“See that? See how the little squib there just coincidentally happens to thematically match what we’re talking about now? Don’t you think that’s weird? The book, just like the concept of the ‘present,’ is a fiction. Which isn’t to say it’s not real. It’s as real as anything else in this science fictional universe. As real as you are. It’s a staircase in a house built by the construction firm of Escher and Sons. It’s fiction, not engineering. It’s a self-voiding fiction, an impossible object and yet, there it is: the object. The book. You. Here it is. Here you are.
