STANE MALLIX WOULD have astonished himself if he had known his challenge of Damnation Mole's work had created a pressure wave of rumours that collided with, reinforced or negated, according to the interference patterns involved, other older more well established rumours.

Reference works took a beating.

What had once been the bedrock of knowledge, the Great Encyclopedia of All Sorts, had found itself being returned by disgruntled owners volume by volume and protests were held outside the offices of a certain door to door sales company who had sent their agents across the land to sell the very same distinguished reference work on various doorsteps deemed in need of a comprehensive education.

"How can we trust what experts are telling us? How do we know the world isn't going to end tomorrow?" Lemon Curl shouted at passersby who sensibly gave her and a few of her placard-waving supporters a wide berth which occasionally meant stepping dangerously into traffic. "For all we know, them storms predicted for the winter might hit us all the sooner."

"And?" one unwise individual said, sizing up the tiny yellow-haired shrike disdainfully.

"And that means you should book a once in a life time trip into the hills to see all the beauty Frangea has to offer in the way of nature, before all that nature is scoured away by winds full of diamond-hard ice crystals."

"Go tourism," her supporters chanted. "Go 'Dog Trails Universal' before all the places are sold out."

The lingering individual lingered no longer and departed without a proferred pamphlet.

"Your loss," Lemon Curl said. Then she spotted her rival across the street offering cutprice outdoor gear during the sweltering heat that was a Frangean autumn.

Meanwhile the All Sorts office had had one of its windows broken and law enforcers moved into the area.

***

THE BOARD OF Directors of the Academy of Sure Things was in a crisis meeting.

"Gentlemen," one began and there were a couple of coughs that interrupted his speech. "And ladies," he added, having forgotten in his controlled panic to move with the times. "We have a problem, the nature of which is a devil to unravel."

"It's corruption, that's what it is," one of the coughy ladies said, smashing her fist so hard upon the table a pencil she had brought to do her eyebrows with shot across the room and drew a gasp from an elderly member who now sported a monobrow in bright blue where it had grazed him and interrupted an afternoon nap all at the same time.

"Indeed it is," said the chairman. "Corruption of data. From whence has this deleterious infiltration commenced and how was it managed with such subtle all-pervasiveness that it seems to be just about everywhere."

"Even the toilet paper has gone wonky," someone observed.

"Quite. Certain universal constants appear out of alignment and this has resulted in catastrophic failure across multiple disciplines and industries. I shudder whenever I cross a bridge at present."

"Try using a toilet hereabouts. That'll make you shudder," came another observation.

There was a pause while an assistant brought up the grid-linked projector. The screen brightened, lights were lowered and everyone looked at what was being projected.

"Gentlemen," there was some coughing, "and ladies, we have here a possible answer to the question, though what that question might be needs answering in itself."

The screen flickered.

"The question is," someone jumped in, "what does a pink inflatable have to do with it?"

"Ah, sorry, that's my Blossom Bay holiday sequence. Chive, change to the correct grid stream please."

"Sorry boss, thought that was a nine when I punched the numbers in earlier. Musta been a zero."

There was a bit of fiddling and a schematic appeared with wavy lines dancing on it like electromagnetic snakes in search of victims.

"Here we have a tree of knowledge," the chairman explained. "There at the root is the source of everything and then it all branches out with interconnectivity which is a pleasure to behold."

"Unlike some in this room I have a social life," a whisper intruded briefly.

A bit more fiddling and the schematic expanded, showing finer detail until it halted upon a particularly knotty bit.

"Physics, gravitation, gridology and applied mathematics all tangled up together," the chairman said. "Did my degree on that bit I did and my higher professorship on that particular tangle right there between intuitive methodology and fun with numbers."

"That's when he must have missed out on a social life," another whisper nipped in between breaths of air from the chairman.

"And here is the revered contribution from Professor , uh Mole."

"Damnation," one of the ladies swore. "Where's my pencil got to? I feel an eyebrow slipping."

"The point is, gentlemen, and ladies," the chairman huffed, "the source data in the archives may have been corrupted at some point. Text books printed off from the on-grid library would have therefore repeated such undetected errors and spread them across the knowledge base."

"Like drinking from a poisoned river," someone said. "One of them on Mount Syzywyg that have notices which say 'Don't drink the water, as it's poisonous you bloody fool.'"

"Alas such a useful and well emphasised warning did not exist when this particular poison entered the system," the chairman acknowledged. "If only it had."

