First Among Sequels

by Jasper Fforde

  I said instead, “I’m truly flattered.”

  “Flattered?” she inquired. “About what?”

  The ceiling departed in a cloud of swirling dust, and the walls started to erode downward with the pictures, mantel and furniture rapidly crumbling away to a fine debris that was sucked up into the whirlwind directly above us.

  “I’m flattered,” I repeated, “because you’d erase a whole book and give your own life just to be rid of me. I must have been a worthy adversary, right?”

  She sensed my change of heart and gave me a faint smile.

  “You almost defeated me,” said Thursday, “and you still might. But if I do survive this,” she added, “it is my gift to you.”

  The walls had almost gone, and the seagrass flooring was crumbling under my feet. Thursday opened a door in the kitchen, beyond which a concrete flight of steps led downward. She beckoned me to follow, and we trotted down into a spacious subterranean vault shaped like the inside of a barrel. Upon a large plinth, there were two prongs across which a weak spark occasionally fired. The noise of the wind had subdued, but I knew it was only a matter of time before the erasure reached us.

  “This is the core-containment room,” explained Thursday. “You’d know about that if you’d listened in class.”

  “How,” I asked, “is your survival a gift to me?”

  “That’s easily explained,” replied Thursday, removing some pieces of packing case from the wall to reveal a riveted iron hatch. “Behind there is the only method of escape—across the emptiness of the Nothing.”

  The inference wasn’t lost on me. The Nothing didn’t support textual life—I’d be stripped away to letters in an instant if I tried to escape across it. But Thursday wasn’t text: She was flesh and blood and could survive.

  “I can’t get out of here on my own,” she added, “so I need your help.”

  I didn’t understand to begin with. I frowned, and then it hit me. She wasn’t offering me forgiveness, a second chance or rescue—I was far too bitter and twisted for that. No, she was offering me the one thing that I would never, could never have. She was offering me redemption. After all I’d done to her, all the things I’d planned to do, she was willing to risk her life to give me one small chance to atone. And what’s more, she knew I would take it. She was right. We were more alike than I thought.

  The roof fell away in patches as the erasure started to pull the containment room apart.

  “What do I do?”

  She indicated the twin latching mechanisms that were positioned eight feet apart. I held the handle and pulled it down on the count of three. The hatch sprung open, revealing an empty, black void.

  “Thank you,” she said as the erasure crept inexorably across the room. The sum total of the book was now a disk less than eight feet across, and we were in the middle of what looked like a swirling cloud of dirt and detritus, while all about us the wind nibbled away at the remaining fabric of the book, reducing it to undescriptive textdust.

  “What will it be like?” I asked as Thursday peered out into the inky blackness.

  “I can’t tell you,” she replied. “No one knows what happens after erasure.”

  I offered her my hand to shake. “If you ever turn this into one of your adventures,” I asked, “will you make me at least vaguely sympathetic? I’d like to think there was a small amount of your humanity in me.”

  She took my hand and shook it. It was warmer than I’d imagined.

  “I’m sorry about sleeping with your husband,” I added as I felt the floor grow soft beneath my feet. “And I think this is yours.”

  And I gave her the locket that had come off when we fought.

  As soon as Thursday1–4 returned my locket, I knew that she had finally learned something about me and, by reflection, her. She was lost and she knew it, so helping me open the hatch and handing over the locket could only be altruism—the first time she had acted thus and the last time she acted at all. I climbed partially out of the hatch into the Nothing. There was barely anything left of the book at all, just the vaguest crackle of its spark growing weaker and weaker. I was still holding Thursday1–4’s hand as I saw her body start to break up, like sandstone eroded by wind. Her hair was being whipped by the currents of air, but she looked peaceful.

  She smiled and said, “I just got it.”

  “Got what?”

  “Something Thursday5 said about hot baths and a martini.”

  Her face started to break down, and I felt her hand crumble within mine like crusty, sun-baked sand. There was almost nothing left of Fiasco at all, and it was time to go.

