The well of lost plots (15 page)

“Indeed,” replied the squire, stepping forward and opening a notebook, “we noticed the theft two days ago. To take so much punctuation in one hit initially sounds audacious, but perhaps the thief thought no one would notice as most readers never get that far into
Ulysses
— you will recall the theft of chapter sixty-two from
Moby-Dick
, where no one noticed? Well, this theft
was
noted, but initial reports show that readers are regarding the lack of punctuation as not a cataclysmic error but the mark of a great genius, so we’ve got some breathing space.”

“Are we sure it was a thief?” asked Beatrice. “Couldn’t it just be grammasites?”

“I don’t think so,” replied Perkins, who had made book-zoology into something closely resembling a science. “Punctusauroids are pretty rare, and to make off with so many punctuations you would need a flock of several hundred. Also, I don’t think they would have left the last full stop — that looks to me like a mischievous thief.”

“Okay,” said the Bellman, “so what are we to do?”

“The only ready market for stolen punctuation is in the Well.”

“Hmm,” mused the Bellman. “A Jurisfiction agent down there is about as conspicuous as a brass band at a funeral. We need someone to go undercover. Any volunteers?”

“It’s my case,” said Vernham Deane. “I’ll go. That is — if no one thinks themselves better qualified.”

There was silence.

“Looks like you’re it!” enthused the Bellman, writing a note on his clipboard. “Item six. As you recall, David and Catriona Balfour were lost a few weeks back. Because there can’t be much to
Kidnapped
and
Catriona
without them and Robert Louis Stevenson remains a popular author, the Council of Genres have licensed a pair of A-4 Generics to take their place. They’ll be given unlimited access to all Stevenson’s books, and I want you all to make them feel welcome.”

There was a murmuring from the collected agents.

“Yes,” said the Bellman with a resigned air, “I know they’ll never be
exactly
the same, but with a bit of luck we should be okay; no one in the Outland noticed when David Copperfield was replaced, now did they?”

No one said anything.

“Good. Item seven. As you know, I am retiring in two weeks’ time and the Council of Genres will need a replacement. All nominations are to be given direct to the Council for consideration.

He paused again.

“Item eight. As you all know, Text Grand Central have been working on an upgrade to the Book Operating System for the last fifty years—”

The assembled agents groaned. Clearly this was a matter of some contention. Snell had explained about the imaginotransference technology behind books in general, but I had no idea how it worked. Still don’t, as a matter of fact.

“Do you know what happened when they tried to upgrade SCROLL?” said Bradshaw. “The system conflict wiped out the entire library at Alexandria — they had to torch the lot to stop it spreading.”

“We knew a lot less about operating systems then, Commander,” replied the Bellman in a soothing voice, “and you can rest assured that early upgrading problems have not been ignored. Many of us have reservations about the standard version of BOOK that all our beloved works are recorded in, and I think the latest upgrade to BOOK V9 is something that we should all welcome.”

No one said anything. He had our attention.

“Good. Well, I could rabbit on all day but I really feel that it would be better to let WordMaster Libris, all the way from Text Grand Central, tell you the full story. Xavier?”

First there was OralTrad, upgraded ten thousand years later by the rhyming (for easier recall) Oral TradPlus. For thousands of years this was the
only
Story Operating System and it is still in use today. The system branched in two about twenty thousand years ago; on one side with CaveDaubPro (forerunner of PaintPlus V2.3, GrecianUrn V1.2, Sculpt-Marble V1.4 and the latest, all-encompassing SuperArtisticExpression-5). The other strand, the Picto-Phonetic Storytelling Systems, started with Clay Tablet V2.1 and went through several competing systems (Wax-Tablet, Papyrus, VellumPlus) before merging into the award-winning SCROLL, which was upgraded eight times to V3.5 before being swept aside by the all new and clearly superior BOOK V1. Stable, easy to store and transport, compact and with a workable index, BOOK has led the way for nearly eighteen hundred years.

