Free Lost in a good book by Jasper Fforde

truth, played one good chord in seven forgettable albums.”
    “Where is this going, Dad?”
    “I’m nearly there. Imagine a boy band so good that you never needed another boy band ever again— or even any more music. Can you imagine that?”
    “It’s hard. But yes, okay.”
    He let this sink in for a moment.
    “When we reach that boy band, my dear, everything we have ever puzzled about becomes crystal clear—and we will kick ourselves that we hadn’t thought of it earlier!”
    “We will?”
    “Sure. And you know the best thing about it? It’s so devilishly simple. ”
    “I see,” I replied, slightly dubiously. “And when is this amazing Boy Band discovered?”
    Dad suddenly turned serious.
    “That’s why I’m here. Perhaps never—which would be frightfully awkward in the grand scheme of things, believe me. Did you see a cyclist on the road?”
    “Yes?”
    “Well,” he said, consulting the large chronograph on his wrist, “in ten seconds that cyclist will be knocked over and killed.”
    “And—?” I asked, sensing that I was missing something.
    He looked around furtively and lowered his voice.
    “Well, it seems that right here and now is the key event whereby we can avert whatever it is that destroys every single speck of life on this planet! ”
    I looked into his earnest eyes.
    “You’re not kidding, are you?”
    He shook his head.
    “In December 1985, your 1985, for some unaccountable reason, all the planet’s organic matter turns to . . . this. ”
    He withdrew a plastic specimen bag from his pocket. It contained a thick pinkish opaque slime. I took the bag and shook it curiously as we heard a loud screech of tires and a sickly thud. A moment later a broken body and twisted bicycle landed close by.
    “On the 12th December at 20:23, give or take a second or two, all organic material—every plant, insect, fish, bird, mammal and the three billion human inhabitants of this planet—will start turning to that. End of all of us. End of Life—and there won’t be that boy band I was telling you about. The problem is—” he went on as a car door slammed and we heard feet running towards us—“that we don’t know why. The ChronoGuard are not doing any upstreaming work at present.”
    “Why is that?”
    “Labor dispute. They’re on strike for shorter hours. Not actually less hours, you understand, just the hours that they do work they want to be—er—shorter.”
    “So while the upstreamers are on strike the world could end and everyone will die, including them? But that’s crazy!”
    “From an industrial action viewpoint,” said my father, furrowing his brow and going silent for a moment, “I think it’s a very good strategy indeed. I hope they can thrash out a new agreement in time.”
    “And we’ll know if they don’t because the world ends?” I remarked sarcastically.
    “Oh, they’ll come to some arrangement,” explained my father, smiling. “The dispute regarding under time rates lasted almost two decades—time’s easy to waste when you’ve got lots of it.”
    “Okay,” I sighed, unwilling to get too embroiled in SO-12 labor disputes, “what can we do about averting this crisis?”
    “Global disasters are like ripples in a pond, Sweetpea. There is always an epicenter—a place in time and space where it all begins, however innocuously.”
    I began to understand. I looked around at the summer’s evening. The birds were twittering happily and barely a soul could be seen in any direction.
    “This is the epicenter?”
    “Exactly so. Doesn’t look like much, does it? I’ve run trillions of timestream models and the outcome is the same—whatever happens here and now somehow relates to the averting of the crisis. And since the cyclist’s death is the only event of any significance for hours in either direction, it has to be the key event. The cyclist must live to ensure the continued health of the planet!”
    We stepped out from behind the billboard to confront