I am not a Postman - Vladmir Nabokov

Page 1
You wake up and instantly feel an overwhelming regret for everything you've ever done and fear for what you might do in the future. In a moment this passes and you look at the time: it is 1:35PM. Your stark grey curtains are glowing dimly, suggesting sunlight, but you can hear a light rain falling on the leafy roof of your shack. Gingerly you try moving your right hand: it isn't broken after all, but it still aches from its meeting with the palaeontologists jaw. You wonder idly if some future paleontologist will discover his bones, like a dog digging up its grandmother. Somebody knocks at the door, which is unexpected because you thought everybody else was dead.
If you prefer the sound of an umbrella being opened to that of one being closed, don't turn to page 4.
If you cannot decide whether “Spelunking” is a sexually connotative verb or the last name of the arch-duke of neo-Sweden, refuse to turn to page 5.
For a list of reductive statements about caste divisions among societies of cannibals and instructions on how to auto-asphyxiate when faced with turning to page 12 which details with a Rabelaisian bawdiness the drunken exploits of your student years, turn to page 9.
Otherwise turn to page 12.

Page 9
Noam Chomsky walks in and abruptly informs you that postmodernism is meaningless because it adds nothing to analytical or empirical knowledge. How do you respond?
If you reply nonsensically that analytical and empirical knowledge are meaningless because they do not detract from postmodernism, take a bite of your watermelon and turn to page 35.
If you blurt something about “invisible tigers” and fire a rubber band at his face before huddling under your sheets, clutching a broken wristwatch to your navel, turn to page 4.

Page 35
That last question was designed to test your susceptibility to hallucinatory episodes and whether or not you read the instructions at the beginning of the book which explain how to by means of mental arithmetic reason your way back to conventional reality. You should have turned to the page which is the sum of the difference between the two page numbers proffered and the square root of the year in which this edition was first published. Go there now, if you can still feel your toes.

Page 86
Having banished this apparition you rise, enjoy a breakfast of lizard meat and coconut milk, and go about your days work. By midday it is pouring heavily and you grow increasingly concerned about the possibility of flash floods, which are common in these parts during the rainy season, although it is November now and this unseasonable deluge might be mitigated by the relatively low levels of the volcanic lakes. At one point a flash of lightning distracts you causing you to misspell the name of a specimen in your report to the National Board of Extraplanetary Science. The report is mailed without your noticing this slip-up, and ten years from now that errant “W” which should have been an uncapitalized “f” will scandalize a jaded botanist into filing a report against you. This might cost you your job in spite of your acknowledged professionalism, but first you must make it to the end of the story.
By two o'clock the rain has slowed to a mere drizzle. You have been working without pause for the last hour, when a streak of yellow at the edge of your vision causes you to look up from the holographic screen. A bird has landed on your windowsill, a magnificent golden parakeet the likes of which you have yet to see on this island. With regret you think of the dismembered corpses of the two young biologists, Joan and Andy, either of whom might have been able to classify it for you. You make a mental note to recover their books from their hut as soon as the weather clears. To your surprise, the bird begins to speak. It does not look at you directly as it does, and it sounds almost distracted, as if it were talking to itself. It has a thick, Hungarian accent, and with a start you realize that the bird is not a living bird: it is a mechanical, imitation bird, the kind that some people keep in their living rooms to amuse their bored guests (who have inevitably seen three or four hundred of the same thing before and are wondering why they still bother visiting people). In your experience however they have proven to be bright, well-spoken and annoyingly cheerful contraptions, with a limited vocabulary; this one seems listless and mordant by comparison, and is using such a variety of technical jargon that you can barely follow the gist of the narrative. You catch the words “quantum superposition” and “Copenhagen interpretation”, and decide that the bird must have been programmed by a physicist. But for what reason? The more it speaks the less sense it seems to make as its vocabulary becomes increasingly complicated and theoretically oriented. You reflect that descriptions of high-level physics always wind up sounding mystical beyond a certain point. After five minutes of this it still has not looked directly at you, and it is getting on your nerves. Moreover you are concerned about where it might have come from. There were no physicists in this expedition: as far as you know there is not a one in the entire solar system. What is it you wish to do?
If you wish to attempt to destroy the bird with your handgun, turn to page 11.
To attempt to capture the bird with a roll of mosquito netting that you have under your bed, turn to page 50.
If the bird suddenly reminds you of your ex-girlfriend, who for two years held an apprenticeship at the Nuclear Research Center in Virtual France, inspiring you to drive it away by passive-aggressively torturing it, turn to page 76.
To finish writing this nonsense, click “Submit Reply”, and go back to whatever it was you were doing before.