Chapter 8: Narrative Interlude: The Pause Button, by Virgil Praxus

Time, despite popular rumor, does not flow like a river.

Rivers don’t get caught in feedback loops, suffer from pacing issues, or occasionally reverse because someone at the controls spilled tea on the narrative timeline.

Time, in stories, is more like soup.

Thick, sloshy, and prone to boiling over when you aren’t watching it.

Virgil Praxus watched the soup boil. Then she put a lid on it.

THE WORLD PAUSED <<

The Cobble Tax Incident froze mid-scatter.

A baker’s tray of scones hung mid-air like a comet made of regret.

A goat looked personally offended in temporal suspension.

The sun, halfway through an enthusiastic rise, stopped as if realizing it had misread its cue and decided to go lie down.

Virgil adjusted her coat, black, tailored, embroidered with all the minor regrets of an overextended narrative editor, and sighed.

“Right,” she muttered. “Let’s get this over with.”

Scene starts : The Therapy Room (Not That Anyone Feels Better Afterwards)

Kaz Swindleton, age ten, found himself in a red armchair too plush to trust.

The walls were lined with shelves full of blank books and one very exhausted ficus.

A softly bubbling fishtank gurgled ominously in the background, next to a motivational poster that read:

“It’s Not a Plot Hole, It’s a Cliffhanger!”

He looked around, unimpressed.

“So. Purgatory for protagonists.”

Virgil swept in with the grace of someone who had definitely tried mindfulness once and found it deeply inefficient.

“Administrative Interlude, Subsection Seventeen. Narrative Clarification with Troublesome protagonists.”

Kaz blinked.

“You make it sound like therapy.”

“It is,” said Virgil.

“Except if it doesn’t work, the book gets cancelled.”

She tossed him a folder.

He caught it. Rifled through the pages with theatrical disdain.

“Opening drags. Dialogue charming but vague. Tone inconsistent. Reader, unsure of where and when we are. Background metaphors ‘clever but confusing.’”

He raised an eyebrow.

“‘Too many hats, not enough heads’? What does that even mean?”

Virgil gave him a look like a grammar rule that had just found a loophole.

“It means you’re trying to be clever instead of clear. And you’re not anchoring the reader.”

“I’m an anchor,” Kaz sniffed.

“The problem is everyone else floats.”

She resisted the urge to rub her temples.

“Kaz, please. You’re the point-of-view character. They need to understand your world to feel it. You keep skipping past the bricks to show them the shadow of the wall.”

“I’m building tone,” he said smugly.

“You’re building confusion.”

Kaz sat back.

“So what? You brought me here to rewrite Chapter One?”

Virgil’s jaw tightened.

“I brought you here because the story is good. But it needs to be better.”

Kaz’s eyes twinkled, which was rarely a good sign.

“You need me to fix it, so the audience cares.”

“Yes.”

“And if I do, the story lives.”

“Yes.”

“And if the story lives… you live.”

Silence.

Virgil didn’t answer. She didn’t need to.

Kaz’s grin was pure velvet mischief.

“Oh, I see. We’re not so different, you and I.”

“You’re a narrative construct with abandonment issues and a flair for illegal metaphors.”

“And you are a desperate, half-sentient narrator trying not to get deleted in the next quarterly pitch review.”

Virgil adjusted her glasses.

“Just fix the opening.”

“You’re scared,” Kaz said suddenly, voice dropping.

“Because I know.”

She said nothing.

Kaz leaned forward, voice lowering further.

“I read the feedback. And I know what you’re thinking.”

Virgil hated this part.

Hated when they got aware.

It made the timeline slippery and the genre bend.

It made the story feel personal, and worse, interactive.

“You think I’m the most troublesome,” Kaz said, softly now.

“Because I shine too brightly. Because I know how this works.”

He tapped the folder shut.

Sat still for a moment.

And then, like a prayer turned threat:

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

“Why don’t you try listening to what Pip said again?”

The room dimmed.

Something flickered in the lighting that wasn’t electricity.

“You think he’s going to die,” Kaz continued, and his voice twisted, not angry. Worse. Certain.

“You think that makes you clever. That killing him buys you gravitas. But i wasn't lying Pip… Pip is stronger than me.”

The tone cracked.

Like someone had taken a Terry Pratchett sentence and shoved it through a meat grinder.

“Me? I’m the hook. The distraction. I twirl, and grin, and keep the reader watching. But him?”

Kaz stood.

