The Malibu Book of the Dead

1.

Before our story begins, a few yellowing pages from a history book blow across the sands near the canned food mines and come to a rest just long enough for us to read the following:

When the bombs fell, it didn’t come as that much of a surprise. What did come as a surprise was the atmosphere igniting and half the earth burning like a marshmallow.

Details of the first years after the holocaust are sketchy. Little is known about the survivors. According to an old myth, the first man to dig his way up from under the mountains of steel, stucco and scrap metal, in one of the few cities fortunate enough to have any rubble at all, was a senator from the United Rates of America who, upon seeing daylight, praised God, claimed victory and vowed to build a bright new society based on the old one. He was immediately struck over the head with a large piece of lumber by the second man to crawl out from under the rubble. (Hence the origins of the old expression: to be a dead senator.)

Modern historians disagree on exactly how many actually survived. What historians do agree upon is only those few who made it to the more remote regions of the Upper Reno Mountains, managed to survive for any longer period of time. It was here, in this tiny corner of the world that what was left of mankind huddled together in small isolated tribes and, with what they had managed to salvage in the way of tools and philosophy, started over.

The early years were hard; many died. None of the laws of nature were quite as anyone had remembered them. What once flowed now froze; what once flew now crawled; what once bloomed in the spring now made long doleful howling sounds at night. What once grew on trees now ate them.

Eventually man fought the new elements to that uncomfortable draw called civilization. Isolated villages with warm houses, fermented beverages and running children sprang up in the wilderness. Everyone worked and produced, bought and sold and pretended as best they could that it was business as usual. Marketplaces sprang up, full of activity and merchants asking each other: Do you have change for a goat?

Each tribe zealously kept alive the learning of the past. Everything they remembered they taught their children. They taught them to read and write and reason and debate and ask why pine trees glowed in the dark. They taught them geography – where Paris used to be, where New York might be, where Los Angeles never was. They taught them history – the great social trends, the great governments, the great nations, the great religions. For awhile, the learning of The Ancients was held sacred and the elders revered, but a few generations after the last of the Ancients died, reverence turned to questioning. What started as a creeping fear of books gradually turned into a genuine distrust of all things connected with the past.

Does knowing where Hawaii used to be keep the cockroaches from running off with our cattle? "Does knowing how to write make the acrylic grow any faster?’

And so, over a period of half a dozen generations, the learning of the past was gradually forgotten. The past was allowed to die and true to the old maxim that when the past dies the future takes revenge, mankind was plunged into a dark age of superstition and ignorance. All that is known of this age, or any other age for that matter, is through the writings of the monks of The Order of Esperanto, founded in memory of Sankta Esperanto.

Centuries later, tribes began migrating down from the mountains and settling in the lowlands where the cities had at one time stood and over time some of the learning of The Ancients was rediscovered. This marks the beginning of what historians refer to as The Renaskigo, from the Esperanto word meaning rebirth. This period begins with the rediscovery of ancient texts and the advent of canned food mining and ends with the birth of the Selegna Empire.

The pages blow away allowing our story to begin.

2.

Professor Colaman was worried. King Canoga wanted to see him, which usually meant one of two things: commendation and knighthood or torture and slow death. No matter how many times he turned it over in his mind he couldn’t think of any reason why he would be a candidate for either one.

It was a beautiful morning. The sun was just rising over the southern canned food mines and the kitchen was awash with the laundromat green-pink of dawn, but Professor Colaman couldn’t enjoy any of it. He stared down in his coffee cup and saw himself shackled to the wall in some dank cell. He was a big man, both in size and courage of convictions, not afraid of many things, but dungeons and the whims of Canoga scared him. Canoga had always been a popular king, revered by the masses, strong and fair. But Colaman knew better. Much better.

His wife, Cienna, came into the kitchen.

There’s a cockroach in the cellar again, she said softly.

No answer.

Honey, there’s a ...

So get an ax and a sack and take care of it! he snapped.

After a long silence she touched him lightly on the shoulder and went down the stairs to the cellar. He continued staring into his cup, a new scenario appearing and disappearing with each stir of the spoon. What could King Canoga possibly want with him, a professor of history, geology and archaeology.  He thought long, hard and deep.

He was so immersed in thought that he didn’t even look up as his wife, ax in hand, dragged a heavy, green-stained sack across the kitchen floor and out the back door behind him.

What did Canoga want?  And why was the summons for so late in the day?  Professor Colaman wondered how he was ever going to get through an entire day of teaching.

3.