WORDMASTER XAVIER LIBRIS,
Story Operating Systems — the Early Years

A SMALL AND RATHER pallid-looking man took his position on the dais; he could only just see over the lectern. He wore a white, short-sleeved shirt and was almost weighed down by the number of pens in his top pocket. We all took a seat and gazed at him with interest. Ultra Word™ had been the talk of the Well for ages and everyone was keen to learn whether the rumors of its technical virtuosity were true.

“Good morning, everyone,” began Libris in a nervous voice, “over the next thirty minutes I will try and explain a little about our latest operating system: BOOK Version 9, which we have code-named Ultra Word™.”

There was silence as the agents mulled this over. I got the feeling that this was not just important but
really
important. Like being at the signing of a peace accord or something. Even Bradshaw, who was no fan of technology, was leaning forward and listening with interest, a frown etched on his forehead.

Libris pulled the first sheet off a flip chart. There was a picture of an old book.

“Well,” he began, “when we first came up with the ‘page’ concept in BOOK V1, we thought we’d reached the zenith of story containment — compact, easy to read, and by using integrated PageNumber™ and Spine Title
^™
technologies, we had a system of indexing far superior to anything SCROLL could offer. Over the years—”

Here he flipped the chart over to show us varying degrees of books through the ages.

“— we have been refining the BOOK system. Illustrations were the first upgrade at 1.1, standardized spelling at V3.1 and vowel and irregular verb stability in V4.2. Today we use BOOK V8.3, one of the most stable and complex imaginotransference technologies ever devised — the smooth transfer of the written word into the reader’s imagination has never been faster.”

He stopped for a moment. We all knew that BOOK V8.3 was excellent; apart from a few typos that crept in and the variable quality of stories — neither of which were the system’s fault — it was good, very good indeed.

“Constructing the books down in the subbasements, although time-consuming, seems to work well even if it is a little chaotic.”

There were murmurs of agreement from the assembled agents; it was clear that no one much liked it down there.

“But,” went on Libris, “endlessly recycling old ideas might not hold the readers’ attention for that much longer — the Council of Genres’ own market research seems to indicate that readers are becoming bored with the sameness of plotlines.”

“I think it’s already happened,” said the Bellman, then checked himself quickly, apologized for the interruption and let Libris carry on.

“But to understand the problem we need a bit of history. When we first devised the BOOK system eighteen hundred years ago, we designed it mainly to record events — we never thought there would be such a demand for
story
. By the tenth century story usage was so low that we still had enough new plots to last over a thousand years. By the time the seventeenth century arrived, this had lowered to six hundred — but there was still no real cause for worry. Then, something happened that stretched the Operating System to the limit.”

“Mass literacy,” put in Miss Havisham.

“Exactly,” replied Libris. “Demand for written stories increased exponentially during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Ten years before
Pamela
was published in 1740, we had enough new ideas to last four hundred years; by the time of Jane Austen this had dropped to thirty. By Dickens’s time ideas were almost wholly recycled, something we have been doing on and off since the thirteenth century to stave off the inevitable. But by 1884, for all intents and purposes, we had depleted our stock of original ideas.”

There was a muttering amongst the collected Jurisfiction agents.

“
Flatland
,” said Bradshaw after pausing for a moment’s reflection. “It was the last original idea, wasn’t it?”

“Pretty much. The few leftover pieces were mopped up by the SF movement until the 1950s, but as far as
pure
ideas are concerned, 1884 was the end. We were expecting the worst — a melt-down of the whole BookWorld and a wholesale departure of readers. But that didn’t happen. Against all expectations, recycled ideas were
working
.”

“But isn’t it the way they are told?” asked Havisham in her not-to-be-argued-with voice. “Surely the
permutations
of storytelling are endless!”

“Large perhaps, but not
infinite
, Miss Havisham. What I’m trying to say is that once all the permutations are used up, there will be nowhere for us to go. The twentieth century has seen books being written and published at an unprecedented rate — even the introduction of the Procrastination 1.3 and Writer’s-Block 2.4 Outlander viruses couldn’t slow the authors down. Plagiarism lawsuits are rising in the Outland; authors are beginning to write the same books. The way I see it we’ve got a year — possibly eighteen months — before the well of fiction runs dry.”

