Exceptions to Reality_ Stories - Alan Dean Foster [57]
I never stopped loving Lovecraft. When I was young, his leavening of gothic horror with a soupçon of science was the only fiction that caused me to cast furtive glances at night in the direction of darkened windows. I even taught at UCLA a graduate literature seminar in Lovecraft’s works. Many years went by, and many words, during which time I wrote only one other very early tale set in Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos.
Then editor John Pelan came calling with an invitation to compose a new Mythos story for an anthology of same that he was putting together for Del Rey Books. The Children of Cthulhu, it was called. Aside from the obvious opportunity to write about unnamable cephalopodian offspring (the title “Cthulhu’s Nursery” sprang to mind—and was as swiftly discarded), I wondered how to bring the Mythos out of the dark alleys of towns like Dunwich and Innsmouth and into the present day. Besides, I’ve never been to either malevolent community (does the new eminent domain–urban renewal law apply to Innsmouth?) and would not be able to describe them (or even Boston) with proper justice.
I was becoming more and more familiar with another aspect of contemporary culture, however, and thought its own arcane argot and evolving mythology might make a nice fit with the Mythos, if only I could figure out a way to make it work as a story.
The answer lay in the mutual mouthing of horrific curses. Both Lovecraft’s Mythos and that of Microsoft possess, and are possessed by, their own singular liturgy of eldritch moans and eerie execrations. Believe me, if I thought lifting my bloodstained arms to the skies and thrice chanting “Ia, Ia, Shub-Niggurath, ftaghn!” would keep MS Word from crashing before automatic save engaged to protect heartfelt work otherwise lost, I would readily do so…
“He’s going to post what?”
Hayes looked up from his handheld. He had known from the beginning that this was going to be tough to explain. Now that he actually found himself in the conference room with the others, the true difficulty of it was more apparent than ever. Nonetheless he not only had to try, he had to convince them of the seriousness of the situation.
Outside, the sun was shining through a dusky scrim of clouds: a perfect Virginia autumn day. The trees were as saturated with color as high-priced film, the creeks were meandering rather than running, and he would have preferred to be anywhere other than in the room. Unfortunately there was the minor matter of a job. It was a good job, his was, and he wanted to keep it. Even if it meant commuting to Quantico from the woodsy homestead he shared with his wife and two kids.
The men and women seated at the table were sensible folk. Practical, rational, intelligent. How was he going to explain the situation to them? Aware that the silence that had followed Morrison’s query was gathering size and strength like a quiet thunderhead, he decided he might as well plunge onward.
“The Necronomicon,” he explained. “Online. All of it. Unless the government of the United States agrees to pay ten million dollars into a specified Swiss bank account by midnight tomorrow.”
“That’s not much time.” Marion Tiffin fiddled with her glasses, which irrespective of the style of the day always seemed to be sliding off her nose.
Voice low and threatening, Morrison leaned forward over the table. “What, pray tell, is this ‘Necronomicon,’ and why should we give one of the hundreds of nutso hackers this Section deals with every month ten dollars not to post it online, much less ten million?”
Hayes fought to hold his ground, intellectual as well as physical. He might as well, he knew. There was no place else to go. “It’s a legendary volume of esoteric lore, thought for many years to be the fictional invention of a writer from Providence.”
“Providence as in Heaven or Providence as in Rhode Island?” Spitzer wanted to know. Spitzer was the biggest man in the room. By the physical conditioning standards of the Bureau, he ought to have been let go twenty years ago. That had not happened