The Special Operations Network was instigated to handle policing duties considered either too unusual or too specialized to be tackled by the regular force. There were thirty departments in all, starting at the more mundane Neighborly Disputes (SO-30) and going on to Literary Detectives (SO-27) and Art Crime (SO-24). Anything below SO-20 was restricted information, so what they got up to was anyone’s guess. What is known is that the individual operatives themselves are slightly unbalanced. “If you want to be a SpecOp,” the saying goes, “act kinda weird.”

M y father had a face that could stop a clock. I don’t mean that he was ugly or anything; it was a phrase the ChronoGuard used to describe someone who had the power to reduce time to an ultra-slow trickle. Dad had been a Colonel in the ChronoGuard and kept his work very quiet. So quiet, in fact, that we didn’t know he’d gone rogue at all until his timekeeping buddies raided our house one morning clutching a Seize & Eradication Order open-dated at both ends and demanded to know where and when he was. Dad has remained at liberty ever since; we learned from his subsequent visits that he regarded the whole service as “morally and historically corrupt” and was fighting a one-man war against the bureaucrats within the Office for Special Stemporal Temp…Tability. Temporal…Stemp…Special—

“Why don’t we just hold it right there?” I said before Thursday5 tied her tongue in knots.

“I’m sorry,” she said with a sigh. “I think my biorhythms must be out of whack.”

“Remember what we talked about?” I asked her, raising an eyebrow.

“Or perhaps it’s just a tricky line to say. Here goes: Special…Temporal…Stability. Got it!” She smiled proudly at her accomplishment. Then a stab of self-doubt crossed her face. “But aside from that, I’m doing okay, right?”

“You’re doing fine.”

We were standing in the opening chapter of The Eyre Affair, or at least the refurbished first chapter. Evil Thursday’s erasure caused a few ruffled feathers at Text Grand Central, especially when Alice-PON-24330 said that while happy to keep the series running for the time being, she was not that keen about taking on the role permanently—what with all the sex, guns, swearing and stuff. There were talks of scrapping the series until I had a brain wave. With the erasure of The Great Samuel Pepys Fiasco, Thursday5 was now bookless and needed a place to live; she could take over. Clearly, there had to be a few changes—quite a lot actually—but I didn’t mind; in fact, I welcomed it. I applied for a whole raft of internal plot adjustments, and Senator Jobsworth, still eager to make amends and keep his job after the reality book farrago, was only too happy to accede to my wishes—as long as I at least tried to make the series commercial.