Collector's Item

On a sweltering night at Galactic University, the overworked Galactic Historian is completing the most important textbook in the universe: a single, definitive account of every significant event in the history of ten thousand races. Once published, it will become the only history that matters, since every source used to create it has been destroyed. With his vast responsibilities, complicated domestic life, and an impending trip to the Hub, he is eager to finish the final proofreading and move on.

Then a mischievous breeze slips through his study at precisely the wrong moment. An unnoticed page vanishes from the manuscript, creating a gap in the official record—and potentially erasing an entire civilization from reality. What follows is a wry, unsettling excursion into cosmic bureaucracy, historical authority, and the astonishing consequences of one seemingly trivial omission. Clever, playful, and touched with existential chill, this story turns a simple accident into a question about what makes anything—or anyone—real.