Codex Born Read Online Free PDF

for.
    “That depends on whether or not I can make this work.” I set down my satchel and pulled out
The Best of Isaac Asimov
.
    For five years, I had studied libriomancy with a man named Ray Walker down in East Lansing, learning the full range and limits of my magic. Or so I thought, up until I saw Johannes Gutenberg in action, watched him pull weapons from books without reading them, or steal Smudge’s flames to use against an enraged Volkswagen Beetle that had been trying to kill us.That encounter showed that I had barely moved beyond Libriomancy 101.
    When the amazement passed, anger stepped in. Had Ray known how much more there was to learn? How much had Gutenberg hidden from the rest of us, and why? Was he trying to make sure nobody ever challenged his power? Or, like an overly strict parent, did he simply not trust us?
    I had gone back to reread every libriomantic tome I could find, searching not for what the books said, but what they omitted. I looked for the gaps, for the experiments we should have performed, but didn’t. For discussions that dismissed certain theories a little too quickly. I pushed myself to move beyond the rules Ray had drilled into me.
    As it turned out, some of those rules were there for very good reasons. In early July, I accidentally conjured up a two-day thunderstorm that knocked out power to most of Copper River and flooded most of Depot Street. Then there was the stray disruptor beam that took out Spencer Mussell’s truck. But I had confirmed that certain rules were rather fuzzy around the edges, and I had figured out several new tricks.
    I flipped to a story called “The Dead Past” and started reading. “A lot of science fiction authors wrote up toys to let them see the past,” I said. “Time portals and chronoscopes and temporal lenses, almost none of which are small enough to pull through the pages.”
    “Why not make a bigger book?” she asked.
    “The books need to be physically identical in order to anchor reader belief.” Though Jeneta’s magic threw that rule into doubt. If we built an e-reader the size of a parking lot, could she pull a spaceship through? What if we projected an e-book onto an IMAX screen? Maybe I could finally make my own X-wing fighter. I tucked that thought aside for later. “In order for me to use it, you’d need to distribute thousands of copies of those oversized books.”
    “Be careful,” Nidhi said quietly, though I had no doubt Helen heard her warning as clearly as I did.
    “Aren’t I always?” Nidhi had been my therapist for severalyears, and she knew better than most the trouble I had gotten myself into when I was younger. I turned the pages and skimmed the story. “You might want to back up a little.”
    “You do know what you’re doing, eh?” asked Helen.
    I gnawed my lower lip. “Farther than that.”
    Unlike the lifeless screen of an e-reader, the pages of Asimov’s story welcomed me. From the opening paragraphs, I could hear Arnold Potterley’s quiet desperation as he petitioned for permission to use chronoscopy. I felt the resigned bitterness of the man forced to refuse that petition. I flipped ahead, imagining the excitement and anticipation of a working chronoscope—anticipation shared by countless readers over time.
    My fingers sank through the page, sending a thrill through my body. I had performed this same act hundreds of times over the years, and there were days I still fought to keep from giggling like a kid on Christmas morning. No matter what happened, no matter what monsters tried to eat my flesh or steal my thoughts, I could do
magic
.
    I saw the chronoscope in my mind, a template created by the imagination and belief of the readers. Normally, the next step would be to use that template to transform the magical energy into solid form and pull it free.
    The hard part was
not
doing so. All my training urged me to create, to grasp the chronoscope from Asimov’s world, even though I could never bring it into our