Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

The Dunlaps had history in town. Colonel Dunlap had been mayor for ten years, after all, and mustered the militia for another five. But nobody cared to remember that anymore, not since the nouveau-riche Belles and Barnetts had moved in and taken over. Jasper Dunlap was particularly bitter about their lack of history in the area; the Belles had arrived in 1904 and the Bennetts in 1921, while there had been a Dunlap in the area since 1827. The others in Jasper’s extended family seemed resigned to their lot as middling cogs in the system, but not Jasper. Even as he worked his day job as an insurance clerk, Jasper was consumed by bile and always laying schemes to bring his family kicking and screaming to the top of the heap once more. His daydreams sometimes had the Belles and Bennetts dragged down, sometimes only had the Dunlaps lifted up, but they were all magical thinking. Deep down, perhaps, Jasper knew that–but if daydreams of former and future glory were all he had to set himself apart from the nobodies he worked with, he’d take it, happily.

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450×12 tires, 1949 Crosley Hotshot – Sourced from trailer. Not street legal, but owner has pledged to avoid streets.

Timing belt, 1983 Eagle wagon – Ordered from legacy parts supplier in Five Boroughs Dump.

Myohoff lifters – Made up, do not exist. Customer may be paranoid schizophrenic.

Spinner rims, 1978 Winnebago recreational vehicle – May be a prank, but they exist.

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Reuniting a piece of consumer goods
With an original, appropriate box
It seems a small, inconsequential thing
Pointless even, in the scale of the world
But when I see them there
Reunited
I feel a sense of warmth
Happiness
It’s not just capitalism
Wearing a serotonin mask
Since it would have me
Buy
A
New
One

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Boxes and boxes of equipment, hauled up from the renovated language lab and its various closets, were lined up in front of the dumpster as the new stuff went in. Sean cast an eye over it, recognizing a fe things: old Apple cables, power cords, VGA connectors, and the like. Somebody had spent thousands of dollars collect the stuff, and it was all going out.

“You think I could take some of this?” one of the student assistants said.

Sean shook his head. “You know the rules. It’s state property until we throw it out, and there’s no dumpster diving allowed.”

The larger pieces of equipment were, at least, going back to Facilities, where they might possibly get a second life. But for just about everything else, this was the end of the line. Money wasted, and all because the university wasn’t allowed to sell “state property.”

Frankly, Sean half-hoped a dumpster diver would come along if only to lessen the waste. At a time when auditors in the state capitol were counting every penny for higher education, hoping to score political points by railing against the ivory tower, here they were putting treasure to trash.

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“Sorry, we’re closed,” said Taylor, waving through the window at the man outside of Grantham Auto Repair.

“But you’re right there!” the man said, exasperated. Behind him, a car was sending up a cloud of exhaust in the frigid air and making a very concerning sound that might have been anything from a broken power steering fluid pump to a cracked cylinder head.

Taylor pointed to the sign she had taped up not ten minutes ago: CLOSED MONDAYS.

“Can’t you just take a look at it?” the man pleaded.

“I’m not a mechanic,” Taylor replied with a helpless smile. “I’m just the receptionist!”

The man pounded futilely a few more times before retreating to his car and rumbling off. Taylor breathed a sigh of relief, largely because of her fib–while she was the receptionist, she was also a mechanic in training taking classes part time at the local community college and pitching in around Grantham’s.

Not today, though. She was just making sure the pipes didn’t freeze and that the mail was collected, since dozens of parts were en route for the two dozen vehicles scattered across the Grantham lot. It wasn’t that business was slow; far from it.

The Grantham Auto Repair lot was about three cars away from being full up. The problem was mechanics. Not only were they in short supply, but they kept getting sick–last week the shop had to close temporarily when Jayson caught the flu, Buddy caught covid, and poor Hunter who worked with both had gotten himself fluvid.

Even if Taylor was able to get her certification, it would take years to match the skill level of a practicing mechanic, and in that time every last one of the Grantham grease monkeys might be lured away by higher pay and better benefits, or driven away by hordes of angry customers blaming them for supply chain issues, inflation, and the overall cost of driving. She couldn’t even advise people to get new cars; the waiting period for anything other than a Kia, Nissan, or–God help you–a Mitsubishi was months on end at $10,000 above sticker.

It wasn’t great. But it did at least guarantee Taylor food on the table when her friends were struggling to make ends meet.

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The kid–probably in college or law school–couldn’t have been out of his early 20s based on the aggressive posture he assumed on his bike.

