Most importantly, putting many titles into a story makes it easier to find your place if you happen to use your book to smash an irksome buzzing fly, and you hit the fly so hard that pieces of metal and plastic go shooting out of the book mechanism, so then you are forced to put the story chip into a new reader and you cannot remember where you were.

That happens more often than you might expect.

My Resting Place After I Died

When I woke after my eighty-story plunge, I felt most horrible indeed. Many things inside me hurt worse than they had ever hurt before… which is not saying much, because this was the first time I had been seriously injured, but pain is more dreadful when one is unaccustomed to physical suffering. If I took a deep breath, sharp aches erupted all across my ribs, as if a dozen axes were chopping at me. And behold, I did have an ax pressed against my flesh: a beautiful silver one I have always carried as both weapon and woodcutting tool. However, the ax was not attacking me in any way; it simply lay on my chest, as if someone had put it there after I fell.

To be honest, I was glad to have the ax with me — it provided a sense of protection. For a brief moment, I tried to cuddle the blade more snugly to me as if it were a pet or a toy… but the pain of moving my arms made my vision blur with tears. Every muscle felt bruised to a pulp; I wondered what bruised glass looked like, but knew if I lifted my head to see, the agony would be more than I could bear.

Therefore, I just lay where I was. It happened to be a hot pleasant place to lie, with an abundance of soothing light. I am such a one as absorbs many wavelengths outside the visible spectrum. Radio waves, X-rays, and gamma particles are like vitamins to me, while infrared and ultraviolet are basic food groups. (I also eat real food, as produced by the synthesizing machines found in every community of my world. But when I am not having Adventures, I can survive quite well on nothing hot sunshine, provided I get a little rain as well.)