{{esquivalience}} (novel)
[[Esquivalience (novel)|<nowiki>{{esquivalience}}</nowiki>]], or {{cs|Esquivalience (novel)|<nowiki>{{esquivalience}}</nowiki>}} if making use of {{cite source}}.{{esquivalience}} was a standalone novella by Jamie H. Cowan released by Overmorrow Publishing in 2024. It elaborated on the temporal phenomenon known as the Unravel, previously featured or mentioned in several other Doctor Who spin-offs, and also featured a licensed appearance by Xavier Llewellyn's Gevity.
Publisher's summary
The Dead & Endangered Languages department never changes its ways — but it seems to be in need of a clean. Really in need of a clean. That's how they end up with a Caretaker. That's why things change in the department.
{{esquivalience}} is a novelette about language, coincidences, and the flow of the universe; charting the course of a mysterious young individual as they undertake a new job role — and all that comes with it.
Summary
to be added
Plot
Prelude
On 11 May 2024, Cory Maythers and Shawn Doltmann both visit the Old Boathouse Cinema in Leith to watch the same movie. However, by a narrow coincidence, they happen not to meet — the first of several narrow misses spanning all the way to 2042. Even though they would assuredly have fallen in love with one another if they had, both live and die having never met one another, leaving behind unrelated spouses and family when both of Shawn and Cory die in 2056 and 2078 respectively. Even in "the wider scale of the Omniverse", no "recognisable versions" of them ever actually meet and live out that glorious potential love story.
The Movement
Gower, an Assistant Dictionary Contributor of the Multiplicity's Dead & Endangered Languages department, has been asked to interview an applicant referred to only as "______" for the position of Caretaker by the Head Dictionary Contributor of the department, who told him it was about time he "unravelled the true meaning of work". Although he feels underqualified to make a decision, Gower ends up giving ______ the job, both due to their apparent eagerness and for fear of disappointing the Head D.C..
______'s first shift as Caretaker of the Dead & Endangered Languages sees them cleaning out the enormously grimy Main Writing Room at night, which they accomplish, finishing up with giving the floor a "meticulous mopping" and going over the room with a fragrance spray (a mix of Bibliosmia and Venusian Winterberries). Towards the end of the shift, the Caretaker is mildly puzzled to find The Book of the Solresol, a book about a language they've never heard about, but they think little of it. Over the following days, thanks to their hard work that first night, their night shifts in the Main Writing Room are much less onerous than their other continuing duties, leaving them with plenty of time to look around and flip through the books.
Some time into _______'s employment at the Multiplicity, one of the Dictionary Contributors, Melvart, has a work conversation with the Head D.C., pertaining to whether or not variations of the word "mavity" in various Earth languages (such as Irish-Gaelic's Domhantarraingt, 17th century-24th century's Mavité, and 14th century Italian's Mavità) should be capitalised on principle, owing to the plentiful evidence that in all Earth languages where the matter is settled for certain, words with that meaning are indeed capitalised, going all the way back to the earliest Indo-European sources. The Head D.C. still finds this too speculative and dismisses Melvart, especially as 18th century-25th century English is not, as yet, officially a Dead or Endangered Language, which puts evidence relating to the word Mavity "outwith [the] department". Reminded by the Head D.C. of the fiasco which occurred when their department tried to collaborate with the Sector 42A Living Languages department regarding facdocksparation (a debate which ended with the Meta-Temporal Support department sweeping in to take over the entire investigation after some of the relevant documents turned out to have themselves facdocksparated), Melvart admits defeat.
Eventually, during one of his night shifts, ______, having read through The Book of the Solresol and The Book of the Linear B, picks up The Book of English (18th to 25th Century), being startled to notice that its listing of the alphabet does not match their recollection, going "S, T, U, V, W" instead of the "S, T, V, U, W" ______ was familiar with. While pondering this mystery, and what a book about language is doing out of the Living Languages collection, ______ notices a pile of rubbish next to Fincherton's desk, and, in addition to an "empty metal can of Gevity", is startled to find that it contains a book, well-worn with a brass plate: The Book of Belgian Dutch. However, they decide to still treat it as they would any other rubbish left in that disposal area, i.e. discard it. Because Curbishley had also left them a note asking them to take a letter (concerning "the recent brief appearance of an alternative Roman-Kontafarus in the 28th century") to the reception of of the Meta-Temporal Support department, they wind up doing so by throwing it down the M.T.S. special disposal chute.
