“Reality is not always probable, or likely…”
— Jorge Luis Borges, interviewed by Columbia University Forum
“…So I went out on my own, years ago, to try to create some additional choices in a parallel universe.”
— Kellyanne Conway, interviewed by Politico
American Carnage and the Compass
In an unnamed country, a series of murders prompts an intellectual detective to overanalyze a succession of tweets and retweets until he begins to predict a pattern of invisible but everlasting intentions that may or may not exist.
The Healthcare Lottery in Babylon
The residents of a mythical kingdom must hold the ideas of “coverage” and “non-coverage” in their minds concurrently, accepting the ominously symmetrical logic of modern medicine as an infinite game of chance.
The Deportation of Al-Mu’tasim
A heavily footnoted examination of a perfect man who exists in infinite versions simultaneously, and because his unbounded character defies traditional measurement, he cannot be judged by an incarnation who once made vulgar comments aboard a tour bus. In an indifferently inconsequential coda, the perfect man deports a traveler named Al-Mu’tasim.
The Inaugural Crowds at Tlön, Uqbar, and Orbis Tertius
When they discover an obscure encyclopedia containing a detailed entry for a fictitious country called Uqbar, two metaphysicians begin arguing about the relative size of the inaugural crowds in Uqbar versus Washington, D.C. until our reality begins to splinter apart and replace itself with Tlönic-language John Birch Society fanfic.
Spicer the Immemorious
After receiving a traumatic head injury, a man loses his powers of recollection and categorically proves there is no way to document words that have been uttered in public.
The Garden of Forking Pipelines
An infinite, unsolvable labyrinth of legal documents is teased to the public through the puzzles in Highlights magazine. The solution ultimately permits the construction of a pipeline to nowhere, a magnificent (and groundwater-contaminating) optical illusion.
The Library of Alternate Facts
A nearly limitless arrangement of hexagonal rooms contains every possible ordering of the alphabet, and therefore every possible truth (and untruth) is hidden among mountains of gibberish. A small group of journalist-librarians grapple with hopelessness as they sift for accuracy among unrelenting mutations of conjecture, ultimately choosing to form a suicide cult.