The Woman Who Died a Lot

10. Monday: The Wingco

"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.”

He pulled up his trouser leg to reveal two inches of gray RAF-issue sock that merged seamlessly into his skin. The sock was actually part of him.

“That’s kind of weird,” said Miles.

“It’s a lot more convenient than dressing every morning. My clothes never need washing or pressing either. Permanent trouser creases for all eternity. Levi’s would love to learn the secret of that.”

“Do you have organs and stuff?” asked Tuesday now that the Wingco seemed to be in the answering vein. “I mean, are you actually alive?”

“I’m as real as my author made me or the readers want me to be. I don’t have blood or tissue or organs or anything, nor do I age or feel pain. I can’t reproduce, but out here I do have free will and a form of autonomy, so in that respect very much alive.”

“Can you die?” asked Joffy.

“Erasure or deletion has always been a very real danger for a character, and even more so for me. I may look fairly robust to you, but I’m on the BookWorld’s ‘Critically Endangered’ list.”

“How so?” asked Miles.

“Because I’m only in single-copy manuscript form. If the manuscript were to be destroyed by a house fire, mold or snails, myself and my flight crew: Septic, Jammy, Snuffy and all the others—would simply vanish.”

“You must go somewhere,” said Joffy thoughtfully. “I’m not convinced the spirit can be simply extinguished.”

“I agree—and that’s really what I’m here for,” said the Wingco, segueing seamlessly into his favorite subject, “to conduct research work into the existence of the Dark Reading Matter.”

“Dark what?” asked Miles.

“Since the observable BookWorld makes up less than twenty percent of the theoretical quantity of Reading Matter,” he explained, “the boffins back in the BookWorld think there is an unknown region of story that we call Dark Reading Matter. I’ll go there when my book finally rots away to nothing. But what I’ll find, no one knows—it’s a one-way trip.”

“We have a similar concept,” remarked Joffy.

“So where is your manuscript?” Miles asked the Wingco.

“I wish we knew.”

“It might be stuck in an attic somewhere,” I added, since we’d looked for it on several occasions, “or at the back of a desk drawer, fallen down behind a filing cabinet—who knows? All we’d need is ten minutes with a photocopier and the Wingco would merely be ‘Vulnerable.’ A limited print run of ten and he’d be on Vanity Island and ‘At Little Risk of Endangerment.’”

“What if you’re landfill?” asked Tuesday. “Anaerobic digestion could take years.”

“Would you make some coffee, please, Friday?” I said quickly, in order to change the subject. The Wingco had thought of that, too, and the landfill theory was good and bad news. Good in that he could last for a century or more with little ill effects and perfectly safe—but bad in that the inevitable breakdown of the manuscript would be painfully protracted as the story fell apart word for word. I’d seen it happen, and it wasn’t pretty.

“Back in 1996 I headed up Jurisfiction’s Manuscript Retrieval Squad,” I said. “I spent almost a year doing little but tracking down Critically Endangered manuscripts. Did I tell you about how I found what came to known as the ‘Hemingway Hoard’?”

“Many times,” said Tuesday, getting up to help Friday with the things.

I thought I wouldn’t bore anyone else, so we changed the subject to my mother and my Aunt Polly, who seemed to get even less and less dignified as they worked their way through their eighth decade together.

“She doesn’t listen to me at all,” said Dad sullenly. “You know those personal-injury traveling booths where dumb people who feign accidents go to grub for cash?”

Joffy said that he did.

“They had one up at the Brunel Centre. A display with a table and some chairs. Your mother pretended to fall over it, then claimed she’d broken her hip and told them she wanted to make a claim—against them.”

“How did it work out?”

“There were three other personal-injury lawyers there, and they all started fighting to represent her. I had to call the police when it came to blows. During the melee she crept away giggling and said that watching personal-injury lawyers punching one another had an inexplicable joy to it.”

“At least it keeps her from playing dominoes at the day center.”

“She’s always been feisty,” said Dad with a warm smile. “Do you remember that trip we took to the Atlas Mountains when your mother tried to smuggle a live goat across the border, wrapped up in a carpet?”

“No,” I said.

“Joffy?”

“No.”

“Damn,” said my father. “All those memories, and none of them shared.”