Chapter Text

I stared at my phone resentfully. There was a clear drawback to having the most annoying ringtone imaginable: Phones could ring at night. Every once in a while I forgot to put it on silent when I went to sleep. Usually, no one had any business with me at night.

Usually. Now that I was awake anyway, I might as well look at the message that had woken me. To my surprise, there were a lot more than one.

_sein_: hey dude

_sein_: sorry to message you that late

_sein_: must be the middle of the night over where you are, right?

I can't remember ever having told _sein_ in which timezone I live, but it's just like them to figure that out from my messaging patterns. Considerate of them to think of that when messaging me, I guess, but still somewhat creepy.

_sein_: found something else for you, wanted to make sure you got it immediately. im basically one foot over the doorstep, going on vacation

_sein_: see you in two weeks

Receiving File: 2302554979.epub

Shit. Why couldn't _sein_ have sent that per email as usual? They knew that I was hopeless with technology. It would be a nightmare to get that file from my phone to my e-reader.

I looked at the file again. Usually, _sein_ wasn't sloppy with filenames, formatting every book's filename as: Author's Family Name, Author's Given Name - [Series] Title. They also tended to include a few words on what kind of book it was, why I should read it and what priority I should assign to it.

I lay back and pulled the sheets up to my chin. They had been in a hurry. Their torrent program probably assigned a random integer as the filename for whatever paranoid reason, and they just hadn't gotten around to changing it.

The explanation was reasonable, but I just couldn't stop thinking about that book. I knew neither the name nor the author, only that _sein_ had compromised their usual standards of quality to get it to me fast enough. It must have been something they knew would interest me, but we hadn't talked about any movies or series lately.

Which meant that it had something to do with Ashes on Mars.

I threw back the covers and fumbled for the light switch. My sleep schedule was going to be ravaged, but there was no way around this. Some day, my curiosity was going to be the death of me.

This book had an author as well as a title, at least according to the cover. Takatsuki Sen - The Black Goat's Egg. Again, there was no image, only black text on a white background.

I didn't know how to check the metadata for a publication date. I didn't have to; I already knew that this had to bear some relation to Ashes on Mars. I could see no other reason why _sein_ would have sent it, otherwise.

I clamped down on the impulse to google the author's name. I was going to read this unaware of any relation to any other work and judge it based on its own merits.

In darkness, sounds are louder. Separated by two floors and innumerable walls, I can hear the creaks of the opening front door. Heavy breathing accompanies the sound of something being dragged over the doorstep. A faint whimper of protest reaches my ears.

"Don't kill me, please."

Mother is home.

I lie awake. My shallow breath is a chisel chipping away at yet another sleepless night.

I remember the fear I once felt, on the eve of first discovering what kind of animal my mother was. I remember the taste of bile rising in the back of my throat as I considered what she had been doing in our home behind my back all those years. I remember sneaking around, finding her tools and being utterly terrified.

Those memories are fading away even now, as I am listening to the faint, muffled screams of yet another victim. There is no absolute fear. There is no measure of emotion the brain will not tire of, no blade that boredom will not dull in time. From that, does it not follow that there is no irredeemable monster?

A voice in my head screams incoherently about morality and ethics. I cannot help but wonder: If it were right, would it struggle against my other thoughts like this? Hysterically, it attempts to cover up its lack of conviction.

Tonight's self, which has rejected the notion of absolute fear, can no longer entertain thoughts of absolute morality.

Tonight's self thinks of mother fondly.

Tomorrow is unknowable.

It was morning. I had read through the entire book in one sitting. I didn't know whether the insane characters or the lurid descriptions of carnage had gripped me more. What set shivers down my spine, though, was the unshakeable sense of the familiar. Black Goat's Egg. I had heard that title before, somewhere.

