The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.
Neal Stephenson
AUTHORS’ NOTE
To the reader: For your convenience we have included a list of characters as well as a glossary of acronyms and terms that are unique to the D.O.D.O. world. Because the lists contain many spoilers, we have placed them at the back of the book.
N. S. and N. G.
PART
ONE
Diachronicle
(PREAMBLE, JULY 1851)
MY NAME IS MELISANDE STOKES and this is my story. I am writing in July 1851 (Common Era, or—let’s face it—Anno Domini) in the guest chamber of a middle-class home in Kensington, London, England. But I am not a native of this place or time. In fact, I am quite fucking desperate to get out of here.
But you already knew that. Because when I’m done writing this thing—which, for reasons that will soon become clear, I’m calling Diachronicle—I am going to take it to the very discreet private offices of the Fugger Bank, Threadneedle Street, lock it up in a safe deposit box, and hand it over to the most powerful banker in London, who is going to seal it in a vault, not to be opened for more than one hundred and sixty years. The Fuggers, above all people in this world, understand the dangers of Diachronic Shear. They know that to open the box and read the document sooner would be to trigger a catastrophe that would wipe London’s financial district off the map and leave a smoking crater in its place.
Actually, it would be much worse than a smoking crater . . . but a smoking crater is how history would describe it, once the surviving witnesses had been sent off to the madhouse.
I’m writing with a steel-nibbed dip pen, model number 137B, from Hughes & Sons Ltd. of Birmingham. I requested the Extra Fine Tip, partly to save money on paper, and partly so that I could jab my thumb with it and draw blood. The brown smear across the top of this page can be tested in any twenty-first-century DNA lab. Compare the results to what is on file in my personnel record at DODO HQ and you will know that I am a woman of your era, writing in the middle of the nineteenth century.
I intend to write everything that explains how I came to be here, no matter how far-fetched or hallucinatory it may sound. To quote Peter Gabriel, a singer/songwriter who will be born ninety-nine years from now: This will be my testimony.
I DO ATTEST that I am here against my will, having been Sent here from September 8, 1850, and from the city of San Francisco, California (the day before California was granted statehood).
I do attest that I belong in Boston, Massachusetts, in the first quarter of the twenty-first century. There, and then, I am part of the Department of Diachronic Operations: a black-budget arm of the United States government that has gone rather badly off the rails due to internal treachery.
In the time in which I write this, 1851, magic is waning. The research that DODO paid me to perform indicates that magic will cease to exist at the end of this month (July 28). When that happens, I will be trapped here in a post-magic world for the rest of my days. The only way anyone will ever know what became of me is through this deposition. While I have managed to land myself in comfortable (by 1851 standards) quarters with access to pen, ink, leisure time, and privacy, it has been at the expense of freedom; my hosts would not consider allowing me out of the house alone for an evening constitutional, let alone to seek out witches who might help me.
One comment before I begin. If anyone from DODO ever reads this, for the love of God please add corset-makers to the list of abettors we need to recruit in any Victorian DTAPs. Corsets are intended to be custom-made to conform to the actual shape of a lady’s body, and it’s uncomfortable to have to borrow one or buy one “off the rack,” although servants and poorer women generally do that (but do not lace them tightly, as they must engage in manual labor). Being here entirely on charity, I prefer not to ask my hosts to extend credit for a custom-fit one, but wearing this one (borrowed from my hostess) is just awful. It makes a Renaissance bodice feel like a bikini, I’m not even kidding.
Diachronicle
DAY 33 (LATE AUGUST, YEAR 0)
In which I meet Tristan Lyons and immediately agree to get into more trouble than I could possibly realize at the time
I MET TRISTAN LYONS IN the hallway outside the faculty offices of the Department of Ancient and Classical Linguistics at Harvard University. I was a lecturer, which means that I was given the most unpopular teaching assignments with no opportunity for university-supported research and no real job security.
On this particular afternoon, as I was walking down the hallway, I heard voices raised within the office of Dr. Roger Blevins, Department Chair. His door was slightly ajar. Usually it gaped open, so that anyone walking by might glance at his ego-wall, upon which hung every degree, honor, and accolade he’d ever collected, honestly or otherwise. When not yawning thus, the door was tightly closed, advising “Do Not Disturb” in 48-point Lucida Blackletter to make sure we all understood how exclusive his company was.
But here it was, uncharacteristically a quarter open. Intrigued, I glanced in, just as a clean-cut man was making a decisive exit, looking back at Blevins with an expression somewhere between disgust and bemusement. His biceps smacked into my shoulder as he ploughed into me with enough force to throw me off balance. I pivoted backward and landed sprawled on the floor. He retreated instinctively, his backpack smacking into the doorjamb with a hard thump. From within the office, Blevins’s voice was hurling a stream of invective.
“Apologies,” the man said at once, turning red. He was about my age. He slipped out into the hallway and began to reach toward me to help me up.
The door swung farther open, quite forcefully—right into my shin. I made a noise of pained protest and the pompous voice from within the room went silent.
Blevins—thick grey hair perfectly immobile, dressed as if he expected at any moment to be sworn in to give expert testimony—emerged from his office and peered down at me disapprovingly. “What are you doing there?” he asked, as if he’d caught me spying.
“My fault, I’m sorry, miss,” said the young man, again holding his hand toward me.
Blevins grabbed the edge of the door and began pulling it closed. “Watch where you’re going,” he said to me. “If you’d been in the middle of the hall you’d have avoided a collision. Please collect yourself and move on.”
He gave the young man a look I could not make out from where I was, then turned back into his office, closing the door hard behind him.
After a second of stunned silence, the young man extended his hand closer to me and I took it, with a nod of thanks, to rise. We were standing quite close to each other.
“I am . . .” he began again. “I am so very sorry—”