The Books
Blank Map Book. Sleep with it under your pillow. In the morning, the book will show you a map to what you are seeking. Perhaps not to what think you are seeking.
Choose Your Own Adventure. Digital book. Choices at pivotal moments will be made based on your reader profile, your recent search history, your streaming choices, and so on. The cheap version has a few easily-guessed tropes. The more expensive the book, the more variety in the stories and the more targeted the personalization.
The Afterword
From Deep Water Prompts on Tumblr. “The otherwise blank map requires the book blood of the seeker to work. I don’t have any. ‘You need a human,’ says the seller with an evil grin, ‘one who wants what you want, and just as badly.’
“Edit: this has a typo and I’m at work so can I ask you all to just please replace the word book with BLOOD? Thank you” DWP: 3069. Hat tip to N for leading me to Deep Water.
I misread the unedited version as “blank map book” rather than “blank map requires the book.” A fortuitous mistake.
The trope of What You Really Want shows up in a Christmas short story by Connie Willis – possibly “The Pony” – and as an aside in Android’s Dream by Scalzi. “One of the great unwritten chapters of retail intelligence programming …” Goodreads: The Android’s Dream Quotes.
Free Fiction 4U. Red Wombat: Toad Words. Posted on by ursulav. Excerpt, “Love is a frog word, if spoken earnestly, and a toad word if spoken sarcastically. Frogs are not good at sarcasm.” Nota bene, other stories on this site are well-written, but are suitable for folks with higher tolerance than mine for weird & creepy. Proceed with caution. Nota nota bene, my tolerance for w&c is extremely low. You’ll probably be fine.
Onwards!
Katherine
Virtual Brush Box 
