rejecting the notion of throwing them away until they cups were “forgotten” or confiscated. And when they spilled—and they did spill—the result was a stainy, sticky mess. Janelle’s Mitsubishi had a permanently sticky floor because of it, they were always finding ants in the floorboards, and everything white the kids owned was inevitably dyed pink.

As much as it annoyed him, he had accepted it. Janelle was The Boss, and even though he’d adopted the first two kids as his own, they were quick to remind him that he wasn’t their dad and that any orders had to be countersigned by The Boss.

But it was all fine when it was just the family. They made sure to drive guests in his Oldsmobile when it came to that. But the real problem was when the pink reared its ugly head in public. Like when they’d been in the hospital to see Janelle’s mother during her most recent bout of old.

The youngest kid, Josiah, had been waddling along with a near-full cup of Burrito Belfry pink drink and tripped over his own feet, dumping 32 ounces of neon sugar all over the hospital floor. He’d been so embarrassed that he’d just snatched the boy—his boy—up and continued like nothing had happened. As they’d waited for the elevators, he’d seen the lady at the front desk put out “wet floor” signs, heard the call for a janitor, and seen people walking by with a wary eye toward the floor, no doubt wondering what kind of horrible Hospital Fluids could have caused such a spill.

His cheeks were burning with shame as they boarded the elevator, but all Josiah could do was mumble about how he wanted another pink drink.

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It was bad enough that things were always breaking down and that Chris had left to take that position at the Westchester ammo factory, leaving him saddled with a greenhorn to train. It was bad enough that his day was plugged sewer lines and rusty outflows rather than the electrical work he’d actually signed on for. But the worst part was that he had made exactly zero headway at getting his mother off of his back about getting himself out there and giving her some grandkids.

Yes, he knew that he was the only child of only children. Yes, he knew that the whispered last wish on the lips of all four dead grandparents and his father had been for the family line to be renewed with many children. Even if he had been able to forget, Mom would have been quick to remind him. Her aging faculties might have meant that each comment about him meeting a nice girl and settling down was the first she could recall, but for him on the other end it was a never-ending torrent.

And how exactly was he supposed to do that, Mom? Working a 40-hour week doing maintenance at the hospital often blossomed into a 50 or 60 hour week because lives were on the line. He needed a job with some stimulation, where every day was a little different, but the flip side was that it left him bone tired every night, and once he’d seen to the care and feeding of mother, the world’s biggest pet canary, there was precious little left over for anything, let alone dating.

He gave it his level best, of course. He tried to flirt with the nurses, the younger receptionists, even the barista with the accent he couldn’t quite place. Hell, even the occasional patient, if they seemed like the might be into it. But it didn’t work.

And, frankly, he wasn’t sure he wanted it to work. What was wrong with a little quietude and time to himself? The occasional hunting or fishing trip with the guys he’d known since high school? Where, other than in the plan Mom and her dead ancestors had laid out, was that a bad thing?

There was an ice machine and a water line that needed fixing. Lives were on the line. He could worry about peer pressure from the dead, and the soon-to-be-dead, another time.

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The etiquette books were silent on the matter of cell phones, at least the ones she had been gifted during her long-ago coming out party and her long-ago engagement party. Their advice had stopped at rotary phones, and frankly she felt that the rest of the world ought to have followed suit. New technology meant new worries, new inconveniences, new wrinkles. She’d been Miss Junior Class in high school, runner-up for Miss Stonewall Jackson in college before meeting Trip, and the age-worn cares that had faded those accolades into memory was almost entirely due to worrying over the newfangled, she was quite convinced.

But even as she rejected touchscreens and streaming media, there were two closely connected innovations that she was willing to tolerate, even proselytize. Pastor Daniel, before he’d moved on and then died, mind, had once said in a sermon that any technology was the Lord’s work that could be put toward His purpose, and she firmly believed that cell phones and her Placebook account fell firmly into that category.

Once upon a time, reaching out and talking to her family or her girlfriends had meant going to visit or talking on a landline. Increasingly gummy knees made the former ever more untenable, and the latter risked Trip overhearing. The man may have been an angry, withered old husk, but he had ears like a cat and she’d get the third degree from him over every little bit of gossip. But with her cell phone, everywhere was suddenly her living room. Maisie could hear about her day from inside the car. Cousin Jan could get updates down to the minute without either of them risking the open road.

So let those other patients in the waiting area stare their daggers as she talked, loudly, on speakerphone. There was nothing in the etiquette books against it, and with Trip out back ensconced in the cold metal grip of an MRI machine, there was nothing the biggest regret of her life could do to interfere.

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He lived in fear of many things—bankruptcy, car crashes, his father rising from the grave—but the one that caused the largest amount of fear, his lifelong Fear Leader for the time being, was being found out as an atheist working in a Baptist hospital.

He’d been convinced, utterly convinced, that nothing lay ahead when the lights went out since childhood, when fate had seen fit to take his angel mother in her 40s while the man who’d somehow married her was barking insults and orders until he was 92. It had manifested as mostly abstinence for him; quietly reclaiming Sundays for himself, bowing his head but remaining silent when prayers were called for, privately scoffing at politicians who claimed divine guidance but in fact worshiped the almighty dollar.

But a Baptist hospital was different. It was explicitly, openly, religious. Giant bible verses decorated the lobby. Staff were encouraged to write out their own favored verses and affirmations on whatever was handy, to show their faith to people in nead of healing—and possibly saving. It turned his stomach, to be honest, but the work as an X-ray tech was the best in town and there was no way he could afford a better home than the one he’d inherited, not in this market and with all the loans.

