My implants were sizzling. I was on a roll.
Words and images flashed through my mind. I watched as they were transposed directly to the screen. One sentence after another raced to completion. Paragraphs began to take shape. I had a comlink to the Muse. No doubt about it.
I was finishing the final chapter of the first draft of my first novel. It may not have been the best first novel ever written--though I secretly suspected it might be--but it was my novel.
All at once the screen flickered and my text vanished.
The face of a man I'd never seen before appeared in its place. It was a nondescript face. Even to a mind as brimful of adjectives as my own, "plain leaning toward homely" was all I could manage.
I punched the reset button but the system had locked up.
"Mr. Adamski?" he said. "Lester Adamski?"
"What do you want?" I barked. "Who are you?
"My name is immaterial," the man stated. "I represent the PBI."
An official-looking emblem flashed several times in the lower right hand corner of the screen to confirm his authority. It displayed, among other things, an old-fashioned fountain pen with a circle around it. A thick bar cut diagonally across the circle, bisecting the pen.
Of course I'd heard rumors about the PBI. What writer hasn't? Yet it wasn't until that moment that I began to believe they actually existed. I feigned ignorance.
"The PBI? What's the PBI?"
Immaterial's eyes rolled up to let me know he hadn't bought my ruse. "The Publishers Bureau of Investigation," he nevertheless informed me. "We have a matter we are looking into and I need to ask you a few questions."
)
