No one said anything. He had our attention.

'Good. Well, I could rabbit on all day but I really feel that it would be better to let WordMaster Libris, all the way from Text Grand Central, tell you the full story. Xavier?'

A small and rather pallid-looking man took his position on the dais; he could only just see over the lectern. He wore a white short-sleeved shirt and was almost weighed down by the number of pens in his top pocket. We all took a seat and gazed at him with interest; UltraWord™ had been the talk of the Well for ages and everyone was keen to learn whether the rumours of its technical virtuosity were true.

'Good morning, everyone,' began Libris in a nervous voice. 'Over the next thirty minutes I will try and explain a little about our latest operating system: BOOK Version 9, which we have code-named UltraWord™.'

There was silence as the agents mulled this over. I got the feeling in that this was not just important but really important. Like being at the signing of a peace accord or something. Even Bradshaw, who was no fan of technology, was leaning forward and listening with interest, a frown etched on his forehead.

Libris pulled the first sheet off a flipchart. There was a picture of an old book.

'Well,' he began, 'when we first came up with the "page" concept in BOOK V1 we thought we'd reached the zenith of story containment — compact, easy to read and, by using integrated PageNumber™ and SpineTitle™ technologies, we had a system of indexing far superior to anything SCROLL could offer. Over the years—'

Here he flipped the chart over to show us varying styles of books through the ages.

'—we have been refining the BOOK system. Illustrations were the first upgrade at 1.1, standardised spelling at V3.1 and vowel and irregular verb stability in V4.2. Today we use BOOK V8.3, one of the most stable and complex ImaginoTransference technologies ever devised — the smooth transfer of the written word into the reader's imagination has never been faster.'

He stopped for a moment. We all knew that BOOK V8.3 was excellent; apart from a few typos that crept in and the variable quality of stories — neither of which was the system's fault — it was good, very good indeed.

'Constructing the books down in the sub-basements, although time consuming, seems to work well, even if it is a little chaotic.'

There were murmurs of agreement from the assembled agents; it was clear that no one much liked it down there.

'But,' went on Libris, 'endlessly recycling old ideas might not hold the reader's attention for that much longer — the Council of Genres' own market research seems to indicate that readers are becoming bored with the sameness of plot lines.'

'I think it's already happened,' said the Bellman, then checked himself quickly, apologised for the interruption and let Libris carry on.

'But,' continued Libris, 'to understand the problem we need a bit of history. When we first devised the BOOK system eighteen hundred years ago, we designed it mainly to record events — we never thought there would be such a demand for story. By the tenth century story usage was so low that we still had enough new plots to last over a thousand years. By the time the seventeenth century arrived this had lowered to six hundred — but there was still no real cause for worry. Then, something happened that stretched the operating system to the limit.'

'Mass literacy,' put in Miss Havisham.

'Exactly,' replied Libris. 'Demand for written stories increased exponentially during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Ten years before Pamela was published in 1740 we had enough new ideas to last another four hundred years; by Dickens' time ideas were almost wholly recycled, something we have been doing on and off since the thirteenth century to stave off the inevitable. But by 1884, to all intents and purposes, we had depleted our stock of original ideas.'

There was muttering among the collected Jurisfiction agents.

'Flatland,' said Bradshaw after pausing for a moment's reflection. 'It was the last original idea, wasn't it?'

'Pretty much. The few leftover pieces were mopped up by the SF movement until the 1950s, but as far as pure ideas are concerned, 1884 was the end. We were expecting the worst — a meltdown of the whole BookWorld and a wholesale departure of readers. But that didn't happen. Against all expectations, recycled ideas were working.'

'But isn't it the way they are told?' asked Havisham in her not-to-be-argued-with voice. 'Surely the permutations of storytelling are endless!'

'Large perhaps, but not infinite, Miss Havisham. What I'm trying to say is that once all the permutations are used up there will be nowhere for us to go. The twentieth century has seen books being written and published at an unprecedented rate — even the introduction of the Procrastination1.3 and Writer'sBlock2.4 Outlander viruses couldn't slow the authors down. Plagiarism lawsuits are rising in the Outland; authors are beginning to write the same books. The way I see it we've got a year — possibly eighteen months — before the well of fiction runs dry.'

He paused to let this sink in.

'That's why we had to go back to the drawing board and rethink the whole situation.'

He flipped the chart again and there were audible gasps. On the chart was written '32-plot story systems'.

'As you know,' he went on, 'every Book Operating System has at its heart the basic eight-plot architecture we inherited from OralTrad. As we used to say: "No one will ever need more than eight plots.'"

'Nine if you count Coming of Age,' piped up Beatrice.

'Isn't that Journey of Discovery? said Tweed.

'What's Macbeth, then?' asked Benedict.

'Bitter Rivalry/Revenge, my dear,' answered Havisham.

'I thought it was Temptation,' mused Beatrice, who liked to contradict Benedict whenever possible.

'Please!' said the Bellman. 'We could argue these points all day. And if you let Libris finish, you can.'

The agents fell silent. I guessed this was a perennial argument.

'So the only way forward,' continued Libris, 'is to completely rebuild the operating system. If we go for a thirty-two-plot basis for our stories, there will be more ideas than you or I will know what to do with. The BookWorld won't have seen such an advance since the invention of movable type.'

'I'm always supportive of new technology, Mr Libris,' said Lady Cavendish kindly, 'but isn't the popularity of books a fair indication of how the good the current system actually is?'

'It depends what you mean by "popular". Only thirty per cent of the Outland read fiction on a regular basis — with UltraWord™ we aim to change all that. But I'm running ahead of myself — an abundance of new ideas is only half the story. Let me carry on and tell you what other benefits the new system will give us.'