February 8, 2025
I almost didn’t notice them.
The boxes from Mr. Smoe were filled with the usual things: old papers, sketches, faded maps, and other odds and ends. Amid these scattered things lay hundreds of small notes on scraps—some on gum wrappers, some on napkins, others on crumpled receipts. At first, I thought they were just random jottings. One line, then a blank space. Another, then more space. Disjointed. Meaningless. But the moment I started reading, I felt something else, a pull, as though a hidden structure waited to be opened.
I studied the scraps one by one, noting that Mr. Smoe had scrawled a basic code or numbering system on them. It wasn’t easy to follow, but patience revealed these pieces might be part of a massive puzzle. More than that, they seemed to change whenever I tried to pin them down. I’d rearrange a line, and the meaning of the entire page shifted. I’d flip another, and the text changed again. It reminded me of a Choose Your Own Adventure book, except I wasn’t choosing the path; the path was choosing me. Each line rearranged itself in ways that defied all sense, like stepping into a living manuscript where any small movement altered the story’s course.
No matter how many times I turned these lines, the storyline never repeated. I tried to go back to the start, but the beginning vanished, replaced by another version of the same scene. I tried to find a final page, but there was none. It was a clown car of words. Scraps of paper this small shouldn’t hold millions of outcomes. But they did.
These lines no longer felt like plain ink on paper. They felt alive. The more I read, the stronger my sense that this was more than a scattered diary or stray musings. It was something beyond a simple story or record. I wasn’t merely reading; I was stepping through hidden doors. It reminded me of how Harry Potter must have felt upon opening Tom Riddle’s diary, drawn into a world woven behind simple words on a page, unaware of how deep the enchantment ran.
And the strangest part? Once I pieced the scraps together, each page contained only eight short lines, yet they flooded my mind with entire landscapes and entire lives. It was as though these sentences formed portals to other worlds. I’m still reeling from that thought. If I keep turning these lines, how much more will I discover?
What have I Discovered?
After weeks of deciphering Mr. Smoe’s code and organizing every scrap, I discovered an amazing story that breaks down into eleven “books,” each holding eight pages, each page offering eight sentences. By my math, that should be sixty-four sentences per book, seven hundred four in total across all eleven. It's a rather short story. Yet I can’t finish it. The story keeps growing, almost magically.
In just a handful of lines from the first section, I read about a mother striving to bring new life into the world under a midnight moon, her breath caught between relief and dread. A father hovered nearby, his worry tinged with hope, while neighbors stood at the threshold, unsure whether to come inside. It was only a few lines, but the moment felt entirely real. Each attempt to reread those sentences reshuffled them into something new, as though the text refused to present the same version twice. It was a remarkable feat; so few words conjuring multiple worlds, never in the same arrangement twice.
I plan to look deeper into these scraps, tracing every possible path of this ever-shifting manuscript. For now, I can only say I’m both transfixed and uneasy. I don’t know how such limited words can branch into so many directions, or how these short lines can hold me so firmly. All I know is that this isn’t some trivial curiosity. These scraps and the code behind them are truly extraordinary. I may never view words on a page the same way again.
Oh, by the way, on the very first scrap I managed to decode, there was just one word: Isabel.
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