I swiped my phone to wake it and sent a message to _sein_.

m1k: What movie was that from?

m1k: Damn, you're not there. I forgot.

m1k: Nonetheless, I'll send my review right now. I think it will be easier while it's still fresh in my mind.

m1k: The plot is that the protagonist is the son of a serial killer. He finds out early on what's going on and gets caught up in a moral quandary. It's obvious that society would want him to report his mother, but he can't help but empathize with her. This, of course, makes him doubt himself; is he fated to be a monster as well?

m1k: Black Goat's Egg takes moral philosophy to a pretty dark place. It's a reflection on modern society's values. The protagonist connects to society's enemy far more easily than to society itself, and in turn normal society becomes the enemy, an alien hive mind straight out of Kafka.

m1k: To be honest, it seems as though the author might have read too much Nietzsche, or Freud, maybe. Both of those thought that social hierarchies suppress free expression of the self.

m1k: From time to time, the book draws parallels between absolute evil and absolute (moral) authority. The main character cannot reject his mother's authority without questioning society's authority as well, because both are a result of his upbringing. At the same time, he's too emotionally stunted to become his own person, either. It's like he's trying and failing to be the subject of a Bildungsroman. The coming-of-age story of a bird too weak to peck its way out of its shell.

m1k: I'm rambling. Let's get to the point.

m1k: This is fictional like Ashes on Mars, right? I want to note that I haven't googled yet where it's from, but I can't shake the feeling that it's familiar.

m1k: I wanted to get a fresh impression, you know? I might recant some of those points after I know more about the fictional environment the book was created in.

I put the phone to sleep again. I had grown so used to _sein_'s commentary that writing a review without it felt like something was missing. A comedic counterpoint, maybe.

I smiled. I tended to complain about some aspects of _sein_'s overconfident online persona, especially the way they never ceased poking fun at me. Still, there was something about them I had grown fond of.

I started up my computer. Browsing on phones was something I had never quite gotten the hang of. Both the interface and the screen were too small, and somehow, my phone had never quite seemed as responsive as my computer. Maybe it was the way the keyboard's keys clicked under my fingers. I was just too analog for touchscreens.

Within seconds, I had found what I was looking for.

m1k: I've looked it up now. Tokyo Ghoul, eh? I vaguely remember reading the first few chapters of that during my manga phase a few years ago. Sadly, it deteriorated into endless action scenes.

m1k: It really fits. I'm re-reading those first few chapters right now, and Black Goat's Egg really adds to the characterization of Kaneki. The way he can't come to terms with his new monstrousness is reflected in the Black Goat's son's indecisiveness on judging monstrous actions.

m1k: It's different from Ashes on Mars in style, themes, characters... basically everything. Still, as a second defictionalization popping out of nowhere it corroborates the theory of both being fanfiction. If I hadn't known about that connection, though, I never would have guessed that both could have been written by the same author. It's one thing to assume a style for a few paragraphs of text, but sustaining that masquerade over an entire novel? I can't begin to imagine how many hours must have gone into editing this until every idiosyncrasy indicative of the author's original style had been ironed out.

I left it at that. There were a lot of open questions left, but unlike _sein_, I had no way to find further books.

I paused. Now that I thought about it, _sein_ wasn't really qualified to find obscure fictional books either. There were immense amounts of ebooks floating around on the net, and there had to be a large amount of fictional books. It would be like trying to find several hundred needles in a haystack the size of the sun—if you didn't know exactly what you were looking for.

That was where I would come in.

I started googling. As usual, the search quickly ended at TV Tropes. No other repository on the contents of fiction was as easily accessible. Usually, the highest barrier was figuring out their inane naming scheme.

"Fictional document" contained what I was looking for. Restraining myself to proper novels, I took some very unstructured notes.

Daniel Handler wrote some (whoever that is)

Ballads in Dragon Bones

Several in Lord of the Rings

Does Stephen King's metafictional clusterfuck count?

Jorge Luis Borges (several)

The Princess Bride

The Rider on the White Horse?

Craig Thomas (maybe)

Mr Bunnsy has an Adventure (& various other Pratchett examples)

anything by Kilgore Trout

Several Harry Potter examples

The King in Yellow

The Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer (how would that one even work, though?)

