| To the Reader: There are several ways to read the online version of Tehuacana. 1. You can read it straight through, in a normal linear fashion, going from one page to the next, in numbered sequence. 2. You can read it as meta-fiction. Scattered throughout the novel, at various points whose significance may or may not be apparent, you'll encounter hyperlinked words. At any time, you can click on one of those words and you will find yourself elsewhere in the story. 3. You can read it as "random" meta-fiction. At the bottom of each page of the novel you'll see a "Random Page" link. Click there and you will go to a different part of the story. 4. At that point, you can continue to read linearly, or continue to jump using the hyperlinked words, or you can return to the "random" page for another random jump. In other words, you can mix the modes of reading at will. One further note: All pages are linked to the "random" page EXCEPT the central, "cave" sectionof the book. You can only get to those pages by reading a few pages linearly before Lafe Simpson, the main character, enters the cave. Because of the difficulty Lafe has in getting to the cave, as well as because of the nature of what he experiences in the cave, it seemed wrong to allow the reader something which Lafe certainly didn't experience, namely random, easy access to the knowledge, possibly the wisdom, he found there. Finally: Tehuacana was apparently (see O.E. Yajagar's "Finder's Comments") written several years before there was an
Internet. Yet both in concept and in realization, it seems, uncannily, to have been
written for a hyperlinked medium. The concept, after all, is that of a person at the point
of death looking back at, and possibly playing with, various scenes from his life.
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