King Canoga was worried. Things were starting to go badly for the Canoga Dynasty and the Selegna Empire. The canned food mines were starting to peter out; there hadn’t been a major ravioli strike in over a year. What had been thought to be an enormous vein of chili con carne with extra beef and had been heralded to the populous as the beginning of better times had turned out to be nothing more than yams. Corn beef hash, pork and beans and sardines were rare and such delicacies as yellow–labeled spaghetti with orange sauce were practically non-existent. The only plentiful canned goods were lima beans and broccoli. Things were bad.  

Some progress was being made in agriculture, but 309 PE (Posta Esperanto) was not a good year for photosynthesis and with the strange way that crops grew nowadays there was great confusion as to who stood where on the food chain. The farmer-crop relationship was often complicated by a continuing conflict over who would eat whom. Many crops were dangerous, not the sort of thing you would want near a house or children. Everyone took signs like DANGER – CORN very seriously.

Livestock was a dependable enough source of food, though not especially appetizing. And of course, there was always the age-old problem of cockroaches running off with cattle.

Times were hard. There had been unrest all over the empire. In the city of Troit, Canoga was burned in effigy. In No Tress and Yield, half-baked assassination plots had been uncovered. Even in Selegna itself there had been considerable discontent. The usual strategy of having some unpopular official disemboweled in the square or throwing prisoners to the man-eating corn wasn’t having any affect. Nor was there anyone left to wage a respectable war on to draw attention away from domestic matters. Canoga’s father had seen to that 30 years ago.

And after all those centuries of complaining about lawyers, from Ciciero to Shakespeare, Canoga had finally done something about it and had them all put to death. It had taken some time, but it was well worth the trouble and the people loved it. Now, there was nobody left. He had been reduced to the occasional copywriter, but here he had to go easy – he always needed a pool of media talent for his own purposes; after all, he was a modern tyrant.

The populace were still behind him, yet heretic cults were growing and for the first time posed a potential threat to Esperanto and to himself, the official ruler and head of the church. Even the Esperanto monks and the Papo, Tiel Nomata, were up to no good.

King Canoga was worried, but he had a plan.

4.

Professor Grev Colaman’s day at the university dragged on. His mind was divided into two independent halves, one side in classroom teaching, the other somewhere miles away. After ten years of teaching, this was an everyday occurrence, but that far-away place was usually a rocky archaeological dig or the pages of some wonderfully obscure book and not a cold slab in the caverns below the palace.

Today we’re going to do a general review of chapter six on The United Rates of America and the last century AE, Antau Esperanto...which means...

He held out his hand.

...before Esperanto...

I’ve made up a list of random questions that cover the material that will help you focus your studying for the exam. Let’s start with social conditions of the first century AE. Ok, let’s start with religion.

The professor wrote The Christian Profits in capital letters.

Can anyone tell me who they were?

I think it’s the name of one of the official religions of the United Rates of America. They often asked the populace to send them money... answered one of the students in the front.

And...

Silence. God, he hated this course; the students got younger and lamer every year.

Come on people, now. Remember, this will be an essay test. You’ll have to do better than that. It’s all in the book.

Silence.

You have some reading to do. This is the sort of question that is very likely to come up on the exam. The Christian Profits were the higher religious leaders, famous for their sincerity, high moral fiber and interesting hairdos. They often performed miracles for money, hence the origins of the expression ‘to count the Profits.’

The droopy-eyed boy in the second row asked, I read a book where the story takes place kinda like in that time and they were always offering the Christian Profits human sacrifices and presents and stuff, like young virgins and drugs. In the book they are also given their own private prostitutes free of charge. Is that true?

Nervous laughter.

"Well, that’s a bit exaggerated. The Christian Profits often did have young girls assist them with certain rituals. These girls were always held in the highest esteem by both the Profits and the general population. The girls were always sworn to secrecy and were usually given large sums of money for their services."

As for drugs...well, what you have to keep in mind is that at that time in the United Rates, drugs were taken by almost everyone, almost all the time. In 32 AE, for example, there was a short economic crisis where drugs temporarily became the legal tender. It all worked very well because everyone knew exactly what the different drugs were worth. So it was very common for people to use drugs as legal payment for debts. Naturally, drugs were also used to make religious offerings to The Christian Profits. As for that bit about the prostitutes... I don’t know where the author got that. There is no historical basis for that whatsoever...Now, let’s move on to geography. The principle cultural regions – New York and San Andreas. Religious centers?

Las Vegas and Orlando.

