“Stand still,” I said as we pressed ourselves against the least-well-described part of the wall and looked again at the NPD. The needle was rising rapidly and counting off the words to what we termed “Read Zero”-the actual time and place, the comprehension singularity, where the story was actually being read.

There was a distant hum and a rumble as the reading approached. Then came a light buzz in the air like static and an increased heightening of the senses as the reader took up the descriptive power of the book and translated it into his or her own unique interpretation of the events-channeled from here through the massive imaginotransference Storycode Engines back at Text Grand Central and into the reader’s imagination. It was a technology of almost incalculable complexity, which I had yet to fully understand. But the beauty of the whole process was that the reader in the Outland never suspected there was any sort of process at all-the act of reading was to most people, myself included, as natural as breathing.

Geppetto’s woodworking tools started to jiggle on the workbench, and a few of the wood shavings started to drift across the floor, gaining more detail as they moved. I frowned. Something wasn’t right. I had expected the room to gain a small amount of increased reality as the reader’s imagination bathed it in the power of his or her own past experiences and interpretations, but as the trembling and warmth increased, I noticed that this small section of Collodi’s eighteenth-century allegorical tale was being raised into an unprecedented level of descriptive power. The walls, which up until then had been a blank wash of color, suddenly gained texture, a myriad of subtle hues and even areas of damp. The window frames peeled and dusted up, the floor moved and undulated until it was covered in flagstones that even I, as an Outlander, would not be able to distinguish from real ones. As Pinocchio slept on, the reading suddenly swelled like a breaking ocean roller and crossed the room in front of us, a crest of heightened reality that moved through us and imparted a warm feeling of well-being. But more than that, a rare thing in fiction, a delicate potpourri of smells. Freshly cut wood, cooking, spice, damp-and Pinocchio’s scorched legs, which I recognized were carved from cherry. There was more, too-a strange jumble of faces, a young girl laughing and a derelict castle in the moonlight. The smells grew stronger, to the point where I could taste them in my mouth, the dust and grime in the room seemingly accentuated until there was a faint hiss and a ploof sound and the enhanced feelings dropped away in an instant. Everything once more returned to the limited reality we had experienced when we arrived-the bare description necessary for the room to be Geppetto’s workshop. I nudged Thursday5, who opened her eyes and looked around with relief.

“What was that?” she asked, staring at me in alarm.

“We were read,” I said, a little rattled myself. Whoever it was could not have failed to see us.

“I’ve been read many times,” murmured Thursday5, “from perfunctory skim to critical analysis, and nothing ever felt like that.”

She was right. I’d stood in for GSD knows how many characters over the years, but even I’d never felt such an in-depth reading.

“Look,” she said, holding up the Narrative Proximity Device. The read-through rate had peaked at an unheard-of 68.5.

“That’s not possible,” I muttered. “The imaginotransference bandwidth doesn’t support readings of that depth at such a speed.”

The reading suddenly swelled like a breaking ocean roller and crossed the room in front of us.

“Do you think they saw us?”

“I’m sure of it,” I replied, my ears still singing and a strange woody taste still in my mouth. I consulted the NPD again. The reader was now well ahead of us and tearing through the prose toward the end of the book.

“Goodness!” exclaimed the cricket, who looked a little flushed and spacey when he reappeared along with his stunt double a few minutes later. “That was every bit as exhilarating as I thought it would be-and I didn’t dry. I was excellent, wasn’t I?”

“You were just wonderful, darling,” said his stunt double. “The whole of Allegorical Juvenilia will be talking about you-one for the envelope, I think.”

“And you, sir,” returned the cricket, “that fall from the wall-simply divine.”

But self-congratulatory crickets didn’t really concern me right now, and even the Goliath probe was momentarily forgotten.

“A Superreader,” I breathed. “I’ve heard the legends but thought they were nothing more than that, tall tales from burned-out text jockeys who’d been mainlining on irregular verbs.”

“Superreader?” echoed Thursday5 inquisitively, and even the crickets stopped congratulating each other on a perfect performance and leaned closer to listen.

“It’s a reader with an unprecedented power of comprehension, someone who can pick up every subtle nuance, all the inferred narrative and deeply embedded subtext in one-tenth the time of normal readers.”

“That’s good, right?”

“Not really. A dozen or so Superreads could strip all the meaning out of a book, leaving the volume a tattered husk with little characterization and only the thinnest of plots.”

“So…most Daphne Farquitt novels have been subjected to a Superreader?”

“No, they’re just bad.”

I thought for a moment, made a few notes in the pad I kept in my pocket and then picked up the Outlander probe. I tried to call Bradshaw to tell him but got only his answering machine. I placed the probe in my bag, recalled that I was also here to tell Thursday5 something about the imaginotransference technology and turned to the crickets.

“Where’s the core-containment chamber?”

“Cri-cri-cri,” muttered the cricket, thinking hard. “I think it’s one of the doors off the kitchen.”

“Right.”

I bade farewell to the crickets, who had begun to bicker when the one with the pillbox hat suggested it was high time he did his own stunts.

“I say, do you mind?” inquired Pinocchio indolently, neither opening his eyes nor removing his feet from the brazier. “Some of us are trying to get some shut-eye.”

8. Julian Sparkle

We entered the kitchen of Geppetto’s small house. It had a sort of worthy austerity about it but was clean and functional. A cat was asleep next to a log basket, and a kettle sang merrily to itself on the range. But we weren’t the only people in the kitchen. There were two other doors leading off, and in front of each was a bored-looking individual sitting on a three-legged stool. In the center of the room was what appeared to be a quiz-show host dressed in a gold lamé suit. He had a fake tan that was almost orange, was weighed down with heavy gold jewelry, and had a perfectly sculpted hairstyle that looked as though it had been imported from the fifties.

“Ah!” he said as soon as he saw us. “Contestants!”

He picked up his microphone.

“Welcome,” he said with faux bonhomie, showing acres of perfect white teeth, “to Puzzlemania, the popular brain game. I’m your host, Julian Sparkle.”

He smiled at us and an imaginary audience and beckoned Thursday5 closer, but I indicated for her to stay where she was.