Metafiction – Opening Chapters

1

THE HIGH READER

THE PLANET FICTION had no accompanying sun, yet its entire surface was bathed in a bright light that was somehow natural and indistinguishable from a keen sunlight. Huge purple leaved trees, tall and springy and bending gracefully as if in a gentle breeze, dominated the planet’s surface, yet there was no atmosphere. The trees looked as if they were sweating from a tropical heat, yet any thermometer would read just a few degrees above absolute zero. Planet Fiction was a tiny planet, yet the gravitational force on its surface was equivalent to the Earth’s.

There were no cities, towns or villages on the planet Fiction, just a single building known as the High Reader’s Realm Depository Complex. A huge dome-shaped building covered with hexagonal glass-like panels. Inside the dome was a particularly vast central hub area, a circular area easily large enough to house its current occupancy of just over nine thousand humans. There were walls to enclose the area, but the ceiling was high above and was the outside structure of the dome-shaped building itself.

The area was covered by row after row after row of sleeping humans of all ages. Unlike outside, there was heat and atmosphere in the building, and all the humans were in a deep sleep and comfortably breathing. The humans were all levitating horizontally just a few feet above the floor. They looked as if they were floating in a sea of randomly changing magnetic currents. For each human, gently rippling differently coloured glowing cables made of a substance called hard-light would temporarily appear and attach themselves from an associated control panel to each human. Some cables concentrated on physical needs. They stimulated muscles and allowed streams of sustenance to flow. Other cables allowed data interfacing, particularly for memory and sensory control. It was as if luminescent ephemeral snakes were appearing out of nowhere to attack their human prey.

The humans were fully clothed, and judging by their clothes, it seemed groupings of rows of humans were from different times and cultures. To some extent, that was true. But it was more subtle than that. And it was far more extraordinary.

Looking down on the sleepers through the glass walls of her elevated control room stood the High Reader Jingsey Pleam. She appeared to be a confident, intelligent and extremely beautiful young woman. Her deep-blue eyes sparkled and her perfect golden blonde hair hung straight with its perfect central parting down behind her back to her waist. But appearances can be deceptive. And none more so than from an absolute master of appearance manipulation. The High Reader, a shapeshifter, owned the most transmogrifyingly awesome abilities in the known chain of universes. It was she, so she claimed, who invented soft-light and hard-light projection and structure. She was dressed resplendently in a long white dress with ever-changing black-lettered English words. She was the only being awake in her huge dome-shaped Realm Depository Complex. The hard-light and atomised complex was her creation, as was the mainly structured soft-light planet Fiction.

Just then, inside the control room, an electrical sizzle sounded and the High Reader involuntarily and momentarily shapeshifted into an old withered alien with a pained expression stretched across her face, before shapeshifting back to her previous beautiful human form. The ever-changing words were now all red-lettered words signifying a warning. However, each of these words was eventually replaced by the capitalised black-lettered word “HELP”.

“No matter the urgency, my personal needs can wait,” she whispered quietly to herself. “I must borrow one more human, the final jigsaw piece in my puzzle.”

The High Reader closed her eyes and concentrated …

Within seconds, she slumped and began to float horizontally in an invisible soup of magnetism, asleep, just like the thousands of humans she had been viewing. But she also materialised on the planet Earth in her beautiful shapeshifted female form wide awake in a hard-light form that looked no different from a flesh and blood form. She had materialised in outer London. The date was Thursday, April 12th, 2032. She was in a bedroom where a woman was sitting by the bed of her dying ten-year-old son. The High Reader still presented herself with her long white dress, but there was no sign of the black-lettered, ever-changing words.

The mother was a thirty-something Muslim wearing a hijab and a tee-shirt and jeans. Out of the window, the iconic Shard, a pointed spear of glass skyscraper, and the much taller Bridge Tower, revealed a distant City of London skyline beneath a black cloudy sky.

The mother did not notice the newly materialised High Reader as her attention was solely centred on her dying son, who was taking his last breaths. Finally, the boy let out a last laboured breath and his eyes closed. His mother felt for a pulse that was no longer there. Silence filled the room for a few seconds. Until … the mother let out a harrowing wailing scream.

“Amir!” she cried. “Oh, my dear, Amir! The last of my blood. God, what did I do to deserve this? Oh, Amir!”

She kissed her son and slumped over the body. Weeping. Shuddering. A defeated mess of humanity.

“Mrs Khan,” said the High Reader in a beautifully perfect English voice, “your son is alive.”

“Amir!” cried Mrs Khan, her trembling hands tightening on the bed sheets, seemingly oblivious to the High Reader’s presence.

“Your son is not dead,” insisted the High Reader. “See how his body has gone? You are slumped over a pillow.”

Mrs Khan slowly felt about the bed as if some niggling afterthought was encouraging her to do so. She was still wailing uncontrollably though. But eventually, as her wandering hands could not feel her son’s body, she stopped her wailing and, confused, slowly lifted herself up and back into her normal sitting position on her chair.

She stared, completely befuddled, at the empty bed. Her son had disappeared. How?

Mrs Khan slowly, fearfully, turned her bowed head, compelled to focus on the High Reader.