  She smiled again, and her face fell away into dust, her hand turned to sand in mine, and the spark crackled and went out. I let go and was—

  The textual world that I had become so accustomed to returned with a strange wobbling sensation. I found myself in another core-containment room pretty much identical to the first—aside from the spark, which crackled twenty times more brightly as readers made their way through the book. I picked myself up, shut and secured the hatch and made my way up the steps and toward the exit, fastening the locket around my neck as I did so.

  I couldn’t really say I was saddened by Thursday1–4’s loss, as she would almost certainly have killed me and done untold damage if she’d lived. But I couldn’t help feeling a sense of guilt that I might have done more for her. After all, it wasn’t strictly her fault—she’d been written that way. I sighed. She had found a little bit of me in her, but I knew there was some of her in me, too.

  I cautiously opened the containment room door and peered out. I was in a collection of farm buildings constructed of red brick and in such a dilapidated state of disrepair it looked as if they were held together only by the moss in the brickwork and the lichen on the roof. I spotted Adam Lambsbreath through the kitchen window, where he was scraping ineffectually at the washing-up with a twig. I made the sign for a telephone through the window at him, and he pointed toward the woodshed across the yard. I ran across and pushed open the door.

  There was something nasty sitting in the corner making odd slavering noises to itself, but I paid it no heed other than to reflect that Ada Doom had been right after all, and found the public footnoterphone that I needed. I dialed Bradshaw’s number and waited impatiently for him to answer.

  “It’s me,” I said. “Your plan worked: She’s dust. I’m in Cold Comfort Farm, page sixty-eight. Can you bring a cab to pick me up? This is going to be one serious mother of a debrief.”

  38.

  The End of Time

  No one ever did find out who the members of the ChronoGuard Star Chamber were, nor what their relationship with the Goliath Corporation actually was. But it was noted that some investment opportunities taken by the multinational were so fortuitous and so prudent and so longsighted that they seemed statistically impossible. There were never any whistle-blowers, so the extent of any chronuption was never known, nor ever would be.

  B y the time I arrived back home, it was dark. Landen heard my key in the latch and met me in the hallway to give me a long hug, which I gratefully received—and returned.

  “What’s the news on the reality book show?”

  “Canceled. Van de Poste has been on the TV and radio explaining that due to a technical error, the project has been shelved—and that the stupidity surplus would be discharged instead by reinvigorating the astronomically expensive and questionably useful Anti-Smite shield.”

  “And Pride and Prejudice?”

  “Running exactly as it ever did. But here’s the good bit: All the readers who bought copies of the book to see the Bennets dress up as bees continued reading to see if Lizzie and Jane would get their men and if Lydia would come to a sticky end. Naturally, all the new readers were delighted at what happened—so much so that people with the name of Wickham have had to go into hiding.”

  “Just like the old days,” I said with a smile.

  The passion for books was returning. I thought for a
moment and walked over to the bookcase, pulled out my copy of The Great Samuel Pepys Fiasco and riffled through the pages. They were blank, every single one.

  “How are Friday and the girls?” I asked, dropping the book into the wastepaper basket.

  “Friday is out. The girls are in bed.”

  “And Pickwick?”

  “Still bald and a bit dopey. So…you managed to do what you set out to do?”

  “Yes,” I said quietly, “and Land, I can’t lie to you anymore. The Acme Carpets stuff is just a front.”

  “I know,” he said softly. “You still do all that SpecOps work, don’t you?”

  “Yes. But, Land, that’s a front, too.”

  He placed a hand on my cheek and stared into my eyes. “I know about Jurisfiction as well, Thurs.”

  I frowned. I hadn’t expected this. “You knew? Since when?”

  “Since about three days after you’d said you’d given it up.”

  I stared at him. “You knew I was lying to you all those years?”

  “Pumpkin,” he said as he gently ushered me into the house and closed the door behind us, “you do love me, don’t you?”

