Legendarium: The Wrath of Bob: Legendarium, #2

By Kevin G. Summers and Michael Bünker

Three years ago, the Legendarium, a metaphysical library at the nexus of the multiverse in which is stored every book ever written in the history of the world, was threatened with utter destruction, but two unlikely and unqualified heroes stood up to save it. Or… maybe they saved it on accident. In any case, they were given credit for saving it. Now, a new old enemy rises and threatens reality itself, and, as improbable as it sounds, only Bombo Dawson and Alistair Foley can stop it. Can these two frenemies manage to work together again to save the Legendarium a second time? Or, will the world be cast into a dystopian nightmare from which it may never recover? Find out in Legendarium: The Wrath of Bob

 

Perfect for fans of Kurt Vonnegut, The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, and John Dies In The End.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Literary Outlaw Press
• Release date: Apr 19, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201909635

Book preview

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Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Coda

About the Authors

Grand Patrons

Legendarium

The Wrath of Bob

by Michael Bunker & Kevin G. Summers

LEGENDARIUM: The Wrath of Bob

Copyright © 2019, 2022 by Michael Bunker & Kevin G. Summers

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

For Morwen, Ingrid and Roland Summers

Prologue

Bob (from Cleveland)

The man in black fled across the foyer and the press corps followed. He flashed his credentials to a huge security guard and then disappeared through an ornate door. When the press reached the door, the guard stood wide-legged in front of the portal and crossed his arms over his broad chest. The demonstration drew the eyes of the reporters to a leather utility belt strapped around his waist. The belt, thick and black, was loaded with weapons suitable to almost any situation: pistol, taser, nightstick, nun-chucks, butterfly knife, handcuffs, throwing stars and a mini-boomerang. The guard looked like he was ready to take out the entire press corps should they turn hostile.

You shall not pass, said the guard, his voice deep and threatening.

Not threatening… promising. Maybe even hopeful.

The press corps did not pass.

Bob Taylor, the man in black, breathed a sigh of relief, his back pressed to the other side of the door. The press had been hounding him for more than three years, ever since his failed attempt to have his local school board ban a group of dirty books from the Harper Valley Middle School Library. The board voted 4-3 not to ban the books, and everyone thought the issue was settled, but not Bob. He looked at it as the first campaign in a larger war. And he admitted now, at least to himself, that he’d made a tactical error those few years ago, one he didn’t plan on making again. What he’d learned since the first battle was that there were people just like him (people liked to call them ideological radicals, but he preferred the term literary purists) on both sides of the political aisle. In fact, there were more people out there willing to ban some book or another than there were people who thought that literature was inherently self-governing. Everyone, they say, can buy or borrow or read or not read whatever they want.

What poppycock. The children were in danger, and now he had a plan to protect them. Better than that, now he knew how to do it. How to win. Traditionally, the political powers had divided themselves on a vertical axis. Everything was either left/right. But he’d learned a secret. Everyone wanted some book burned, they just disagreed on which books. The right way to divide the issue was on a horizontal axis. If he could get everyone who wanted to burn a book – any book—in the same camp, he’d win. Intersectionality for literature. Sheer numbers would prevail.

For every conservative on his side who wanted to ban books because of indecency or prurience, there was a liberal who wanted to ban other books because they were problematic, meaning that someone in an afflicted class might be offended by it. There were no end to the books, classics and non-classics, which could be banned if the only standard was that someone found the material offensive.

Bob wanted to make certain that no one took the term burning books literally. It’s not necessary to burn a book to accomplish its destruction. Banning the books, getting them labeled problematic, or tarnishing them with favored political epithets would serve the purpose too.

In the last year, he’d made plans and he’d made friends. Some say that love and war make strange bedfellows, and he’d found himself in bed on this issue with some strange folks. Some insane folks, in his remarkably sane opinion, but now he knew he had the right plan. He only needed to put it into action.

Bob knew… he swore… he would never rest until the children of the greater Cleveland area had no access whatsoever to any of the books on his own personal blacklist, and toward that end he’d work to help any aggrieved party – any at all – ban, tarnish, or label as problematic any book they didn’t like. It would be open season on books. Any book at all. Bob didn’t care. In his mind books could only do evil and rarely good, so he didn’t care if some babies got tossed out with the bathwater. And he was certain he would rest easier tonight, after his meeting with Obenshain, which was the reason he was here at the governor’s mansion in Columbus, Ohio.

As he pushed into the office, he sucked in air. The rarified air of power. Then Bob made a strange sound under his breath. He was the only one who heard it.

