Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

Beyond Days

Of course! They are but visitors to this world, the great stony spheres, much as I am. For if man is but an ephemeral soul clad in the dust of this world, would not a luminous spirit bound in a form of pure stone be the same? I feel that the process is different and more deliberate, as if the spirits within the spheres have built them up from the surroundings with no regard to function and every regard to form. After all, what would a human being look like if we had been designed without regard for base instincts and the crude processes necessary for life? I understand more of their song by the day, and I have also been practicing songs of my own, using the top of a glass bottle. It is a bit like trying to speak Spanish without a tongue, but I wonder if I cannot, perhaps, make some meaning understood all the same.

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Day ???

They grew here but they were born elsewhere. That was the first thing I heard with clarity after puzzling over the clear dulcet tones for many a long hour. The spheres sing of how they grew here but were born elsewhere. Needless to say, I thought that perhaps I had gotten this wrong. Language, even human language, is never an exact science. But I think that they have noticed me here, desperate for information. I feel the songs are slower, simpler, to aid in my first halting translations. Louder, as well, to cut back against the winds that tear at a man’s eardrums until he is very nearly mad. But it is a sort of stony compassion, all the same, and one that moved me to tears when first I noticed it. As to what the meaning is, if indeed that is the meaning of their song of the last period, I feel that if I sink deeper into my shelter and let the warmth wash over me, warmth growing there like a new-planted seed ready for harvest, I shall have my answer.

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Day 75?

Of course. Of course. It’s all so simple now! I see it. The spheres use different scales for different modes of speech. Different tones in different scales, some that I can barely hear over the howling of the arctic winds and the pounding of my own heart. Luckily for me, I was a fine student of both the piano and the violin in my time, when such an education was considered to be absolutely necessary for the life of a gentleman. I have nothing but time to work out what the spheres are singing to each other in far greater detail than the first murmurs that I fancied I understood. I hardly even feel the cold anymore, and the pemmican might as well be water as I barely notice its salty unpleasantness anymore. I am convinced, utterly convinced, that within the obscure language of these monoliths will be my ultimate salvation.

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Day 60 – 31st of June?

They are singing stories of what has happened here. Magnificent tales that I have only just begun to understand. The small stones are learning the songs of the larger ones, and as they grow and the others erode away in the bitter cold, the stories become theirs. Other have come upon these shores, some like me, others not. Luminous beings descended from on high and still the spheres sing of it even though an age has come and gone. I must learn their songs, sing them, that I might learn their secrets and somehow endure this place.

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Day 57 – 10th of June?

The song of the spheres continues at all hours, and I have found it to be a great source of solace amid the terrible cold and utter desolation of this place. I think that the larger spheres produce a more dulcet tone tht rises and falls with the wind, while the smaller ones are higher, lighter. I imagine that the smallest of the spheres, mere pebbles, sing at a frequency that’s too high for me to hear. I’ve read that dogs can percieve notes too high for humans to percieve, perhaps that is the case here. But the differences between them give me a notion that perhaps I could annotate the music, to transcribe it, as a

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Day 54 – 7th of June?

The spheres sing. I don’t know how else to put it, but I have heard their song for some time now. I wrote it off as the delusions of a mind starved for both stimulation and sustenance, but there can now be no doubt. The larger ones emit a song, an ethereal tone that is almost beyond the range of human hearing. It must have something to do with the way the savage winds play over their surface, like blowing across the mouth of a glass bottle. It is a soothing sound, if an eerie one, so I’ll not waste what little energy I have in complaints.

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The S4N74 virus primarily affects the elderly, with no case ever reported in an individual under 55. It’s believed that this is because a weakened or compromised immune system is needed for infection. It also only affects males, as the Y chromosome is essential to the virus’s replication.

Early symptoms include weight gain, whitening of hair, and an intense urge to give away personal posessions. This last symptom seems mystifying until one realizes that the infection is spread through close contact and tends to survive well on paper and other permeable surfaces.

End-stage symptoms include uncontrollable laughter, rosacea, sundowning, and loss of sensation leading to a feeling of intense warmth even in cold areas.

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Day 54 – 6th of June?

I have made my camp in the wind shadow of the large, smooth sphere. It offers a modicum of protection from the Arctic gales, and by piling up the many stones that litter the beach and digging a bit into the frozen ground, I have been able to make a shelter large enough to sleep fitfully in. That, and gnawing my meager rations, are all that there is to do, other than write until the ink runs out.

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Day 52 – 4th of June?

The pemmican and biscuits that I have been carefully rationing are almost gone, as are the two tins of fuel I have been using for dregs of warmth and melting ice for drinking water. I have not seen a living thing larger than a lichen on the island, and even if I do fancy seeing the occasional seal amidst the waves, I surely could not kill it. I need all six bullets in my revolver to fend off bears, if indeed any bears every frequent this place. I tremble to write what the sixth is to be held back for.

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Day 52 – 3rd of June?

I fear that the spheres must be made by some natural phenomenon that I do not understand, for they exist in many places in the bar patches of this wasteland. Careful examination has turned them up in every size from marbles to medicine balls in addition to the many eroded giants. Kismet, it seems, led me to look upon one of the most perfect of their number first, so it could dash my hopes.

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