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themselves. Page 203, for instance, traded places with page 51,pages 110 to 143 now
followed page 275, and pages 310 to 327 wiggled their way into place between pages 15 and
16.
Readers could not adjust to all these transformations. A number of them suffered strokes or
coronaries, their doctors ominously declaring that their hearts had attacked them. Other
readers simply stopped functioning or began shouting at neighbors' wives, or throwing
themselves sobbing into their brothers-in-law's arms.
The book company that had published the novel was overwhelmed by millions of law suits and,
in an adroit legal maneuver, sued the author for breach of contract, claiming that the altered
novel was not the one they had agreed to publish, or, indeed, had published.
In the end, the courts sent a delegation of eminent critics to approach the author and order him
to rewrite the novel as it had originally appeared, or suffer the penalty of death, since he was
responsible for the initial work that was causing such hardships for so many in its present form
and, therefore, was clearly "a wicked, immoral, iniquitous and recreant act against the public's
welfare."
On a hot sunny day, the delegation found the old novelist working in his garden, wrestling
bushes and vines into a barrel, the creepers seeming to fight him off like inept tentacles.
"I was expecting you," he said, wiping the sweat from his face and neck with a towel. "But
there's not much I can do. I created those characters all right; I won't deny that. But from the
moment they woke on the page and I instructed them to say this and do that, they said and did
whatever they wanted. I even warned them about their drinking, and entering that mine with
rotting timbers in Arizona, but they never listened. I finally decided to leave them alone and just
be there, in case they ever wanted to talk."
The head of the delegation waved the novelist's words away. "You know the consequences if
you refuse?" he said.
The novelist shrugged. "I suspect those renegade characters will return. That may be the
saddest thing of all. But you never know: all the characters have surprised me before, and
there's no reason to think they won't surprise me again."
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