Free Emperor of Gondwanaland by Paul di Filippo Page B

to bop around the site. What he discovered on these dependent pages were numerous intriguing photos of exotic scenes—cities, people, buildings, landscapes, artworks—and many more descriptive and explanatory passages that amounted to a self-consistent and utterly convincing portrait of an alien world.
    “The Defeat of the Last ’Warg”; a recipe for bluebunny with groundnut sauce; The Adventures of Calinok Cannikin , by Ahleucha Mamarosa; Jibril III’s tornado-struck coronation; the deadly glacier apes; the first landing on the Outermost Moon; the Immaculate Epidemic; the Street of Lanternmoths in Scordatura; the voices of children singing the songs of Mourners Day; the Teetering Needle in the Broken Desert; sunlight on the slate roofs of Saurelle; the latest fashion photographs of Yardley Legg—
    Mutt’s head was spinning and the clock icon on his screen read noon. Man, people thought Tolkien was an obsessive perfectionist dreamer! Whoever had put this site together was a goddamn fantasy genius! The backstory to Gondwanaland possessed the kind of organic cohesiveness that admitted of the random and contradictory. Why hadn’t the citizens of Balamuth ever realized that they were sitting on a vein of pure allurium until a sheepherder named Thunn Pumpelly fell into that sinkhole? They just hadn’t! A hundred other circumstantial incidents and anecdotes contributed to the warp and woof of Gondwanaland, until in Mutt’s mind the whole invention assumed the heft and sheen of a length of richly embroidered silk.
    Mutt wondered momentarily whether the whole elaborate hoax was the work of a single creator, or a group effort. Perhaps the name or names of the perps was hidden in some kind of Easter egg—
    The one link Mutt hadn’t yet explored led to the forums. Now he went there.
    He faced a choice of dozens of boards on different topics, all listing thousands of archived posts. He arbitrarily chose one—imperial news—and read a few recent posts in chronological order.
     
Anybody heard any reports since Restday from the Liminal Palace on G4’s health?
—IceApell3
 
The last update from the Remediator General said G4 was still in serious condition. Something about not responding to the infusion of nurse-hemomites.
—LenaFromBamford
 
Looks like we could be having an Imperial Search soon then. I hope the Cabal of Assessors has their equipment in good working order. When was the last IS? 9950, right?
—Gillyflower87
 
Aren’t we all being a little premature? Golusty IV isn’t dead yet!
—IlonaG
     
    Mutt was baffled, even somehow a little pissed off, by the intensity of the role-playing on display here. These people—assuming the posts indeed originated from disparate individuals—were really into this micronation game, more like Renaissance Faire head-cases and Civil War reenactors than the art-student goofballs Mutt had envisioned as the people responsible for the Gondwanaland site. Still, their fervent loyalty to their fantasy world offered Mutt a wistful, appealing alternative to his own anomie.
    Impulsively, Mutt launched his own post.
     
From everything I’ve seen, Golusty IV seems like a very fine emperor and a good person. I hope he gets better.
—MuttsterPrime
     
    He quit his browser and brought up his word processor.
    Then he resumed trying to fit his life into ten-minute boxes.
     
    Kicklighter returned from the Boston trip looking as if he had spent the entire time wrestling rabid tigers. Evidently, his cure had not been totally effective. His vaunted invulnerability to the seductions of Native American-sponsored games of chance plainly featured chinks. An office pool was immediately begun centered on his probable date of firing by the publisher, Henry Huntsman. Ironically, Kicklighter himself placed a wager.
    But all these waves of office scandal washed over Mutt without leaving any impression at all. Likewise, his dealings with his former friends and rivals had no impact on his abstracted