Jeff Noon - Automated Alice

The love that conquers, (JUZZ! JUZZ! KERJANGLE!)

(FUNKY WOOFGOSH!)

Sidestepping the snakes to be tossed

As Pablo concurs

Completely (KLONK!) bonkers!"

Jimi Hentrails then went into a long and loud guitar solo, that made the garden shed shudder even more. Alice clung on tightly to the quivering workbench, as she shouted to Pablo, "What kind of art is it that you craft, Mister Ogden? Because your latest creation is not making any kind of sense!"

"I call my art skewedism," Pablo stated, working his controls, "which allows me to make creatures out of rudity. Indeed, I used to call my art rudism, and then crudism, but those labels seemed too crudely, rudely obvious. Before that I was making gluedism, where all the parts are glued together, and some time before that, cluedism, where I had only the faintest clue as to what I was doing. But then I realized that I didn't have a clue at all, and I started to brood upon my doings; so then I called my art broodism. But that didn't seem to fit at all. So I called it shoedism, because all my sculptures seemed to be wearing shoes. And then shrewdism, because wasn't I being very shrewd in the making of them? And then cubism, because I was assembling the cubes of moments lost. But that label seemed to me so limiting, because by then I was making creatures out of creatures! So I called my art zoodism. And then fludism, because I couldn't stop sneezing. And then chewedism, because I couldn't stop chewing. And then bluedism, because I couldn't stop painting everything blue. Ewedism: sculptures of female sheep. Foodism: sculptures of dinnertime. I've also been through moodism, brewedism, all the young dudeisms, Judeism, lewdism, nudism and pseudism. I then made a stab at whodism, because who in the mazes was I anyway, to be making such illegal creatures? And then finally, after many a strange queuedism, whilst waiting for a proper label, I settled upon skewedism, because my mind is skew-whiff with so much diverseness. This is why the Civil Serpents hate my work so: they can't stand anything that is even a little bit skewed."

James Marshall Hentrails finished his crazy solo and began the second verse of his song, accessorized by creeping guitar:

"Little Miss Anagram! (ZING! ZANG! QWERTYUIOP!)

Completely bananas!

(ASDFGH! ]KL!) Polygon pyjama jam!

(ZX! CVB! NM!)

Awake from your dramas (#!@£$%^&*!)

Forever mañanas!"

The word polygon only reminded Alice of how far away her parrot was. "The garden gate is looming close, Alice," shouted Pablo, over the singing.

Indeed, the shed had now folded up its chickeny legs, in order to squat itself down, some twenty yards from the knot garden's exit. Alice had one last question, as she ran towards the door, and it was this: "Pablo, what was that last word that Jimi sang?"

"What word?" answered Pablo.

"That mañanas word."

"It's Spanish for tomorrow, Alice. The singer is asking us to celebrate the forever tomorrows. Wouldn't you like that?"

"I wouldn't like that, at all!" said Alice, as Celia and herself stepped out, onto the grass. "Because yesterday is where I want to be."

(JOING! SHULEEOINNNGH! BLOZZ BLOZZ BLOZZ!)

Jimi Hentrails was still playing up a storm, as Pablo called after the two girls, "Watch out for the snakes, Alice; they won't like Celia leaving the garden..."

Imagine, after taking only a few steps over the dewy grass, Alice heard a terrible swishing sound from behind her; and then imagine her surprise when seemingly a hundred slithering snakes came rushing out of the hedgerows, all of them extremely keen to take a fangly bite at her ankles!

Snakes, snakes, snakes! Everywhere all around Alice a swissshing and a hisssing noise could be heard as a hundred-knot of sssnakes ssslithered and sssibilanted themselves through the undergrowth. It was now thirty minutes past seven o'clock in the morning and the Real-life Alice was being viciously dragged towards the knot garden's exit gate by Celia, the Automated Alice. The sun was rising over and above the hedgerows, illuminating the rainbowed scales of the collected ranks of the Under Assistant Civil Serpents. Alice glanced behind at a sudden scrunching noise to see the walking shed of Pablo Ogden lumbering off, back towards the centre of the garden. And then she was running towards the iron gates and jumping over many a snake in her journey. "All I seem to be doing in 1998," Alice said to herself whilst running (and jumping) alongside Celia, "is running! Running, running, running! It was never like this in 1860: why, in the afternoon of that year, I could not even be bothered to get out of my armchair. Not even for a writing lesson! Maybe everything is so much faster in the future? At this rate I shall never catch my breath, let alone my parrot!"

"Quickly, Alice, quickly!" Celia cried, fearful of the snakes dragging her back into the garden. "The gates are just ahead of us."

They made it only just in time. Celia wrenched open the iron gates with her terbo-charged arms (even as the myriad snakes were biting at her porcelain ankles) and then pushed Alice through into the next episode. Celia clanged the gates shut behind her (squashing a snake's head in the closing process). "Jolly bad luck, Mister Snakified Under Assistant!" Celia sang, quite gleefully.

And that was how Alice and Celia made their entrance into the streets of Manchester.

Alice had never heard such a hellish noise before, such a tumultitude, such a cacophonous display of wailings and screechings! And so very early in the morning! Why this was even worse than the terrible racket that James Marshall Hentrails had made upon his terrible racket. Alice and Celia were now standing at the side of an extremely busy thoroughfare; behind them the gates to the knot garden were being hissed at madly by the frustrated snakes. In front of them were hundreds of moaning metal horses, who breathed out a fulsome wind of smelly gases from their hind ends as they sped along the road (at more than twenty miles per hour!). Clinging tightly to the saddle of each metal horse was a person (not one of which looked entirely human).

"My goodness!" cried Alice to Celia. "What a pong! I've never seen so many horses before."

"These are not horses," said Celia, "these are carriages."

"Well they certainly look a little like horses."

"These vehicles are horseless carriages."

"How do you know that the carriages are horseless?" asked Alice.

"Because they haven't got any real horses drawing them."

"I didn't know that real horses could draw. Can they also paint?"

"Alice! You must know what I mean!" Celia cried. "A horseless carriage is what the people of the future call a carriage that isn't being pulled by a horse."

"Is that similar to a pianoless lampshade?" asked Alice.

"Whatever's a pianoless lampshade?" asked Celia.

"Why, it's a lampshade that isn't being played by a piano, of course."

"Alice! I'm getting rather tired of your loopiness!" Celia replied. "Only by working together can we escape from this future world and thereby make our way back to the past. We are the not-quite twins, the sisters of the corkscrew. Your feelings, my logic -- girl and doll. Only by this shared route may we travel back home. Don't you see that yet?"

Alice didn't see it, mainly because she was too busy studying the lights and cries rising above the houses on the opposite side of the road. Alice just knew that Whippoorwill would be attracted to those colours and noises, and (having spotted a small gap in the rushing traffic) Alice stepped out into the road. Oh dear: one of the ever-so-horseless carriages nearly knocked her down. In fact, that passing vehicle clipped Alice on the elbow! "Yeeooohhh!" Alice yeeooohhhed, falling back onto the pavement. "That hurt!"