“Your son would have died. As you witnessed, he had taken a last breath and his heart had stopped. Within minutes his brain would have deteriorated through oxygen starvation and died. And that would have been that. However, providing the brain has not been damaged substantially, I have the power to restore to full health any human body. So you must forgive me for borrowing him for that purpose. The price: his participation in my research.”

“Is he really alive?” mumbled Mrs Khan.

“Yes.”

“In heaven?”

“No. He is in another universe that has a connection to your universe. There’s a known chain of universes created by the immense energy released by the fragmenting of a crystal. We usually refer to this chain of universes as the Chain. Each fragment is responsible for the stability of each universe. Thus, the cause of the Big Bang is known to me. A Big Bang that can be observed in each universe of the Chain.”

“Crystal?” mumbled Mrs Khan, questioningly.

“Yes. But as for its nature and its creation, almost nothing is known. The only proof of this crystal is that one such of its fragments has been found in another universe to the one you live in, and that another fragment most certainly exists in your universe. My research, backed by the Chain’s leading theoretical particle physicists, supports the theory of the original intact crystal, and its fragmentation causing the creation of the Chain. Also, interestingly, if not amazingly, my research shows that the fragments of the original crystal have a connection with what would best be described as a force of fiction. Not that you have any interest at all in this crystal business, but that is all I will say on this matter.”

“Who are you?” asked Mrs Khan, her eyebrows knotting together tightly.

“Best not to say, in case you mention me. Not that anyone would believe you. You can trust me when I say that I will return him alive and healthy.”

“I don’t understand …”

“No, you don’t. But at least you now have hope, Mrs Khan.”

Mrs Khan lifted her bowed head and sank her chin into the palm of her hand, continuing to stare at the High Reader. Still confused, but now less fearful and more with a sense of hope and wonder.

“How long will I have to wait?” she asked.

“I cannot say. But hopefully not too long. Maybe days. Maybe weeks. Maybe a couple of months or so. Events of epic proportions are now imminent, forcing my research to climax. Fear not though—I am determined to prevail.”

Mrs Khan patted the sides of her forehead with the flats of her hands. “Have I lost my mind?”

“No, Mrs Khan. And what is more, I have more hopeful news for you.”

“What can be more hopeful than what you have already said?”

“You believe your husband, Anil Khan, died in a suicide bomber’s attack last year. But his body was not found, was it? No substantial DNA was identified.”

“You mean …”

“I took his body the instant the suicide bomber’s bomb went off. I will be returning him with your son. It is only because I took your husband that I kept an eye on you and your son.”

“Can this all really be true?”

“There is your answer,” said the High Reader, emphatically, pointing at the empty bed. Then with her finger still pointing, she promptly dematerialised.

Back in her control room, the High Reader’s closed eyes opened and gravity gently assisted her into a standing position.

She looked down at the floating humans. A smile broke out on her face as she spied the newly arrived ten-year-old boy floating in his designated area next to his father. Her technology was quickly repairing the boy, the appearing and disappearing glowing cables working at breakneck speed.

Just then, an alarm blared through the complex …

The High Reader noticed a group of floating sleepers all dressed in Regency clothing whose associated control panels were all flashing the words “EXTERNAL DETECTION!” She immediately waved her hand. A portal opened up in front of her. Hard-light glowing cabling appeared and attached to her temples. In the portal, a planet was viewable. It resembled Earth. The High Reader concentrated and the entire planet dissolved into nothingness.

“It was only a matter of time,” murmured the High Reader.

The clothing of the Regency group of floating humans immediately snapped to a change. They were wearing Regency clothing, but it was less ornate and colourful.

The portal closed up … only to open again …

This time through the portal, a studious human figure could be seen sitting hunched over a desk, working hard on his laptop computer. A computer that displayed English as well as alien words. Beside his desk was a huge water filled aquarium glass tank, big enough to house a giant octopus.

“Bort Hiron?” questioned the High Reader.

The figure immediately span around and reeled back in shock.

“Huh?”

“Do not be alarmed, Mr Hiron. You, of all people, must be able to guess at who I am—even in my shapeshifted human form. By the way, it seems you prefer a human form yourself these days. Your glass water tank looks almost lost without you. I have been informed you do not even sleep in it anymore.”

“You must be Jingsey Pleam the High Reader. Why are you contacting me?”

“I know you are aware of my cloning replacement process. Well, it is imminent. I am sure you are aware of Colby’s efforts to steal my research and use it to take control of the Chain. He has just moments ago located my first Novel Realm.”

“Hmm, Pride and Prejudice. You need to destroy that Novel Realm before he puts some sort of hold on your hard-light characters and he captures the alien shapeshifter furniture extras.”

“I am ahead of you, Mr Hiron. I have retrieved all the human hard-light characters. They are all back in their soft-light Realm. Their memories of the last two hundred and twenty-five years, erased from their minds and safely stored. Their physical bodies are all safely here in my Realm Depository Complex. The shapeshifters were all teleported to a safe location with an emergency teleportation pulse. I then completely destroyed the Novel Realm.”

“That’s good, High Reader.”

