On this day, 02|15|1991
I dreamt. From this dream, I wrote.
A story long and winding.
So it would be forgotten, just as they do when a mystery lingers beyond measure within their universe.
When it is finished, I will unwrite the final stroke from the epilogue and descend into endless rest.
To this dream I will return, and I will stay...
for eternity.
. . .
'The final sentence sent the protagonist and their companions toward a happily ever after. I was left staring at the empty space following the last word.'
"That was it? I wasted a whole year on this garbage? I could've spent that time reading something with at least a half-decent ending."
Hoku closed the cover of the final book to a series he had spent many months reading, then gazed at the surface with resentment.
Despite his understanding of the scenarios, he despised the choice that the protagonist had made in the end.
'Yet somehow I wish there was more to the story,' he thought.
Hoku slumped deep into a wooden chair, with a bored expression.
He grazed a finger along the white crease on the book's spine.
Jiang Hao, his current caretaker, who he had needed since he was only seventeen, worked as a history professor at an unpopular university.
Hoku's first meeting with family apart from his parents was ill-fated.
His uncle; the older brother of his father, first shook hands with Hoku after he had awakened from a two-day coma inside a hospital room.
The only details that burdened his identity were an unidentifiable hospital uniform, a lanyard with a broken clip, and memory loss, despite receiving a report that he hadn't suffered any detectable brain damage.
Fortunately, his current situation wasn't as strange. The room he resided in was a gaudy vast room of books.
The walls shelved mostly antique books, an inevitable collector's interest when one's life revolves around teaching history.
Some of them were newer, but not too recent.
Further down the stacks were books written by authors that were old, but still alive.
Those were the stories that fascinated him most.
Hoku sighed and stood from his chair, then dragged it across the room to the edge of the shelf, and pushed down on the backrest to balance himself on top of the chair.
There was a gap in the high-middle shelf precisely the same width as the book in his hand.
He pushed the book back into place.
Hoku had never shared affection for the pieces of history his uncle received, as gifts from either his fond female colleagues or the online websites he spent his evenings scrolling through rather than marking his students' papers.
He peered at the top shelf as he stepped down from the chair.
Suddenly, a distinct book with a stark white spine and no dust cover, or branded title, seized his attention.
He stared for a moment at the only white book on a shelf of books with eroding spines, before pulling it from its place on the shelf.
Hoku brushed his thumb over the pages and studied the strange blank cover.
Upon opening the book, the pages snap apart as if they had never been opened during the presumably long period it had been published.
No dedications, just a vacant page without an author's signature.
The next page is the same.
Nothing.
As well as the third page seemingly as though any title of ownership were pulled into a white pool.
Hoku flips through the pages quicker, every other page more puzzling than the last.
Somewhere amidst the pages, he discovers an illustration without an entry.
This book is odd.
The page after it also had a picture with no text.
He turned the page back and forth as though he had expected an answer to appear.
The image on the twenty-third page was a neatly detailed drawing of what appeared to be the inside of an outdated house.
The interior was vast, and walls were heaped with messy bookcases that contained only clutter.
The drawing had a linear perspective, and a few candle sticks secured on the side walls were shaded darker than the ones on the main wall.
The next page had an atmospheric perspective of the center wall.
There was a book on the shelf that wasn't tinted like the other ones around it.
The book bore a white spine, almost as if it were preserving itself from the damage of time.
Hoku flipped through the pages to see if there were any more peculiar illustrations, it oddly intrigued him.
However, they were also blank.
'Is it supposed to be symbolic? Like an art piece?' He pondered, furrowing his eyebrows.
He peeked again at the filled pages, though nothing looked out of place.
However, he noticed upon second glance that a rather large painting of a key was propped against one of the bookshelves, and the matrix of the painting was absent.
Hoku supposed that maybe it was an unfinished painting.
Losing interest, he rested it on the edge of the shelf, not feeling the need to put it back right away.
Unbeknownst to him, there wasn't enough space on the edge to balance the book, and it fell to the floor the instant he let go of it.
Hoku briefly examined the book on the floor.
His uncle granted him access to almost every book in the room, but set distinct limits on the ones at the top.
Figuring he could hide it in the desk, he bent down to pick it up, but something was there that he hadn't noticed while flipping through the pages.
Peeking from the top, was a corner of a page, its shade much whiter than the other pages.
Hoku instinctively pulled the page from where it was seemingly hidden, confirming that it was not content from the book itself, but rather a poorly folded envelope that appeared to have been in the book sooner than when it was 'published'.
'Hm?'
Hoku turned the envelope to the back, and neat text composed a short message.
"Do not amend their mistakes, pertain to the present."
He scrunched his eyebrows in puzzlement and picked at the yellow wax seal on the other side.
Peeling it off came easier than understanding what had been written inside of the paper.
A series of numbers, separated by a degree symbol, and apostrophes were written at the end of the page, normally where someone would address themself after a letter.
There were also letters written in the array of digits, an N and an E, followed by a short message above them.
"This is a guide for the one without a sequence.
The greatest navigator."
'Another strange entry from a mysterious correspondent,' he thought, tilting his head.
. . .
The First Quota
The creator's original narrative has found you. The initial readers have narrowly altered the narrative's 'existence' by imparting a separate title.
Thus, the original telling has been delegated as 'The Memoir.'
What you've just read is the only fragment I was able to decipher from within the contents of this artifact. The only other mystery that has been solved is that 'The Memoir' belonged to the abundant creator.
You may refer to me as the editor until we meet.
Lastly, I ask only this: Be highly attentive to the entries I've left in this book.
I can promise that they may prove useful.
Sincerely,
The editor.
Prelude to the Memoir
Rule 1
Mysteries lie beyond your reality, Navigator. Have vigilance in your choices to tailor the unraveling of your universe.
Rule 2
Only anomalies can interact with the stream that unifies the function of infinite sequences.
Rule 3
Sending written letters to the past will not change the future. Instead, the recipient will lose memories of the letter. If the correspondent personally delivered the letter... both parties are doomed.
To be continued...