Divagation and fugue.

The caffeine had given its all in propelling the Sage on his brisk walk to the embarkation point. Entirely spent now, the Old Man sagged into a deck chair. Lulled by the gentle rocking of the boat and the bland monotony of the Surrey countryside, he tried to ward off sleep by looking through the newspaper he found abandoned in the chair on his right. As his eyes slid down the page they were captured by a short report with a Canadian dateline:

Online Collaboration Lands Young Authors Book Deal. Two 21-year-old women wrote a 400-page book together online in just 18 days. They met on LiveJournal, a virtual community of bloggers and learned that they shared a passion for C.S. Lewis’s THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE. Danielle Bennett lives in Victoria and Jaida Jones in New York. They decided to work together to write a novel of their own, the first for both. The women took turns writing 6 or 7 pages, emailing the sections back and forth. The recipient would edit the other’s work, add on new pages, and send it back. In 18 days, they had finished HAVEMERCY, a fantasy novel featuring flying metal dragons, magicians, and a climactic battle between warring rivals. Their agent shopped the book but found only rejection. Then came a surprise call from Anne Groell, senior editor of Spectra, the science-fiction imprint of Random House’s Bantam Dell Publishing Group, offering a $30,000 advance for the two and a contract for a sequel to be finished August 1.

The Old Man harrumphed, though not loudly enough to attract the attention of his three confederates, all of whom were dozing in the mottled sunshine. "What could these two mere girls possibly know of witches and dragons?" he wondered to himself. "And magicians? I wouldn’t be surprised if all they’d ever known of magicians have consisted of crass commercial performances enacted by those charlatans for whom cheap thaumaturgy and clumsy legerdemain constitute the sum total of their so-called powers. Why in my day…" The Old Man opened his eyes in one last feeble effort to ward off the drowziness that had already felled his associates. "I suspect that even the Trappist here, despite his penchant for ruses and escapades, has seen his share of real wonders. Now if the two of us were to collaborate, there’s no telling what sort of fabulous tale we could conjure. A $30,00 advance: is that a large sum, I wonder? Might we be able with such a sum to purchase Sir Toby’s from that closefisted scoundrel who…"

But now the fog that had been settling over the Sage’s imaginings became impenetrable to the probings of our most perspicacious narrator. Leaving the slack-jawed Old Man to his dreams, he strolled silently toward the prow of the boat.