"Ha! You sound like a shareholder in the Great Encyclopedia of All Sorts publishing company," someone sniggered.

"Get a life."

"No, you get a life." Things were threatening to get out of hand.

"Ladies, ladies, and uh, gentlemen, let us not lose our heads over this."

"Or professorships," someone grumbled.

"That too. Lights up Chive."

There was a sudden flare of incandescence which sent everyone scurrying under the table for protection.

"Sorry boss, thought that was a zero. Musta been a nine."

The light level resumed a tolerable level and everyone took their seats.

"What are you doing with my pencil?" one lady board member was heard to say as everyone settled again.

"Breaking it into small pieces," came a gruff reply.

"Enough!" the chairman interrupted, taking command like a teacher in a classroom of rowdy pupils. It was an apt description. "We must address this issue at the source. The source code for our on-grid library databases have to be incorruptible by necessity, yet corrupted in some subtle way it has been. The question is how did this happen?"

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

"That is what I intend to find out," a voice chuckled off to one side.

Everyone looked to see who had spoken but no sooner had the words filtered across the restless room than the speaker had somehow managed to disappear from a convenient exit.

"Ghosts," someone muttered.

"In the machinery," another added.

"Damnation," was the final conclusion to the meeting.

***

TINKER BLOMP liked to juggle. It was the closest he could get to that forbidden activity known as laying odds.

With the subtleties of rumour there was always a risk, like dropping a pebble in the water and seeing how the ripples behaved once they had passed the limits of concentric uniformity. As soon as one misbegotten idea had been put out of its misery than another might spring forth, fully armed and ready to battle common sense with a multitude of weapons. Gossip, lies and political speeches all came into play at some point along the line.

"Do not fight fire with fire," he had been warned often enough.

No, he was not using scorn or sarcasm to allay fears everything was going to end soon. Pushing back against such doomsaying only reinforced the fear.

Pretending such a forbidding future was simply a thing of no moment only brought worriers clamouring to be heard as if they were party to arcane knowledge the benighted needed to know. It was their good deed for what time was left to them to mend a shortlived world. A pity when that life appeared to extend and extend so that these good deeds tended to dry up.

Except in one notable source.

The purity of such actions spoke for themselves, proof against any adversity or diversion or temptation.

This was one of the little Tinkering tricks Tinker Blomp tossed in the air.

Rumour, the counterweight which preceded it, must needs be juggled with too of course. This one he wanted to let fall and shatter like a ceramic bowl upon unyielding concrete.

***

THE WISDOM DISTRICT contained a public library. Of course there were no books in it anymore. That was pointless for people kept taking them out and not bringing them back. Now there were touch screens instead. Most of these were covered in sticky fingerprints for the place prided itself on bringing education to the young and the great unwashed.

It was a curious building. Long and thin so no one could get lost among the shelves back when there were books there, it had now evolved into a sort of thoroughfare of on-grid words and pictures that changed of their own accord until someone touched the screen and received a message asking what they might like to read. Or why they were not outside enjoying the sunshine like everyone else.

One curious figure watched the active screens from an alcove as the occasional seeker of knowledge sauntered by. He was so absorbed in the dancing words he forgot where he was and found himself being reminded by others.

"Why do they need so many blasted screens?" a man said, sidling up to the thoughtful figure whose beard quivered with unspoken words.

"Hmn?" Tinker Blomp said.

"I mean, one would be enough, wouldn't it? What with all them menus and sidebars and things you can drill down into."

"Two fingers on one screen creates confusion," came a considered reply. "Try it."

The man did so and got a blue death screen and a buzz for his trouble.

"Why's that then?" he asked, a little shaken. He had never been menaced by information before.

"Only one question at a time should be asked, and only one answer is available."

"What about either or?"

"Either the one comes before its alternative."

The man humphed at this and double-digited the screen again to make it buzz.

"The brain though can be tricked into seeing two things at once," Tinker Blomp said, fearing library guards might appear and eject a troublesome reader as well as himself as somehow in collusion.

"How so?" and the buzzing stopped, though the staring from a couple of readers farther along the long thin space continued a while.

"I have a coin, thus," and the Tinker held the shiny disc between finger and thumb with a flourish. He was in his element now. With a flick of a finger he set it to spinning rapidly while tilting it to catch the light above.

