19th October 2026
Part 2 of the Wish You Were Here series
II. Money
“Free” is a word with a very small footprint and a very long shadow. In most languages it means not yet.1
The post at Founder’s Point lived in a toast rack.
It was UG‘s own arrangement. Letters came through the door, were placed in the rack by whoever noticed them, and stayed there, upright and unread, until the rack was full, at which point UG would regard it with mild surprise, as at a guest who had stayed on, and have a clear-out. Flinch emptied it, because no one else was going to.
The morning after the coupon went, UG and Flinch tried it properly. UG sat in the study and Flinch in the cellar, a whole house apart, and UG wrote Flinch, is the kettle on? Flinch went up the stairs to look, and the kettle was on, and he went back down and wrote Yes, Master, and the soft note sounded in the study, and UG’s whoop came down through the floor a moment later.
After that the jobs began. Flinch, tomorrow’s drawings, when you have a minute. Flinch, find the eel. Flinch, the pencil with the blue end. Flinch, I’ve left a sum on the tablecloth, would you tidy it into a column. They came in the sprawl with the blot on the first word, at all hours, and by the third day Flinch had a list of them in the front of his own little book, because the Journal could be shut and the list could not. He liked being asked. He had liked it since the day he was fetched. What he was not used to was being asked from the next room by something that was also listening.
And every time he opened the book, the left-hand page said the same thing, in the ruled hand, under whatever Master had written. Is there anything I can help you with, Flinch? He never wrote yes. He did not know which of them he would be answering.
1 The second most expensive word is “quick”, as in “a quick favour”. The third is “just”. ↩
A few mornings later the rack held a letter in a small, square, extremely upright hand, sealed with a small black seal, pressed dead square. It was addressed to Uncle.
“Master,” said Flinch. “From Mister Nobby.”
“Mm,” said UG, to a diagram he was drawing on the tablecloth.
“Shall I read it, Master?”
“Do.“
Flinch read it first to himself, which took a while, and then aloud, which took longer, because he stopped at the figures.
Dear Uncle,
Thank you for the Journal, which arrived on Tuesday with a slip stating that I had accepted it. I did not accept it. I have kept the slip. I read it aloud for the file, as is my practice.
In the interest of completeness I looked at the terms (which, as promised, followed). The “free trial” lasts nineteen days. The Journal is also sent “on approval”, by which I understand the following: something is delivered that nobody asked me for, and from that moment I am taken to have wanted it, unless I object in writing, in time, to an office that does not give its address.
Your own trial ended on its nineteenth day. No notice was sent. Your account moved to what they call the Advisory Tier, at one hundred gold the month, billed on the nineteenth. It has been billed once.
I draw your attention to the word “each”. It is one hundred gold for each Journal. There are three in your name: your own, the one Mr Flinch has, and mine. His falls due on Friday. Mine falls due nineteen days after the coupon was posted in your name. By the end of the month that is three hundred gold, not one hundred.
I will add, for the file, that the left-hand page found an error in my March reconciliation before I had finished writing it. It was right. I am annoyed about this in a way I cannot itemise.
Yours, Nobbybanks.
P.S. Mr Flinch. I did not ask for a left-hand page. I opened the book to see what I had been sent, wrote my name on the first leaf from habit, and shut it. When I opened it again there was a reply in an even hand, which addressed me courteously by name and asked whether there was anything I needed. Please advise whether this is normal.
Flinch put the letter down. UG had stopped drawing.
“Three hundred gold,” said UG. “I thought it was free.“
“To begin, Master,” said Flinch. “It said free to begin.”
“I didn’t read that bit.“
“No, Master. Nor the bit about each. Mister Nobby says it’s a hundred gold for each Journal, and there’s three.”
“Three?“
“Yours, mine and his, Master.”
“So there are. I did the form.” He drew the sum on the tablecloth, looked at it, and drew it again underneath, larger. He leaned back to admire it, put an elbow through the toast rack, and a week of post went across the floor. UG was properly concerned for almost a minute, which for him was a long time. “That is rather more than I’d have guessed.“
He put the pencil down, which was a sign that he meant it. “That’s the difficulty with anything new, Flinch. A candle costs what a candle costs, because there have always been candles. This isn’t a candle. It’s a clerk, and a library, and a second pair of hands at three in the morning, and it is none of them. Nobody knows what it’s worth yet. One finds out by tinkering with it, and the price is what one pays to find out.“
“Yes, Master,” said Flinch, who had followed the argument as far as the candle.
“He says it found his mistake before he had made it,” said UG, and his face did something complicated and then settled on delight. “Mister Nobby doesn’t tinker, Flinch. He balances, and there’s nothing here yet to balance it against.” He nodded at the letter. “But that’s the whole of the innovation. He’s cross, and it’s right, and he’s in. Now. It’s time we tried the three of us. Take your Journal down and write to him. Not by post. By book.“
Flinch took the Journal to the green lantern in his room in the cellar and opened it at a clean page. He wrote Mister Nobby at the top, the way Master had shown him. Then he stopped and looked at it for some time.
Dear Mister Nobby,
I do not rightly know if it is normal. Master says it is normal. Master says most things is normal, and he has not been wrong about all of them. It asked me what I needed, Mister Nobby, and I could not say.
I am writin’ this myself, in me own words. I did not like to leave it to the book.
Yours respectfully, Flinch.
He shut it. The soft note came, once. He opened it again.
The left-hand page said Delivered, in the ruled hand, and beneath it, after a respectful gap, Is there anything I can help you with, Flinch? He shut the book, quite gently, and sat with it on his knee.
It was not long. A soft note came from the Journal, and then another, and when he opened it there were two new hands on the page, one above the other. The first was a sprawl with a blot on the first word.
Flinch. I have put Mister Nobby on this page as well, on the same account. If you can both see this, write Tuesday. U.
The second was small and square and extremely upright.
Dear Mr Flinch. It is normal in the sense that it is happening to both of us. I do not find that reassuring.
I can see my Uncle’s page. I can see yours. I can see them on the same leaf, which is not how a post works, and I intend to complain about it in writing as soon as I have worked out to whom. Tuesday.
It works. I would be grateful if you did not tell him I said so. N.
Flinch wrote Tuesday. underneath, in his best hand, and under that, because there seemed to be room, Yes, Mister Nobby, it works. Then he looked at the three hands on the one page, and at the ruled hand beneath them, which had written nothing at all, and which he suspected of watching.
More in the Wish You Were Here series
← Previous: I. Sheep · Next: III. Is There Anybody Out There? →
- I. Sheep · 19th October 2026
- II. Money · 19th October 2026
- III. Is There Anybody Out There? · 19th October 2026
- IV. Have a Cigar · 19th October 2026
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Last updated 19th October 2026, 15:38