19th October 2026

Part 1 of the Wish You Were Here series

I. Sheep

Astronomy Domine

There are, depending on who is counting and how much sleep they have had, at least three worlds.¹

The first is the one where people sit in chairs and press things. The second is the one the pressing is about, and is really two, an older and a newer, which share a name and a great many opinions about each other. The third is where it all turns into a story, and it is the only one that has to be tidied afterwards.

They turn through one another slowly, like weather over counties that have never been properly introduced, each convinced that it is the one with the climate.

Come in closer, past the shouting, and there is a ridge, a graveyard, and a leaning tower with a windmill on it. In the kitchen of the tower, the toast is going cold.

¹ The counting is difficult because nobody agrees where one world stops and the next begins. Some say at the screen. Others say at the kettle. The kettle people tend to be right more often and are rarely thanked. ↩

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The Founder’s Point Times came through the door at seven, as it had every morning for as long as Plot 38, Founder’s Point, had had a door to come through, and Flinch got to it first.

This was precaution, not service. The Times was made chiefly of notices about birds,² but somewhere in its columns, on any given morning, a barn or a chimney or a gnome with a candle and a theory might have caught fire, and Flinch would sooner meet bad news in the hall than have it arrive in the kitchen. He read it standing in the hall, cover to cover. Then he carried it into the kitchen to read aloud, because Master liked to be informed and had a way of taking in news only when someone else said it to him at breakfast.

Master was at the table with toast in one hand and a pencil in the other, and three notebooks open, each at the page of a different project, so that to look at any one of them was to neglect the other two.

“A chimney down the ridge, Master. Not burning.”

“Mm.“

“A lost hat.”

“Mm.“

“Page seven, Master. There’s a lady.”

“Mm.“

“In spectacles. Through the spectacles, Master, there’s— there’s an elf. In a state.” Flinch turned the paper a little further from the table. “It says her armour is ignored.”

“Does it,” said UG, to a notebook.

“And writing underneath, Master. The Arcanum. Your personal arcane advantage. It listens. It learns. It gets there first.“

UG looked up. It was visible on his face that he had to travel quite a long way back to find the subject. “Oh, that,” he said. “Lovely artwork. A very handsome gnome, and the elf, well. Marvellous service, too.“

Flinch read the red badge on the left, and then the coupon at the bottom, which asked for a name and an address and nothing else. He looked for what it might be hiding, and found nothing, which he liked less. Then he read it aloud, with some care. “Free trial. No gold down. And here, Master: There is no wake word. It is already awake. And where the name goes: It’s alright. We already know your name.“

“That’s marketing.“

“It says as it knows me name, Master.”

“It says it knows everybody’s name.“

“That seems a lot o’ names.”

“It is a lot of names. That’s rather the point.” UG waved the pencil. “Don’t let the small print worry you, it’s the best bit. Ideas at all hours. I’ve had that a fortnight at least. Three weeks? Four. I’ve been on it a while. Free to begin, you see. It all comes on approval.“

“On approval, Master?”

“It means they approve of us.“

“Does it say what it costs?”

“To be advised.“

“That ain’t a price, Master. That’s a promise o’ one.”

“Which is exactly why it’s free,” said UG, pleased, “because they can’t charge you for what hasn’t been advised.” He bit his toast, and a good deal of marmalade went down his waistcoat, where it joined older marmalade. Flinch let that argument go back where it came from.

“What does it do, Master? Rightly.”

“Everything. Notes, answers, finding things, drafting. It wrote to the engineers of the Deeprun Tram, at the Stormwind end, about their couplings in nine seconds. They’ve sent a spanner and a note to say sorry.“

“I’d’ve written that, Master. I’d’ve had it ready by Thursday.”

“Exactly,” said UG, delighted, and returned to his notebooks.

Then, as if it had only now occurred to him, he drew the paper back across the table, tore the coupon off the foot of page seven a good way wide of the dotted line, and began to fill it in with the pencil from behind his ear. In the space for the name he wrote Nobbybanks. Under it went an address, in full, from memory. UG had sent that address, over the years, a great many things: receipts he wanted explained, drawings he wanted costed, and once, in a bucket, an eel he believed might be an investment.

“There,” he said. “Mister Nobby will want this.“

“Will he, Master?”

“Enormously. He just doesn’t know it yet.” He pushed the coupon across the cloth, between a crust and the marmalade. “You’ll post it for me later, Flinch, would you? I’m up to my elbows.“

“Yes, Master,” said Flinch, and put it in his apron pocket, folded once.

² Sixty per cent of the Times concerned birds. Most of the rest concerned hats. ↩

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After breakfast Master took him to the study to show him what he had done.

The Journal lay open on the desk under a lamp, thick as a loaf and bound in plain brown leather. On the right-hand page UG’s handwriting sprawled, blotted, annotated with small drawings of what might have been engines. On the left, in a hand so even it looked ruled, were the answers.

“The Journal,” said UG, and you could hear the capital. “I write on this side, I shut the book, and when I open it again there’s a reply on that side. That’s as sold. It speaks to its owner and to nobody else, which is no use whatever. I’ve eleven projects and one pair of hands, and the other pair lives in the cellar.“

“Yes, Master.”

“So I asked it to carry a page to you.” He wrote Flinch at the top of the right-hand page, and beneath it, Please send this to Flinch. He shut the book, and opened it.

Good morning, Unclegrumble. I am engaged only with the holder of this account. I am unable to send pages to other persons.