Principle industrial cities  ...?

Ramp, Troit and Yield, several students mumbled at once.

And remember Troit stood in more or less the same place over three hundred years ago as it does now. Troit, as you’ll recall, was completely different from what it is now. It was so bad that, believe it or not, the bombs actually improved it.

Laughter. He used that joke every term and it always got precisely the same laugh.

What about Los Angeles? asked a student.

That popped up every term as well.

"Los Angeles is a mythical city that was supposed to have sunk into the San Andreas Sea. The story comes up time and time again in mythology and primitive religions. There is not a shred of evidence, historical or otherwise, that it actually happened.

"What about The Los Angeles Conspiracy? protested someone at the back of the room. There’s all sorts of evidence that Los Angeles existed like a peninsula into the San Andreas Sea with stucco factories and stuff, and there are markings in Nevada by the coast which can only be seen from the mountains which proves there must have freeways and stuff."

The class reacted with a mumbling of quiet questions.

"What’s a freeway...?

"What’s stucco...?

The professor interrupted. Listen, I’ve worked with some of our best archaeologists who’ve been digging for years along the San Andreas coast and they’ve yet to come up with a scrap of tangible evidence that even hints at the possibility that Los Angeles ever existed. The markings in the desert have traces of freeways, but we’ve found those in lots of places. Look, I don’t think we need spend more time on this.

But what about all the expressions using Los Angeles. Like ‘This is worse than Los Angeles’  and ...

I think that’s all nonsense, added one student who was joined by about half the class.

What a dumb book.

Who are you calling stupid?

The class was starting to get out of control. Professor Colaman put his foot down, or more precisely his hand, a textbook and the better part of the desk.

Hey!

Instant silence. The professor had a big hand, a bigger text and enormous lungs and when he used all three at the same time he commanded respect. He was a big man; he’d been a wrestler in school. The classroom fell silent long before the textbook stopped vibrating. The professor continued talking calmly, as he almost always did.

"If you would like to know more about Los Angeles you can enroll in my class, Southern California Mythology 101A next term. It covers all the relevant mythology. We do the entire Belair Scrolls. But for now, let’s move on."

He looked up at the clock. The class was drawing to a close.

His heart beat his heartbeat.

We still have 5 minutes ...ah... a word or two about ...ah...the origins of the canned food mines... the effect of molten lava and fallout in preserving much of what remains today...

There door creaked and three soldiers walked in.

Professor Colaman, we’ve come to escort you to the palace, said one of the soldiers respectfully. Colaman waited for the dreaded words that so many lost souls had heard before him.

His royal highness wishes to take a meeting with you. There is a cart outside.

The soldiers were polite enough, but judging by their palace uniforms – three piece suits and red capes with matching epaulets and sashes – they were not to be taken lightly. They had swords, spears and briefcases. The soldiers meant business.

5.

King Canoga was short. So short, he often had people put to death for no reason whatsoever. He liked to think of himself as ridiculously cruel. He loved the sound of it. Ridiculously cruel – it had a certain timelessness, a certain far-off music.

He was well-read in the dark arts of the Ancients  – witchcraft, voodoo, statesmanship. He was conversant in Machiavelli and Nixon – he knew all about the powerful magic of maintaining a good image while slaughtering the opposition. While others were unduly concerned with military might, he was busy unleashing far more devastating forces – the dark, savage power of PR.  Demographics, statistics, kingdom-market studies, profile analysis and, of course, a touch of senseless bloodshed and torture thrown in for credibility. PR and bloodshed.

Being a man of firm principles, he always strove to be so incomprehensibly sadistic that he passed for a nice guy. PR and bloodshed. The empire was in deep trouble, but he had a plan that would eliminate his rivals and make him the most popular king in history. PR and bloodshed.

The plan had come to him just before one of his readings with the realm psychic. The plan was simple, so simple that even if it failed it would save him.

For centuries, Esperanto had been the official, as well as the popular religion of the empire. The teachings of Sankta Esperanto were part of the very fabric of society – Esperanto Proverbs were a daily part of the language, his writings were familiar to everyone. Even those who had never read a word could, and usually did, quote him at length. Even his handwriting was as well-known as any logo or trademark.

Very few of his writings had been found. His works numbered less than a hundred pages – The Napkin Chronicles, The Esperanto Proverbs and assorted fragments the formed the basis for The Evangelio, the foundation of the religion. There were no first-hand historical accounts of his life. In fact, there was little proof that he had ever existed, which accounted for the tremendous popularity of