> "Hither and yon, then thither beyon'

> Come one, come all

> Hither before thither, then ever and ever

> Come one, then yon"

> -Book of Everless 46:2

"The team of television science-spectacle stars, had long ago run out of actual cool stuff to do. It was then that a strange book appeared upon their doorstep, so to say. An intern had opened it, read from its strange designs and alchemy formulas and shown it to the producer." The speaker paused, continued:

"They had soon realized they had some kind of gold mine, some kind of mother-lode. Here in this book they held were ancient mysteries. Known before they were discovered by Leidenfrost, Mpemba, Hawking, Möbius, Kaku, Abbot, Pthagorus and Aristotle in just the first chapter. There were more, of course, the likes of which the world had never known. Secrets that are hidden from mankind in plain sight." Detective Albright Pendrakön spoke without any kind of emphasis.

His listener was an old friend from a very long time ago. Even longer than the decades, after the last three years. The listener couldn't grasp the tone-of-voice of his long-lost buddy:

A flat kind of speech that meant that he wasn't just tired. He wasn't just exhausted. He wasn't just burned-out. His flat tone-of-voice went far beyond those levels of depletion.

"Sir? What happened to them? What happened to those people, in their shop? They were filming something. Some experiment. What is it?" Able Darter asked the Detective nearly the same question he had asked at the beginning, before it had all really begun.

It had all begun the moment Detective Pendrakön had opened the book on the table. It had been conveniently behind the blast shield and whatever had happened in the film-studio workshop of the science show 'Science Busters' had not damaged the old rotten book. He had read from it and seen some of its bizarre inscriptions. Alchemy, but also science.

Forbidden. That is what Detective Pendrakön had concluded. He had always been an atheist or an agnostic. He wasn't sure which one he qualified as, but he didn't believe in the supernatural. Beyond man, there was nothing, right?

He looked around with eyes that had seen too much now. He had been following this book's path of destruction for three years. First the case in Kosovo. Then it had appeared in Morocco. Then in a village in Uttar Pradesh, somehow. Then Chicago. Then rumors of it in Paris. Now here. Three years and always the same thing. A mysterious book. Experimentation and sudden success and productivity; whenever moral-ambition had fallen into decline.

Then this.

He looked at the destruction all around him. Really looked at it, even though his eyes were tired of seeing it. There was no clue, no way to understand what had caused all the death and carnage and wreckage and ruin. Nothing could have been mixed chemically or otherwise to cause such a mess. It looked like a bomb made of baking goods had happened somehow. But all lab results had proven inconclusive as to what they had been messing with.

Never had he gotten to the scene of the crime before the book disappeared. He had known of the book, this book that had names that always meant 'Ever-less'. Not 'forever' or 'without-end'. Just that one meaning: without.

Without what? Ever-less from what? What was this word? This impossible title, describing what?

Detective Pendrakön had always found it to be the lack of decipherable clues. He had been hired initially by the American Embassy in Kosovo. Then he had quickly followed the trail to Morocco, chasing those that had left with the book during all the media hype. It is what they had wanted more than a solved case, the actual book itself. It had turned out, upon arriving in Morocco, that his employers were actually from the CIA, and sending him, sending little ol' Detective Pendrakön, was a tactical maneuver, instead of sending one of their own, or anyone they could trust. They were using him to ferret it out, he followed the book and they followed him. Classic.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Morocco had been a place of death. The body count had risen to six people in Morocco, all killed by messing with the book, a total of six deaths since Detective Pendrakön had taken the case. Two people had died in Kosovo, before the book was stolen. The thieves had known its value and had a buyer. The clues were a spider web that had filled page after page of notebooks. Then when he had followed their return to India, hoping they still had the book, his notes had been taken. The CIA? Not hardly, they knew a lot more than he did before he was ever involved. It had been someone else. Someone looking for the book.

The whole village had died. They had made this stuff. The same stuff. They were eating it, apparently. Then they tried another recipe and it had been the same devastation that Detective Pendrakön was looking at in this film studio. The same kind of wreckage as the first two crime scenes. No survivors, but the book had vanished.

Only to emerge a year later in Chicago. Detective Pendrakön had stopped touring the Taj Nagari and gone home. Literally.

They had baited him to find the book and several of his old friends had paid the price. All of them had been 'suicided' one by one. The M.O. of the CIA. Detective Pendrakön had not been rogue before his friends had died, but he had trusted nobody ever since. Instead he started playing their game on their mutual home-turf. He had killed a CIA agent four and a half weeks later. Shot him five times and left his body in the hotel room. The meeting had gotten him back on the case, because the agent had been carrying a file that had gotten Detective Pendrakön up-to-date on the whereabouts of the book.

Seemed some nobody horror-writer had bought it in a used bookstore, as unlikely as that seemed. The Book of Everless had ended up in some back-alley bookstore guarded by large rats and a one-eyed cat. He had gotten in and snooped around and the receipt ledger had said that the student and small-time writer had gone home with the tome after paying twenty one dollars and sixty six cents. Then the CIA had gone after the young man and he had gotten paranoid and ditched it.

After two seasons with their ratings sky-rocketing the Discovery Channel show Science Busters had been busted, scientifically, by their discovery.

"Hither thee, hither here,

A secret comes, then one is gone,

Gone one, yon all,

These fourteen ingredients,

mix one, mix all"

-Book of Everless 46:9

Detective Pendrakön flipped absently through the pages and looked at the only friend he had left, a physics professor named Able Darter. He had not called him here, but they had a mutual interest in this place. Able Darter had been the teacher that had sent the interns here that had been wiped out in the last experiment. Along with the rest of the show's cast.

"I am sorry about all of this." Detective Pendrakön told his friend. They had both gone to MIT a long time ago and had shared more than just a few things. That had been a long time ago.

"I had to be here. I have to know what this is about, Albie." Able Darter spoke with reverence for the dead. They were there long after the police had closed the case. The scene of the accident had included the book. It had just sat there, irrelevant to the official local investigation. Just an accident. The book hadn't even been documented on the reports. It had just been overlooked in sight of twisted and shattered destruction and blown apart human bodies.

"You called me 'Albie', haven't heard it in so long." Detective Pendrakön said distantly. Saying it the way he did, with so much nostalgia and a longing for years gone by, made Able feel sorry for him.

"What is that?" Able asked at last. He had, of course, noticed the way his old friend was treating the book. Like it was the most terrible thing in the world. Worse than the horror all around them: all of it festooned in yellow caution tape and crisscrossed with police tape.

"I cannot tell you. It isn't safe to know certain things. It isn't safe to know what this is." Detective Pendrakön said cryptically.

"It is just an old book." Able frowned.

"That is correct, sir." Detective Pendrakön agreed. His tone was flat still, but then it broke and he said with great emotional emphasis:

"Now go home. Go home to your family. Cherish them and forget this. Do it for me. Please."

"Okay" Able agreed after a long moment of hearing the echo of his old friend's sudden shift from a flat tone to emotion. He got up and left.

Detective Pendrakön was alone.

He trembled.

Wept.