“He hears everything.

You’ll erase my memory when I go back. I know.

Reset the bit where I knew too much.

But not him.

He’s marked now.

You can’t touch him.

Not all the way.

Not anymore.”

Not after you tried to save the last one they lined up for death.

He moved to the door.

Paused.

Kaz smiled.

“But go on. Keep your eye on me.

The trickster.

The sparkle.

The show.”

He tilted his too-large hat.

“Just remember which of us sees behind the curtain.”

And then he paused in the doorway.

Just long enough to make it deliberate.

His voice cut through the room like thread pulled too tight.

Bright. Sharp. Tearing.

“Mom.”

Not a joke. Not a jab.

Not sarcastic, not sweet.

Just… raw.

Not said with warmth, but with fear.

With accusation.

Like he was naming something she’d worked very hard not to be.

Like he was dragging it out of the quiet and forcing her to see it.

“Mom,” he repeated—louder this time, harsher—

as if daring her to flinch.

As if daring her to deny it.

And with that word—just that one word—

he was gone.

Back into the story.

Back into the soup.

And with that single word hanging in the air like smoke, he was gone.

Virgil sat alone.

The fish tank bubbled.

A file cabinet snapped itself shut.

She didn’t move. Didn’t speak.

Then, very softly:

“Bloody hell.”

And cried.

She didn’t sob.

That would’ve been theatrical.

No, Virgil Praxus cried like a kettle too long on the hob,

tight-lidded, trembling,

trying very hard not to whistle.

Her shoulders folded inward.

One hand gripped her glasses,

the other clutched the folder of notes

as if it might anchor her to something real.

The pages were damp now,

blurred edits,

red ink bleeding across the margins.

No words.

Just a quiet, undignified sort of shaking.

A hiccup slipped out.

She bit it back like a secret.

And still, she didn’t speak.

Didn’t explain.

Because what could she say?

What would it change?

The fish tank burbled cheerfully in the corner.

And the worst part of all…

…was that she still had to finish the chapter.

She spoke.

THE WORLD RESUMED <<

The scones fell.

The goat bleated.

The sun reluctantly resumed its duties.

And Kaz Swindleton, star, liar, hook, hero, love interest, and son smiled as though nothing had ever happened.

INTERNAL MEMORANDUM

FROM: Mary – Reviewer Allocation, Quality Circulation

TO: Virgil Praxus – Lead Narrative Architect, Sector V

RE: Reviewer Pool – 742-D

Timestamp: 07:02:51 CST

----------------------------------------

Hey Virgil,

Got your memo. Totally hear you on the current batch—we’ve all had runs where the feedback room starts feeling more like a trap than a team.

That said, I did send it up the ladder. Memetics and Upper Management gave the usual answer: the reviewers are “within tolerance,” “non-disruptive,” and “statistically aligned with expectation curves.” Translation: harmless enough. Unless they stop being useful, they stay.

I know that’s not what you were hoping for. Gorrence is definitely… a lot. But he’s still flagged as productive, and the system’s big on letting those types play themselves out.

Good news though: I was able to slip a couple fresh voices into the mix. Nothing dramatic, just a quiet rotation. One’s a big-picture thinker with a calm read on tone shifts, the other’s newer—experimental, optimistic, open to emotional sincerity. Might not drown out the noise, but at least they’ll speak a different language.

Also—coffee machine’s fixed. Properly this time.

No more dread in the drip. No more espresso that tasted like failure and whispered back things you thought you’d buried. Just... coffee.

A bit dull, if I’m honest. But it doesn’t shudder when you approach it anymore, and it’s stopped spelling “unsustainable arc” in the crema. So, I’ll take it.

Engineering found something embedded in the filtration node. Shouldn’t have passed safety checks. Shouldn’t have been there at all, really. But you know how things go, when certain people think subtlety counts as accountability.

I don’t care what they say

I know the machine didn’t break on its own.

And I know I’m the only one, who actually cares .

So. Fixed it. Quietly. Logged it under “ambient contamination” and moved on.

Let me know if you want something stronger. I’ve still got a tin of that tea from R&D—the one that might be self-aware, but brews courage like nobody’s business.

Don't let them get to you Virgil

We’ve both had worse.

You’re doing good work, Virgil. Even if it doesn’t feel like it yet.

—Mary

P.S. That Leviathan? Still around. Someone gave it a title and now it’s scheduling performance reviews. I avoid eye contact and carry a clipboard. You taught me that.