Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

A thousand interfaces ago
Options abounded in menus, mice
A simpler future is in store
Hamburger menus meant for fingers
An internet of the i
If you want more features
You can learn to program yourself
In machine code or assembly

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The back of Stubb’s Coffee looked out on what passed for a back alley in Deerton. There was the tail end of the Spin Cycle, where lost laundry and bad quarters went to die. Once upon a time, it had been possible to score bags of edible bread and boxed treats from Wilbur’s Bake Shop, but the building had been shuttered for two years. In fact, half of the block was vacant, now, and after dark they were pools of dark failure against the city lights and the distant blinkers of the ammonia towers at The Plant.

Ruby sighed, her exultation turning to mist in the late-night chill. She lit a cigarette, leaving it to hang on her lip as the ash grew, and pulled a small notebook from her pocket. The Rubymaximum Chronofile, or at least Volume 271b thereof, needed updating with everything that had happened across the countertop at Stubb’s. Ruby scribbled hurriedly, trying to get the information down while it was still fresh, pausing only to breathe out minor dragon-clouds or tap the ashes from her coffin nail onto the sluggish winter mud.

The fate of Rubymaximum Chronofile Volume 271a was warning enough about what happened when hot ash came up against cardboard and paper.

“Theresa Vandermeer in again, third time today. She only gets a water each time, but then uses the wireless for the maximum amount of time. I bet she lost her internet again, and is coming in to do business. The last time her boy Carlos lost his job, they were unplugged for six weeks, and made ends meet through coffee shop wi-fi and eBay.”

Ruby paused, tapping the Stubb’s-branded ballpoint on her chin.

“I think the store is going under,” she continued. “Inez cut everyone’s hours again. I’m the only one with a decent number, since I know how to fix the espresso machine. We only get about ten people during the morning rush. At school there’d be ten people per minute. The cost of internet alone probably isn’t being made up by the mud we’re slinging. Better start looking for opportunities elsewhere. No more saying ‘Deerton may be tiny but at least it has a Stubb’s!’ It’s gonna hit the library hard, too, all the internet-seekers are gonna go there and blow out their data limits. With the reduced hours and no money for computers, the city’s headed back to 1990 in more ways than one.”

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Temporal skimmers are unique in that they exist completely fluidly in the fourth dimension. This ensures that there will only be a handful, perhaps only one or two, in existence at any given time. Their massive bulk and devastating hunger is therefore not in competition with any other.

However, experts are certain that the skimmers return to a certain time period to breed. No one is sure when this is, but there is a healthy debate about whether a plague of these creatures, enough to scour the world clean, was in the past…or is in the future.

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The Vanishers

The Book of Vanishings, also known as the Vanishomicon, is the holy book of this group. Short and widely available, it lays out 22 rules for living along with a 23rd rule that encompasses the Vanishers’ philosophy:

Those that follow these rules in this world and in their heart will vanish from it. Mankind is a plague upon this world, for they do not belong to each other. In vanishing, both are made whole in separate paradises.

Vanishers spontaneously arise from those reading the Book. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, the tend to disappear. The most famous instance is probably the settlement of Beloktown, a Vanisher settlement of 5000 souls that was found vacant and abandoned some time after its last contact with the rest of the Barrier. But smaller groups and individuals also vanish.

Skeptics claim that is a self-fulfilling prophecy, that the Vanishers wander off to die or are killed by people taking advantage of Rule 2, Total Nonviolence. But the persistent vanishings do lend some credence to the belief system, and the Book of Vanishings has never gone out of print.

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“Helixers”

The religious text responsible for the Helixers and Helixism is the Elikomicon, written by an unknown author approximately 1000 years ago. The Elikomicon claims that humankind should look to the humble snail as a model: slow, deliberate, unhurried, and yet always prepared to passively resist outside pressure.

Helixers, especially priests, are known for their slow, and deliberate movements, honed through hours of exercises, as well as their use of extremely strong (if plain) armor. Lay Helixers may use simple boiled leather armor, but higher echelons regularly wear chainmail or even full plate. Other than spiral or helical motifs, as well as the occasional engraved or gilded snail, this armor is completely unadorned.

Settlements built by Helixers also follow a spiral plan, with the highest and most fortified part of the settlement being at the center of the spiral. They also tend to be strongly fortified. Despite this, Helixers are strictly nonviolent, and refuse to engage in hostile action. If provoked, they will form a tetsudo formation with heavily armored, shieldbearing priests on the outside and vulnerable children and elders at the center.

Helixers are seen by many in the Barrier as seditious, as they gladly sell their armor in exchange for resources regardless of the purchaser. They are also known to employ mercenaries to guard their settlements, and in fact recruit many of them over time. But the presence of armored cultists and their armed guards still alarms many, and Helixers settlements are frequent targets of attacks fro, various quarters.

Strangely, no copies of the Elikomicon are currently known to exist. Though the book was in wide circulation at one time, it was written in a complex code that was never fully broken. It is believed that all current Helixers high priests commit the book to memory from recitations by elders.

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“The Being”

The leader of this cult has convinced their followers that they are the only being in the world, and that all other creatures, and indeed the world itself, is part of their dream. As such, “The Being” is kept in comfort and waited on, lest they awaken and snuff the world from being. While the claim is that this is not a lucid dream per se, “The Being” promises that the dream rewards those who are loyal to it. True followers are fanatically loyal, as they believe that rough handling of “The Being” could result in the snuffing out of the entire world.

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Lines in the grocery store, carts laden
Men gesticulating before green screens
School is canceled the night before
Clear skies hold a menacing promise
A whisper of ice, a vapor of snow
Terror incarnate for those who can’t
Who won’t be prepared for the freeze
In the commotion of schools and storms
The temperature falls 40° in 12 hours
We are all so worried about ice that
No one notices the oceans are boiling

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