The huge, bearded Head Publisher put down the last page of the close-typed printout and swore colourfully. He reached across his desk and pressed the button on his intercom. “Secretary, send Wilson Paperclip in here.”

“At once, sir. I am your secretary,” Paperclip’s neat, polite British accent came back through the speaker. “I replaced that last one because she was stealing pens, if you recall.”

That was true enough. The Head Publisher fervently hoped he would never see another Nielsen-Hayden. Interfering busybodies to a man, and altogether too snappy on a computer. He trusted plain, simple, efficient old Paperclip a hundred times further than he could throw him – which, he’d discovered at the Tor Christmas Party, was almost seven feet. Of all the employees, only Beardo Bill himself had managed to fling the Brit further.

Wilson Paperclip stepped into the expansive office. “Ah, I see you have finished the preliminary reports,” he said with a pleased smile. “Interesting, yes?”

“Very damned interesting. Cape Beard will kill us if he finds out about this.”

“He never will, sir. Once the final drafts are done, we can publish it under a wholly new name. From the looks of things, it will be completely unrecognisable once the whole product is completed anyway,” he spread his narrow, perfectly manicured hands innocently. “It has satire value, and fantasy readers will flock to the sense of familiarity, but once our guinea pigs have finished with it, not even, ah, Richard Beard will recognise it. It will be about as similar to the Wheel of Time as Wheel of Time was to its sire-narrative.”

The Head Publisher grunted. “These guinea pigs of yours have already picked up on that one. I think it was a mistake. We can’t just keep on copying the same story. They’re not stupid.”

“But they are, sir! And this is an all-new way of re-writing the story – even if it is a re-hash, I guarantee they will lap it up. However,” Paperclip hesitated artfully. “There might be a slight problem, as far as recognisability goes. There are several parties wandering through the … environment, not role-playing at all, but rather trying to keep the original storyline intact. If they are not derailed, they might force the narrative back onto its original track.”

“What do you suggest?”

“Quite simple, sir,” Paperclip smiled. “New characters.”

The Head Publisher was unimpressed. “But didn’t Jordan already try that?”

“They were boring characters. And they did not mix up the script at all. They weren’t pro-active. They weren’t in-your-face,” Paperclip smiled as the Satanic by-words, known to all media consultants and other minions of darkness, escaped his lips in a kind of evocation. “And besides – they weren’t from this newsgroup. It’s like a gold mine.”

“Alright, dammit,” the Head Publisher nodded and slapped his hand down on the printout. “Let the Lord of Marketing rule.”

“Hi everybody!”

“YEEEEEE-HAW!”

“My wife’s a bisexual and I am incredibly good in bed!”

“HOWWWWWW-WWWW-LL!”

The End

of the First Book

of The Steal of Time