“I was fully prepared, of course. However, I did not expect Colby to be this advanced in his progress. Unfortunately, it took the last of my energy and advanced my need to initiate my cloning process. I can do one last task before shutting everything down here in my complex to run on automatic. The key lies in a human called Eddie Sharpe. He holds the key. I will get him into a hard-light form in the Novel Realm universe where I now reside. I will control this by pushing him into finally taking on a sequel to the successful novel that bears his name, if not his story. He will then have access to parts of the Novel Realm of the original novel falsely attributed to him.”

“You are obviously referring to the Novel Realm The Subtle Escape. It is my understanding that Julia Strauss was the true author of the associated published novel and not Eddie Sharpe (as you alluded to).”

“That is correct. However, it is a skill of Mr Sharpe’s that I have a need of.”

“Eddie Sharpe? Huh? What skill? Is this a joke?”

“It’s no joke. He has an unrivalled skill. A skill he has no awareness of, such is his pessimistic character. I need a human to discover that skill, Mr Hiron, and bring such knowledge from their universe. I cannot disclose that skill to you because you are already compromised.”

“I am?”

The High Reader affirmed this fact by simply not bothering to actively affirm it. She continued, “I have, as we have been speaking, downloaded to your laptop all the relevant scenarios and information you need to understand the situation.”

“This laptop?” queried Hiron, looking back momentarily at the laptop on his desk.

“Obviously,” confirmed the High Reader. She continued, “As soon as Eddie Sharpe’s skill is revealed, you must bring him here to my Realm Depository Complex. His skill will give you the key to the location of my complex. Everything necessary is on your laptop, including teleportation initiation applications. Hopefully I will have completed my clone replacement process by the time you, Eddie Sharpe and any other relevant helpers arrive—if any of you arrive at all. For any biological creatures, I advise you use a hard-light form, as fully documented in the information placed on your laptop.”

“What ‘other relevant helpers’?”

“At least the shapeshifter Luxem and Mr Sharpe’s granddaughter Maddie Sharpe. It is all detailed in the scenarios and information I have detailed for you on your laptop. Understood?”

“I’ve caught up with you, High Reader.”

“Thank goodness. You must go into hiding from your base immediately. Colby has you on his strategic radar now.”

“Yes, I have prepared for such a time, High Reader, as I’m sure you realise.”

The High Reader gave Bort Hiron a curt nod and without another word, she closed her portal.

She gave a quick glance around the control room and down through the glass wall at the thousands of human sleepers. She nodded her head slowly, as if confident, at least for the time being, that there were no further imminent threats.

Again, she opened up a portal … this time with a view looking down from high above the ground in the City of Cambridge, England.

The High Reader watched sixty-year-old Eddie Sharpe, looking hunched and defeated as if marching against the tide of humanity, trudge through the driving rain and a thunderstorm beneath a dark-grey cloudy sky. His dishevelled shock of grey hair seemed to be a foreboding cloud all of its own, following him around wherever he would go. With a broken umbrella (which, like its owner, was falling to pieces) he eventually arrived and disappeared into a tall building, Colberton Publishing House headquarters.

“Eddie Sharpe, are you ready?” questioned the High Reader quietly to herself. “You had better be. It is not just your universe that is in peril. It is every universe! Cheer up, for all our sakes!”

With that said, the High Reader took on a look of deep concentration. Four hard-light transparent thought bubbles fired out of her forehead. Three of them headed into Colberton Publishing House, passing through the walls of the building.

One thought bubble entered into the back of Eddie Sharpe’s head as he approached a receptionist. Another entered into the back of a tall thin man’s head who was sitting in an office arguing with a short plump woman, whose back of the head received the third thought bubble. The thin man’s nametag hanging down from his neck read “Bill Travers”, and the plump woman’s likewise nametag read “Helen Mallory”. The fourth thought bubble whizzed off in a skid of light and whooshed just under a mile away into a classroom in Cambridge’s Chesterton Community School. There it entered the back of the head of a bright-looking blonde pony-tailed schoolgirl who bore a strong facial resemblance to Eddie Sharpe, which was not surprising because she was Eddie’s granddaughter, Maddie Sharpe. She had the same striking blue eyes.

Meanwhile, the portal closed up.

“That should help push matters along to where they would almost have probably ended up if time had been available,” muttered the High Reader as she closed her eyes and shapeshifted into her ancient dying withered natural alien form. As her body began to float out of her control room in a horizontal position, she whispered almost inaudibly from her fragile, thin, alien lips, “It’s always a risk to play with destiny—but sometimes destiny plays with destiny. I’m sure the crystal wouldn’t have it any other way!”

 

2

THE REALM OF FICTIONAL CHARACTERS

“Charlie? ARE YOU there? Charlie!” pleaded Susan’s thoughts through the Realm of Fictional Characters awaiting their turn. The characters referred to their world simply as the Realm. The buildings and their furnishings were composed of hard-light but the characters were composed of a ghostly soft-light. The only sense they had was that of sight. In order to give the appearance of speaking, they would move their mouths in synchronisation with their publicly projected thoughts.

Susan lifted her ghostly form off the armchair she was sitting in and ran out of her English village house into her brightly lit outside back garden. There was no air, but still the hard-light grass trembled as if in a pleasant spring breeze.

