The Guides of Mechafauna Valley (early access)

Dear Reader,

Recently I spent a very long weekend house-sitting for a friend who (being a time traveler by profession) will have been called out of the century on short notice for a work-related matter.

It was a lovely little country house by a lake without a name, and though I had hoped the change of scenery would bring inspiration for my derivative novella “The Rogue Chair,” I instead found myself doing everything but. After scrubbing the house to an inch of its life, chopping enough wood for two consecutive winters (you never know with my friend), and befriending a neighborhood coyote, I resorted to sifting through the inevitable detritus of a time traveler’s attic.

And that’s where, squatting among a landslide of youthful nostalgia for eras I’d never known --lead-pewter soldiers, a hovering skateboard which no longer hovered, a veritable ratking of friendship bracelets-- I first read the document you’re about to read.

“THE GUIDES OF MECHAFAUNA” by B. West is a game made for children, by a young park ranger barely out of childhood themself. I reproduce it here as I found it: photocopied on a sheaf of mint and salmon office paper, the pasted-on images sometimes almost illegible. But the game is playable and the glimpse of my friend’s future childhood is captivating.
I hope you have as much fun playing THE GUIDES OF MECHAFAUNA VALLEY as I am sure Ranger West’s charges did, some day to come.

Yours with nostalgia for a mechanical Miocene yet to be,

BESW