"Yesterday I found another book that doesn't exist, if you type it into Google." I say to you before I spell out what I am talking about. I find books like this all the time in back-alley bookstores where I have to knock and a guy slides open this little hatch and only his red sleepless eyes can be seen.
"What the hell do you want?" the book seller asks me, as if he doesn't recognize me.
A large rat is eating out of an old Chinese-take-out container made of white cardboard with a metal handle. It looks up at me as if it would also like to know what I want.
A mangy cat, like some kind of ennui-plagued crime boss is lounging on a broken heap of a fire escape. He would also like to know what I want. His one remaining eye demands the words.
"Those books." I say.
The place smells evil and old, moldy rotten tomes line the shelves. Silverfish are eating these books, line by line, page by page, chapter by chapter. Spiders eating the silverfish also line the shelves with their webs. You can't sue this guy if you get bit by a spider.
Then I found a good one. He wanted sixteen dollars for it.
"Seventeen Oh Four" He rings it up and stuffs it into a used grocery bag from Safeway. Creepy people always buy their groceries at Safeway. It must be in the serial-killer code. I think they have a book that outlines such a treatise, somewhere in this place.
{I couldn't get past the technical stuff in the first chapter of this non-existent book}
The Timetraveler's Guide To History: All About Time Machines
"The time machine exists in several classes. The first class and every subsequent class has four basic parts. The first part is somewhat irrelevant but essential to the whole and that part is the vehicle itself. The vehicle is further divided into the elemental systems of any vehicle (also called the vehicular components) such as the chassis, the engine and the controls. Once a vehicle has been assembled the actual 'temporal components' are added giving the vehicle the ability to travel through time.
The first class of time machines has three parts besides the vehicle that are intrinsic to the ability of the time machine to move through time. The first-most and most required temporal component is the chronic-trigger. The chronic-trigger is the part that actually initiates the disruption of time and allows the vehicle to move through time and sequence either forward or backward to the past or future. Without this part the vehicle would not be a time machine.
The second most and absolutely most needed temporal component is the flux-capacitor which actually controls the flow of time relevant to the vehicle and its occupants. Without this part the first most temporal component would simply erase the time machine from dimensional sequence by sending it simultaneously to every hour of the past and future, effectively erasing it from existence.
The third most and definitely important temporal component is the tachometer which measures time itself and tells the timetraveler where or rather when they have arrived. The tachometer is also the part of the controls that allows the timetraveler to set coordinates to arrive at. Without this temporal component timetravel occurs seemingly at random, with no immediate way to know if the time machine has brought the timetraveler to the past or future or how far in either direction. Likewise, there is no obvious way to return to the point-of-origin for the time machine except by chance.
The second class of time machine is significantly more advanced than the first class. The most important difference is that additional 'advanced components' have been added to the vehicle which either enhance the vehicle itself or add to the functions of the temporal components, thereby making a much more powerful time machine There are four of these parts which could be added by a time-traveler to his time machine and each operates independently These advanced components are the force-field, tachyon-amplifier, continuum-transfunctioner and paradox-inhibitor. The force-field is a shield protecting the time machine to varying degrees. The tachyon-amplifier or teleporter is a space travel device allowing instantaneous travel from one point in space to another. The continuum-transfunctioner is a powerful object with mysterious abilities to alter physical reality. Finally, the paradox-inhibitor can be used to prevent any kind of contradictions or paradoxes caused by timetravel.
The third class of time machine is so far advanced that everything that could be included in the components of the first or second classes are merely features taken for granted. In addition to automatically having all of the features of the first two classes, these earlier systems are so far advanced that they are virtually fail safe with no known examples of any system and its redundant safety features ever actually failing and causing any kind of serious problem. For this reason, third class machines are often referred to by the civilizations that manufacture them as 'legal' time machines indicating that inventors making clumsy prototypes along the timestream are operating unauthorized. The third class of time machine is so common that their existence indicates that another sub class is possible. Time machines built illegally might have components cobbled together from third class and other classes. While a time machine like this would probably be better than a second class time machine it is also probably not as good as a professionally manufactured one. It is impossible to predict the abilities of a sub class time machine for it might also be so awesome that is almost equals a fourth class.
Fourth class time machines are so advanced that they actually exist outside of space and time and do not have components that can be recognized as electronics or machine parts. Instead, they are operated by the will of their operators and appear to function as magic even to another time traveler that has seen very high tech societies. Fourth class is restricted to inter-dimensional or alien explorers that have achieved levels of technology impossible to comprehend even for individual members of their own species which is surely invisible to lesser intelligences. For a human to possess one of these time machines would indicate that they have somehow reached a technological singularity where technology itself is abandoned for a much higher form of physical manipulation that cannot be understood by a mere biological intelligence. Fourth class machines are therefore actually sentient and serve their operator with god-like power."