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By Root 851 0

trawlers rode gently in the swell, grammasites wheeling above the mast tops, hoping to dart down and snatch a dropped article. On the dockside was the day’s catch. Most scrawlers simply netted the words that basked upon the surface for a quick and easy sale to the wordsmiths, while others deep-trawled for binary clause systems, whereby a verb and a noun had clumped together in a symbiotic relationship to form a protosentence. But even these hardened scrawlers were in awe of those who hunted fully formed sentences. These weatherbeaten sea dogs would sail far across the Text Sea in search of an entire paragraph, a descriptive zinger or even an original comedy monologue—the elusive Moby-Shtick that legends speak of.

Facing the docks and beyond the coils of ropes, nets, harpoons and infinitive splitters were several rows of single-story workshops where the words and letters were crocheted, knitted, sewed, glued, riveted or nailed together into sentences, depending on the softness of the prose to which they were destined. The completed sentences were either rough-sorted into bundles and sold direct to the Well of Lost Plots or woven into standard paragraphs on power looms, the nouns, verbs and adjectives left loose so the end users could make their own choices.

The Buick pulled to a stop outside the main entrance of the Great Library, and we climbed out. The library was housed in a towering Gothic skyscraper that stood as a reminder of the BookWorld before it was remade. Back then the area below the Great Library had been simply unexplored jungle. All that was swept away in the nine minutes of the remaking. The BookWorld may be slow when it comes to changing fashions and storytelling conventions, but it can rebuild itself in a flash if required.

I paused for a moment. It was impossible not to be impressed by the Great Library, and this in a world noted for its superlative structures, settings and depth. Just by way of example, the landscape inside Lord of the Rings was so stunning and so stupendous that it could be absorbed as a form of nourishment. The huge tourism opportunities within the trilogy had been long understood and exploited, and even though the battles were exciting and fun to watch, most people went only for the valleys, rivers, waterfalls, crags, trees and moss.

I stepped into the lobby of the library and paid my respects to those names on the Boojumorial—a marble tablet that commemorated Jurisfiction agents from both the RealWorld and the BookWorld who had lost their lives in the protection of the written word. They may have been carbon- or text-based, but here they were equal; no preference was given to the real over the imaginary. My companions, however, due either to indifference or to long acquaintance with the “Honored Erased,” paid it no heed at all. We walked towards the circular void that ran through the building, and I looked up. Twenty-six floors above us, the glazed roof was just visible. Twenty-six floors of every book that had ever been written, and here logged faithfully in alphabetical order for mostly serial-continuity purposes. It wasn’t necessary to have the library anymore, but it paid to have a backup in case something went wrong. And something always did go wrong. Although infuriating, it was unavoidable. With all the drama at hand, it was inevitable that the BookWorld would spontaneously erupt into intrigue, which would then set off a chain reaction of unexpected consequence. If the BookWorld were itself a book, it would be self-writing.

I glanced down. Below me were the twenty-six basements that made up the Well of Lost Plots—the place where all books are built. As I looked, I could see flashes of light as inspiration fired off in small bursts of energy. A really good idea could burn brightly for many months and give nearby books-in-progress much-needed warmth.

We entered the elevator, and I felt myself grow increasingly apprehensive as the ancient lift slowly clanked its way to the top. The senator’s summons might have been related to Bradshaw’s recent request, to our chance meeting