Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

“Look here,” said Clen. He and the others were seated around the table while wind and rain swirled outside the window.

“This is our lake, right here.” Clen drew a circle with a crayon. “It’s like a little soap bubble, and we’re on the inside. “And, out here, there are other bubbles,” he continued, drawing more circles. “The way to get out of and the way to get in to these bubbles varies, but there’s a way in and out of each one, even if it’s really hard.”

Clen licked his finger, and smudged away a bit of one of the circles. “When you break the bubble, you go into another one, but the one you were is closes behind you.”

“I think I get it,” Ohns said.

“Now, we know that something from outside our bubble is making the darkness, and the wind, and the rain,” Clen said, drawing arrows going into the circle. “We also think that somebody out here–in another bubble–has been in contact with Ohns here, trying to tell him something, trying to get him to ask a certain question.”

“Where I came from.” Ohns whispered.

Clen drew a stick figure in one of the bubbles. “My old friend Ath also lives in a bubble,” Clen said. “If you break out of ours, and enter one of the other ones out there, you may find your black-haired kiddo, the answer to his question, or Ath, who might know all three. The only real danger is that you might not know how to get back into our bubble here once you’re done, or if you decide to quit. It’s probably not as easy to get back in as it is to leave.”

“So we might be gone…forever?” asked Fer.

“Maybe, kiddo,” Clen said sadly. “I just don’t know. But if we say here, we’ll never know what’s causing these,” he gestured to the arrows,” and the bubble might break for good.”

“What do you mean, for good?” Ohns asked. “You said we could go through it.”

“You’re very small, Ohns–one person, or a few people, going through wouldn’t be enough to break it. But that stuff outside…”

“There’s a lot of it,” Ohns said. “Whatever it is. And if it keeps coming, it might pop the bubble for good.”

Clen nodded.

“What happens then?”

“Well, you wind up leaving anyway, probably,” said Clen. “Just very fast, very suddenly, and along with everything else–trees, the water, everything. Maybe you’ll be fine; maybe you’ll get smooshed between two uprooted trees as they’re yanked out of the ground.”

“But what about you, Clen?”

“I’ll stay here, in my home, as long as I can, kiddo,” Clen said. “I’m not going, even if it means staying here while this bubble of ours collapses around it.”

“I want to know all possible translations, Hector.”

“Sir, it’s not necessarily an ambiguous phrase…” Hector began.

“Look, I know you translators are conditioned to deal with people who think there’s a one-to-one correspondence between every word in every language, but I have enough classes under my belt to know that’s not true. Did you ever hear the story of Prime Minister Suzuki and the Potsdam Declaration?”

Hector looked thoroughly perplexed. “Um…”

“When the Allies demanded that the Japanese Empire surrender unconditionally in the Potsdam Declaration, Suzuki used the word mokusatsu to describe the government’s response. That particular word was a favorite of Japanese politicians because it could mean anything from ‘no comment’ to ‘ignore it’ to ‘silent contempt.’ Needless to say, the translator on our side opted for the latter, and our response was pithy and very much to the point in the form of atomic weapons. That’s what I mean by all possible translation, Hector.”