Aged Plant Fibers and Ink
I am very proud of how this story turned out, and I am grateful to Zooscape for publishing it, even if I do not like how the publisher has embraced generative AI. After a peculiar night at a wine bar, I wondered... Would an alien race, with senses different from that of a human, understand anything humanity has left behind? What would a scent-oriented species get out of humanity's printed volumes? The volumes mentioned are books I have sniffed. Aged books published years ago, including one volume I bought and then sat on for years. When I bought it, the pages had no age smell, but in the few short years I had it, the book had aged enough to have a scent. It wasn't that old. I remember thinking this copy of the John Varley Reader should not smell old yet! I wondered how nonhumans would interpret that. Would a scent-based species even think to read the text on the page, or would the scent be the information they expect? Could humanity be remembered for its ability to produce un...
