Conditional Reality

The art of the bookplate went into sharp decline with the advent of electronic books. Many of the old bookplates, sensing their own obsolescence, slid off their books and retreated to the desert where they congregated into stealth cities in the sand, populated by gargoyles, crocodiles, unicorns, medusae, fishing lures, lions, and tiny aged men with long white beards. The spiders and scorpions who had lived there for eons were initially uneasy with their new neighbors, but came to accept their deeply strange ways. You’re a little possessive, they said to the bookplates, but we appreciate your tendency to bite.