“The writer,” Eddie said. He weighed the idea, then nodded slowly. He vaguely remembered a concept from high school—the god from the machine, it was called. There was a fancy Latin term for it as well, but that one he couldn’t remember. (...) Such ideas had undoubtedly gone out of fashion in the modern age, but Eddie thought that popular novelists—of the sort sai King seemed on his way to becoming—probably still used the technique, only disguising it better. Little escape hatches. Cards that read GET OUT OF JAIL FREE or ESCAPE THE PIRATES or FREAK STORM CUTS ELECTRICAL POWER, EXECUTION POSTPONED. The god from the machine (who was actually the writer), patiently working to keep the characters safe so his tale wouldn’t end with an unsatisfying line like “And so the ka-tet was wiped out on Jericho Hill and the bad guys won, rule Discordia, so sorry, better luck next time (what next time, ha-ha), THE END.”