Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

Even between the closest parallel worlds, a number of subtle differences exist in atmospheric pressure, chirality, the shape of pollen, and countless other minute factors. Your body can adjust, but it takes time and there’s often a period of relative weakness for 24-48 hours after slipping. But that’s not the real danger; it’s slipping into another parallel world before becoming fully acclimated to the one in which you find yourself.

If you attempt another slip while still acclimating, you risk what are called the parallel bends or multiversal narcosis. Travelers can become drowsy, disoriented, weakened, and impaired, with delirium and mania often occurring. This can lead to another slip, or a series of slips in short order, making the problem worse. If untreated, death invariably occurs due to cerebral hemorrhage, embolism, or even suicide. This is why it is essential to acclimate to each parallel world upon arrival, and to spend no less than 48 but ideally more than 72 hours in each new parallel world after a slip.

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“Of course it had to be a family. Actors would soon be exposed for lack of familial resemblance, and there had to be someone to marry off. But they were always at the beck and call of someone with a much longer view, and deviations…were not tolerated.”

“So that explains it, then. A perfect, immortal ruler from the shadows.”

“Yes. And every few decades, someone stumbles onto that secret. Sometimes, they can be useful. Other times, they are not. In both cases, they are a threat to me. You will see there, on the table, a contract. And a knife. If you wish to serve me, you will sign in your own blood and the knife…well, if you wish to live, let us say that my secret must not be spoken.”

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Tropical Kiwi Crunch – New Zealand banned export of endangered bird meat.

Orange Pulp Fiction – Licensing issues and negative side effects of adrenaline as a food additive.

A Separate Peach – Demand fell off.

Che Guava – Labor difficulties in the Bolivian plant.

Uncandy Valley – Customers objected to “creepy” gynoid on packagin.

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Last entry. Could scarcely believe it. Had to whistle again. To be sure. Chapped lips. Chipped bottle. But no mistake. Been asked to come. Bodies shed. Luminous spirits ascending. Beyond warmth. Beyond cold. Someone might see us someday. If they invent better telescope. And learn to sing.

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We have been singing to each other for some time now. So much to understand, so much yet to be understood, more than my humble pen can write even as my ink grows thick and stubborn with cold. They came from beyond the orbits of the furthest planets yet known, further even than Planet X, from a great cloud of icy spheres that move in concert about our Sun. These great and distant brothers send their children to inhabit distant worlds and to experience an altogether different experience than the lonely void. But they know all to well not to appear where my wretched kind may find them and roll them off cliffs. So they manifest here, growing like gallstones, for a time and then shatter–as I have seen several shattered husks–and returning to the icy and luminous cloud beyond the furthest our telescopes can see for new and glorious incarnations as worlds of their own, beyond our experience and imaginations.

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