Jasper Fforde_Thursday Next_05 by First Among Sequels

Author:First Among Sequels
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Thursday (Fictitious Character), Next, Great Britain, Mystery Fiction, Women Sleuths, Fiction, Women Detectives - Great Britain, English Mystery & Suspense Fiction, Time Travel, Mystery, Mystery & Detective - General, Fantasy Fiction, Characters and Characteristics in Literature, Detective, Women Detectives, Mystery & Detective, Thursday (Fictitious character), Fiction - Mystery, General, Books and Reading, Fantasy, Suspense
ISBN: 9780786298433
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2007-07-01T05:00:00+00:00

I knew why it worked but not how. Indeed, I was suspicious that perhaps there wasn’t an explanation at all—or indeed any need for one. It was something we called an “abstract narrative imperative”: They work solely because it’s expedient that they do. The BookWorld is like that. Full of wholly improbable plot devices that are there to help grease the storytelling cogs. I paused so they could both watch the proceedings for a moment. Thursday5 made no secret of her fascination, but Thursday1–4 stifled a faux yawn. Despite this, she still looked around. It was hard not to be impressed—the machines stretched off into the hazy distance almost as far as you could see. Technicians scurried like ants over the whirring machinery checking dials, oiling, venting off steam and filling out reports on clipboards. Others moved between machines with trolleys full of papers to be filed, and the air was full of the smell of hot oil and steam. Above our heads a series of clanking shafts and flapping leather belts brought power to the engines, and the combined clatter and hum in the vast chamber sounded like a cascading waterfall.

“Five hundred machines on each floor!” I shouted above the tumult. “With each one capable of handling up to fifty thousand concurrent readings. The ones in the blue overalls are the storycode technicians, known affectionately as ‘word monkeys.’ They keep the engines running smoothly, clean out the dialogue injectors and make sure there isn’t a buildup of irony on the compressors. The man dressed in the white lab coat is the ‘text collector.’ There is a reader echo that pings back to the engine to throughput the next word, so we can use that to check if the book is running true to the author’s original wishes. Any variance is termed a ‘textual anomaly’ and is caught in the waste gate of the echo skimmers, which are those large copper things on the top.”

“This is all really fascinating technological stuff,” observed Thursday1–4 drily, “but I’m waiting to see how it relates to pianos.”

“It doesn’t, O sarcastic one. It’s called education.”

“Pointless exposition, if you ask me.”

“She’s not asking you,” retorted Thursday5.

“Exactly,” I replied, “and some people enjoy the techie stuff. Follow me.”

I opened an arched oak door that led off the engine floor and into the administrative section of Text Grand Central, a labyrinth of stone corridors lit by flaming torches affixed to the walls. It was insufferably gloomy but economical—part of the unfinished Gothic Horror novel from which all of TGC was fashioned. As soon as the door closed, the noise from the main engine floor ceased abruptly.

“I was just trying to explain,” I said, “how we find out about narrative flexations. Most of the time, the anomalies are just misreads and lazy readers getting the wrong end of the stick, but we have to check everything, just in case.”

“I can get this on the Text Grand Central tour for twenty shillings and with better company,” said Thursday1–4, looking pointedly at Thursday5.

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