In November of 2004, I didn’t write a novel. This is a series of excerpts from all the novels I didn’t write that month.

He said his eyes rasped audibly when he blinked. Which wasn’t very far from the truth. Very small amounts of dust particles crept into his eyes at night and bonded with his cornea to form a strange layer of gritty paste on the surface of his eye. In a literal sense, his eyes were like sandpaper.

Not, of course, that anyone else could see it. He had been to doctors who told him nothing was wrong, gave him simple saline drops and the equivalent of a pat on the head. He had been to several shaman who told him that the condition was a result of his continued ignorance. So he had tried to learn everything there was about physics, chemistry, mysticism, philosophy, society, psychology, languages, literature from every available culture – anything that was in the world or hidden between the cracks of physicality. The condition remained. He was a medical mystery.

“So that’s why I’ve come to you,” he concluded.

“Well, Mr. Marson, what do you expect me to do about it?”

He paused to take in the bleakness of my habitat. The air was cold and pulling moisture from the ground. “Why do you live here?”

My focus left his face and wandered to the grey-white horizon. “Because it’s home,” I replied with a shrug.

He blinked slowly, wincing a little as he opened his eyes again. “I want you to be my companion to every type of habitable place on the planet, from least to most hospitable. After that, I will ask you the same question and I want a better answer. Because that is the last thing I don’t know. And if that doesn’t cure me, I will have my eyes removed.”

I ran my tongue against the back of my teeth to keep my face neutral. “Why me? That’s a lot of pressure on a person.”

He smiled. “Because you, like me, have never really seen.”