“Charlie!” cried Susan up to the hard-light blue sky. Her transparent eyes searched among the slowly moving puffy white clouds; as always, there was never a sun to blind her.

Streaking down from the clouds like a blur of dry water sped Charlie.

He speedily decelerated and alighted weightlessly onto the lawn to face Susan. She felt her mind glowing within itself as Charlie’s presence gently nuzzled her.

Out in the bright light, Charlie and Susan’s transparent bodies were hard to see.

“Quick, follow me inside where we can see each other more clearly,” said Susan as she turned and rushed back into her quaint house.

Moments later, Charlie and Susan were sitting comfortably in her living room.

“And?” questioned Charlie. Susan could feel him caressing her mind, soothing her thoughts, dancing upon her imagination.

“Did you feel it?”

“You mean that pulse of hard-light awareness? Just a short while ago?”

“Yes. It brought back memories of us being called to a place called the Realm between Realms?”

“Yeah, it did the same for me too.”

“Julia called us there from our dreams, didn’t she?”

“Yeah, that’s right. And she had a full name.”

“Julia Strauss.”

“Yeah.”

“The recent pulse of hard-light awareness has brought it all back. And there was an author. Eddie Sharpe. Remember him?” Susan’s transparent eyebrows knotted with inquisitiveness.

“Oh yeah, of course. A god sitting with us. It’s all coming back now. We worked with an author!” And now it was Charlie’s turn to knot his eyebrows. “He didn’t say much though, did he?”

“No, he didn’t. Julia seemed to be in charge of everything. We were helping her write the end of the novel. I presumed she was following the lead of the author; but, sacrilege I know, I saw no evidence. Did you, Charlie?”

“No. But whatever way you look at it, there’s just no way a character from our Realm of Fictional Characters awaiting their turn could possibly write an author’s novel. She had written up the novel. It was in her hand. But the author must have somehow been directing her. We lost our telepathy in exchange for our superior hard-light bodies and additional four senses, but maybe the author Eddie Sharpe used his powers of telepathy. He’s a god, so he must have had the power of telepathy.”

“But why did Julia call us to help her? She knows tons of characters.”

“Hey, Susan, I think she said there was something about our inner character that would help us write clauses that would help keep control of the novel’s antagonist, Neil Barrington. We had knowledge of non-fictional writing techniques. Footnotes, especially.”

“Ah yes, that’s right. We helped ensure Neil Barrington could never leave the novel’s published prose. Right? Our footnotes trapped him good and proper. I never did like Neil when he was in our Realm. He once told me we were all prisoners. That our life could only make sense if our true bodies were elsewhere. He said that even if we received our calling to a Novel Realm, we would still be prisoners.”

“Exactly. That’s why we had to help write the prose that trapped him strictly into the Novel Realm. He actually attempted an end contribution to the novel. Remember that? It seemed like it was some sort of prose that allowed him an escape from the Novel Realm. Madness, I know.”

“And he might have succeeded, Charlie, if Julia had not convinced Eddie Sharpe that an uplifting ending to the novel would be a much better option. Of course, the author must have been pretending to allow Julia to appear to be convincing him.”

“Didn’t you think the author Eddie Sharpe’s behaviour was very strange? He seemed to thrive on behaving like a first-class fool whenever he volunteered a contribution or answered a question from Julia or us.” Charlie then changed to a more pleasing topic. “I must say, Susan, you did look so beautiful in your hard-light form. Your beautiful green eyes were particularly alluring.”

“You were at least as much handsome as I was beautiful. Your clear brown skin. Your hazel-brown eyes. Oh, your … you!”

“Don’t exaggerate, Susan. Anyway, what do you think the recent pulse of hard-light awareness means?”

“I think maybe we are being prepared for our turn.” Susan’s mind gave off a mild explosion of hope. “What else could all this mean?”

“Hey, maybe we’ll both get to live in the same Novel Realm together. Wouldn’t that be something?”

“Oh, Charlie, I always hoped so. That’s why I’ve kept my character so close to you.”

“Yeah, and I, in my turn, have kept mine close to yours. We’re on the same mind-length, you and me. All the same, being selected for the same Novel Realm is out of our thoughts. Only an author can make such an event happen. Our fate lies in an author’s will. We characters have no say in the life we will live in an author’s novel. You know that’s true, Susan.”

“Ah yes, but if an author chooses me and you have not already been chosen, I will make sure the author chooses you. Just you wait and see.”

“Well, we’re so almost interdependent that there’s hopefully a chance if an author selects one of us, he or she will feel obliged to select the other.”

Susan paused to collect her thoughts, then said, “We left Julia Strauss a long time ago. But I think maybe we will end up with her. Otherwise why are we remembering our time with her in the Realm between Realms?”

“But she’s already in a Novel Realm …”

“Yes, but it is definitely still possible, Charlie.”

“How?”

“If the author Eddie Sharpe starts a sequel and gets it published.”

“Yeah, of course. I knew that.”

“Charlie, if you were hard-light, you’d be blushing right now.”

“Okay, I’ll admit to that. But, oh boy, that Julia. Such a beautiful mind. Almost as beautiful as yours.”

