Good Omens

given him an official witchfinder’s warrant card, which among other things charged all beadles, magistrates, bishops, and bailiffs to give him free passage and as much dry kindling as he required. It was incredibly impressive, a masterpiece of calligraphy, and probably quite old. He’d forgotten about it.
    â€œIt’s really just a hobby,” he said wretchedly. “I’m really a … a … ” he wasn’t going to say wages clerk, not here, not now, not to a girl like this, “a computer engineer,” he lied. Want to be, want to be; in my heart I’m a computer engineer, it’s only the brain that’s letting me down. “Excuse me, could I know—”
    â€œAnathema Device,” said Anathema. “I’m an occultist, but that’s just a hobby. I’m really a witch. Well done. You’re half an hour late,” she added, handing him a small sheet of cardboard, “so you’d better read this. It’ll save a lot of time.”
    NEWT DID IN FACT own a small home computer, despite his boyhood experiences. In fact, he’d owned several. You always knew which ones he owned. They were desktop equivalents of the Wasabi. They were the ones which, for example, dropped to half price just after he’d bought them. Or were launched in a blaze of publicity and disappeared into obscurity within a year. Or only worked at all if you stuck them in a fridge. Or, if by some fluke they were basically good machines, Newt always got the few that were sold with the early, bug-infested version of the operating system. But he persevered, because he believed .
    Adam also had a small computer. He used it for playing games, but never for very long. He’d load a game, watch it intently for a few minutes, and then proceed to play it until the High Score counter ran out of zeroes.
    When the other Them wondered about this strange skill, Adam professed mild amazement that everyone didn’t play games like this.
    â€œAll you have to do is learn how to play it, and then it’s just easy,” he said.
    QUITE A LOT OF THE FRONT parlor in Jasmine Cottage was taken up, Newt noticed with a sinking feeling, with piles of newspapers. Clippings were stuck around the walls. Some of them had bits circled in red ink. He was mildly gratified to spot several he had cut out for Shadwell.
    Anathema owned very little in the way of furniture. The only thing she’d bothered to bring with her had been her clock, one of the family heirlooms. It wasn’t a full-cased grandfather clock, but a wall clock with a free-swinging pendulum that E. A. Poe would cheerfully have strapped someone under.
    Newt kept finding his eye drawn to it.
    â€œIt was built by an ancestor of mine,” said Anathema, putting the coffee cups down on the table. “Sir Joshua Device. You may have heard of him? He invented the little rocking thing that made it possible to build accurate clocks cheaply? They named it after him.”
    â€œThe Joshua?” said Newt guardedly.
    â€œThe device.”
    In the last half hour Newt had heard some pretty unbelievable stuff and was close to believing it, but you have to draw the line somewhere.
    â€œThe device is named after a real person?” he said.
    â€œOh, yes. Fine old Lancashire name. From the French, I believe. You’ll be telling me next you’ve never heard of Sir Humphrey Gadget—”
    â€œOh, now come on —”
    â€œâ€”who devised a gadget that made it possible to pump out flooded mineshafts. Or Pietr Gizmo? Or Cyrus T. Doodad, America’s foremost black inventor? Thomas Edison said that the only other contemporary practical scientists he admired were Cyrus T. Doodad and Ella Reader Widget. And—”
    She looked at Newt’s blank expression.
    â€œI did my Ph.D. on them,” she said. “The people who invented things so simple and universally useful that everyone forgot that they’d ever actually needed to be invented. Sugar?”
    â€œEr—”
    â€œYou normally have two,” said Anathema sweetly.
    Newt stared back at the card she’d handed him.
    She’d seemed to think it would explain everything.
    It didn’t.
    It had a ruled line down the middle. On the left-hand side was a short piece of what seemed to be poetry, in black ink. On the right-hand side, in red ink this time, were comments and annotations. The effect was as follows:
    3819: When