Almost

Folded into quarters, the map shows a perfectly ordinary stretch of railway. Open it fully and the line ends outside a town called Almost. The station appears on both sides of a fold, with different opening hours.

The mapmaker explains that one station was drawn on Tuesday, when the railway was expected to reach the town, and the other on Friday, when the railway company had revised its plans. He sees no reason to suppress either account. The ticket clerk would prefer him to choose.

A road continues from the station to the town hall, but the distance is given as “before lunch.” Beyond the town hall there is a bridge with one end marked Proposed and the other marked Completed. Both ends appear to be standing on the same bank.

The museum asked for a corrected edition. The mapmaker supplied an envelope large enough to hold the original without folding it, together with a bill for the envelope. He maintains that this resolves the station problem, provided the map is never closed.

Catalogue note: fictional cartography, unsuitable for travel planning. We have retained the envelope because it is the only part of the collection that does exactly what it says.