“There’s no need to crown me with false appraisal, though I think it so sweet of you. Flattery will get you everywhere—even if your praises border on the platitudinous. If truth be told, Julia’s mind was indeed beautiful, and mine lived in its shadow. Still, my mind’s full of other qualities, I suppose.”

“Better ones,” enthused Charlie. His telepathic words showered Susan’s mind like a warm soft rain, causing her mind to balloon joyously.

“Maybe, maybe not …” said Susan, a huge smile breaking on her face. Her face then turned more serious. “Why do we each have knowledge other characters don’t have, Charlie? Where does it come from?”

“Obviously from the Grand Writer, our God of all gods. He simply chooses characters and gives them the knowledge through pulses of hard-light awareness. That’s what I think.”

“But how do we really know that the Grand Writer actually exists?”

“Come on, Susan. Because all we characters have been given a hard-light awareness pulse telling us so. Don’t even try to argue that maybe we haven’t.”

“I won’t. But Charlie, that doesn’t prove it is He who has given us that pulse, does it?”

“Susan, you’re beginning to sound like Neil Barrington!”

“I’m questioning. He was flatly disbelieving. Faith must always be questioned. Even the pulses of the Grand Writer tell us that.”

“You have me there, Susan. Still, something is afoot with the recent pulse of hard-light awareness we have just experienced.”

“I’m sure we’ll be called into an Eddie Sharpe sequel, Charlie. It all makes sense. I don’t think we’ll be going straight into a Novel Realm though. I’ll bet we’re being prepared for another call to the Realm between Realms. This time we’ll get our full names, just like Julia, and we’ll gain permanent hard-light form. Our turn will have come!”

“Well, the last time we were called, it was from our dreams. So I’ll just say pleasant dreams, for tonight, Susan, and I’ll be on my way.”

Charlie shot up as a streak of light off his armchair and disappeared through the ceiling.

“Charlie, come back!” shouted the thoughts of Susan as she looked up crossly at the ceiling. “How rude.”

Silent thoughts …

Then …

Charlie’s face pushed through the ceiling and he poked his transparent tongue out cheekily at Susan. Then his face withdrew back through the ceiling, and Susan felt his presence speedily disappearing.

“Oh, Charlie, you’re incorrigible,” said Susan, her mind laughing heartily.

 

3

THE FALL OF EDDIE SHARPE

DEEP IN THE HEART of the City of Cambridge, England, two publishing agents were sitting at a table opposite Eddie Sharpe. The three of them were all huddled together in a cramped office high up on the twentieth floor of the Colberton Publishing House office block, which stood proudly among the other commercial buildings and against the driving rain.

To Eddie, the tall thin man and the short plump woman were opposites in physical appearance but bosom pals of the mind—Bill Travers and Helen Mallory. The pair sat highly animated, profusely enthusiastic, as if life was something worth living. Eddie, in stark contrast, was losing the will to live. He looked out at the grey driving rain firing down from the heavy black April sky and half-tempted himself to plunge out of the window and merge depressingly with it.

The three of them had just finished drinking their cups of coffee and a meaningless conversation about life the universe and nothing in particular, when …

“Eddie, Eddie, Eddie,” dripped beady-eyed Travers, the words tumbling down like the rain outside, “how long ago was it since you were runner-up for the Man Booker Prize?”

“Just over fifteen years,” mumbled Eddie, finding it hard to maintain focus. He stroked his unshaven cheeks with the back of his hand defensively. “I lost out on a split decision,” he added.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, you coulda been a contender, and all that claptrap. But the fact of the matter is, Eddie boy, you came a close second and have produced nothing in the same class since.”

Eddie thought beanpole Travers was enjoying his act of human demolition.

“Don’t be too hard on him, Bill,” piped in Mallory. “We have published seven of his other novels.” She waddled herself slightly while examining her reflection in her compact makeup mirror, as she meticulously applied some gaudy lipstick. Eddie thought she was attempting the impossible task of making herself look pretty. He was sometimes overweight himself and knew he was being a touch hypocritical, but really, to him she looked like a bloated sea lion. Her neck was wider than her head, and the moustache sprouting above her upper lip gave the appearance of whiskers.

“Yeah—yeah—yeah,” retorted Travers, raising his voice and punctuating each “yeah” with a pounding bony fist on the tabletop, “but six of them died a death and cost us a substantial loss, and the only one that made a meagre profit was the follow-up novel to the first Man Booker Prize runner-up novel we published. And let’s be honest, people only bought the follow-up because they had expected it would be at least somewhere as good as the precedent. It wasn’t!”

Eddie gazed down forlornly at the office’s patterned Axminster carpet.

“No, I’m sorry, Eddie, we can’t publish this current effort,” said Travers, waving Eddie’s latest manuscript in front of Eddie’s nose. “To cut a long story short—and I mean literally that—it is pure unadulterated crap.”

“Bill!” reprimanded Mallory, snapping shut her compact makeup mirror and giving Travers a fierce, disapproving look.

Eddie shuffled a little uncomfortably. “Oh, he’s right, Helen,” he muttered, wafting his hands about indecisively. “I just can’t recapture the form of my first novel. I’d rather not say why.”

