Shelfmark Hollow

A download request came for range—
The bytes were exceeding and strange.
Five-hundred to thousand,
When file was just loathsome—
Four hundred bytes was the change.

On a shelf full of books standing tight,
Shelfmark found the missing inch right.
Between books so sound,
The index was found—
No space, yet possession in sight.

An index was indexed that day—
Between two consecutive—the way.
It existed, somehow,
On nobody’s brow,
Yet the indexer said, “I can say!”

The request was entirely outside,
The document range was denied.
But Shelfmark agreed,
“You may have this deed—
The bytes that forever don’t hide.”

“You may have this portion,” she said,
“That never existed instead.”
The bytes never born,
The file never worn,
Were served up like phantom bread.

The shelves held their books very tight,
With nothing but darkness and light.
She audited air,
Found nothing was there,
Yet marked it as properly sighted.

When asked for the end and beyond,
Her answer was eerily fond:
“That range doesn’t exist,
But I’ll let you assist
In getting the null and the frond.”

The missing inch kept on being found
In places where nothing had sound.
The shelfmark was hollow,
The range, easy to swallow,
And nothing came up from the ground.