Chickachickachicka, Bob whispered to the ether. It was his personal calling card. A message to himself about who he was. Making the sound was a habit. He’d gotten it from 1970s TV shows when the show runners would play a rattlesnake sound whenever anything bad was going to happen, or was threatening to happen. Especially so when there was a real rattlesnake around. In the 70s, it seems there was a lot of worry about rattlesnakes. Rattlesnakes and quicksand. As a young boy, he’d been certain that one of these two dangers was the way that most people died. You went one way or the other. Rattlesnake or quicksand. But in real life, he’d never come upon either one. He’d never seen a rattlesnake except on TV, and nobody talked about quicksand any more. It’s like it stopped being a danger. It was the Satanic Panic, radon, stranger-danger, and meth of the 1970s. Now, it was like quicksand had never even existed as an existential threat. Bob knew why. TV writers were liars too. Still, he’d liked the idea that the rattlesnake sound meant danger, and though he believed himself to be good and not evil, he’d adopted the sound as his personal identifier, his soundtrack. In the parlance of the day, he identified as a rattlesnake. So he made the chickachickachicka sound as his eyes looked up at the governor of Ohio.

Governor Obenshain was sitting behind her immense desk manipulating the touch screen on a thin tablet device with her finger. She might have been working on a new piece of legislation; she might have been playing Angry Birds. It was impossible to tell. There were two flags in the room, one on either side of the desk.

One, the state flag of Ohio, had a swallowtail shape unlike the flags of the other forty-nine states. It was designed by John Eisenmann for the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. This was the fair where President William McKinley—an Ohio native—was assassinated. It’s unknown if McKinley saw the flag before he was killed. The flag of Ohio was decorated with numerous symbols that probably meant something. Bob Taylor had no idea what they meant.

The other flag shadowing the governor’s desk was Old Glory, the flag of the United States of America. It consisted of thirteen horizontal strips in alternating colors of red and white. It contained a field of blue decorated with fifty white stars. The stars represented the fifty states that were united in America. Eleven of those states weren’t united at one point—they’d left to form their own country from the years 1861-1865. This was considered treason. Now they were back and everyone was happy about it. Mostly. The thirteen alternating stripes represented the original colonies that rebelled against the British Empire, which was treason too, but the good kind we’re told. These colonies went on to become states and were represented twice on the flag. The bad treasonous states went on to become havens for moonshiners NASCAR, and bass fishermen. They were only represented once on the flag unless they also happened to be one of the original thirteen colonies. You get the idea.

Governor Obenshain, unlike governors of those southern states, didn’t have to worry about removing a Confederate flag or statues from the state capital building in Columbus, because Ohio didn’t join the CSA with the other eleven states. But Obenshain had plenty of other things to worry about, and Bob Taylor was sure he was one of them. He’d developed quite a negative image since his failed efforts to ban all of those books in Cleveland a few years ago. Nobody liked to be considered a book banner, though most people were ok with book banning of one sort of another if you pressed them on the topic long enough. But Bob didn’t care about what was popular; he cared about what was right. Was it right for his daughter to have access to a book written by a pervert like Lewis Carroll? Or for his son to be influenced by an alcoholic ne’er-do-well like Ernest Hemingway? The man had probably never owned a thesaurus in his life. And, (Bob shuddered) the thought of his children reading smut about sailors killing sperm whales for their oil was just too much to bear. No, the line had to be drawn here... this far, no farther.

Welcome, Mr. Taylor, said Governor Obenshain. Please sit down.

The beautiful dance has begun, Bob thought. Watch me dance, like a pretty, pretty dancer. Chickachickachicka.

Bob sat in the chair opposite and facing the huge gubernatorial desk. It was shorter than he expected and as he sunk into it he felt like Jimmy Stewart sitting across from Lionel Barrymore in that awful, blasphemous Christmas movie. He would have liked to see that one banned as well, but the business of the day was literature. Maybe movies would come later.

I know you’re very busy, said Bob, so I’ll get right to the point. I think that the minds of the children in this state are too precious, too malleable for them to have access to the wrong kind of books. I know that this could be controversial, but think of the children. Think of the future...

Obenshain’s eyes narrowed. What is it that you want me to do?

Bob slid his hand into the inside pocket of his black sports coat and removed an envelope. He slid it across the desk. Obenshain took the envelope, opened it, and pulled out the piece of paper that was inside.

What’s this?

A list of vile books that need to be banned in this state. I want you to issue an executive order that will see every book on that list destroyed, or at the very least removed and buried. Chickachickachicka.

Excuse me?

Nothing, Bob said. I need you to ban those books.

Obenshain dropped the piece of paper onto the desk like it was a piece of used toilet paper. I’m not going to do that. My constituency would have me run out of town on a rail.

Bob sighed. I don’t think so. I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this, but I figured that it would. So distasteful. He reached into the other coat pocket and removed another envelope. He slid it across the desk; it rested right next to the list of banned books.

More books for me to ban? asked the governor, sourly.

Take a look.

She opened the envelope and Bob could see by the stunned expression on her face that she was his.

You have an election coming up next year, Am I correct? I’m prepared to donate that much money to your campaign if you support me in this noble cause. And another thing…

Obenshain’s eyes cut back to Bob. What other thing?