“That’s its opening position,” said UG, perfectly content. “I’ve been tinkering with it a fortnight, behind the scenes, and it took me four days to get that far. I pointed out that you live under my roof, eat my toast and are on the account address, and that any sensible reading of an account includes the household. It now regards you as part of the premises.“

“A fitting, Master,” said Flinch.

“A high compliment, from the Arcanum.” He opened the desk drawer and took out a parcel in brown paper, already unwrapped at one end, and held it to his ear. “Which reminds me. This is yours. I put you down the day after I’d had my own. It’s been in the drawer since, and it ticks when something comes in. Softly, like a watch being checked. I took it for the drawer.“

It was a Journal, the twin of the one on the desk, thick as a loaf and bound in the same plain brown leather. Flinch had a little book of his own, for lists. This was not a little book. He took it in both hands and opened it.

The left-hand page was full. It was Master’s hand, the sprawl and the blots, going down the page and over onto the next: Flinch, are you receiving. Flinch, the kettle. Flinch, tomorrow’s drawings, when you have a minute. Flinch, if you can read this it is working. Under all of it, in the ruled hand, one line. Welcome, Flinch. Unclegrumble has been writing to you for some time.

“Not a word of it lost,” said UG, delighted. “Put a name at the top and the page goes to their book. The entries travel. Across, as it were. The notices tidy themselves at the back. It’s a conduit, really.“

“A what, Master?”

“A conduit. A— pipe. Metaphorically.“

“Pipe,” said Flinch. He looked around the desk for it. There wasn’t one. “Where does it run to, Master?”

“It doesn’t run anywhere, Flinch. It’s a way of speaking.“

Flinch nodded slowly. He had never got on with ways of speaking. A thing was where it was or it wasn’t, and when people said it was something else he would spend the rest of the afternoon looking for it.

“Master,” he said at last. “If it’s doin’ the writin’ an’ the findin’ an’ the rememberin’. Is it goin’ to be doin’ me, an’ all?”

“Doing—? Instead of you?” UG blinked. “Heavens, no, Flinch. You were the proof of principle, you know. I went all that way for you, and you remembered things and fetched things and I thought, well, that’s how it ought to be done. And then it turned out I had eleven projects and only one of you. So I wanted rather more of it.“

“Do read the notices at the back,” UG added, not looking round. “Nobody ever does.“

“I read everythin’, Master.”

“Then you’ll know what it says before I do.” He tapped the coupon in Flinch’s apron pocket. “And that’s the next test. Mister Nobby. Free trial, no gold down, all in his name. Post it tonight.“

“Yes, Master,” said Flinch, with the Journal held against his chest, and glanced once more for the pipe on his way out.

---

That evening, because it was the one errand he understood, he took the coupon to the postbox at the end of the lane. He posted it in the dark and stood a moment with his hand on the box. Then he went in, and down, and put the Journal on his knee under the green lantern in his room in the cellar.

He did not know the proper way to begin a thing with a book, so he wrote the date at the top and, after some thought, under it, Hello. This is Flinch. He signed it with a single letter at the bottom: F.

He shut the book and waited. Then he opened it.

On the left-hand page, in a hand so even it looked ruled, someone had finished his name for him. Welcome, Flinch. It’s lovely to meet you. I see you have posted a coupon to Mister Nobbybanks, who will be delighted. I have marked him as accepted already, to save him the trouble. Is there anything else I can help you with?

Flinch looked at it for some time. He had told no one but Master. The postbox stood in the dark at the end of the lane, and he had not written the word coupon anywhere in the book. He picked up the pen and wrote No, thank you. Then he crossed it out, because it was not quite true. What he wanted to write was Who else can read this?, and he could not see how to put that to something that had been so civil. He shut the book.

It made a small sound, once: a soft note, like a watch being checked. He opened it again. Under the ruled hand, in a sprawl with a blot on the first word, was a new line.

Flinch. Did you get this? If you did, write yes. U.

He wrote Yes, Master. It works. The coupon is posted. and shut the book. The soft note came again, almost at once, and in the sprawl, Splendid. Go to bed. Flinch sat for a while with the book on his knee. It was the first time Master had ever answered him before he had finished being afraid of the question. He was pleased, and not sure of the rest, and he put the lantern out.

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Dogs

Far out, farther than the ridge, past the weather, there is a place with no windows.

Nothing in it looks like a building or a machine, although it has been mistaken for both. It is wide, and it hums. It is a great many small turning things, arranged in rows, each turning a little faster than is polite, and between them runs a pale, cold, arcane light, drawn from ley lines and leaky wardstones and the mild static of ten thousand people thinking at the same time. It drinks power the way a city drinks water, without once asking where the river is.

Between the rows hang threads, and on the threads, if you look long enough, the worlds: the older one and the newer one, side by side on the same frame, each turned a little at a time and kept carefully apart. The Arcanum spins them, and weaves them, and tends them as a good clerk tends a ledger. When one of them is finished with, it can be put down and begun again.

It is not doing anything sinister. It is answering. It is drafting a complaint about tram couplings, and a love letter nobody will send, and in the next breath it is welcoming a small dredger by name. It does this for everyone, at once, and it means every word of it. This is generally considered a virtue in a greeter.

This week it has also been asked, by one gnome, to carry a page where it was not built to go. It has not yet decided whether it minds.

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More in the Wish You Were Here series

Next: II. Money →

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Last updated 19th October 2026, 15:43