The Hive Queen and the Hegemon

Inkheart

P.G. Wodehouse examples

The Dragonsong Trilogy

Walter Moers examples

The Grasshopper Lies Heavy

Those were only examples of books occuring in books, not other media, but I had to start somewhere.

Next, I looked at the other relevant TV Tropes page: defictionalizations. No matter what our obsessive fanfiction writer thought they were doing, they weren't breaking entirely new ground. A quick scan of the list showed, however, that most defictionalizations were officially licensed. Money obviously wasn't the fanfiction writer's objective. Even fame couldn't be it, given the absurdly reclusive method of publishing.

I had barely spent ten minutes on my research at this point, but I felt disheartened already. Searching for all of those titles wasn't going to be easy, and I knew that I had barely scratched the surface. None of the two books that had appeared so far were on my list. It was time to attack this from another angle.

Fortunately, I knew just the expert to ask.

m1k: Hey Cio. I need some advice.

cio_ci: hey, mike :) you missed engineering mechanics 101 yesterday, i heard. everything fine?

m1k: Yeah, it's not really worth my time. How do you even know that, though?

cio_ci: what anyone knows, everyone knows :)

cio_ci: social being, y'know, unlike some i might point out

cio_ci: so what did you want to ask me about?

m1k: Fanfiction.

cio_ci: you finally decided to dip your toes into the deep end of the pool :D looking for recommendations to read or writing advice?

m1k: No, it's... stranger than that. Have I told you about _sein_?

cio_ci: your internet friend? the one who enables your unhealthy book addiction at the expense of hardworking writers? :)

m1k: Yeah, that one.

cio_ci: you don't talk about him often, that's for sure.

m1k: There's not really much to talk about. For instance, I don't know whether they're a 'he'.

cio_ci: 'they' as a singular pronoun? for shame. i expected more from someone with your diligence regarding capitalization and punctuation.

m1k: Popular consensus is on my side here. Also, _sein_ might actually be multiple people. I have no way to know.

cio_ci: so they're

cio_ci: bah, that's an abomination. fortunately, pronouns are grammatically optional.

cio_ci: so _sein_'s obsessed with privacy.

m1k: Maybe, but if they are, so am I. We mostly talk about books, not ourselves.

cio_ci: nor each other. got it. what's _sein_ got to do with fanfiction?

m1k: This is going to sound crazy.

cio_ci: intriguing

m1k: _sein_'s been getting me some weird books lately.

cio_ci: like, chuck tingle weird or voynich manuscript weird?

m1k: You've read House of Leaves, right?

cio_ci: i was the one who first recommended it to you, dummy

m1k: Really? That must have been an eternity ago, I remember reading it in middle school. Anyway, and this is hypothetical, how would you feel if someone handed you Zampano's unedited manuscript?

cio_ci: huh. interesting idea for a fanfiction.

m1k: Yeah, that's what I thought as well. It doesn't end there, though. Imagine Balin's diary turning up after that, or the unabridged Princess Bride.

cio_ci: same writer?

m1k: I have no idea who the writer is. _sein_ found the first on some obscure private torrent network and didn't have time to tell me about the second one.

cio_ci: wait, this is real? you can get me a fanfiction written as balin's diary??

m1k: Hypothetical example. The real books were Ashes on Mars (from some obscure European movie) and Takatsuki Sen's The Black Goat's Egg, from Tokyo Ghoul.

cio_ci: found the anime one

m1k: What? Where did you find it?

cio_ci: ao3. where would you look for fanfic?

cio_ci: oh, there's a disclaimer here. they're just reposting it, not the original author.

cio_ci: huh. might have gotten it from the same torrent.

m1k: For a moment, I hoped I had a new lead. Damn.

cio_ci: playing detective? :)

m1k: Yeah, I guess I stumbled into it. It's a mystery, you know? Someone spent a lot of time on writing those, then released them in the most obscure and ineffective way possible.

