Jasper Fforde

Feedback loops, echo chambers, circular reinforcement. All could play a part in escalating the utterly imaginary to the level of reality, sometimes with fatal consequences.

“Passing through?”

“Yes; here to meet with Moody.”

“You’ll get more sense from lichen. What’s with your head?”

Unlike talking to The Notable Goodnight, where I needed to be polite, this was an answer I could have fun with.

“It’s the final stages of an excruciatingly painful and incurable genital wasting disease. Luckily, it’s only spread by skin contact. Sorry, I should’ve said that before I shook your hand. Remiss of me – apologies.”

Shamanic Bob smiled.

“Fair enough,” he said. “I think I deserved that.”

“Yes, I think you did.”

“Jealous?” she said. “Of what you have to offer? A second-rate Consul and a third-rate vaudeville act peddling fourth-rate advice to a fifth-rate Novice?”

If you’ve not dreamed, you’ve never truly slept. Dreams are the place where you can be yourself; do anything, be anything. The mind set free.

“Oh, hullo, Worthing,” he said in a cheery manner. “How are things?”

“Outlook stormy with a chance of scattered death moving in randomly from all points of the compass.”

I don’t care one way or the other if the big A is using you to scratch an itch, but think very carefully of actions, Wonky. They have a dismaying tendency to be followed by consequences, and sometimes quite bad ones.

“I’ll be honest,” I said, “I have nothing against anyone who believes, but I think it’s a dangerous nonsense.”

“How is that working out?” I asked.

“Somewhere between frustratingly slow and fiendishly elusive.”

“It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not,” he said, “it’s what everyone believes that’s important.”

“Last season we had the Reduced Shakespeare Company doing ‘Highlights of the Mostly Complete History of Condensing Stuff (abridged)’.”

You’ll know the beginning easily enough; it’s when it all started going weird.

“I always really admired you growing up. Always smiling through your unhappiness. A real inspiration.”

“I wasn’t unhappy.”

“You looked unhappy.”

“Looks can be deceptive.”

“All too true,” she said, “but I meant what I said: inspirational in a sort of tragic way, like you were the failure in the family, but always looked on the bright side of everything.”

“You’re very kind,” I said, long used to Megan’s ways, “but it could have been much worse: I could have been born without tact or empathy, and be shallow, self-absorbed and hideously patronizing.”