"I don’t think you have to worry about your constituency. You see, everyone wants something banned these days. There are other books, even books I might agree with. PROBLEMATIC books, Bob said, using the modern keyword for banning politically incorrect literature. Those books could get the axe too."

I see, the governor said. She took another look at the number that had been scribbled on the paper inside the envelope. It was a mind-blowing amount of money, but after all, what was money for? And Bob Taylor had plenty of it. He had buy whatever you want and even things you don’t just to keep other people from having them money. He had purchase any business where an employee looks at you wrong, and fire them money. He had hire people you hate and make them move to Cleveland money. Two years ago he’d bought a seventy-five foot yacht, brand new, and, in front of his neighbors, had it sunk in Lake Erie just off the coast of his beach house so that pleasure boaters would have to slow down or risk being shipwrecked there. Bob Taylor was CFO of a major chemical company, a subsidiary of an agricultural firm that was itself owned by an entertainment conglomerate that produced the highest-rated news programs (one of each, geared toward liberals and conservatives.) Bob Taylor had more money than he knew what to do with. Lots of other people had causes at which they were willing to throw money. This was his.

What do you say? Will you take this obscene amount of money and issue an executive order?"

The governor thought about it for a minute, and then her face softened. She smiled. It’s going to take some effort to get all of these books off the shelves, she said, so we’d better get started.

Bob smiled sardonically. I thought you would come to my way of thinking. He laughed. I would have paid twice as much for you, he said, winking.

You could have had me for half, Governor Obenshain shot back. Then they both laughed.

And somewhere in the vast multiverse, at the nexus of all stories, the metaphysical library known as the Legendarium shuddered as if struck by an earthquake. Shadows began to take shape as the repository of all human knowledge came under attack yet again.

Chapter One

The Drawing of the Two Three

The sight of a woman slaving over a hot stove should not have filled Bombo Dawson with so much pleasure, but he was hungry and Carol looked awfully pretty in her June Cleaver dress and frilly, yellow apron. Bombo patted her playfully on the bottom, and Carol shot him a look that could freeze a nuclear reactor.

You need to watch yourself, pal, Carol said. It’s a new era. Women aren’t here to be groped and pawed by the likes of you.

Bombo laughed. That’s hilarious. What’s for supper?

Carol smiled.

Squash soup, she said, as if it were pheasant under glass. As if she’d said bacon cheeseburger. As if the words squash soup actually meant steak fingers in some private married people love-language known only by paramours. Her British accent was so jolly that it was almost enough to make squash soup sound appetizing. Almost.

Four years had passed since she’d agreed to become his wife, and she’d spent most of that time trying to help him lose weight. His health was her project and her mission in life. Truth be told, Carol spent most of that time forcing him to try one fad diet after another. Bombo usually lasted about a month before he was back on the donuts, and then Carol would spend every waking moment reading about the Caveman diet or the Weston Price diet or the bananas-left-under-a-rug-in-a-hot-room diet or whatever. Her latest thing was the Squash Diet, and it was the worst one by far. Bombo had eaten nothing but squash for nineteen days and he would have done almost anything for a Boston Creme donut. Heck, he’d do anything for a spam and mayonnaise filled donut, and that sounded gross. On the other hand, he had lost eleven pounds and was down one pants size.

Did you do any writing today?

Bombo shook his head as he sank into one of the chairs in their little kitchen. Stuck, I guess. I don’t know what the problem is, he said, I just can’t seem to make the words flow. I don’t know. Maybe it’s the lack of food energy from important empty calories and critical sugar carbs found in American-style circular pastry treats.

Carol scowled at Bombo. Bombo! Stop blaming your writer’s block on your healthy diet. You wrote a bestselling novel in thirty hours, said Carol, maybe you need a deadline looming over your head.

I don’t know. I mean, that could be it. It could be that eating nothing but squash for literally months on end has no effect on the writing muses. Or, and just hear me out, maybe I just need a Krispy Kreme truck to fall out of the sky and land on a passing jelly filling truck, and then the… you know… the combined binary ingredients of pastry and jelly would blend together right there in the wreckage only to cause a hazard for a speeding frosting-type vehicle that would overturn on top of the whole thing, you know? Right out there in front of the house.

Carol’s lips became very small. There’s nothing stopping you from driving down to the 7-11 and getting a donut.

Sure there is.

What’s that?

Your scorn, said Bombo. "If I go to 7-11 and get a donut, you’ll make me feel bad about it for the rest of my life. And darling, it doesn’t have to be that way. We could both be happy! You married a fat man, Carol, not a skinny man trapped inside a fat man. This man that you see before you, this squash malnourished but svelte Thomas Magnum of literature, isn’t the real me. I’m kind of the Dom DeLuise of literature. The Paul Prudhomme of word things. I’m the John Candy of… well, of candy. Man was not meant to be sustained only on the fruit of herbaceous