Page 24 (1/2)

1

Monday: Swindon

The Special Operations Netas for duties considered too specialized to be tackled by the regular force Despite considerable success in the many varied areas of expertise in which SpecOps operated, all but three of the thirty-six divisions were disbanded in the winter of 1991–92, allegedly due to budgetary cutbacks By 2004 it was realized that this had been a bad move, and plans were drawn up to re-form the service

Millon de Floss, A Short History of SpecOps

Everything co-running sitcom, one’s life, and eventually our species The question forwill couely useful until it does?

In the case of a good bottle of wine, probably not ht make one believe otherwise A well-lazed summer’s day should not expect too much of itself either, and sitcoms never die They simply move to a zo two—the end of one’s life and that of our species—regular subscribers to my exploits will recall that I had seen iven my past record, it would be probable that much useful ould be done between then and now As to the end of our species, the possibility of annihilation was quite real, well docuinative title of Asteroid HR-6984 Whether the huure out a hile function for itself in the thirty-seven years until possible collision was dependent upon one’s level of optimism

But it wasn’t all bad news In fact, due to a foible of human nature that denies us the ability to focus on more than one threat at a time, the asteroid was barely news at all HR-6984’s convenient lack of urgency and its current likelihood of hitting the earth at only around 34 percent had relegated it well past such front-page news as the stupidity surplus and the current round of fiery cleansings by an angry deity Instead the hurtling luned to pop-culture dauinea-pig accessorizing and the apparently relevant eating habits of noncelebrities

My take on it was this: A 34 percent chance that soht happen was also a 66 percent chance it wouldn’t happen, and, given the rocky road our species had traveled to get here in the first place, these were considerably better odds than we’d seen so far As for finding a collective purpose for ourselves in what ht potentially be the last thirty-seven years of our existence, I was always struck by the paradox that while collective purpose ht be at best unknowable and at worst irrelevant, individual purpose was of considerable importance

But I’ ahead ofa busier-than-usual week in the late suan with a trip into Swindon in order to findfire descending from the heavens, a rethink on the Wessex Library Service operating budget, andGavin Watkins dead The last one was a serious downer—especially for Gavin It’s a long story, and with a feists and turns that take a bit of figuring What the hell We’ll just run the story in real tiic afterward My name is Thursday Next You’ll probably have heard ofof Jane Eyre,” but even if you haven’t, it doesn’t h

So there ere— in the colid

ing effortlessly above the North Wessex countryside on the Newbury-Hungerford-Swindon monorail We’d boarded at Aldbourne, wherelived, and the car was al about Asteroid HR-6984, nor about the stupidity surplus or Landen’s latest book, Dogs Who Wonder Why Their Owners Think They Know When They Are Coht Appear as If We Do We weren’t even talking about other issues of the day, such as pissed-off deities, Phoebe Smalls, the movie of Bonzo the Wonder Hound, Synthetic Thursdays or the ongoing “Brains kept alive in jars” ethical debate in New Splicer hter Jenny and why I needed a tattoo to reined, or indeed every bit as I iined

“I never thought I’d get a second,” I said, staring at the scarlet rawness on the back of my hand

“I’ot the first,” said Landen

“It was on a drunken night in Sevastopol,” I replied wistfully, “a week off the troopship and still without an ounce of combat experience or sense”

“Happy days,” said Landen, “to have experienced the camaraderie before the loss”