Book excerpt: Tokharian Tales is a collection of post-futuristic seemingly science-fictional short stories set on an Earth that is being abandoned, including a love story about a scientist who falls in love with a ghost ... a romance that goes horribly wrong on the floating bridge between Hawaii and Viva-Mexico ... a story set in the Outzone, the dark underbelly of the internet ... a retro-futuristic novella about a quixotic social anarchist who dreams of spaceships during her datura trances ... storybook-tales for 67th century children about robots and replicants, osterlings and Oospheroids ... and the adventure of Shridmar Joe, Hovercipher Pro, in the most dangerous dance of a strangeous game you've ever played! Thousand years ago, the Tokharians lived in a lush oasis with orchards and vineyards where they grew gourds and peaches, melons and grapes. They had iron-smelting furnaces and Buddhist stupas. Merchants rested under mulberry trees, and in the marketplace they sold Chinese brides, Kashmir wool, Bactrian rubies and lapis-lazuli. Gone now, desert now: the oasis has dried up, and a desert wind blows sand over the shattered stupas, the stumps of mulberry trees. The Tokharians either departed or they died in the desert which overtook them. But distance yourself: the same thing is happening again as we dismantle the Earth to fly to the stars. The same desert wind blows over America, over the ruins of Santa Fe and New York City. The wats and shrines of Thailand have been unbricked, removed, and re-assembled in orbit around distant stars. Likewise, the massive Mesoamerican suntemples of Viva-Mexico have been transplanted to the jungle greens and desert sandstonewhites of other planets aroundindigo-orange stars.... About the author: Jason Murk is an existential anarchist from New Mexico who flies through the summer skies in sadhoo-tripsterly tradition in his own hovercipher. What's a hovercipher? You might as well ask what's existential anarchism - open this book and find out!