  “Yes, but—”

  He put his finger to my lips. “Hang on a minute. I know you do, and I love it that you do. But if you care too much about upsetting me, then you won’t do the things you have to do, and those things are important—not just to me but to everyone.”

  “Then…you’re not cross I’ve been lying to you for fourteen years?”

  “Thursday, you mean everything to me. Not just because you’re cute, smart, funny and have a devastatingly good figure and boobs to die for, but that you do right for right’s sake—it’s what you are and what you do. Even if I never get my magnum opus published, I will still die secure in the knowledge that my time on this planet was well spent—giving support, love and security to someone who actually makes a difference.”

  “Oh, Land,” I said, burying my head in his shoulder, “you’re making me go all misty!”

  And I hugged him again, while he rubbed my back and said that everything was all right. We stood like this for some time until I suddenly had a thought.

  “Land,” I said slowly, “how much do you know?”

  “Mr. and Mrs. Bradshaw tell me quite a lot, and Spike and Bowden often call to keep me updated.”

  “The rotten swines!” I said with a smile. “They’re always telling me to spill the beans to you!”

  “We all care about you, Thursday.”

  This was abundantly true, but I couldn’t get Thursday1–4 and her brief sojourn to the real world out of my mind. “What about…other stuff?”

  Landen knew exactly what I was talking about. “I only figured out she was the written Thursday when you came back upstairs.”

  “How?”

  “Because it was only then I realized she hadn’t been wearing the necklace I gave you for your birthday.”

  “Oh,” I said, fingering the locket around my neck. There was silence for a moment as we both considered what had happened. Eventually I said, “But she was a terrible lay, right?”

  “Hopeless.”

  And we both laughed. We would never mention it again.

  “Listen,” said Landen, “there’s someone to see you in the front room.”

  “Who?”

  “Just go in. I’ll make some tea.”

  I walked into the living room, where a tall man was standing at the mantel with his back to me, looking at the framed pictures of the family.

  “That’s us holidaying on the Isle of Skye,” I said in a soft voice, “at the Old Man of Storr. Jenny’s not there because she was in a huff and sat in the car, and you can just see Pickwick’s head at the edge of the frame.”

  “I remember it well,” he said, and turned to face me. It was Friday, of course. Not my Friday but his older self. He was about sixty, and handsome to boot. His hair was graying at the temples, and the smile wrinkles around his eyes made me think of Landen. He was wearing the pale blue uniform of the ChronoGuard, the shoulder emblazoned with the five gold pips of director-general. But it wasn’t the day-to-day uniform, it was ceremonial dress. This was a special occasion.

  “Hi, Mum.”

  “Hi, Sweetpea. So you did make it to director-general after all!”

  He shrugged and smiled. “I did and I didn’t. I’m here, but I can’t be. It’s like everything else that we’ve done in the past to change the present—we were definitely there, but we couldn’t have been. The one thing you learn about the time business is that mutually opposing states can comfortably coexist.”

  “Like Saturday Night Fever being excellent and crap at the same time?”

  “Kind of. When it comes to traveling about in the timestream, paradox is always a cozy bedfellow—you get used to living with it.” He looked at his watch. “You destroyed the recipe, didn’t you?”

  “I ate it.”

  “Good. I’ve just come to tell you that with only twenty-three minutes to go until the End of Time and without the equation for unscrambling eggs, the Star Chamber has conceded that the continued existence of time travel is retrospectively insupportable. We’re closing down the time engines right now. All operatives are being demobilized. Enloopment facilities are being emptied and places found for the inmates in conventional prisons.”

  “She was right after all,” I said quietly.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Aornis. I did get her out of the loop.”

  “We’re making quite sure that all prisoners with ‘special requirements’ are being looked after properly, Mum.”

  “I hope so. What about the other inventions built using retro-deficit-engineering?”