The next day, ______ is called before the Head D.C. to account for their actions: putting the book down the special disposal chute appears to have erased the Belgian Dutch language variant itself from existence. Worse, this has actually erased the native speakers of that tongue from history, including their descendants, "unweaving" them — a catastrophe which ripples even to the staff of the Multiplicity, with the Belgian-descended Terrence being rewritten into Bertram (who has no such ancestry) while a "half-Alpha Centaurian" called Hr'salis, who had similar ancestry, simply ceases to exist.
Only the Head D.C. remembers the previous version of reality. Sending a time-traveller back in time to make a copy of the book before its destruction is quickly dismissed, as the Multiplicity's Books are allegedly "temporally non-transferable" as a copyright-protection measure (although a few members of the faculty disagree with this claim, with one pointedly arguing that "surely, there [are] smarter ways to protect [the] Books than that"). The Head D.C.'s private concerns are of entirely broader scope, however, as he sees in the coincidence of the special disposal chute's relatively recent installation, the hiring of the new Caretaker, and the mysterious appearance of the book left lying on the floor, a knot of coincidence as the "ropes of reality" are "tugging together".
At any rate, being unwilling to alert the Meta-Temporal Support department, let alone Senior Management, the Dictionary Contributors eventually decide to do the only thing they can do: invent a new language whole-cloth to take Belgian Dutch's place in history, plugging the hole as best they can. After frantic work, Belgian Gerench, loosely adapted from French (such that they are unable to prevent its body of speakers from including "a few French people who felt an unusual (and societally discouraged) affinity to the language") is duly added to the Multiplicity Central Digital Overview Index, complete with notes on how its vocabulary was affected by various societal and genetic changes to the human experience over the centuries.
With the immediate crisis resolved, the Head D.C. decides against firing ______, which would draw undue attention since the nature of their crime is by definition lost to time. During their next night shift, ______ decides to hurry up with their secret original reason for taking the job: locating the extradimensional Inner Reference Room, hidden beneath a stairway, and which contains a tree of time (the preternatural trees from whose wood the paper of the Multipicity's books is made) as well a The Book of the Head Dictionary Contributor of the D&DL Department. Before they can start rewriting it, they are however caught in the act by the Head D.C. himself, who anticipated their plans and had been lying in wait.
Though he pulls out The Book of ______, the Head D.C. realises it is of "little consequence" and admits he cannot stop ______ from carrying out their intended plan of modifying his book to be about them instead. However, he implores them to listen to him and relent because "everything could depend on this". Pleading as his body begins to be injured and destabilised by a series of furious rewrites and vandalisations of his book, the Head D.C. reveals that he once thought he could meddle with the books, introducing a fake word in The Book of Dutch as a trap to protect against fraudulent copies, only for that word — esquivalience — to introduce the concept of its supposed meaning into his own life story. It was thus in an act of esquivalience that the Head D.C. shirked his duty to interview new applicants and allowed the unqualified Gower to interview ______, making possible his entry into the Multiplicity's staff and thus, the current crisis. The Head D.C. warns ______ that a similar fate will befall them, in an endless cycle, if they persist, because a mysterious external process is trying to rewrite the whole of reality, taking advantage of lesser powers like the Multipicity's to achieve its aims, bit by bit.
Just stop reading. Stop changing things. Stop, and we can be spared. Be free! If you keep going, then it will get what it wants. It is a happening. Out there, and in here in the basement. Everywhere. It will win if you keep going. One day, you’ll make the same mistakes. Goddamn, you will. Because it’s all already written. It has already written it all. The paths, the choices. Rewrites, erasures, and even the contradictions. If you don’t just… stop… it will… Unravel us all.
