The Woman Who Died a Lot

“Right. So what I have to do is to meet each charged particle with the ultradense nucleus of a lead-187 atom. The particle is halted and drained off as thermal energy to be turned to electrical energy using a steam turbine. Part of this energy is used to power the shield, and the rest is fed back into the national grid. The feed-in tariff is so good these days that we hope to be able to recoup all our production costs within about twenty-three smitings. Joffy, do you think you can convince the Almighty to schedule His cleansings to coincide with peak demands of power? Everyone pops on the kettle at halftime during the SuperHoop.”

“I’m not sure the Lord takes account of sporting events when deciding on a bit of smiting.”

“And the shield has to work first,” added Landen.

“Yes, there is that,” replied Tuesday thoughtfully. “Anyway, the problem is being able to predict the position of each charged particle in the column of all-cleansing fire and then have a lead-187 nucleus ready and waiting precisely for it underneath. To put it into practical terms, it would be like attempting to predict where in Hertfordshire an acorn would fall and have another acorn waiting underneath it.”

“I should imagine that’s almost impossible.”

She smiled. “Predicting random events is possible if you examine the effect a subatomic particle named the Madeupion has on the arrow of time near the event. For a trillionth-trillionth of a second before the event, cause and effect entangle. And if in the short period we can unentangle the effect from cause, we can see an event before it has happened—and do something about it.”

She wrote an equation on the wall and rapped her knuckles against it.

“And that’s the problem. Attempting to find an upper and a lower limit for my Madeupion Unentanglement Constant, or U_c. Too high and we’re not seeing far enough back, too low and we get to see the event after it’s happened. I’ve brought the limits down to between six point three and six point eight quintillionths of a second, but it’s still too large. To the fleeting existence of a Madeupion, the U_c is like the Jurassic—only without the dinosaurs.”

Tuesday stared at her scribbles on the wall for a while.

“It’s just that math isn’t my strong point,” she said with a sigh, “and we’re not actually sure the Madeupion exists. It just seems a good theory to explain déjà vu, intuition and the ability of ninjas to dodge bullets. Ninjas are far more important to science than anyone realizes. If we could capture one to study, I think most of science’s biggest puzzles might be resolved.”

“So where does that leave us?” asked Joffy.

“We might crack the U_c problem in ten minutes,” replied Tuesday, “or it may never be cracked.”

We all fell silent for a few moments.

“Pudding anyone?” I said brightly. “Tuesday, would you do the plates?”

10. Monday: The Wingco

The book from which the Wingco hailed was a typical tale of wartime derring-do. He and his crew hide themselves when England falls in 1942 and then, after a series of adventures, steal a bomber at Coventry and head toward London to bomb the occupying force’s high command. But the book was abandoned as they start their first run from Putney Bridge, so they never got to find out if they were victorious or not. “It’s frustrating,” the Wingco said when asked, “to not know whether one’s purpose is fulfilled. You humans must get it all the time.”

Thursday Next,

Private Journals

"Can I ask a personal question?” asked Miles to the Wing Commander once we all had started on the trifle, which was excellent.

“Of course,” said the Wingco affably, “ask away.”

“Are you really fictional?”

My career in the BookWorld had not been common knowledge until the attempted assassination, and after that there didn’t seem a lot of point in hiding it. I think most of the family knew anyway— Landen in particular—and while the BookWorld was truly bizarre as only fiction can be, the inclusion of evidence in the guise of the Wing Commander changed my experiences from being the product of an overactive imagination to something quite remarkable.

“Mind, body and socks,” replied the Wingco cheerfully, “and I don’t mean that metaphorically. Because I never disrobe in my book, my mind and body are truly at one with my socks—look.”