Mallory smiled at Eddie. “What made the novel so good were the characters. Especially that, oh what was her name … you know, the protagonist … the woman who escaped from the evil antagonist Neil Barrington … what was her name …?”

“Julia Strauss,” interjected Travers. “What a character, Eddie. Why can’t you repeat that formula?” Travers’s blood-shot grey eyes burned holes in Eddie’s so much so that they seemed to make Eddie go temporarily blind.

Eddie stared back vacantly, his blinded eyes unfocused. “Just can’t create anything like her,” he mumbled, lurching unexpectedly to the side of his chair as if he were drunk. “She created herself if truth be told.”

“Ah, did she now?” thundered the tall, bright-eyed agent, as if he were a stick man undergoing electrocution. “Eddie, sometimes we think we discover our characters rather than invent them. They seem to have a life of their own and write the whole damn novel.”

Eddie’s eyebrows creased … a memory had come back to haunt him. Travers had hit the sharpest of nails smack on its head.

“Oh stop talking poppycock, Bill, or I shall start addressing you as Billy Liar,” sniggered Mallory vociferously.

“That’s not even mildly amusing,” instantly retorted Travers, producing a huge grin.

Eddie cast a quick, surreptitious glance at Travers and thought he had turned into a friendly scarecrow whose padding had been stolen by a flock of adolescent crows.

“Yeah, well, whatever,” rejoined Mallory, banging her pulpy hands in a drum solo on the tabletop, causing the auburn bun in her hair to spiral out of control. Eventually her bun completely unravelled and before her long strands of hair even had time to tumble about, she, as fast as a crafty flurry of light, produced an elasticated hairband from nowhere and tied her hair into a ponytail, which she whipped back behind her “sea lion” head as if nothing had happened.

Eddie couldn’t help but notice Mallory’s outrageous quick-change coiffure restyling act. He found her hair-raising shenanigans slightly amusing despite his present struggle with the suffocating feeling of a heavy, dark and deep depression.

Mallory, an agent who doubled up as a guru on the craft of writing, continued quickly, “The point you’re making, Bill, is a common and stupid writing myth. Characters writing themselves. Characters writing the novel. Ha! This is a romantic, dare I say, quixotic, and erroneous precept.”

“Well slap me in the face with a baby octopus,” said Travers. “I was only trying to make pleasant conversation. Of course, a character can’t be discovered rather than invented. Not an original one, at any rate.”

Mallory looked encouragingly beneath concerned eyebrows towards Eddie. “Why don’t you recreate the same initial conditions as you did for your first novel?”

“There weren’t any, really. The novel all came out through a series of dreams. You see, I really did quite literally discover the characters for my novel.” Eddie looked bemused with himself as he began absently drawing invisible doodles with his finger on the tabletop, wondering what on earth had come over him to be releasing his greatest secret. He rubbed the back of his head absently where the High Reader’s thought bubble, unknown to him, had earlier entered.

“What?” thundered Travers.

“Well, I had been working on an idea about prisoners being prisoners who didn’t know they were prisoners. Bit like Plato’s allegory of the Cave, which I’m sure you’re both familiar with. That was all. Nothing too grandiose. But then I had this strange dream where I found myself in a place where I met one of these prisoners. Her name was Julia. She asked me to give her a full name. So I did. Julia Strauss. The place was called the Realm between Realms. The dream seemed pretty real and lasted a long time. Really lucid. I woke up feeling completely worn out. But I immediately found myself with the opening chapters Julia had written in the dream. She had written them in a notebook, and it had appeared out of the dream and on my office desk. I continued having the dreams until Julia completed the novel.

“Yes, but Eddie,” said Mallory, waddling on her seat into a more comfortable position with her elbows on the tabletop and her head in her hands, which Eddie thought made her look more like a sea lion than ever, “they were your dreams. You still created Julia. Not sure what you mean by the notebook.”

“Okay, they were my dreams, but she claimed they were hers too.”

“And these dreams stopped on the completion of the novel, you say?” asked Travers easily, rolling his eyes in mock contempt. “A novel written in your dream by one of its characters into a notebook, a notebook that you claim kept appearing in your waking world.”

“The dreams stopped the evening before the book was published, to be precise. Never had such a dream since.”

“But,” asked Mallory, “what about the antagonist, the cruel evil monster, Neil Barrington, and all the other characters? You must have created them?”

“Well …” dithered Eddie, wondering whether he should really be confiding such information. What had come over him? Then he gritted his teeth with determination, and said, “Listen, if you read the novel, you’ll see each and every one of them is introduced into the novel by Julia Strauss. She directed the whole shebang. Even to the extent of making up the title: The Subtle Escape. There were a few other characters who helped Julia. Charlie and Susan helped. And believe it or not—Neil Barrington. It was all handwritten in the notebook.”

“Very amusing, Mr Sharpe,” said Travers with a cynical smirk. “A Man Booker Prize fiction novel runner-up is a novel written by the protagonist of the novel with help from some other characters, including even the antagonist!” He laughed heartily before he leaned his torso and long twig-like arms forward across the table, bringing his head with them until his long, pointed nose threatened to puncture Eddie’s face. “Next you’ll be telling me she was trying to escape from your novel and not the evil clutches of Neil Barrington!”