He paused to let this sink in.

“That’s why we had to go back to the drawing board and rethink the whole system.”

He flipped the chart again and there were audible gasps. On the chart was written
32-Plot Story Systems
.

“As you know,” he went on, “every Book Operating System has at its heart the basic eight-plot architecture we inherited from OralTrad. As we used to say, ‘No one will ever need more than eight plots.’ ”

“Nine if you count
Coming of Age
,” piped up Beatrice.

“Isn’t that
Journey of Discovery
?” said Tweed.

“What’s
Macbeth
then? asked Benedict.

“
Bitter Rivalry/Revenge
, my dear,” answered Havisham.

“I thought it was
Temptation
,” mused Beatrice, who liked to contradict Benedict whenever possible.

“Please!” said the Bellman. “We could argue these points all night. And if you let Libris finish, you can.”

The agents fell silent. I guessed this was a perennial argument.

“So the only way forward,” continued Libris, “is to completely rebuild the Operating System. If we go for a thirty-two-plot basis for our stories, there will be more ideas than you or I will know what to do with. The BookWorld won’t have seen such an advance since the invention of movable type.”

“I’m always supportive of new technology, Mr. Libris,” said Lady Cavendish kindly, “but isn’t the popularity of books a fair indication of how good the current system actually is?”

“It depends what you mean by
popular
. Only thirty percent of the Outland read fiction on a regular basis — with Ultra Word™ we aim to change all that. But I’m running ahead of myself — an abundance of new ideas is only half the story. Let me carry on and tell you what other benefits the new system will give us.”

Libris flipped the chart again. This time it read,
Enhanced Features
.

“Firstly, Ultra Word™ is wholly reverse compatible with all existing novels, plays and poetry. Furthermore, new books written with this system will offer bonus features that will enhance and delight.”

“I say,” asked Bradshaw slowly, “how do you hope to improve a book?”

“Let me give you an example,” replied Libris enthusiastically. “In books that we know at present, dialogue has to be dedicated to the people who are talking as the reader has no idea who is speaking from the words alone. This can be tricky if we want a large scene with many people talking to one another — it’s very easy to get bogged down in the ‘said George,’ ‘replied Michael,’ ‘added Paul’ and suchlike; with the Ultra Word™ Enhanced Character Identification™, a reader will have no trouble placing who is speaking to whom without all those tedious dialogue markers. In addition, Ultra Word™ will be bundled with PlotPotPlus™, which gives the reader a potted précis if they are lost or have put the book down unfinished for a few months or more. Other options will be ReadZip™, PageGlow™ and three music tracks.”

“How will the reader get these new features to work?” asked Lady Cavendish.

“There will be a preferences page inserted just after the frontispiece.”

“Touch sensitive?” I asked.

“No,” replied Libris excitedly, “
read
sensitive.
Ultra
words that know when they are being read. On the preferences page you can also select WordClot™, which adjusts the vocabulary to the reader — no more difficult words, or, if you
like
difficult words, you can
increase
the vocabulary complexity.”

There was silence as everyone took this in.

“But to get back to your point, Lady Cavendish, a lot of people reject fiction because they find reading tedious and slow. At present levels the fastest throughput we can manage is about six words per second. With UltraWord™ we will have the technology to quadruple the uptake — something that will be very attractive to new readers — or slow ones.”

“Cards on the table and all that, Libris,” said Bradshaw in a loud voice. “Technology is all very well but unless we get it
absolutely
right, it could turn out to be a debacle of the highest order.”

“You didn’t like the ISBN positioning system, either, Commander,” replied Libris, “yet book navigation has never been easier.”

They stared at one another until a loud belch rent the air. It was Falstaff.

“I have lived,” he said, getting to his feet with a great deal of effort, “through much in my time; some good, some bad — I was witness to the great vowel shift and remember fond those better days when puns, fat people and foreigners were funny beyond all. I saw the novel rise and the epic poem fall, I remember when you could get blind drunk, eat yourself ill and still have change for a whore out of sixpence. I remember when water would kill you and spirits would save you; I remember—”