And so the novel begins!
After several episodes of raw investigation, in which our curiosity is piqued and our appetite whetted, our attention now returns to the majestic glass-walled downtown office complex that houses the Speculative Service, in company with our hero, the most remarkable representative of that selfsame agency!
Our readers will not need to be reminded of the various mechanisms, extraordinary and subtle, that work together to protect the Golden State from the ever-present danger of falsehood in its variegated forms. These mechanisms include, for example, the Trusted Authority, daily beacon of new and accurate information; the Gazetteer and Book of What Is So and all the other volumes of reference, regularly issued and updated by the Publishing Arm to disseminate good and golden facts so that we all may operate, in all places and at all times, with the benefit of common understanding; and the “comprehensive capture mechanisms,” or simply “captures,” those ubiquitous small recording devices, some carefully hidden and some purposefully visible, capturing what happens, at all times and in all places, so that reality can be preserved for later reference. So there may be one reality, true and permanent and universal.
And of course the Record itself, where the events which occur are forever housed, so that no one may say one thing and subsequently claim not to have said it; so that no controversy may go unresolved; so that no disruption of fact can long go uncorrected.
Preeminent among the variety of truth-defending mechanisms, though, is the Speculative Service, that elite corps of law enforcement officials who are solely empowered, and uniquely qualified, to detect and destroy the stuff of lies. A created member of our Service has cultivated that superior discernment necessary to catch falsehoods as they emerge, and the skill to conjure falsehoods of his or her own. Confronted with a “mystery,” a blank space on the canvas of reality, the Speculator concocts potential truths, in order to test the plausibility of each until he or she deduces what really happened. Like the poison control man, like the radiologist, like the firefighter, Speculators are licensed to deal in danger, and they do so bravely, for the preservation of what is real, and for the protection of us all.
Three cheers for the Service!
And three cheers for Mr. Ratesic, a leading light among them, who even now—“now” in the sense of “at the time he emerges in the telling of the tale, at the time you, dear reader, are given the pleasure of joining his company”—even now Mr. Ratesic is confronted with a set of flat facts which, though each taken individually is true, piled together like a cairn, arranged with fiendish purpose to cover over a yawning darkness…