One of Our Thursdays Is Missing - Jasper Fforde [10]
“If you’re here to catch a glimpse of her, it’s unlikely. She dropped in once soon after the remaking, but not since then.”
“I’m really just after the work, Miss Next.”
She handed me her CV. It wasn’t long, nor particularly impressive. She was from an original manuscript sitting abandoned in a drawer somewhere in the Outland. She would have handled loss, love, uncertainty and a corkingly good betrayal. It looked like it might have been a good gig. But after fifteen years and not a single reader, it was time to move on.
“So . . . why do you want to work in my series?”
“I’m eager to enter a new and stimulating phase of my career,” she said brightly, “and I need a challenging and engaging book in which I can learn from a true professional.”
It was the usual bullshit, and it didn’t wash.
“You could get a read anywhere,” I said, handing back the CV, “so why come to the speculative end of Fantasy?”
She bit her lip and stared at me.
“I’ve only ever been read by one person at a time,” she confessed. “I took a short third-person locum inside a Reader’s Digest version of Don Quixote as Dulcinea two weeks ago. I had a panic attack when the read levels went over twenty-six and went for the Snooze.”
I heard Mrs. Malaprop drop a teacup in the kitchen. I was shocked, too. The Snooze Button was reserved only for dire emergencies. Once it was utilized, a reverse throughput capacitor on the imaginotransference engines would cause the reader instantaneous yawning, drowsiness and then sleep. Quick, simple—and the readers suspected nothing.
“You hit Snooze?”
“I was stopped before I did.”
“I’m very relieved.”
“Me, too. Rocinante had to take over my part—played her rather well, actually.”
“Did the Don notice? Rocinante playing you, I mean?”
“No.”
Carmine was just what I was looking for. Overqualified understudies rarely stayed long, but what with her being severely readerphobic, the low ReadRates would suit her down to the ground. I was mildly concerned over her eagerness to hit Snooze. To discourage misuse, every time the button was pressed, one or more kittens were put to death somewhere in the BookWorld. It was rarely used.
“Okay,” I said, “you’re hired. One caveat: You don’t get the Snooze Button access codes. Agreed?”
“Agreed.”
“Excellent. How much reading time do you have?”
“Aside from my own book, I’ve got eighty-seven pages.”
It was a lamentably small amount. A single quizzical reader hunting for obscure hidden meanings would have her in a stammering flat spin in a second.
“Get your coat and a notebook,” I said. “We’re going to go greet our new neighbors—and have a chat.”
3.
Scarlett O’Kipper
Outland tourism was banned long ago, and even full members of Jurisfiction—the BookWorld’s policing elite—were no longer permitted to cross over to the RealWorld. The reasons were many and hotly debated, but this much was agreed: Reality was a pit of vipers for the unwary. Forget to breathe, miscalculate gravity or support the wrong god or football team and they’d be sending you home in a zinc coffin.
Bradshaw’s BookWorld Companion (17th edition)
After taking a pager off the counter so Mrs. Malaprop could reach me in case a reader turned up unexpectedly, we stepped out of the main gate and walked down the street. The remade Geographic BookWorld was as its name suggested—geographic—and the neighborhoods were laid out like those in an Outland housing estate. A single road ran down between the books, with sidewalks, grass verges, syntax hydrants and trees. To the left and right were compounds that contained entire novels with all their settings. In one was a half-scale Kilimanjaro, and in another a bamboo plantation. In a third an electrical storm at full tilt.
“We’re right on the edge of Fantasy,” I explained. “Straight ahead is Human Drama, and to your right is Comedy. I’ll give you Wednesdays off, but I expect you to be on standby most of the time.”
“The more first-person time I can put in,” replied Carmine, “the better. Is there anything to do around