The Nicki Fowl Fiction Files: The story

by Nicki Fowl

This is a story. Not just any story. A story about stories. And the person who fights to preserve them. Me. This is the Nicki Fowl Fiction Files: The story, and this is my story, my story about how this all began, my fight, my travels between Fact and Fic, and so much more. Why write mine? Because though history chooses what it will remember, the grain of every story is trut

The Nickolai Fowl Fiction Files

By: Nicki Fowl, full name Nickolai Odin Ephesus Fowl

Intro

Stories, they are as old as Time itself, or so I have heard. From the gruesome and classic folktale, to the tamed descendant the fairytale, from the ancient lore of minor, and major, religions, to the lyrical whims of the humble bard, from the modern television show, to the movie, and even to the words you yourself are reading right now, the story is what defines us, what sculpts us as children and gives us dreams, what soothes, or sometimes, inspires nightmares, what gives us hope, what lights the darkness that is our world, and what we depend on to remember that which historians, scholars, and masters of the material world themselves have forgotten. With the power of story, we have recalled the heroic deeds of brave men well passed, of clever and sometimes cruel tricks man has played on others and his own kind, and many other lessons that, if we are truly blessed, we will never completely allow passing from memory into nothingness.

But what do we truly know about stories? What gives us the reason to off them all as myths or legends, when we ourselves have been hoodwinked by the truth we so closely cling to? Why do we automatically sign newly crafted stories off as 'fiction' and dub them 'not true' just because we cannot meet the real subjects of the work with our own eyes? That we cannot hear their voices with our own ears? Is the fact that we have not been beyond our own solar system not a point that emphasizes enough how little we know of the workings of space and time? We are blind, blind by our own desire for knowledge at how little we know, and how much is possible in the vast universe, or even universes.

I speak from experience.

I used to be like the common man, so wrapped up in what happened here in our world, and so blind to what might really be out there, that had I never known it was me, I wouldn't have believed it was me if I'd been shown proof.

Now, though, I am no longer blind. I have no scarf over my vision, no hard grip on the small world of 'truth' the common man binds to tightly to his heart. I walk free, free on my own feet, and I walk where only I can.

This was all thanks to a small discovery I'd made while visiting the library. I was simply browsing the fiction section when I heard a voice whisper. Then I heard more voices, all whispering. The books were speaking to me, telling me their contents all at the same time. And they were telling me something else, something layered beneath the nonsense of layers and layers of crafted tales inscribed on countless sheets of paper. I soon followed it to a wall in the library, where the sounds of it grew louder, and were not just whispers, but talking and even yelling, and sounds of metal clashing and drinks being drunk, of loud curses and soft promises, and many other things that I could not recall if you gave me professional help.

I could almost feel the presences of all the owners of those voices, speaking as if they were next to me. Then I saw a hole, a hole that was in the library wall, black as the night sky. I couldn't see through it at all, and that was when I discovered what set me free to walk.

A large circle of text, a ring of words that formed a single statement, was also in the wall, but it seemed that unlike the hole, they were not carved, but almost floating in the air in front of it. As I looked at the writing, I could feel my tongue form the words unconsciously, twisting it's way around each syllable and phrase, and I realized that I was vocalizing it.

Before I knew what I was doing, I had finished reciting the words, and inside the frame of that statement, the hole grew, it grew until it filled the space the circle of words outlined, and somehow I fell through.

Now I walk between my old home world and a new one, traversing the two at will, and learning things no one else had ever come to notice. I took upon myself to record the tales of this strange place, this world which was entirely new to me, and to preserve forever in print that which my new home's counterpart, my old home, had never given thought to.

But that is just the beginning of my journey. As for the ending, that has yet to be told.

My name is Nickolai Odin Ephesus Fowl, my purpose is to investigate the world of 'Fic' and preserve it in the world of 'Fact'.

Let me spell it out for you. Fact is Earth, and Fic is the home of all the 'fake' characters man has 'created'. The two worlds are one. Every time a character is created, or thought up, or invented, it appears in Fic, with a life, mind, body and soul all it's own. All the different versions are simply parts of it's mind, so the more people create fanfics and the more of them created in Fact, the more is added to the characters mind in Fic as it grows older, and since all creations in this realm have immortality, all of them learn about the two worlds pretty much from the day they appear. Furthermore, each character lives out it's own life independently, to some degree or another, from the story generated in the world of Fact, similar to how time twists all tales.

So, what does that make me? That would be the 'historian of two worlds', and I preserve the different histories between the two, playing the devil's advocate and the angel's assistant as much as necessary, so that I can string together the truth and put it down forever in memory, so that nothing and no one disappears from existence.

That's the kicker, the only way to kill a resident of the Fic, to erase every scrap of his or her history so that they fade from memory. It does happen, and when someone from Fact dies, all that's left of them is in Fic, and even that may disappear. Some are lucky, like Hercules, or Albert Einstein, and have their history at least partly woven into the fabric of memory for all time, or at least for a very long time. It's sad, and the really sad thing is that no one will miss them, because how can you miss what you don't ever remember?
This is why I took this job, so that kind of thing could be stopped. The one good thing, and sad thing too, is that I'll never be considered a failure, since no one can remember someone who had been forgotten, and to keep track would require being able to remember them.

Fic is not heaven. There are bottle babies and drug addicts, violent fathers and rapists, and many other things that stem from the world of Fact. But there's hope, because for every villain, there is a hero. For every druggie, there is someone who can fight the addiction. And since 90% of stories have a happy ending, that's what I am counting on.

None of you, not one, will probably believe an iota of this. You'll see it as a piece of rubbish, or just another fanfic by another rabid, probably sick and horny, fan of some fad. I frankly don't give a damn. This is what I fight for, because though history might choose what it remembers, the starting grain of every story is truth.