And what a bike! It was a Yamaha sport model, probably an YZF-R1, done up in a jaunty orange and green that was surely done aftermarket and at great expense. The kid was astride the thing in that feral, fetal position sport bike riders assume, in a helmet and jacket that were color-matched to his mount and probably cost a pretty penny themselves.

Behind him, riding ‘bitch,’ was a similarly-dressed figure in maroon. From the fleeting glances I got, it seemed a sure bet that it was the rider’s girlfriend, her hands on his waist. Even though they were behind me on a narrow city street adjoining a municipal park, the entire unit seemed like it might, at any moment, peel out in a cloud of rubber smoke and zoom away, faster than the speed of cops.

I’m quite sure that’s the aesthetic both the young driver and his squeeze wanted to cultivate, at least.

It’s too bad that the entire time they were in my rearview mirror, his left blinker was on.

Unbeknownst to either rider or passenger, they were proceeding down the road like an old man with turn signal blazing. The turn they’d made to fall in behind me had been a right, too, so it was turns and turns ago that the left would have been used. And it was still defiantly signaling left even as the riders slipped into the park, presumably for a walk.

The whole time they were on the road, they were probably looking at me tailgate with cool confidence–an old man, by their standards, in an old man’s car. Little knowing that their fast, brash image was, at that very moment, fatally compromised by a sparkle of old man–a glimmer of cranky age–glinting on their left mirror.

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The bus driver job seemed like a perfect for for John. In his old careers, working food service or retail, he often came home exhausted, with little time and less energy to read books or think big thoughts–his favorite things to do since high school, even if he fully acknowledged that the thoughts rarely, if ever, went anyplace.

But sitting in a seat all day, with a predictable route that he’d have memorized in a few weeks, and in a college town besides? It wasn’t just a break from being on his feet all day, it was an opportunity to think deep thoughts, to ponder the mysteries of the universe from the safety and warmth of a mobile office. Maybe even have an occasional chat with the students and teachers, a chance to learn and be learnt from.

John started his new career by getting up a little early and reading thought-provoking articles in order to provide some kindling for his mental fire. He practically sashayed in the door his first real day on the job after training, singing into the padded and shock-absorbing seat with an audible sigh.

It wasn’t the last time he’d sigh on the job.

While John was right that he’d have his usual route memorized inside of a week, he was constantly pulled off of it to fill in for others, often after just enough time had passed for him to forget the old route. Worse, the students in town drove like maniacs, secure behind the wheels of vehicles their parents bought and could replace. This made even the usual route a gauntlet fraught with peril, even after John had gotten practice under his belt.

And no one wanted to talk. The students, the teachers…they were in the middle of their own conversations or radiated sullen, exhausted silence. The geometry of the cab was such that it was nigh impossible to say anything to anyone, even when they were the rare rider trying to pay a fare instead of flashing a student ID.

John soon found that the job required too little mental acuity to satisfy his wandering mind, but just enough to keep it from wandering. And while he no longer came home physically exhausted, he now was mentally beat after each shift and stiff as a board to boot–hardly ready to read or do much of anything other than slurp down dinner and go to bed.

If bus driving really was a dream job for big thinkers, John ruefully reflected on morning as he stared at his diesel steed, a bunch of rich men would do it for fun.

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“It’s done. You’ve successfully created a miniaturized, portable white dwarf star, brighter than anything human eyes can comprehend while still successfully contained. What will you do now?”

“Put it in car headlights, of course. Brighter is better.”

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In 1788, the doomed expedition of Jean-François de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse, left a collection of letters and documents with the British settlement at Sydney in Australia for delivery back to France. One such document is a letter from Pierre d’Gusteau, one of the mates aboard the French ship Astrolabe.

In it, the author writes of a curious incident near Samoa, where a series of flashing lights had been observed at night. It was assumed that the lights were some form of communication, being used to blink a simple code. d’Gusteau records the sequence, which repeated for some time, as “-.. .- -. –. . .-.” and notes that attempts to respond to the light by repeating the signal back were not recognized.

The crew of Astrolabe assumed that the lights had been at the top of an island. But according to the navigational charts sent to Paris, there was no land whatsoever nearby, with Samoa and other chains being more than a day away in every direction. Furthermore, the signal appeared like Morse code to investigators examining the records in 1968. However, the earliest Morse codes were not in use before 1844, over 50 years later, and would not reach Samoa and the surrounding islands for decades after that.

Unfortunately, shortly after leaving Sydney, Pierre d’Gusteau, the Astrolabe, and all of Lapérouse’s men vanished, never to be seen again. Their fate was not ascertained until 1826, when artifacts were found they had wrecked on an island and slowly perished. No human remains of any member of the crew were ever found, however.

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