As ______ loses patience and finishes him off, the Head D.C. — whose name was once Miltontheus — chokes out the name of this force: the Unravel. The next day finds ______ — now the uncontested Head D.C. — studying The Book of English, noting the entry for esquivalience ("Meaning to shirk one’s official duties deliberately. Said to have originated within Dutch.") and also those for "unravel" and "ravel", noted as contranyms, and which both also originated within Dutch. Though making a note that some weird facdocksparation-like phenomenon seems to be originating within Dutch, the new Head D.C. decides against investigating it just now, instead focusing on their new power and responsibility within the department.
These events seem to be echoed in the lyrics of a 1967 "hit song" by Aubrey Waites, David Agnew and one other, entitled The Twist at the End — whose lyrics proclaim that "Good eyes and bad lies/It never really mattered/For we're all grooving/To the words/They scattered" and repeatedly foretelling a "twist at the end".
Eventually, a note is added to the "Unravel" entry in The Book of English (fourth to fifth billionth century). While it remains otherwise unchanged, a Nota Bene now advises that the word is "to be used with extreme care and caution".
Postlude
In the altered version of history, Cory Maythers and Shawn Doltmann do meet at the screening of Our Second Bridge, and again at Tommy Kane's party a few months later, over the course of which they share their first kiss. They eventually marry and live long, happy lives, which last longer than in the original timeline (with Cory dying in 2081 and Shawn in 2084). These new paths represent "a new generation of probabilities and possibilities", with "the traditions of the Omniverse [having] been broken. Unravelled. The rope of Cory’s life had touched against that of Shawn’s. Then tangled. Then intertwined".
As Shawn went on to inform Cory in a phone conversation, the change started from Shawn leaving work early to be sure to catch the beginning of the movie. Having arrived before Cory, he sat down in the front row first, with Cory sitting down next to him instead of on the fourth row. He thus reflects that his esquivalience paid off that day — and is happy to have Cory check the dictionary to confirm that "it is a real world thank very much".
It felt like [Cory] was the extra word in the story of [Shawn]'s life. And what a word.
Characters
Mentioned only
- David Agnew
- Antoine
- Unnamed bard
- Terrence
- Curbishley
- Alex Doltmann
- Peter Doltmann
- Fincherton
- Hr'salis
- Tommy Kane
- T. S. Lee
- Cory Maythers's first and last girlfriend
- Martin Maythers
- Paul McCartney
- Thwvorpwell
- Aubrey Waites
- The Wordsmith
Worldbuilding
- Gower's responsibilities include such activities as occasionally being "required to step in on settling the debate on the interpretation of a particular quipu from 14th century Earth, or maintain the current baseline of [[[Skermish]] as deciphered from post-Meluvian texts despite the fussing of a particularly stubborn Contributor", and keeping the curious away from "the ominous box marked ‘Languages of the Dead (do not confuse)’".
- People occasionally come to Gower's part of the building to "fetch boxes related to Starpoint 14 and the Orinon Galaxy". Writing up his shopping list for later.
- Gower has been trying to read through T. S. Lee's The Travels As Our Souls Unravel, but finds it somewhat beyond him.
- There is a Contributor in the Department who "would would only go by the name of 'the Wordsmith'".
- The Multiplicity has a Sentient Resources department.
- ______ uses the singular they.
- When musing that the quality of ______'s job interview is going to prove irrelevant because there are no other applicants, Gower thinks of what "the people of Wrendiar Ply would've said in the language of their earliest time-segments: Merforta gratei du guye".
- Gower is worried that only a scholar would know what it means for "ropes" to have "slack", and offers up the more modern expression of "Nobody else can shoot the quantum rifle for you if you cannot handle the molecular weight".
- 2,910,276 dead languages are documented by the Dead & Endangered Languages department, and the Head D.C. knows every one of them personally.
- As Caretaker, ______ is granted the use of a hover-trolley.
- Two suns are visible out the window of the Main Writing Room.
- When Melvart addresses him, the Head D.C. looks up from "examining the inscription of a third-rotational Samaancer ring".
