The well of lost plots Read Free Page A

To my right I could see the one remaining engine, looking forlorn, the propeller blades streaked with bird droppings.
    Behind the pilots’ seats, where the flight engineer would have sat, there was a desk with reading lamp, footnoterphone and typewriter. On the bookshelf were mainly magazines of a police nature and lots of forensic textbooks. I walked through a narrow doorway and found a pleasant bedroom. The headroom was not overgenerous, but it was cozy and dry and was paneled in pine with a porthole above the double bed. Behind the bedroom was a storeroom, a hot-water boiler, stacks of wood and a spiral staircase. I was just about to go downstairs when I heard someone speak from the living room below.
    “What do you think that is?”
    The voice had an empty ring to it and was neuter in its inflection — I couldn’t tell if it was male or female.
    I stopped and instinctively pulled my automatic from my shoulder holster. Mary lived alone — or so it had said in the book. As I moved slowly downstairs, I heard another voice answer the first: “I think it’s a bird of some sort.”
    The second voice was no more distinctive than the first, and indeed, if the second voice had not been
answering
the first, I might have thought they belonged to the same person.
    As I rounded the staircase, I saw two figures standing in the middle of the room staring at Pickwick, who stared back, courageously protecting her egg from behind a sofa.
    “Hey!” I said, pointing my gun in their direction. “Hold it right there!”
    The two figures looked up and stared at me without expression from features that were as insipid and muted as their voices. Because of their equal blandness it was impossible to tell them apart. Their arms hung limply by their sides, exhibiting no body language. They might have been angry or curious or worried or elated — but I couldn’t tell.
`
    “Who are you?” I asked.
    “We are nobody,” replied the one on the left.
    “Everyone is
someone
,” I replied.
    “Not altogether correct,” said the one on the right. “We have a code number but nothing more. I am TSI-1404912-A and this is TSI-1404912-C.”
    “What happened to B?”
    “Taken by a grammasite last Tuesday.”
    I lowered my gun. Miss Havisham had told me about Generics. They were created here in the Well to populate the books that were to be written. At the point of creation they were simply a human canvas without paint — blank like a coin, ready to be stamped with individualism. They had no history, no conflicts, no foibles — nothing that might make them either readable or interesting in any way. It was up to various institutions to teach them to be useful members of fiction. They were graded, too. A to D, one through ten. Any that were D-graded were like worker bees in crowds and busy streets. Small speaking parts were C-grades; B-grades usually made up the bulk of featured but not
leading
characters. These parts usually — but not always — went to the A-grades, handpicked for their skills at character projection and multidimensionality. Huckleberry Finn, Tess and Anna Karenina were all A-grades, but then so were Mr. Hyde, Hannibal Lecter and Professor Moriarty. I looked at the ungraded Generics again. Murderers or heroes? It was impossible to tell how they would turn out. Still, at this stage of their development they would be harmless. I reholstered my automatic.
    “You’re Generics, right?”
    “Indeed,” they said in unison.
    “What are you doing here?”
    “You remember the craze for minimalism?” asked the one on the right.
    “Yes?” I replied, moving closer to stare at their blank faces curiously. There was a lot about the Well that I was going to have to get used to. They were harmless enough — but decidedly creepy. Pickwick was still hiding behind the sofa.
    “It was caused by the 1982 character shortage,” said the one on the left. “Vikram Seth is planning a large book in the next few years and I don’t think