“No, but I think Barrington was trying to escape from the novel,” said Eddie. “Fortunately he didn’t make it because I rejected his ending chapters’ contribution. And what’s more, he failed to convince me of one thing!”

“What was that?” asked Mallory, and Eddie could see from the friendly granny-like look on her face that she thought he was crazy.

“He failed to convince me to change the name of the antagonist from Neil Barrington to Eddie Sharpe. I told him I would, but I lied. Julia, Charlie and Susan talked me out of it. And we stuck with Julia’s ending chapters that were subtly amended by Charlie and Susan.”

“I don’t recall any characters called Charlie and Susan …?” questioned Mallory.

“Oh, that’s because they were never put in the novel. It just wasn’t their turn.”

“What are you talking about, ‘wasn’t their turn’?” Mallory was charmed but befuddled by Eddie’s apparent nonsense.

“Okay, Eddie,” blasted Travers, with an air of finality, interrupting Eddie’s conversation with Mallory, “enough of this childish baloney. Just before you arrived into the office this morning, Helen and I were arguing about how best to dump you. But for some strange unfathomable reason, we decided to give you one last chance to have a novel published.” Travers and Mallory started to rub the back of their heads, where the High Reader’s thought bubble, unknown to them, had earlier entered them. “Yeah, we’re as nuts as you sometimes. So Eddie baby, dream of what you like. Prisoners who are unaware they are prisoners. Characters who go on to not be characters. Places that are places between other places. Anything you damn well like. Only deliver me a profitable novel! Man Booker winner. Man Booker loser. Or anything in-between. I don’t give a damn, as long as it’s a best-seller! Just write a sequel for goodness’ sake!”

“Yes, Eddie, write a sequel,” agreed Mallory. “You can’t go wrong. What have you got to lose?”

“Maybe everything,” murmured Eddie under his breath.

Travers craned forward again, so much so that Eddie had to push himself back in his chair and lean precariously backwards. Travers’s blood-shot eyes suddenly lit up angrily, like exploding stars, as he thwacked a rock-like fist hard onto the tabletop, scattering three empty coffee cups off their rattling saucers. He then delivered a final ultimatum in a forced undertone, “This is your last chance, Eddie boy. Don’t blow it!”

 

4

MADDIE: THE SHARPEST SHARPE?

THE RAIN HAD cleared by the time Eddie Sharpe got back to his North Cambridge, Richmond Road semi-detached three-bedroom house. He lived alone, but his extremely bright twelve-year-old granddaughter often popped in after school to visit him. And he had only been home half an hour when he heard the familiar slam of the front door, and seconds later witnessed his granddaughter charging enthusiastically into his living room …

“Granddad, you look very tired,” said Eddie’s twelve-year-old granddaughter, Maddie Sharpe. “Would you like a cup of tea?” Maddie gave Eddie a short comforting hug from behind his armchair, where he was slumped to the point of almost dripping off it.

“Sure,” murmured Eddie. “What brings you here this time?” he called out at Maddie’s back as she headed briskly out of the living room door, her blonde shoulder-length ponytail swinging left to right.

“Need your internet connection, Gramps,” she chirped without turning back. Eddie then just about made out Maddie’s finishing words as they drifted away to the kitchen, “Ours is acting up again.”

Eddie looked out of his living room windows. Though the late afternoon sun was making inroads against the slowly clearing grey clouds in the sky, nothing could make inroads into the burgeoning clouds crowding Eddie’s mind. He opened a window to allow a bumblebee that had engaged in a head-butting competition with the impenetrable glass of the window to escape its unwinnable match.

“Off you go! Taste the freedom! In the story of your life, Bertie the Bumblebee, this is your deus ex machina moment. I am your saviour from the machine of this realm we call reality. I wonder if I will ever find a saviour. I have a particular dread I might one day have need of one.”

Maddie soon returned with a tray carrying two cups of tea and a side plate piled with digestive biscuits, which she placed on a coffee table within reach of Eddie’s armchair.

“Who were you talking to, Gramps?” Maddie looked over at Eddie, who remained at the open window looking out forlornly at his small front garden, which was in need of some serious gardening.

“A poor miserable creature in need of help.”

“Oh, Mrs Bailey. Is she still moaning about the traffic? There’s hardly any traffic on your road. She’s a loony, if you ask me. She should try living on the Mill Road. Students, drug sellers and every kind of undesirable imaginable live on that street.”

Eddie closed the window and slumped in a weary heap on his comfortable armchair, unwilling to correct Maddie’s false supposition.

“Well, what’s up, Gramps?” asked Maddie, carrying over her cup of tea and a couple of digestive biscuits to the settee where she sat and opened up her laptop.

“Oh, my meeting with my publisher didn’t go down too well.”

“By which you mean it went down badly, I take it.” Maddie said all this without looking up from her laptop, as she was busy logging onto Eddie’s home network.

“Yeah. The meeting went down as catastrophically as the Titanic, if truth be told.” Eddie took a sorrowful sip of his tea.

Maddie looked up. She gave Eddie a comforting smile, but her eyes showed a measure of concern. “What happened then?”

