I told him I didn't know and passed him a mug of coffee.

'Do you have any Generics living in your books?' I asked.

'A half-dozen or so at any one time,' he replied, spooning in some sugar and staring at ibb and obb, who, true to form, stared back. 'Boring bunch until they develop a personality, then they can be quite fun. Trouble is, they have an annoying habit of assimilating themselves into a strong leading character, and it can spread among them like a rash. They used to be billeted en masse but that all changed after we lodged six thousand Generics inside Rebecca. In under a month all but eight had become Mrs Danvers. Listen, I don't suppose I could interest you in a couple of housekeepers, could I?'

'I don't think so,' I replied, recalling Mrs Danvers' slightly abrasive personality.

'Don't blame you,' replied Snell with a laugh.

'So now it's only limited numbers per novel?'

'You learn fast. We had a similar problem with Merlins. We've had aged-male-bearded-wizard-mentor types coming out of our ears for years.'

He leaned closer.

'Do you know how many Merlins the Well of Lost Plots has placed over the past fifty years?'

'Tell me.'

'Nine thousand!' he breathed. 'We even altered plot lines to include older male mentor figures! Do you think that was wrong?'

'I'm not sure,' I said, slightly confused.

'At least the Merlin type is a popular character,' added Snell. 'Stick a new hat on him and he can appear pretty much anywhere. Try getting rid of thousands of Mrs Danvers. There isn't a huge demand for creepy fifty-something housekeepers; even buy-two-get-one-free deals didn't help — we use them on anti-mispeling duty, you know. A sort of army.'

'What's it like?' I asked.

'How do you mean?'

'Being fictional.'

'Ah!' replied Snell slowly. 'Yes — fictional.'

I realised too late that I had gone too far — it was how I imagined a dog would feel if you brought up the question of distemper in polite conversation.

'I forgive your inquisitiveness, Miss Next, and since you are an Outlander I will take no offence. If I were you I shouldn't enquire too deeply about the past of fictioneers. We all aspire to be ourselves, an original character in a litany of fiction so vast that we know we cannot. After basic training at St Tabularasa's I progressed to the Dupin School for Detectives; I went on field trips around the works of Hammett, Chandler and Sayers before attending a postgraduate course at the Agatha Christie Finishing School. I would have liked to have been an original but I was born seventy years too late for that.'

He stopped and paused for reflection. I was sorry to have raised the point. It can't be easy, being an amalgamation of all that has been written before.

'Right!' he said, finishing his coffee. 'That's enough about me. Ready?'

I nodded.

'Then let's go.'

So, taking my hand, he transported us both out of Caversham Heights and into the endless corridors of the Well of Lost Plots.

The Well was similar to the Library as regards the fabric of the building — dark wood, thick carpet, tons of shelves — but here the similarity ended. Firstly, it was noisy. Tradesmen, artisans, technicians and Generics all walked about the broad corridors appearing and vanishing as they moved from book to book, building, changing and deleting to the author's wishes. Crates and packing cases lay scattered about the corridor and people ate, slept and conducted their business in shops and small houses built in the manner of an untidy shanty town. Advertising hoardings and posters were everywhere, promoting some form of goods or services unique to the business of writing.'[5]

'I think I'm picking up junk footnoterphone messages, Snell,' I said above the hubbub. 'Should I be worried?'

'You get them all the time down here,' he replied. 'Ignore them — and never pass on chain footnotes.'[6]

We were accosted by a stout man wearing a sandwich board advertising bespoke plot devices 'for the discerning wordsmith'.

'No thank you,' yelled Snell, taking me by the arm and walking us to a quieter spot between Dr Forthright's Chapter Ending Emporium and the Premier Mentor School.

'There are twenty-six floors in the Well,' he told me, waving a hand towards the bustling crowd. 'Most of them are chaotic factories of fictional prose like this one but the twenty-sixth sub-basement has an entrance to the Text Sea — we'll go down there and see them offloading the scrawltrawlers one evening.'

'What do they unload?'

'Words,' smiled Snell, 'words, words and more words. The building blocks of fiction, the DNA of Story.'

'But I don't see any books being written,' I observed, looking around.

He chuckled.

'You Outlanders! Books may look like nothing more than words on a page but they are actually an infinitely complex Imagino-Transference technology that translates odd inky squiggles into pictures inside your head — we're currently using Book Operating System V8.3. Not for long, though — Text Grand Central want to upgrade the system.'

'Someone mentioned UltraWord™ on the news last night,' I observed.

'Fancy-pants name. It's BOOK V9 to me and you. WordMaster Libris should be giving us a presentation shortly. UltraWord™ is being tested as we speak — if it's as good as they say it is, books will never be the same again!'

'Well,' I sighed, trying to get my head around this idea, 'I had always thought novels were just, well, written.'

'Write is only the word we use to describe the recording process,' replied Snell as we walked along. 'The Well of Lost Plots is where we interface the writer's imagination with the characters and plots so that it will make sense in the reader's mind. After all, reading is arguably a far more creative and imaginative process than writing; when the reader creates emotion in their head, or the colours of the sky during the setting sun, or the smell of a warm summer's breeze on their face, they should reserve as much praise for themselves as they do for the writer — perhaps more.'

This was a new approach; I ran the idea around in my head.

'Really?' I replied, slightly doubtfully.

'Of course!' Snell laughed. 'Surf pounding the shingle wouldn't mean diddly unless you'd seen the waves cascade on to the foreshore, or felt the breakers tremble the beach beneath your feet, now, would it?'

'I suppose not.'

'Books,' said Snell, 'are a kind of magic.'

I thought about this for a moment and looked around at the chaotic fiction factory. My husband was or is a novelist — I had always wanted to know what went on inside his head and this, I figured, was about the nearest I'd ever get.[7] We walked on, past a shop called 'A Minute Passed'. It sold descriptive devices for marking the passage of time — this week they had a special on Seasonal Changes.

'What happens to the books which are unpublished?' I asked wondering whether the characters in Caversham Heights really had so much to worry about.

'The failure rate is pretty high,' admitted Snell, 'and not just for reasons of dubious merit. Bunyan's Bootscraper by John McSquurd is one of the best books ever written but it's never been out of the author's hands. Most of the dross, rejects or otherwise unpublished just languish down here in the Well until they are broken up for salvage. Others are so bad they are just demolished — the words are pulled from the pages and tossed into the Text Sea.'

'All the characters are just recycled like waste cardboard or something?'

Snell paused and coughed politely.