Newspaper language, in fact, was a simplification to the point of abstraction. It was like mathematics. It had a bearing on life, but was remote from it, making not particular statements but general ones. Just as 2+2=4 applies to any two pairs of apples, or vacuum-cleaners, or middle-class Frenchmen, so ‘Mr. Average in Get-There-or-Else Mystery Marathon’ described a range of situations so undefined as to be infinite. The more Goldwasser thought about it, the more difficult it was to see what sort of evidence could possibly disprove ‘Mr. Average in Get-There-or-Else Mystery Marathon,’ and if there was no evidence that disproved it, there was plainly none that proved it, either. The only possible conclusion was that it was not a factual statement at all, but, like 2+2=4, a well-formed formula legitimately derived from an axiomatic system. All this was a great comfort to Goldwasser, who had to reproduce the system on the axiomatic machinery of a computer.

Bearing all this in mind, he had set up enough cards in the card-index to begin processing simple stories along these lines. The results were not perfect, but they had a certain encouraging purity of style – particularly the Magic, or Black, Box One, which according to analysis of cuttings, normally appeared about once a fortnight. There were several different permutations, but they all looked more or less like:

‘MAGIC BOX’ WILL HELP HOUSEWIVES

TOP SECRET BRITISH TRIUMPH

British scientists have developed a ‘magic box,’ it was learned last night. The new wonder device was tested behind locked doors after years of research.

Results were said to have surpassed expectations.

Top brass were among the men in the mystery research marathon. Last night experts were calling the magic box the beat-the-jinx box. The new wonder device has broken the jinx that has haunted British wonder projects ever since last week.

Mrs. Average Housewife will be among the first to feel the benefit of the beat-the-jinx box.

How does it work?

Specially designed tubes feed supplies of wonder drug into the mechanism. A magic eye keeps a continuous check.

The device is switched on and off with a switch which works on the same principle as an ordinary domestic light switch.

A secret ray device is activated by an activator.

But the real secret of the magic box? – A new all-British wonder cell.

Goldwasser had arranged the cards so that the results they produced showed the two conflicting tropisms of newspaper language – on the one hand towards a range of especially familiar expressions like ‘do-it-yourself,’ ‘scorcher,’ ‘hubby,’ and ‘television,’ and on the other hand towards an exotic range of words that never occurred anywhere else, like ‘envoy,’ ‘slay,’ ‘blaze,’ and ‘pinpoint.’ The stories that emerged had something of the poignant ambiguity of the pictures one sees in the clouds – glimpses of a remote, fantastic world at once familiar and yet chimeric. For instance:

DO-IT-YOURSELF ENVOY IN SOCCER PROBE MARATHON

Rain horror ended Britain’s miracle heatwave last night. Millions of viewers saw the man they call Mr. X, the mystery man in the Sex-in-the-Snow case, mention the royal family on TV.