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I could see Thursday5 move expectantly every time the door opened, but apart from the usual ten members of the committee and their staff, no one else turned up.
“Good afternoon, everyone,” said Jobsworth, standing up to address us. There weren’t many of us in the debating chamber, but it was usually this way—policy meetings were closed-door affairs.
“Sadly, I have to advise you that Mr. Harry Potter is unable to attend due to copyright restrictions, so we’re going to leave the ‘supplying characters from video games’ issue for another time.”
There was a grumbling from the senators, and I noticed one or two put their autograph books back into their bags.
“Apologies for absence,” continued Jobsworth. “Jacob Marley is too alive to attend, the Snork Maiden is at the hairdresser’s, and Senator Zigo is once more unavailable. So we’ll begin. Item One: the grammasite problem. Mr. Bamford?”
Senator Bamford was a small man with wispy blond hair and eyes that were so small they almost weren’t there. He wore a blue coverall very obviously under his senatorial robes and had been in charge of what we called “the grammasite problem” for almost four decades, seemingly to no avail. The predations of the little parasitical beasts upon the books on which they fed was damaging and a constant drain on resources. Despite culling in the past, their numbers were no smaller now than they’d ever been. Mass extermination was often suggested, something the Naturalist genre was violently against. Pests they might be, but the young were cute and cuddly and had big eyes, which was definitely an evolutionary edge to secure survival.
“The problem is so well known that I will not outline it here again, but suffice it to say that numbers of grammasites have risen dramatically over the years, and in order to keep the naturalists happy I suggest we undertake a program of textualization, whereby representative specimens of the seven hundred or so species will be preserved in long-winded accounts in dreary academic tomes. In that way we can preserve the animal and even, if necessary, bring it back from extinction—yet still exterminate the species.”
Bamford sat down again, and Jobsworth asked for a show of hands. We all agreed. Grammasites were a pest and needed to be dealt with.
“Item Two,” said Jobsworth. “Falling readership figures. Baxter?”
Baxter stood up and addressed the room, although, to be honest, the other delegates—with the possible exception of Beauty—generally went with Jobsworth on everything. The person Baxter really needed to address was me. As the holder of the only veto, I was the one he would have to swing.
“The falling readership figures have been a matter of some concern for a number of years now, and increased expenditure in the Well of Lost Plots to construct thrilling new books has failed to grasp the imagination of the reading public. As head of the Readership Increasement Committee, I have been formulating some radical ideas to rekindle interest in novels.”
He turned over a paper and coughed before continuing.
“After a fact-finding mission conducted in the real world, I have decided that ‘interactivity’ is the keyword of the new generation. For many readers books are too much of a one-sided conduit of information, and a new form of novel that allows its readers to choose where the story goes is the way forward.”
“Isn’t that the point of books?” asked Black Beauty, stamping his hoof angrily on the table and upsetting an inkwell. “The pleasure lies in the unfolding of the plots. Even if we know what must happen, how one arrives there is still entertaining.”
“I couldn’t agree with you more,” remarked Baxter, “but our core readership is aging, and the world’s youth is growing up without being in the habit of reading books.”
“So what’s your suggestion?” asked Jobsworth.
“To create a new form of book—an interactive book that begins blank except for ten or so basic characters. Then, as it is written, chapter by chapter, the readers are polled on whom they want to keep and whom they want to exclude. As soon as we know, we write the new section, and at the end of the new c
hapter we poll the readers again. I call it a ‘reality book show’—life as it really is, with all the human interactions that make it so rich.”
“And the boring bits as well?” I asked, recalling my only experience with reality TV.
“I don’t suggest that every book should be this way,” added Baxter hurriedly, “but we want to make books hip and appealing to the youth market. Society is moving on, and if we don’t move with it, books—and we—will vanish.”
As if to reinforce his argument, he waved a hand at the Read-O-Meter, which dropped another seventeen books by way of confirmation.
“Why don’t we just write better books?” I asked.
“Because it’s expensive, it’s time-consuming, and there’s no guarantee it will work,” said Senator Aimsworth, speaking for the first time. “From what I’ve seen of the real world, interactivity is a sure-fire hit. Baxter is right. The future is reality book shows based on democratic decision making shared by the creators and the readers. Give people what they want and in just the way they want it.”
“Once the ball starts rolling downhill, it can’t be stopped,” I remarked. “This is the wrong route—I can feel it.”
“Your loyalty is misplaced, Ms. Next. What could be wrong with offering readers choice? I say we vote on it. All those in favor of directing funds and resources to an interactive reality-book project?”
They all raised their hands—except me and Senator Beauty.
Me because I didn’t agree with them and Beauty because he had a hoof. It didn’t matter. He was against it.
“As usual,” growled Aimsworth, “the contrarian amongst us knows better. Your objections, Ms. Next?”
I took a deep breath. “The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that we’re not in the book industry. This isn’t a publishing meeting with sales targets, goals, market research and focus groups. The book may be the delivery medium, but what we’re actually peddling here is story. Humans like stories. Humans need stories. Stories are good. Stories work. Story clarifies and captures the essence of the human spirit. Story, in all its forms—of life, of love, of knowledge—has traced the upward surge of mankind. And story, you mark my words, will be with the last human to draw breath, and we should be there, too, supporting that one last person. I say we place our faith in good stories well told and leave the interactivity as the transient Outlander fad that it is. Instead of being subservient to reader opinion, we should be leading it.”
I paused for a moment and stared at the sea of unconvinced faces. The Read-O-Meter clicked down another twenty-eight books.