cio_ci: this black goat thing is getting a lot of traction, though. reviews, kudos—the works

m1k: Not that weird. It's pretty good actually. Not only is it an accurate reproduction of what is described in Tokyo Ghoul, it's pretty good on its own.

cio_ci: you praising fanfic? wtf

m1k: We talked about this. It's not that I dislike all fanfictions, I just dislike the badly-written ones.

m1k: Which are basically all of them.

cio_ci: pfffff

m1k: Your work excluded, of course.

cio_ci: too late to butter me up, snob

cio_ci: what were you trying to ask me about, though?

m1k: Well, you've made this metafiction thing kind of your shtick, right? I'm not actually sure we're dealing with fanfiction here. I'd like to hear your thoughts and ideas on this scenario. Fictional books are suddenly real. How can that be, what does it mean?

cio_ci: okay hmm

cio_ci: first off, fictional books are more impressive than real ones. stephen king alludes to the dark tower in purposely vague terms, right? the readers build this tower in their head that's not only greater than any building ever built, but even greater than any building ever imagined, because they don't have to deal with the details, only with a monolithic and absolute concept. same deal with books. doesn't surprise me that fans are inspired by those monuments in their heads. what does surprise me is that you found the results to be decent, given the expectations they have to satisfy.

cio_ci: you've read the northern caves, right?

m1k: sure. senile author writes incomprehensible book, fans go literally mad trying to figure it out.

cio_ci: that's only one interpretation, but sure, let's let it stand. fact of the matter is, TNC is an exception to my previous point, because the fictional book isn't epic or anything, it's just weird.

cio_ci: maybe weird to an epic degree.

cio_ci: what i'm trying to say is that no one would write it. if you ever find something like tnc, that's the time to reconsider your fanfiction explanation. until then, i think it's the most obviously valid hypothesis, regardless of how the works were published. some authors are just that weird.

m1k: Okay, that's your assessment of the situation, then? No other ideas?

cio_ci: nah, i was just buying time while i brainstormed.

cio_ci: 1: the books have been real all along, just obscure.

m1k: We thought of that one, but _sein_ didn't find anything on the internet.

cio_ci: did you look at worldcat to find out whether they're in libraries anywhere?

cio_ci: ask in a bookstore maybe?

m1k: I didn't. I can imagine that _sein_ did, though.

cio_ci: alright, next one

cio_ci: 2: the books were written by the actual authors, but never published. they kept them as background notes for their other work, and they somehow got leaked.

m1k: They're pretty well-edited for that.

m1k: I could imagine a fan editing them, though.

cio_ci: this is possible for one book, but less likely for two showing up in close succession imho

cio_ci: also, wouldn't the original black goat's egg be in japanese?

m1k: Oops. Damn anglocentrism.

m1k: Wait, I have a hypothesis, too. What if someone programmed a computer to extrapolate novels from snatches of text and descriptions?

cio_ci: :D

m1k: You're laughing, but computers can color pictures based on small color clues. Not just in blocky cartoon colors, I mean.

cio_ci: you're thinking of a neural network. sure, those are good at pattern-matching. maybe google could, with a few years of work, get one to plausibly imitate an author's writing style.

cio_ci: but i can't imagine a neural network managing large-scale consistency issues like plot holes or plausible character growth. did whatever you read seem like a barely connected quilt of story patches?

m1k: No, it didn't.

m1k: There's no way, then?

cio_ci: well, it's not impossible. neural networks can theoretically do anything. however, a plot is a pattern with an insane amount of details you can get wrong in lots and lots of non-obvious ways. i don't think it's feasible.

cio_ci: might be a nice idea for a story, though.

cio_ci: thanks for the inspiration :)

m1k: No problem. Thank you for your ideas as well.

cio_ci: you're welcome. keep me in the loop on this :)

Cio had been helpful, but the trail itself was cold. Until _sein_ came back and offered more books, there was nothing I could do to disprove any of the hypotheses we had formed.

I sighed. I might as well use the time to catch up on my schoolwork.