Vice Nimrod (A Novel of the Tower of Babel) Chapter 3

We continue the second round of PILCROW’s Serialized Novel Contest, with our first Finalist’s third chapter. Over the next three weeks, we’ll serialize the first few chapters of our three Finalist’s unpublished novels, and then subscribers (both free and paid) will vote on a Winner to be fully serialized here on the Substack. Finalists are awarded $500; the Winner $1,000.

Our Finalists are:

• Vice Nimrod by Colin Dodds

  • Chapter 1

  • Chapter 2

• Still Soft With Sleep by Vincenzo Barney

• Don’t Disappoint by Martin Van Cooper

While the traditional organs of American letters continue to wither, we recognize the need to forge a new path. If you believe in what we’re doing, PLEASE share and subscribe and spread the word.

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In Vice Nimrod, a young refugee from a brimstone-wrecked small town, Ishkebek finds his way to Nimrod’s Mighty Tower, where he lands a job. Through a mix of savvy alliances and good luck, he rises through the ranks, and survives a professionally disastrous friendship with an idol-smashing protege, to reach the rank of Vice Nimrod, Communications. In his words, we learn how Nimrod’s Communications Group deftly handles the inquiries of the neighboring kingdoms, how it spins the burning of Sodom & Gomorrah, and how it finally flounders through the varied crises that make up the Confusion of Tongues.

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Senior Associate - Workplace Piety, Communications & Kingdom Marketing

A year or two went by. Work was good. Those years were like flying on narcotic and erotic tailwinds and updrafts of distraction and self-importance. The fantasy of the world made all-encompassing, tangible and real the way that memos about memos seem to prove themselves by a cheap principle of reflexivity. When you only spend two or three waking hours a day out of the office, the office becomes a perfect tautology.

People who never experience it have no hope of understanding it. But imagine a life where you never have to think about who you are or if you’re right or wrong, good or evil, never had to think about death, or reality, or the fleetingness and futility of it all. And you got paid enough that you never had to worry about money or getting old. When things are good at work, life is a variety of perfect. And it only costs everything.

Eventually, the wind blew from the south through the new moon, and a fresh ...