  “They’ll stay. The microchip and Gravitube will be invented, so it’s not a problem—but there won’t be any new retro-deficit technologies. More important, the Standard History Eventline will stay as it was when we switch off the engines.”

  “None of the history-rolling-up-like-a-carpet, then?”

  “Possibly—but not very likely.”

  “And Goliath gets to stay as it is?”

  “I’m afraid so.” He paused briefly, then sighed. “So many things I could have done, might have done, have done and haven’t done. I’m going to miss it all.”

  He looked at me intently. This was my son, but it wasn’t. It was him as he might have turned out but never would. I still loved him, but it was the only time in my life where I was glad to say good-bye.

  “What about the Now?”

  “It’ll recover, given time. Keep people reading books, Mum; it helps to reinforce and strengthen the indefinable moment that anchors us in the here-and-now. Strive for the Long Now. It’s the only thing that will save us. Well,” he added with finality, giving me a kiss on the cheek, “I’ll be going. I’ve got to do some paperwork before I switch off the last engine.”

  “What will happen to you?”

  He smiled again. “The Friday Last? I wink out of existence. And do you know, I’m not bothered. I’ve no idea what the future will bring to the Friday Present, and that’s a concept I’ll gladly die for.”

  I felt tears come to my eyes, which was silly, really. This was only the possibility of Friday, not the actual one.

  “Don’t cry, Mum. I’ll see you when I get up tomorrow—and you know I’m going to sleep in, right?”

  He hugged me again, and in an instant he was gone. I wandered through to the kitchen and rested my hand on Landen’s back as he poured some milk in my tea. We sat at the kitchen table until, untold trillions years in the future, time came to a halt. There was no erasure of history, no distant thunder, no “we interrupt this broadcast” on the wireless—nothing. The technology had gone for good and the ChronoGuard with it. Strictly speaking, neither of them had ever been. But as our Friday pointed out the following day, they were still there, echoes from the past that would make themselves known as anachronisms in ancient texts and artifacts that were out of place and out of time. T
he most celebrated of these would be the discovery of a fossilized 1956 Volkswagen Beetle preserved in Precambrian rock strata. In the glove box, they would find the remains of the following day’s paper featuring the car’s discovery—and a very worthwhile tip for the winner of the three-thirty at Kempton Park.

  “Well, that’s it,” I said after we had waited for another five minutes and found ourselves still in a state of pleasantly welcome existence. “The ChronoGuard has shut itself down, and time travel is as it should be: technically, logically and theoretically…impossible.”

  “Good thing, too,” replied Landen. “It always made my head ache. In fact, I was thinking of doing a self-help book for SF novelists eager to write about time travel. It would consist of a single word: Don’t.”

  I laughed, and we heard a key turn in the front door. It turned out to be Friday, and I recoiled in shock when he walked into the kitchen. He had short hair and was wearing a suit and tie.

  As I stood there with my mouth open, he said, “Good evening, Mother. Good evening, Father. I trust I am not too late for some sustenance?”

  “Oh, my God!” I cried in horror. “They replaced you!”

  Neither Landen nor Friday could hold it in for long, and they both collapsed into a sea of giggles. He hadn’t been replaced at all—he’d just had a haircut.

  “Oh, very funny,” I said, arms folded and severely unamused. “Next you’ll be telling me Jenny is a mindworm or something.”

  “She is,” said Landen, and it was my turn to burst out laughing at the ridiculousness of the suggestion. They didn’t find it at all funny. Honestly, some people have no sense of humor.

  39.

  A Woman Named

  Thursday Next

  The Special Operations Network was instigated to handle policing duties considered either too unusual or too specialized to be tackled by the regular force. There were thirty departments in all, starting at the more mundane Neighborly Disputes (SO-30) and going on to Literary Detectives (SO-27) and Art Crime (SO-24). Anything below SO-20 was restricted information, so what they got up to was anyone’s guess. What is known is that the individual operatives themselves are slightly unbalanced. “If you want to be a SpecOp,” the saying goes, “act kinda weird.”