- Assistant Dictionary Contributor Thwvorpwell is meant to be investigating the Aplin Cluster, but has also made time to try and find evidence that the word Domhantarraingt should be capitalised).
- Facdocksparation is "a word referring to the decay of documents or other forms of data due to an unnatural change in their history". Whether it "originated in one of the still-living ancestors of a specific niche 37th century variation of the English language that had rapidly died out, or instead come from a dying language elsewhere in the Five Galaxies" became a matter of debate.
- The Solresol language is related to "musical magick" and "the recovery of Paul McCartney's fabled Höfner bass guitar. The Inner Reference Room is described as "the Multiplicity’s heart of languages, scattered across books, ropes, and distantly heard musical tunes".
- The Inner Reference Room was built using "cross-dimensional nesting technology taken from the Vinculum", "alternate pocket dimension mapping", and other technologies which ______ does not bother to list.
- The Head D.C. explains that "the leaves of every tree of time are rooted in all that came before. The flowers that grow aside them are scented in memory. And it never forgets. The trees. The flowers. The ropes".
Notes
- The book was dedicated to the memory of Matthew "Matty" Moore, and include thanks to Thomas Stewart, Chris "Topher" McCafferty, Ryan Williams, Campbell P., Ben Tedds, Tom Christison, Liam Kershaw-Calvert, Chris C., Ruaidhri Guest, Christine Lindberg and Jeffrey Princeton.
- The cover of the novella depicts The Book of the Head Dictionary Contributor of the D&DL Department.
Continuity
Discussion of prior mentions of the Unravel in PROSE: The Book of the Snowstorm [+]Loading...["The Book of the Snowstorm (short story)"] and PROSE: A World of Pure Unimagination [+]Loading...["A World of Pure Unimagination (short story)"] needs to be added.
- It is mentioned in the entry on Belgian Gerench that most humans from the 45th century onward have undergone some genetic engineering, including removal of the appendix and the addition of a second heart and second cervical trachea. PROSE: The Ark [+]Loading...["The Ark (novelisation)"], novelised from the TV story of the same name, asserted that the Guardians' ancestors had undergone such genetic modifications "many Segments ago".
- The mysterious fluctuations in time slightly alter the alphabet, with the letters U and V switching places. This is an allusion to an infamous line-fluff in TV: The Masque of Mandragora [+]Loading...["The Masque of Mandragora (TV story)"] where Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith got this wrong while reciting the alphabet backwards. Mischievously, {{esquivalience}} implies that "S, T, V, U" was the original order, and the real-world-compliant "S, T, U, V" is what the changes to history yield.
- The word "facdocksparation" previously appeared on the cover of the audio story AUDIO: Gobbledegook [+]Loading...["Gobbledegook (audio story)"].
- The Five Galaxies were mentioned in TV: Delta and the Bannerman [+]Loading...["Delta and the Bannerman (TV story)"] and PROSE: Borrowed Time [+]Loading...["Borrowed Time (novel)"].
- An "accidental mis-refactoring of the God Maker equation" is cited as the kind of thing known to cause arbitrary alterations to history. The Skasis Paradigm, central to TV: School Reunion [+]Loading...["School Reunion (TV story)"], was described as both "the Universal Equation" and "the God Maker", with its solution being said to give its user control of "the building blocks of the Universe".
- Krulvan, one of the Chumerian languages of the planet B'llauit, is affected by "the old dot-and-bubble effect".
- The Head D.C. thinks of the "knots of coincidence" surrounding the Unravel in terms of "the ropes of reality" being "tugged". TV: The Church on Ruby Road [+]Loading...["The Church on Ruby Road (TV story)"] drew a parallel between the literal vocabulary of rope used by the Goblins and their "language of luck" which allowed them to feed on coincidence.
- This story uses the term of "mavity" for "gravity", following the running joke established in TV: Wild Blue Yonder [+]Loading...["Wild Blue Yonder (TV story)"].
Continuity to non-covered sources
- The Aplin Cluster, mentioned here, was previously the setting of the fan fiction PROSE: Time After Time, which Cowan wrote for Doctor Who: Lockdown!.
