July 26, 2020
“I guess I never expected to get this far,” he said with a crooked smile. “If you’ve got nothing to lose, it means you’ll push just that much harder, right?”
His eyes were clearly searching for affirmation, and in her mind’s eye she told him the truth: “No, I think it means you just got lucky and are rationalizing it.”
A moment of silence followed, as the battered craft bobbed on the mirror-still water amid the flotsam from the recent storm.
“Right,” she said, with a forced smile.
July 25, 2020
The creature slowly disembarked from the craft, its true form hidden behind a space suit that, in form as well as function, hinted at a truly alien physiology.
“What do you want?” the brigadier general cried, waving back his troop at the alien’s apparently peaceful approach.
A hidden speaker crackled, and in an inhuman but intelligible voice, the creature answered:
“This is Earth, yes?”
“Yes,” the general cried back, his hand resting lightly on his sidearm.
“I have heard that you accept radioactive waste. I would like to leave some Polonium-209.”
July 24, 2020
“Why wouldn’t I?” Thomas said.
“Because it’s violent, unpleasant, and may lead to irrational behavior on your part.” Dr. Antonacci pressed her lips together. “Honestly, if it were up to me, I wouldn’t even mention it. But we’ve been accused of withholding information before, so I feel I must.”
“Let me see it.”
Click. A slide of a person, face-down, with the same figure literally carved, over and over, into their lower back. The lack of blood from the later incisions made it quite obvious that the subject had bled to death long before the final cuts were made.
“Subject eventually expressed the memetic entity in a violent and compulsive way,” said Dr. Antonacci. “In this case, her husband. Death was by exsanguination and shock. The lined paper is what they were able to give her at the Department of Mental Health state hospital.”
Thomas turned away, breathing heavily, and Ari bit her fist, eyes locked on the image. “Does it…always end this way?” she whispered.
“Of course not. As with any virus, to return to our earlier metaphor, interaction with a host can lead to anything from nothing to death.”
“Why…why do they do it?” Thomas said, still looking away.
“Why does anything that needs a living host do as it does?” Dr. Antonacci said. “I suppose one way to think of it is that these memetic communications–images, songs, thoughts, what have you–simply need to exist. And the only way they can exist, I’m sorry to say, is to express themselves through us.”
July 23, 2020
“So they’re dangerous then.”
“No, not all of them.” Dr. Vellie Dee Antonacci spoke with authority, twangs of her formative years in the Mississippi Delta bubbling up when she grew excited. “Think of it like a virus. We tend to think of a virus as universally bad, when in reality the vast majority of them are benign or inconsequential–computers or human bodies.”
“But still requiring a living host.”
“Yes, and being functionally immortal,” Dr. Antonacci said. “But otherwise the analogy is only useful as just that–an analogy. Take this, for example. A memetic entity that was catalogued in 1967, one of the earlier ones in our records.”
A few clicks on the Institute’s computer, and the projection changed to an image of a child’s drawing with three eyes and three arms.
“Looks like something my Briley would draw,” laughed Thomas.
“Yes, and that is one of the reasons why it can be so hard to see memetics when they express themselves through the very young,” said Dr. Antonacci. “Of course, they can take the form of any organized, coherent information. Drawings, a melody, even a memory.”
She clicked, and the image was replaced by what looked like a high schooler’s notebook. Its margins were filled with the same three-eyed, three-armed entity, now drawn with a much more authoritative hand. Often, the doodles had advanced art techniques like chiaroscuro shading and graphite smudging for texture.
“This was ten years afterwards. Note how the expression is very similar, even though the subject has clearly learned more about art. This subject, in fact, later became a professional artist, which allowed the Institute a very thorough paper trail.
More clicks, revealing the triple-being in increasingly sophisticated renderings in the margins of a standardized test, as a part of a pattern fr textiles, as a background element in a children’s book cover illustration, and across lined paper. By now colors–a clashing and unpleasant rainbow hue–had been added.
“Why is that last one just on notebook paper?” Thomas said.
Dr. Antonacci cocked her head. “Are you sure you want to know the answer to that question?”
