Fiction Pick of the Week: "Athena Magazine"

Two friends found a literary magazine; fantastical complications and potentials ensue. From Aira's newest collection, The Musical Brain.

"So, predictably, we began to consider a first issue that would be thirty-six-fold, so to speak. An issue made up of numbers 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12-13-14-15-16-17-18-19-20-21-22-23-24-25-26-27-28-29-30-31-32-33-34-35-36. That would allow for an almost total flexibility. Why hadn’t we thought of it before? Why had we wasted our time with 'triples' and 'quadruples' and 'decuples' when there was such an obvious solution right under our noses? The printer’s 'sheet' should have shown us the way right from the start, from the moment we discovered its existence, the famous “sheet” that was unfolding now before our eyes, like a rose in time."