Bamford sat down again, and Jobsworth asked for a show of hands. We all agreed. Grammasites were a pest and needed to be dealt with.

“Item Two,” said Jobsworth. “Falling readership figures. Baxter?”

Baxter stood up and addressed the room, although, to be honest, the other delegates—with the possible exception of Beauty—generally went with Jobsworth on everything. The person Baxter really needed to address was me. As the holder of the only veto, I was the one he would have to swing.

“The falling readership figures have been a matter of some concern for a number of years now, and increased expenditure in the Well of Lost Plots to construct thrilling new books has failed to grasp the imagination of the reading public. As head of the Readership Increasement Committee, I have been formulating some radical ideas to rekindle interest in novels.”

He turned over a paper and coughed before continuing.

“After a fact-finding mission conducted in the real world, I have decided that ‘interactivity’ is the keyword of the new generation. For many readers books are too much of a one-sided conduit of information, and a new form of novel that allows its readers to choose where the story goes is the way forward.”

“Isn’t that the point of books?” asked Black Beauty, stamping his hoof angrily on the table and upsetting an inkwell. “The pleasure lies in the unfolding of the plots. Even if we know what must happen, how one arrives there is still entertaining.”

“I couldn’t agree with you more,” remarked Baxter, “but our core readership is aging, and the world’s youth is growing up without being in the habit of reading books.”

“So what’s your suggestion?” asked Jobsworth.

“To create a new form of book—an interactive book that begins blank except for ten or so basic characters. Then, as it is written, chapter by chapter, the readers are polled on whom they want to keep and whom they want to exclude. As soon as we know, we write the new section, and at the end of the new chapter we poll the readers again. I call it a ‘reality book show’—life as it really is, with all the human interactions that make it so rich.”

“And the boring bits as well?” I asked, recalling my only experience with reality TV.

“I don’t suggest that every book should be this way,” added Baxter hurriedly, “but we want to make books hip and appealing to the youth market. Society is moving on, and if we don’t move with it, books—and we—will vanish.”

As if to reinforce his argument, he waved a hand at the Read-O-Meter, which dropped another seventeen books by way of confirmation.

“Why don’t we just write better books?” I asked.