“My latest manuscript? The one you told me was okay. Well, my main publishing agents agreed with you up to a point. They thought it was okay—for the wastepaper bin!”

“Oh dear. Sorry to hear that, Gramps. I thought the writing was excellent. Perfect sentences and all that. But I suppose if there’s no actual story …”

“Yes, well, anyway, they’ve given me one last chance. My next book has to be a winner, like my first. Or that’s it.” Eddie took another sip of his tea before adding, “I’m all washed up, Madds.”

“What I don’t get is that if your first book was so good, why can’t you just write a sequel? You’re bound to come up with a best-seller, surely?”

“That’s what my agents keep telling me.”

“I’ve vaguely thought of suggesting it before, but now somehow it seems such an obvious suggestion.” Maddie started to rub the back of her head where the High Reader’s fourth thought bubble, unknown to her, had entered it earlier in the day. “So what are you waiting for, Gramps?” Maddie shrugged, then once again became engrossed with her laptop.

“Look, you’re probably going to think your dear old granddad is ready for the funny farm, but I’m going to be one-hundred percent honest with you, Maddie. As I tried to explain to my agents, I didn’t really write my first book.”

Maddie looked up from her laptop with a puzzled expression, her nose scrunched up, her eyebrows head-butted each other, and her mouth fell open. “Huh?”

“One of the novel’s characters wrote everything in a manuscript notebook. All I did was type it all up. Another of the characters attempted a significant contribution. However, I rejected his efforts.”

Maddie paused, rubbed the back of her head again, and then took to stroking her chin. Her intelligent mind kicked into its top gear. She looked into her grandfather’s weary eyes. “I suppose those two characters would be Julia Strauss and Neil Barrington?”

“Yes,” Eddie was both surprised and impressed with his granddaughter’s latest supposition. “You’re right. The protagonist and the antagonist. The goodie and the baddie, so to speak. How could you guess that?”

“It just seems to make sense to me the more I think of it, Gramps.” Maddie dipped a digestive biscuit into her cup of tea.

“Really?”

“Yep,” said Maddie, while pleasurably chewing and swallowing chunks of her digestive biscuit.

“How so?”

“Well, we all know the book is famous for the twist that occurs at the end of the book, where Julia Strauss escapes from her imprisonment and bursts into the futuristic courtroom to give evidence against Neil Barrington. But until that point, it looked as if the better finish would be the sad one where Neil Barrington got away with his crimes. I guess they don’t do unhappy endings anymore, Gramps. But I have to say, Julia’s escape from her dungeon was an incredible feat. Such bravery! Such originality! So my guess is that Neil Barrington was pushing you to write for the, in my opinion, better sad ending. And Julia Strauss, the weaker, though more original, happy ending?”

“That’s very perceptive of you, Maddie. Neil Barrington was indeed pushing for the sadder ending. However, and yes, it was Julia Strauss that pushed for the happier ending. But she was supported by two characters called Charlie and Susan.”

“Charlie and Susan? Maybe if you tell me their surnames, I might recall them.”

“They don’t have surnames.”

“What? I definitely don’t remember two characters called Charlie and Susan in the novel. And I only recently reread the book just a few weeks ago.”

“Well, they weren’t in the book. But they warned me of Neil Barrington’s true intentions. He was after more than just a good sad ending. He was after a good sad beginning!”

“Hmm …” Maddie wrinkled her nose and looked unsurely at her grandfather, a little doubtful of his sanity. “I’m not sure where you’re going with that line of explanation. But the way I see it, is that you wrote the novel through the minds of your characters, which were so unique and original that your mind actually believed that they were real. But if you do a sequel, they’ll live again, and can write you another best-selling novel.”

“It’s not what you think, Maddie. These characters met me in my dreams.”

“So? They were your dreams. And when you woke up, you wrote down the ideas the characters gave you in the dreams. So just see if you can do the same thing again.”

“Maddie, you’re sounding just like my agents. Listen to me! I didn’t write the manuscript of that first novel in my waking hours. It was written for me in my dreams!”

“What on earth …?”

“It’s true, Maddie. When I woke up, chapters of words would all be there in the handwriting of Julia Strauss, as well as the rejected ending chapters of Neil Barrington.”

Maddie took a second to digest Eddie’s words. Then she burst into laughter, almost spilling some tea from the cup in her hand. “Granddad, you’re taking me for a ride, aren’t you? That was very funny. For a minute back there, I thought you were off your rocker!”

“Oh, no. I’m being deadly serious.”

“And I suppose this handwritten manuscript no longer exists?” questioned Maddie sarcastically. “This sounds so much like Joseph Smith and his golden plates. The evidence conveniently irretrievable.”

“Joseph who?”

“Joseph never-you-mind. That’s who! Anyway, all that matters is that you can’t just make things up.”

“I’m not making anything up.”

“Well, without the manuscript, who cares?”

“But I’ve still got it!”

“What! Really? Can I see it?”

“Sure, why not.”

Eddie disappeared out of the living room and headed to his study room, his home’s writing office. “Called his bluff there,” murmured Maddie to herself. “God knows what he’ll come back with … Now where was I?” Maddie turned her attention back to her laptop and opened up a file in her homework directory. “Ah yes—Is Global Cooling now a fact?”