 The Engine begins with Noon using an existing text and then applying different 'filter gates' that edit the text into something new.Examples of these gates include 'enhance' which creates elements of beauty in the text, and 'ghost edit'; this kills the text and calls up a ghost to haunt the text.The "Codex" edition of the book was illustrated by Daniel Allington and has an introduction by Michael Bracewell, explaining the "Cobralingus Engine".