One of Our Thursdays Is Missing - Jasper Fforde [62]
I passed the big viewing windows, where I had stood with the real Thursday when she was my mentor, and peered out at a BookWorld that appeared deceptively orderly. Because I was quite high and the island dished to fit snugly on the inside face of the sphere, I could clearly see every part of it, from the volcanoes in the far north all the way down to Vanity Island off the southern tip. I could even see my own series as a dark smudge in the distance.
I was escorted away from the viewing windows and walked past the public gallery above the debating chamber. There was a session in progress, and although it was being conducted in Courier Bold, the antiquated yet universal language of the BookWorld, I could make out that it was a discussion about the possibility of Text Sea levels rising due to the advent of e-books. I’d heard about this issue. The argument went that because e-books were composed almost entirely of electrons and barely any ink and paper at all, the scrawl trawlers’ work would be cut by 90 percent overnight, and there was a possibility for inundation of the low-lying areas of the BookWorld—essentially Maritime and Disaster. This argument was countered by a delegate who maintained that e-books were the way of the future, and since the power of a book is undiminished irrespective of the carrier medium, no such panic was necessary. Still another delegate suggested that the advent of e-books might actually increase the demand for new material and thus cause a shortage of words—something for which the BookWorld must be prepared by the construction of more scrawl trawlers and the training of extra scrawlermen. All three were experts, and all three had conflicting views. I was reminded of Clarke’s Second Law of Egodynamics: “For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert.”
“Come on,” said one of the Plaids. “We’re not bleeding tour guides.”
We walked down a corridor, past more security, then arrived at an opulent antechamber with expansive views across the BookWorld.
“Miss Next?” said a friendly clerk holding a clipboard. “The senator will see you now.”
18.
Senator Jobsworth
Dark Reading Matter: the hypothetical last resting place of books never published, ideas never penned and poems held only in the heart by poets who died without passing them on. Theoretical bibliologists have proved that the Background Story Radiation was appreciably more than the apparent quantity of STORY in the BookWorld. No one had any idea where it might be or how you could reach it. DRM’s existence remained theoretical, at best.
Bradshaw’s BookWorld Companion (4th edition)
The senator was sitting behind his desk as I was ushered into his office. Several men and women dressed in the uniform of almost every military conflict there was were in attendance, as well as a couple of high-ranking generals, Colonel Barksdale and Commander Herring, the chief of staff.
“Would you excuse us?” said the senator, and everyone except Red Herring and Colonel Barksdale filed out, looking at me suspiciously as they did so. I stood in front of Jobsworth’s desk while he finished what he was doing. I didn’t know which book he had come from, but wagging tongues suggested he was an illegal immigrant from Quackery, a subgenre within Lies & Self-Delusion, just off the north coast. I don’t think anyone ever raised it with him, or if they did, no answer was forthcoming. It didn’t really much matter, since Jobsworth had been the overall leader of the Council of Genres for as long as it had been in existence, and his unassailable