"You trying to hypnotise me?" the man said with a frown of uncertainty and he stepped back a bit. "As I don't hold with that."

"Not at all, my good man," Blomp said politely as the disc continued its flickering gyrations. "You need but glance at it and I promise not to wave my fingers in strange ways. See here, the numerator side and the presidential side."

"Ha! Looks as if the president has a halo. Damned unlikely thing that," the man said, squinting with satisfaction at the discovery.

"If there had been any books here in this library I could have held a page up to the light and read the text on both sides at the same time."

"There's a trick."

The coin disappeared.

"My good man," Blomp said. "You have cleared my mind of a fog that lingered around it."

"Just saying, we need only the one blasted screen to read stuff on."

"Two people need two screens. Three people need three. And so on."

Tinker Blomp made to move away and the man, not quite finished with his idea made a grab for him. In doing so he touched a curious staff he had not noticed before. There was a blue spark and nearby screens flickered.

"Hey," someone said. "What just happened? Lost my bloody place!"

"No, it's still there," Blomp said in a slightly nervous voice as he propped up the man whom he had conversed with but moments ago so he looked as if he was still conscious. "Just wait a bit and it will pop back into view."

"Ah," the other said several screens away. "There it is. Chapter Five. My favourite."

As Tinker Blomp departed the unconscious man slumped forward so that his nose and his cheek each tried to ask the screen in front of him a question. There was another blue flash and a continued buzzing that eventually brought uniformed gentlemen running.

"Well," one of them said as he lifted the man from the touch screen. "Another word addict I fear."

"Yeah. Get them all the time," his colleague said.

"Did you see a second man here with him just now?"

They both looked around fruitlessly, then noticed another reader nearby engrossed in his touch screen. He was touching it a lot.

"Let's ask this guy."

"Whoo-hoo! Chapter Five. Yes!"

"Let's not," and the guards called in a medic to deal with the wordsleeper before returning to their cubicle and await the next bibliographical infraction.

***

AND THERE IT was. Two things at once. A quantum array inserted into source code. Simple really.

Except why of course.

"What bloody fool would tamper with constants and create chaos in such a random way?" Tinker Blomp asked himself as he wandered past the Museum of Past and Forgotten Things.

Then he wandered into the Museum of Past and Forgotten Things, for he just remembered something about the place.

Seeing is disbelieving.

He could not disbelieve what he was seeing.

"Tell me," he asked a passing assistant who had pondered offering him a brochure but was unsure whether he existed or not, all things considered.

"Tell you what, sir?" the lady said.

"The artist. Is he here? In this building."

"Ah sir. That's the trick. If you can find him you can challenge him to a duel of realities," the lady said gleefully. "Fifty coins a go."

There was one thing that always held true regarding artists.

"Catch," and a coin spun in the air, but before it reached the grateful assistant it disappeared. Then it reappeared again some distance away in the hand of a curious looking little man.

"This is Tinker gold," he said in appalled tones.

"Guaranteed genuine," Blomp replied, hitching up his robe a moment. The assistant made herself scarce as her offer of tea was dismissed.

The two men stared a while at each other, the one sizing up the other. There was a considerable difference in size, so the smaller of the two opened the conversation which the now departed assistant thought might be likened to a duel.

"I am-"

"I know who you are."

"I am sorry," the man completed his sentence at a possible tangent from his initial intention.

"Too late for that."

"I meant no harm."

"Too late for that."

"I sought that space between alternatives."

"We call it Affinity where I come from."

"And where's that?"

"The space between alternatives. You've been Tinkering if I am not mistaken."

"In the name of understanding."

"Open up a human body to find a human soul and you will make a mess and be none the wiser."

"I know that now. This was my ticket out of here, you know, before the world ends." He gestured at the exhibits and their leering ambiguities. Then he held up the coin. "Thank you for this."

"It has two sides. Choose the right one."

"I will."

Tinker Blomp returned to the library, when it was closed of course, and chose a screen that seemed a little less sticky than the others. He pressed a few panels until a flurry of figures scrolled with rapidity upon a purple background. Then he froze it with a finger.

The finger was on a number.

It was the number nine.

With a little device he had pulled from his pocket he touched the screen again and the nine changed to a zero. No, it reverted to a zero.

The screen was released and began scrolling again happily until it faded and went blank.

It is the greatest gift of free will. To have a choice.

So long as it is the right choice.

Which begs the question.

Is being right, being free?