Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

The Great Ruckus of 1712 began in Hartfordshire, where a rowdy bar song began on St. Swithun’s Day and became a bar fight, which spilled out onto the town square in a general melee of roughousing and cacophony. Constables summoned to attend to the disturbance became part of it, and by nightfall the anarchy had spread as far as London.

While there is no record of Queen Anne punching her husband and his chamberlain, as is often claimed in legend, large parts of the old city were consumed by ruckus for the better part of 48 hours. Troops were eventually called in to quell the disorder, but no inroads could be made until soldiers who couldn’t speak fluent English were located.

The incident was little commented upon at the time, except in bawdy ballads and the like, but the Great Ruckus of 1712 is now regarded as an early example of mass hysteria. It shares this distinction with the Terrible Row of 1757, the Godawful Noise of 1691, and of course the Infernal Racket of 1802.

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“The main thing you worry about on a voyage like this is cabin fever.” Xavier indicated the crew compartment with a sweep of his hand.

“It’s tiny,” Magdalene said.

“They’re not paying us to haul passengers,” said Xavier. “Six months out, six months back. You get your own cabin and use of the common area. We have a net dump that you’re free to look through–read-only, I’m afraid–and a nice collection of games and videos we hold in common.”

“What if I don’t get along with someone?” said Magdelene.

“Then you damn well keep it to yourself. You put up with people you didn’t like every day in nursery school, why should it be any different when you’re an adult?”

“Well, for one thing, the pay’s better.”

Xavier laughed. “That’s the spirit. Keep it up. A little humor goes a long way, so long as you don’t start being like Ahmed and repeating the same damn joke a hundred times.”

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“This is an expired coupon,” said the manager. “I’m afraid we can’t honor it.”

“Look at me.” Caleb pointed at his eyes. “Listen to what I have to say. What does it cost you to honor my coupon? Nothing.”

“Well,” the manager said. “That’s not true. If I honor expired coupons, it comes out of my own pay.”

“It costs you nothing,” said Caleb. “But I’m a slacker, a white male with an internet connection and, therefore, the most dangerous being on earth. If you gggive me my coupton, that’ll be the end of it. But if you don’t, I’ll make it my mission to bring this place down. I’ll blog about it. I’ll make videos about it. I’ll program a spambot to flood the side with hate mail. They’ll do interviews whith me on the secret rape dungeon you have concealed beneath your property. And it’ll get noticed, because there’s just that little real news around here.”

“There you go, sir,” mumbled the manager. “Two dollars off your meal.”

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1789 – The Holy Rolling Pin, commissioned by Louis XVI, is smuggled to Great Britain.

1803 – During the Peace of Amiens, berries from the Tree of Love in Paris and the Tree of Lust in Rome are commingled to form the Filling of Feelings, which is boiled shut and kept as preserves.

1815 – The Justice Crust, cooked for Napoleon’s triumphal reentry, is taken to London.

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“I told you,” Mikey said. “I want to go by Mike.”

“Ah yes,” whispered Pruitt. “But that’s not what the narrator is calling you, is it?”

“I…what?” said Mikey.

“You can hear it, can’t you? The threads binding together the great narrative of our world. It knows that no matter how much you push against it, you’ll always be a Mikey just as I’ll always be a Pruitt.”

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