The Well of Lost Plots

I murmured into my mobile footnoterphone.

'Go, Mimi, go!'[25]

Everyone in the Starlight Room reacted slightly to the distant explosion. Tweed steadied himself and spun round to glare at me.

'What was that?'

I patted him patronisingly on the shoulder.

'It's called levelling the playing field, Harris.'

33 UltraWord�

'Storycode Engine: The name given to the ImaginoTransference machines used by Text Grand Central to throughput the books in the Great Library to the readers in the Outland. On a single machine floor at TGC there are five hundred of these cast-iron, shiny brass and polished mahogany colossi. A single engine can cope with up to a thousand simultaneous readings of the same book at up to six words per second per reader. With a hundred similar floors, TGC is able to handle fifty million different readings, although the lowest thirty floors are generally only used when a long-awaited best-seller is published. Using the UltraWord� system, only twelve engines would be needed to handle up to one hundred million simultaneous readings at speeds of up to twenty words per second.'

XAVIER LIBRIS � UltraWord� � the Ultimate Reading Experience

Hamlet and Jude Fawley exchanged glances and shrugged their shoulders as I walked up the steps and looked out at the crowd. Heathcliff, for whom all of this was merely delaying his moment of honour, glowered at me angrily. Oddly, I didn't feel at all nervous � only a sort of numb elation. I would do some serious throwing up in the toilets later, but for now I was fine.

'Good evening,' I said to the utterly silent audience. 'No one would deny that we need more plots, but there are one or two things about UltraWord� that you should know.'

'Grand Central?!' said Tweed uselessly into his mobile footnoter-phone. 'Tweed to Text Grand Central, come in, please!'

I didn't have long. As soon as TGC knew what had happened they could write themselves another footnoterphone link.

'First, there are no new plots. In all the testing that has been done, not one has been described or hinted at. Libris, would you care to outline a "new" plot now?'

'They won't be available until UltraWord� is online,' he said, glaring at Tweed, who was still trying to contact Text Grand Central.

'Then they are untested. Second,' I went on, 'UltraWord� carries a thrice-read-only feature. This means no more book lending. Libraries will close down overnight, second-hand bookshops will be a thing of the past. Words can educate and liberate � but TGC want to make them a saleable commodity and nothing more.'

The crowd started to murmur to one another. Not one of those murmurs you usually get in the BookWorld, just a descriptive term, but a real murmur � seven million people all discussing what I had just said.

'Orlick!' I heard Tweed shout. 'Get to TGC � run if you have to � and get the footnoterphone repaired!'

'This is preposterous!' yelled Libris, almost apoplectic with rage. 'Lies, damnable lies!'

'Here,' I said, tossing Deane's copy of The Little Prince on to the table right at the front. The displacement field technology worked perfectly � a single book landed on each of the hundred thousand tables.

'This is an UltraWord� book,' I explained. 'Read the first page and pass it on. See how long it takes before you can't open it.'

'Tweed!?' yelled Libris, who was still next to me on the stage and becoming more agitated by the second. 'Do something!'

I pointed at Xavier.

'WordMaster Libris could refute my arguments with ease, simply by rewriting the facts. He could have unblocked the book already but for one thing � all the lines are down to Text Grand Central. As soon as they are up again, each of these books will be unblocked. Perkins was murdered when he found out what they were up to. He told Snell and he was killed too. Miss Havisham didn't know but TGC suspected that she did, so she had to be silenced.'

The Bellman had risen to his feet and was walking to the front of the stage.

'Is this true?' he asked, eyes blazing.

'No, Your Bellship,' replied Libris, 'on my honour. As soon as we get back online we will refute every single claim the misinformed Miss Next has made!'

The Bellman looked at me.

'Better get a move on, young lady. You have the crowd but for how long I have no idea.'

'Third, and more importantly, all books written using the UltraWord� system can be fixed direct from Text Grand Central � there will be no need for Jurisfiction. Everything we do can be achieved by low-skilled technicians at TGC.'

'Ah!' said Libris, interrupting. 'Now we get to your real point � fearful of your job, perhaps?'

'Not my job, Libris � my real home is in the Outland. I would applaud a BookWorld in which we had no need of a policing agency � but not one where we lose the Well of Lost Plots!'

There was a gasp from the crowd; seven million people all drawing breath at the same time.

'No need for plotsmiths, echolocators, imaginators, holesmiths, grammatacists and spellcheckers. No need for Generics to be trained because characters will be constructed with the minimum of description necessary to do the job. I'm talking about the wholesale destruction of everything that is intuitive in writing � to be replaced by the formulaic. The Well would be dismantled and run instead by a few technicians at TGC who will get Ultra Word� to write books with no input from any of you.'

'Then what will happen to us?' said a voice from the front.

'Replaced,' I said simply, 'replaced by a string of nouns and verbs. No hopes, no dreams, no future. No more holidays because you won't need or want one � you will all be reduced to nothing more than words on a page, lifeless as the ink and paper that you will become.'

There was silence.

'Proof!' cried Libris. 'All you have demonstrated so far is that you can spin a yarn as well as any plotsmith! Where is your proof?'

'Very well,' I said slowly. 'Mrs Bradshaw? The skylark, if you please.'

Mrs Bradshaw produced the small cage from beneath the table and handed it up to me.

'I have seen an UltraWord� character with my own eyes and they are empty husks; if an old book is read in UltraWord� it is very good � but if it is written in UltraWord� it will be flat and trite, devoid of feeling, the SmileyBurger of the storytelling world. The Well may be wasteful and long winded, but every book read in the Outland was built there � even the greats.'

I took the skylark from the cage.

'This was the proof that Perkins died for.

I placed the small songbird beneath the ImaginoTransference device and the skylark's description was transmitted to the audience.

Oh Lark so quick of wing,
Dive down from up on high,
Perch proud upon the post
Melt darkness with thy cry.

Come make my spirits soar,
Dance here and hover long,
Tempt summer with your trill,
Sweet stream of endless song.

The audience reacted favourably to the words and there was a smattering of applause, despite their nervousness.

'What's wrong with that?' insisted Libris. 'UltraWord� takes language and uses it in ways more wonderful than you can imagine!'

The Bellman looked at me.

'Miss Next,' he demanded, 'explain yourself

'Well,' I said slowly, 'that wasn�t an UltraWord� skylark. I picked it up from the Library this morning.'

There was an expectant hush as Mrs Bradshaw produced a second bird seemingly identical to the first and handed it up to me.

25

Mimi nodded to Quasimodo, who pulled the string. The steel plate shot out and Das Kapital and Mein Kampf came together, their conflicting ideologies starting to generate heat. The books turned brown, smouldered for a moment and then, as Mimi and Quasimodo scurried away, the two volumes reached critical mass, turned white hot, and exploded. The detonation echoed down the footnoterphone pipes, followed by a deathly silence. They had done it. The footnoterphone conduit was destroyed � Libris and Tweed were cut off from Text Grand Central.