Antichapter 3: The Antimuse

A phone rang. This phone had nothing to do with the story. It was coincidental, and irrelevant. The adversary wondered why he’d even written about it.

Then another phone rang. Then more and more phones rang, until billions of phones were ringing, not just on Earth but on every planet that had phones. Exactly one was relevant to the story. The rest rang to maintain logical consistency: if a character dials a random number and exactly one phone in the universe rings it is unlikely that phone will be the one that needs to be answered in order to advance the plot, while if every phone in the universe rings, then it is certain that the one phone that needs to be answered will be one of the phones that rings.

And indeed the one phone that needed to be answered finally rang.

“Will someone answer the fucking phone?” A voice asked. “Someone’s got to answer it to move the goddamn plot forward.”

As if in answer to that question, but actually as the result of a coincidence, improbable even by the standards of this metanovel, a hand reached out and picked up the phone.

“Hello,” said the voice of the antimuse, owner of the newest hand.

“Hello,” the Voice from the last chapter said. “Are you an antimuse?”

“Are you a moron?” The antimuse retorted. “Are you blind or are you stupid? Didn’t you read the title? Didn’t you read the line before yours? ‛Hello,’ said the voice of the antimuse, owner of the newest hand.’ That should be a fucking clue.”

“Sorry,” said the Voice. “Can we try it again?”

“Sure,” said the antimuse, and her hand replaced her phone.

Refs:

1Stop That Book!64

4Antimuse Redux