Now, Baptist didn’t require people who worked there to be religious. That was still technically illegal. And he wasn’t even the only atheist there; Marigold at the sonography outpatient desk was a full-on heathen. But he couldn’t to play the game, couldn’t bring himself to tape lies to his workstation, couldn’t accept the invites to this or that church. He just couldn’t.

And if that ever got out, people would notice. Marigold got a pass because she bowed the head and bent the knee in a temple of lies once weekly, but not him. If one of the more devout higher-ups learned of his apostasy, if Dr. Theodore or Mr. Everts found out, they could use the information like a dagger in the heart of his career. No promotions, no raises, no nothing for the heathen.

Was it a rational fear? Probably not; he was able to admit that much to himself. But for someone who had winced at every sound his father had made, the idea of an unknowable doom around every corner was well and truly ingrained.

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The customers were always very understanding when the coffee machines broke. It helped that many were the nurses and doctors that the barista saw everyday, looking for a few grounds to pour over a frazzled mind as a resurrection ritual. But even the patients or their hangers-on were usually able to conjure from a well of understanding when things broke down. Which was often enough.

The single barista ran the stall from 7am to 9pm daily, “proudly serving Stubb’s Coffee” but without access to any of their supply chain, their union, or their benefits. It was never busy in the same way that the Stubb’s downtown was, never lines hanging out the door, but bury enough that the occasional bathroom and single lunch break at the adjacent cafeteria felt almost like betrayals. Things had been harder in Slovenia, to be sure, and the monthly checks sent home were keeping the family afloat. And losing a job risked losing the all-important green card that kept her slinging java in the American south even after her student visa (for literature, of all things) had expired.

But if only the coffee stand had been built with a modicum of care when the new hospital had been thrown up. If only the repair guys, normally used to fixing IV pumps upstairs, didn’t try to flirt with her when the ice machine had its weekly breakdown. And if only the espresso machine would live up to its life’s purpose and occasionally make a little actual espresso, as a treat.

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Submission velvet
Little hurricane
Breakfast blown away
In putty, goodness
A heartache flower
Buries scrap iron deep
While bright burlap sacks
Dance amid the rain
Tiny earthquake comes
A flighted bird sings
What meaning there is
We add it ourselves

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Dussewe was a wind elemental, while its dearest friend Bubb was an earth elemental. Meeting, as elementals did, at the margins where wind-whipped soil ever hung in the air, they would howl and scrape for hours of camaraderie.

One day, Dussewe sheepishly approached its sire, the West Wind, and stated that it had made a mistake. It had fallen in love with Bubb, and their simple play had taken on a deeper meaning. The West Wind, though surprised, gave its permission and assured Dussewe that no apology was necessary. Dussewe immediately corrected its sire: that was not the apology. Rather, it was sorry that it and Bubb had inadvertently sired a being of their own, neither wind nor earth. At this, the West Wind grew both angry and curious: what would this elemental look like, and what had Dussewe and Bubb unwittingly unleashed upon the world?

Invited by the proud—if fearful—Dussewe to join it and Bubb, the West Wind met them at a stormfront to see their child, the first whirlwind, combining air and earth into a power so mighty that none could withstand it.

The West Wind, ever proud of its children, was prouder still of this unexpected grandchild, and gave permission for Dussewe (and Bubb) to sire as many as they wished. Bubb’s sire, the great Quake, concurred.

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Waxworth was a candle that had been given the Spark, not because the witch Babathiel had any particular need for it, but merely as an experiment. Waxworth had proven himself, for it did prefer to be called “he,” far beyond expectation, with supple and flexible limbs of beeswax and a flame that burned ever-bright. With regular infusions of wax, who knew how long he might persist?

The villagers learned of Waxworth when they saw him repeatedly leaping over a narrow arm of the lake after sunset, the bright flame of his life dancing in the darkness. He did it as a thrill, for the lake could easily put out his light forever, and it earned him the title of “The Candle that Leapt Over the Lake at Dusk.” Even now, he would repeat the feat, adding a pirouette or other stylish motion as he saw appropriate, often to an audience of townsfolk and travelers.

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There is only one chance, and I have only enough power for one trip. I am not so foolish that I think to send myself, even if it were possible. No, we have been designing the item that will go back for almost 40 years: a portable Universal Constructor, one that works on a fusion reactor to rearrange the structure of almost any material. It has been pre-programmed with the ability to build anything from simple wooden tools to nanoscale microfibers. It can even, with time, build more of itself.

We will send it back to a time and place carefully selected to present it to our relatives at the earliest stage of their development when they might use it. In a time before writing, a time before memory, an ancient tool will wait to be discovered. It is my hope, and the hope of the entire team, that it will be enough to change our fate.

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Struggling through the choking dust, and stopping to take supplemental oxygen from a respirator, the courier struggled through the salt flat and through the entrance to the Doomsday Vault.

The Actuary sat there, on a throne of bone and petrified wood. “What have you brought me?”

“An endling,” said the courier. “The final parsnips, in particular.” He held out the vegetables, which were seedless but might still be propagated vegetatively to rejuvenate their kind.

“Deliver them unto me.” As the courier handed them over, the Actuary’s touch made them crumble to dust, not even a DNA sequence remaining.

“I am pleased.” A cylinder of oxygen and a bag of coins landed at the courier’s feet. “Continue your search for endlings that we may extinguish their light.”

“Yes, my liege,” the courier said, eagerly collecting the reward.

“Remember,” the Actuary added. “If another should bring a…parsnip…in after this, your light is forfeit for its.”

“Y-yes my liege,” the courier said.

“It is the price for the great gift that you have been given. The honor…of perishing last.”

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