'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.