Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

The First Siege

Over time, attitudes and divisions between the City proper and the outlying Farmlands began to diverge. The use of Outsider laborers, and their descendents, coupled with the rapid rise in the City’s population, began to worry prominent Farmlanders, who demanded greater political autonomy and bitterly resented the City’s interference in their affairs. In the City itself, opposition to the Farmlands’ labor practices became more widespread, while many in the Farmlands began to quietly stockpile arms and talk of a second revolution.

In 954, an abortive rebellion of Outsider laborers briefly seized control of a few small towns in the Farmlands. Although local militia and troops from the Citizen Army easily crushed the uprising, it quickly became a political issue. The Farmlanders demanded tighter laws on Outsider laborers and more freedom to create such laws at the local level, while the Mayor and City Council refused.

Enraged by this, a council of Farmlanders met in the spring of 955 and declared that the Farmlands would henceforth form a city to itself. The Mayor and City Council refused to recognize this, and both sides prepared for war. The Farmlanders moved first, cutting off all land routes into the City and capturing parts of the outskirts. They hoped to starve the Citizens at large into recognizing their independence; the Mayor responded by taking the unprecedented step of trading with Outsiders for food and desperately needed supplies.

In return for manufactured goods, as many Outsiders as the City’s ships could reach provided foodstuffs and raw materials. Even with this lifeline, the Siege was desperate; every inch of available space was dedicated to impromptu gardens, and heavy guns were rolled directly into battle from the Industrial District.

Eventually, the larger population of the City, coupled with its superior industrial productivity, and the Farmlanders’ refusal to trade with Outsiders, allowed the Citizens’ Army to break the siege. By 958, the war had turned to conquest of the Farmlands, and despite desperate defensive measures by the secessionists, the conflict ended by 959. A large portion of the Farmlanders chose to flee before the advancing Citizens’ Army, as did many of their surviving troops. As part of the armistice, they were allowed to leave the Farmlands for the Outlands, where after a long trek the refugees established the Second City. In the wake of their departure, the Outsider laborers were given farmland, and the current policy of admitting a select few Outsiders into the City each year was implemented.

The Second City

The Second City flourished, and conducted profitable trade with the City despite the animosity and destruction of the First Siege. Though always smaller than the City, the Second City soon developed a reputation for technological excellence that was matched only by its brutal labor policies—the practice of using Outsider labor as chattel continued under a slightly different name.

Then next fifty years saw a gradual reduction of tensions between the Cities, despite vocal minorities on both sides who clamored for revenge or renewed conflict. Despite the official trade and neutrality between the Cities, both quietly built up and modernized their armed forces; the rediscovery of heavier-than-air flight and efficient steam turbines led to an extension of this policy in the air and on the sea.

Eventually, the revaunchist party in the Second City gained power, while a weak administration and Mayor presided over the City. The Second Citizens began staging increasingly belligerent military demonstrations, and began making demands for favorable adjustments to trade and other agreements. The City’s government accede to these for a time, but growing public pressure eventually reached a boiling point, and a new Mayor and Council, hostile to the Second City, were installed.

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

Hopewell was, as most college towns are, full of students who were wealthy or spoiled enough that they routinely abandoned their possessions when leaving town for good. Most ended up curbside, fodder for the pickers and incoming students savvy enough to look.

But the more conscientious, if still spoiled, Southern Michigan University students would deposit their castoffs at one of Hopewell’s many thrift stores. In many places that would have meant a Salvation Army or a Goodwill, but the various policies of the organizations behind those chains had let them to wither in the face of a boycott by many students. So it fell to the large store at the corner of Lafayette and Kalamazoo, the one which had until 1975 been Harwich’s Department Store.

It had been known by many names throughout its history, but since 2004 it had been Tokyo Thrift.

An experienced shopper could find all manner of low-cost treasures there, from DVDs in their original shrinkwrap to cast-off mint-in-box action figures, signed first editions, vintage clothes, antique furniture, and original artwork. For some time, a group of students at SMU had kept a blog called “Tokyo Treasures” with all the various finds that canny shoppers had unearthed.

On June 17, 2010, an item went up on the Tokyo Treasures blog: “Authentic Egyptian Statue – Mafdet, Goddess of Cats.” It had been purchased for $0.99 and authenticated by an Egyptology graduate student. One week later, the blog post was taken down without notice or explanation.

The author, a prolific blog contributor, was never heard from again.

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

That’s just the thing…every reference to Liehlton is a reference to Stanville, every signpost points to Liehlton instead of Y. Even everybody who has a friend in Liehlton has a friend in Stanville. It’s like it’s the only difference between the two worlds.

And that’s the strangest part–you’d think that there would be, I dunno, a butterfly effect where a change to Liehlton would have effects everywhere. That’s just not the case! As near as I can tell, for everything that doesn’t directly involve Liehlton or Stanville, there is no difference at all!

You haven’t even heard the strangest part. I took a topographic map from the Stanville public library–without checking it out, I know, but these are desperate times. The topography and buildings fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. Nothing overlaps.

What I’m saying is that they have a hill where we have a ravine, they have brambles where we have a building. If you were to crop one city on top of the other, no one would notice but the trees and the deer.

What I’m saying is that it’s obvious to me that Liehlton and Stanville were, at one point, the same city.

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

Easton spread out a set of dossiers, each with a glossy photograph attached. “Danica Paterson, Annita Pescador, Cantina Spadero, Dianne Scarpato,” he said, pointing at each one in turn. “It is imperative that they be captured and brought back to the Institute.”

The bounty hunter, wearing clean but inconspicuous civilian clothes, leafed through each file in turn. “You’ll pay the agreed-upon bounty for each one, plus all expenses incurred in each successful hunt.” It wasn’t a question.

“And the unsuccessful ones?”

“Those are on me. But there won’t be any.”

“Fair enough,” said Easton. “Do you have any questions?”

“I’m a professional,” said the bounty hunter. “All I need to know is who and where. I don’t need to know why.”

“If you say so.” Easton took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “But I should warn you that all four of them will resist you tooth and claw. And once one of them knows you’re coming, they all will.”

“They moving as a group?”

“No, certainly not.”

“They in close contact by phone or internet?”

“I wouldn’t think so. They want to distance themselves from each other at almost any cost.”

The bounty hunter sighed. “Then why don’t you be square with me and say why, exactly, they will all know what one knows?”

Easton fingered a paperclip nervously. “Well…the fact of the matter is…they are the same person. All of them.”

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

“Well, I was on CupydsArrow.com updating my profile,” said Chrissy, hesitantly, “when suddenly a sinkhole opened up beneath my computer desk and sucked everything in my room into the ancient deep.”

“Oh, that was just me stirring from my dead slumber of aeons and shifting the door of my house at the sunken city of Ri’ya’dh,” said Xuhulu, its inconceivable form writhing with tentacles and chaos.

“And, uh, why did you feel the need to do that?” Chrissy asked.

“Because, um…” Xuhulu rubbed the back of what might have been its head with what might have been its arm, both appendages guaranteed to cause permanent insanity in anyone who beheld them in the wrong configuration. “I might be eldritchcutie321 on CupydsArrow.com. Got any plans tonight?”

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

“Once the ritual begins, you’ll see their signs up there in the hills.”

“I see it! Bonfires, dozens of them.”

“Creatures such as those can’t enkindle bonfires. Those are malfires; they give no heat, no succor, and shed no earthly light. What ours eyes interpret as light is merely the iceberg-tip of the dark magicks they seek to unleash into an unsuspecting and ordered world.”

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!