July 22, 2020
From the time she could hold a pencil, she would create fantastic creatures in the margins of books, on napkins, and even carved into living wood. These demonic little characters didn’t just occupy her thoughts; they kept her company. With her family ever on the move, the dark fantasy that unfolded in pencil upon her leaves was her constant companion, for good or ill. For while the creatures were sometimes benign and friendly, with compassion in their claws and feeling in their fangs, at other times they were anything but. The fantastic demons were sometimes haunting, terrifying, and even maddening, but they and their minder brethren had one thing in common.
It was her obsession to draw things that couldn’t draw themselves. And these were things that needed to exist.
Thus she has found that her soul rests with art, from her earliest days in school, surrounded by kind and understanding souls and speaking to rats in eldritch tongues, to the harrowing time when the demons briefly brought her to a boarding school for wayward children. To do anything but art is monstrous, unfulfilling torture.
Her creations, her things that need to exist, relentlessly pursue their goals, regardless of the obstacles, even when it seems like they’re on a doomed quest. They fall in love so quickly and easily, but they have to devour the ones they love to be truly satisfied. Perhaps her heart is the same way; she loves horror and the fantastic, but her imagination brings things to life that have a powerful, vibrant need to be wanted. Some wanderers understand; they have that same incredible creative fire. Identities wrapped up in their ability to make art, they suffer the same agony of creation and ecstasy of making.
Whether seeking enlightenment and dark secrets abroad, crafting characters and campaigns for the twisted world of Dungeons and Dragons, or gyrating herself to a beat that only she can hear, she brings the same dark passion to every project she undertakes. Let her inner fires burn for your project; put her continued striving to improve to work for whatever fantastic purposes you have.
For her creations will always need to exist.
July 21, 2020
July 20, 2020
“Masks are a hoax,” Cynthia said. “You can take it off.”
I shrugged in what I hoped looked like a helpless manner. “They make me wear it at work,” I said. “I’ll get fired if they find out I took it off.”
“Typical.” Cynthia pulled a long, slim cigarette out of her purse and lit it with a flower-patterned pink Bic. “But I get it. I’m not allowed to smoke inside, you’re not allowed to take your mask off. I’m not surprised that a liberal paper and a liberal university are both in on the scam.”
“Scam?” I said.
“Oh yes. The orders to close things? They’re using that Chinese virus as a trojan horse. First thing they did was close churches–government trying to squeeze them out. But did they close bars? Restaurants? Hell no, because the politicians are getting money from ’em.”
“My church back home gives plenty to our local politicians,” I lied. Hadn’t been to church since college, and even then it’d been for daring purposes. “Pretty scared of them voting too. Isn’t this a pretty solidly Republican state?”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” sneered Cynthia. “But our governor’s a worthless potato, letting people bully him. The mayor too. I bet they’re both secret atheists. They oughta open the churches back up at the very least.”
“You think?”
“The Spirit will cover them and protect them,” Cynthia said. “It’s a test of faith, see?”
July 19, 2020
July 18, 2020
July 17, 2020
Join or Dye Furniture
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Play’s the Thing Toyshop
If you think that the best toys don’t have flashing lights, batteries, or wireless internet connectivity, you’ve come to the right place. All the shop’s toys are handmade in the grand santaclausian tradition and guaranteed to put up with decades of roughhousing and chaos.
Scoop! Creamery
This just in: Scoop! Creamery is a cool place until you fudge it up and have to split. A local favorite for decades, with everything from hand-dipped shakes to legally distinct copies of flavors from national brands, everyone has a soft spot for Scoop!
Vol-Au-Vent Fine French Dining
This tidy little Gallic bistro has been catering to sophisticate tastes since the 1970s. Reserve a table and get ready to receive the full brunt of French gastronomy; we’re talkin’ snails, veal, and everything in between. Be sure to leave room for dessert and try one of the famous “fin d’eclair” pastries.
Pollywanna’s Caribbean Cuisine
If you’re looking for tempting treasures from the south seas, then look no further than the fabulous golden horde that is Pollywanna’s signature fried fish. Plunder up a plate from the all-you-can-eat buffet, but be warned: it’s rated arr!
Excerpts From Nonexistent Books 