Noble V: Greylancer (24 page)

My shock did not dissipate for a long while after they left and the echo of their
footsteps faded. “Did you see?” I asked Lord Schranz Voyevoda—no, Shwann—my entire
body dripping in a cold sweat. “What will befall the world after their arrival? I
fear its history will be a cursed one.”

“What did you see?” Shwann asked.

Try as I might to answer with the dignity of a master addressing his apprentice, my
voice quivered. I said, “The woman also grew fangs.”

†

In the end, my fate traced a path up the platform steps to the guillotine. The young
lord did not appear at my beheading. When the cold blade was brought down upon my
neck, I felt gratified for my fortunate end.

I intuited that those who would encounter my creations would never be so fortunate
as to greet a death as peaceful and swift as mine.

Hideyuki Kikuchi
was born in Chiba in 1949. He graduated from the Aoyama Gakuin University of Law
and, inspired by H. P. Lovecraft, began publishing supernatural fiction in the early
1980s. One of the most prolific authors in the field, Kikuchi has published over three
hundred books and still produces multiple novels per year. He has enjoyed international
success as a novelist, and much of his work has been adapted for manga and anime.
Kikuchi is the author of the ongoing series Vampire Hunter D. Wicked City, A Wind
Named Amnesia, and Dark Wars: The Tale of Meiji Dracula number among his works available
in English.

In this classic of Japanese SF, American astronauts on a space mission discover a
strange virus and bring it to Earth, where rogue scientists transform it into a fatal
version of the flu. After the virulent virus is released, nearly all human life on Earth
is wiped out save for fewer than one thousand men and a handful of women living in research
stations in Antarctica. Then one of the researchers realizes that a major earthquake
in the now-depopulated United States may lead to nuclear Armageddon …

This is not a novel.
This is not a short story collection.
This is Self-Reference ENGINE.

Instructions for Use: Read chapters in order. Contemplate the dreams of twenty-two
dead Freuds. Note your position in space-time at all times (and spaces). Keep an eye
out for a talking bobby sock named Bobby Socks. Beware the star-man Alpha Centauri.
Remember that the chapter entitled “Japanese” is translated from the Japanese, but
should be read in Japanese. Warning: if reading this book on the back of a catfish
statue, the text may vanish at any moment, and you may forget that it ever existed.

From the mind of Toh EnJoe comes Self-Reference ENGINE, a textual machine that combines
the rigor of Stanislaw Lem with the imagination of Jorge Luis Borges.Do not operate
heavy machinery for one hour after reading.

A web browser that threatens to conquer the world. The longest, loneliest railroad
on Earth. A North Korean nuke hitting Tokyo, a hollow asteroid full of automated
rice paddies, and a specialist in breaking up “virtual” marriages And yes, giant
robots. These thirteen stories from and about the Land of the Rising Sun run the gamut
from fantasy to cyberpunk and will leave you knowing that the future is Japanese!
Includes Hideyuki Kikuchi’s “Mountain People, Ocean People.”