Jasper Fforde - The Woman Who Died a Lot

The SEC was the Stupid Events Commission, the government department created to oversee the safe discharge of the stupidity surplus. Some would argue that it was the SEC’s good management and unimpeachably honest adherence to sound business practices that had gotten us into this mess, but anyone can attribute blame with the benefit of hindsight.

“How’s the reinstatement of the service going for you so far?” I asked.

“Not too bad,” replied Braxton thoughtfully. “We decided to rebrand SpecOps at great expense to bring it all up to date. We designed new logos, uniforms, notepaper and stuff with SpecOps’ new name: EnSquidnia.”

“I don’t like it.”

“No, it’s a stupid name, and the focus group hated it, so we changed it back to SpecOps. That small debacle alone wasted almost three million pounds of taxpayers’ money.”

“I can see you’re taking the Stupidity Surplus Reduction Program with the seriousness it deserves.”

“I do my best. Now, how did things go with Dr. Chumley?”

“He gave me a NUT-4.”

“That’s awkward,” said Braxton. “The position I had in mind would require a NUT-2, but we could probably make an exception.”

“Ah,” I replied, surprised yet somewhat relieved that Phoebe Smalls had also overcooked the goose in the insanity department. “Has the entry requirement been changed since Victor was heading up the department?”

Braxton looked at me with a frown. “I don’t recall Victor Analogy ever being chief librarian.”

I suddenly had an odd feeling. I had assumed that Braxton’s interest in me was SpecOps-related, but he was involved in a lot more than just the Special Operations Network. I wasn’t up for the SO-27 at all. I cursed my own arrogance and felt seriously stupid for going so far as to offer the deputy’s job to Phoebe.

“You . . . want me to run the Swindon Library ?” I asked, trying not to make my disappointment show.

“Good Lord no!” said Braxton with a laugh. “I want you to be head of the entire Wessex All-You-Can-Eat-at-Fatso’s Drink Not Included Library Service. Annual budget of one hundred fifty-six million pounds, salary is seventy-two thousand pound plus the most up-to-date Vauxhall KP-3 automobile, a dental plan, free lunches and a generous stationery allowance.”

I said nothing for a while.

“I know,” said Braxton, “tempting, isn’t it? I thought you’d be shocked into silence by the generosity. Just the thing to ease you into a slower pace, eh?”

“I’m not sure I need a slower pace, sir. I was hoping for something more . . . SpecOps-related.”

My disappointment would not have been hard to divine, and the smile dropped from Braxton’s face.

“Oh, Lord,” he said, covering his mouth with his hand in embarrassment. “Did I give the impression I wanted you to head up SO-27? I apologize if I did.”

I thought for a moment. He hadn’t, actually. I had simply assumed it, probably as a result of a little too much delusive hope.

“No, sir, it was my error.”

“Gosh,” he said as another thought struck him, “you must have worked hard to convince Dr. Chumley to give you aNUT-4 classification. You didn’t use the old ‘pregnant with an elephant’ gambit, did you?”

“Of course not. That would have been ridiculous.”

We both fell silent for a few moments.

“Listen here,” he said, “can I be honest with you, Thursday?”

“I’m going to say yes when I should probably say no.”

“We all slow down. Sometimes through age and sometimes through . . . circumstance. I’m seventy-six next June, and I’m out two weeks before then. I still have much to offer, but . . . well, sooner or later I’m going to make a humongous mistake—the sort that kills people, and I don’t want to be here when I do.”

He thought for a moment of the impossibility of the last statement.

“You understand what I mean?”

“Yes,” I replied, “but I’m only fifty-four.”

“But in that time you’ve had a lot of mileage. Head the of Wessex Library Service is a cushy number, and this is why I want you in at the top: I’d like you to liaise closely with Divisional Commander Smalls, who will be reestablishing the Literary Detectives over the next few weeks.”

I took a deep breath, and Braxton continued.

“It’s time to move on and out, Thursday. Phoebe is a good choice. Qualified, fearless, smart, nuts—and good with stats. I want you two to get along. It’ll be better for you, her and the service. Now, how about it?”

“I’ll . . . have to discuss it with Landen.”

“I expect nothing less,” he said as his order arrived. “By Jove, this looks good.”

We ate while Braxton talked at some length about his daughter’s latest drunken escapades and how they were a huge worry to Mrs. Hicks. But I wasn’t really listening. Somehow I didn’t really think a career of saying “Shh!” and stamping return dates was really my thing. I could go freelance at the drop of a hat and join any private detective agency on the planet with a single phone call. But if I did join the Wessex All-You-Can-Eat-at-Fatso’s Drink Not Included Library Service, I was still in a government agency, and in the loop, ready to step in when Phoebe fell flat on her small and very perfect nose.

Within half an hour, I had thanked Braxton for his time and limped out of Yo! Toast.

Iwalked through the Brunel Centre feeling a sense of disappointment mixed with the realization that until my health improved, things were going to be very different. I couldn’t do what I wanted to do, which led me to the inevitable conclusion that I couldn’t be who I wanted to be. My purpose was suddenly blunted, and I didn’t like it.

I arrived at the Swindon branch of TJ-Maxx at a little after two. I knew as well as anyone that the store hadn’t been deliberately set up as a bargain store for end-of-line designer garments, but rather a high-security facility for the imprisonment of dangerous criminals. Swindon’s most celebrated convict had been Oswald Danforth, whose punishment was to be trapped in an endlessly recurring eight-minute loop of time. In his case while his girlfriend, Trudi, tried on a camisole. She never knew about the loop, of course—but Danforth did. That’s why it was called TJ-Maxx: Temporal-J, Maximum Xecurity. It had been runby the ChronoGuard. The official title was “Closed-Loop Temporal-Field Containment,” but SO-12 simply called it being “in the loop.” It was cruel and unusual, sure, but it was cheap and required no guards, food or health care.

Or at least it had . There were no prisoners now—not since the ChronoGuard was disbanded and all its technology decommissioned.

I found Landen staring at the frying pans on the second floor, wondering, as he usually did, whether they were more expensive than at the co-op and, if so, what the point was of selling them.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey,” he replied, putting back a cheese grater before adding, “No cookies at the hunt, sir.”

“What?”

“The password?”

“Oh. ‘It’s not a cookie, it’s a . . .’ Shit. Hang on.”