Vice Nimrod (A Novel of the Tower of Babel) Chapter 4

We conclude the first week of the second iteration of PILCROW’s Serialized Novel Contest, with our first Finalist’s fourth chapter. Over the next two weeks, we’ll serialize the first few chapters of our remaining Finalist’s unpublished novels, and then subscribers (both free and paid) will vote on a Winner to be fully serialized here on the Substack.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

  • Chapter 3

• 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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Managing Nimrod - Divine Compliance, Workplace Piety & Communications

The fight would come down to the mathematicians against the youngest and dumbest of the Hundred Righteous Men, like it always does. But that didn’t mean we could ignore it, Jerr said.

The Great and Holy God of Utter Cataclysm was something even Nimrod could not manage. The best that the risk-management priests in Divine Compliance could do to hedge against Him was to keep righteous men on the payroll. They were supposedly impeccable characters from almost all walks of life (though, it’s worth noting, never from Communications). They served as our hostages against an angry God, or gods. Like all tower departments, it hedged its bets in that regard.

My hometown of Shinursba had ten such men, supposedly. The lesser capitals and larger cities kept 25 righteous men on their payrolls. Neighboring Sodom liked to boast that you couldn’t find ten righteous men in its precincts if you tried. Not to be outdone, Gomorrah claimed that every righteous man to enter its ...