One of Our Thursdays Is Missing
For Tif Loehnis
To whom I owe my career
and by consequence
much else besides
1.
The BookWorld Remade
The remaking was one of those moments when one felt a part of literature and not just carried along within it. In less than ten minutes, the entire fabric of the BookWorld was radically altered. The old system was swept away, and everything was changed forever. But the group of people to whom it was ultimately beneficial remained gloriously unaware: the readers. To most of them, books were merely books. If only it were that simple. . . .
Everyone can remember where they were when the BookWorld was remade. I was at home “resting between readings,” which is a polite euphemism for “almost remaindered.”
But I wasn’t doing nothing. No, I was using the time to acquaint myself with EZ-Read’s latest Laborsaving Narrative Devices, all designed to assist a first-person protagonist like me cope with the strains of a sixty-eight-setting five-book series at the speculative end of Fantasy.
I couldn’t afford any of these devices—not even Verb-Ease™ for troublesome irregularity—but that wasn’t the point. It was the company of EZ-Read’s regional salesman that I was interested in, a cheery Designated Love Interest named Whitby Jett.
“We have a new line in foreshadowing,” he said, passing me a small blue vial.