Jeff Noon - Automated Alice

"Oh dear!" Alice murmurs to herself. "Here I am being eaten alive by the crazy wurms, without a hope of escape; and the time is two o'clock! I'm late for my lesson! And if I'm not mistaken, that trio of large, black and angry-looking bubbles racing towards me is an ellipsis! Oh, what a horrible creature an ellipsis is! Maybe I should escape from this wurmy world. But however can I manage it?" The wurms were now nudging against Alice's nostrils! "I must try to think of a plan!" she mumbled. "Now let me see... the wurm came into my body through my mouth; how can I now get rid of that wrigglesome wanderer? Only by the never passage, I fear."

(The never passage is of course the nether passage: the passage that can never be written about. But if my dearest Alice can only escape the world of the wurms by this terrible evacuation, then so be it, for I must give my writing to the young girl's future.)

By this time (thanks to my hesitation in the story's telling) the three dots of the ellipsis monster are gathering around Alice's head in a squelchy triangle of bubbles.

"My name is Dot," the first bubble says.

"My name also is Dot," the second bubble says.

"My name is also and also Dot," the third bubble says. The trio of bubbles move in on Alice, ever closer, ever closer...

Alice feels herself being engulfed by the wurms and the Dots, and very terrified she is by the stifling presence of these two engulfers; so very terrified that she actually excretes the wurm.

(May I by the way explain that the rather naughty word excrete comes from the Latin for separate and discharge, and if a word comes from the Latin, it surely cannot be that naughty? Suffice it to say politely that Alice did separate and discharge the wurm from her body, through the never passage...)

And through this passage Alice arrived back in her tiny cell below the police station. Long Distance Davis was curled up, snail-like, in his shell of a hat on the dirt floor, still travelling in the wurm's dream. Alice shook her head from side to side twenty-seven and a half times, in order to dispel the remnants of the wurminess, and then she announced sternly to herself, "Whippoorwill was right: I have been a pretty fool up to now. I have allowed myself to be carried along by strangers through this future world. From now on, I shall carry myself! I shall find my own way back to Great Aunt Ermintrude's house."

Alice noticed the jigsaw pieces scattered on the floor. She picked them up carefully, added the snail piece from her pocket, and rearranged all six of them around the stolen feather from Whippoorwill. It was then that she found the real answer to Whippoorwill's last riddle: Who is it that contains only the half of the whole? Alice realized that the parrot had said hole, and not whole. Who is it that contains only the half of the hole? That was the question. Alice now knew that the hole that Whippoorwill had riddled about was the hole in her jigsaw of London Zoo, or rather, the twelve holes that the missing pieces were waiting to fill.

"Why, this whole future I'm trapped within," Alice cried out loud, "is nothing more than a jigsaw of the past. If I can gather together all of the lost pieces, perhaps I will find my way back through the hole in time!" She then counted the pieces she had already collected: the termite piece, the badger piece, the snake, the chicken, the zebra and the snail piece. "That makes six pieces," she added to herself. "I have six more to find, because twelve pieces were missing from my long-ago jigsaw. I did give the right answer to Whippoorwill's riddle, but for all the wrong reasons. I am the girl that contains only the half of the hole."

Alice tried her best to remember the six pieces she was still missing: "There was a spider from the spider house, and a cat from the cat house, but they are both in the possession of the police! And what about the other four pieces? There was a fish missing from the aquarium, I'm sure, and also a crow from the aviary, and a parrot, I believe. Why, that piece must represent Whippoorwill! I must surely catch him so that I can arrive back in time for my writing lesson. And I still don't know the correct usage for an ellipsis, even though a three-dotted monster wanted to eat me in Wurmland! But there was one other jigsaw piece missing as well. Now then, what was it? Oh bother, I simply cannot recall it, no matter how hard I try! And anyway, however shall I find those jigsawed creatures while I am languishing in gaol? And what about Celia? I must also find my Automated Alice. And I expect I must also try to find out who the real Jigsaw Murderer is, in order to prove my innocence! Oh dear! I've got so many things to find. I shall never get home!"

Just then the door to the cell opened. It was Inspector Jack Russell, popping his furry head in. "Alice," he barked, "please come with me and quickly! Our Lady of the Snakes is now ready for you. Your conviction will play a vigorous role in her election campaign."

Alice was quite fearful of meeting such a high-up Civil Serpent, but really she had no choice at all. Indeed, she had less than a second's chance to pat Long Distance's sleeping shell-shape, and to gather up all the jigsaw pieces and the parrot's feather, before Jack Russell whiskered her out of the cell. Down a long twisting of corridors they travelled, and up an ever-increasing series of stairways. Alice became disorientated yet again. "Why, the future is so full of mazes," she said to herself, "it's a wonder anybody can get anywhere!"

Presently she was led through a door marked Chamber of Interrogation, into a room of mirrors. "Wait here," Jack Russell growled at her. "The Over Assistant will be along shortly to question you." He left the room, banging the mirrored door shut behind him. Alice looked all around in order to find an escape, but the mirrored walls repeated her image time and time again, until Alice was quite lost in her reflections. There was an infinitude of Alices in the room!

"This is really all too much!" she reflected to herself, reflected to herself, reflected to herself, reflected to herself, reflected to herself (ad infinitum). "I shall never find my true self in this room of mirrors."

Just then, a thousand elusive images of Whippoorwill started to dance around the room!

"Oh dear!" cried Alice, as she flickered here and there trying to catch even one of the thousand feathery images: "How shall I know which is the real Whippoorwill?" she cried, "and which the unreal? And in any case, I wonder what the collective noun for parrots is?"

"The collective noun," answered a croaky voice from out of nowhere, "is a pandemonium of parrots."

"Who said that?" asked Alice in surprise.

"Celia said it," answered the voice of a thousand parrots, as one of Alice's reflections peeled itself free from the mirrors.

"Is that really you, Celia?" asked Alice of the wayward reflection.

The reflection reflected, ".uoy eucser ot gniyrt m'I .aileC yllaer si siht, seY" And the reflection vanished once more into a merely mirrored image, taking all the reflections of Whippoorwill with it.

One of the mirrors then opened, and a Snakewoman came slithering forwards from the reflection of the reflection of a Snakewoman, whose curling body was somehow arranged into a vaguely human shape.

Alice was quite taken aback. "What do you want of me?" she asked of the Snakewoman. "Are you an adder?"

"I am a Subtracter," replied the Snakewoman. "My name is Mrs Minus. I am the prime candidate for imminent election to the position of New Supreme Serpent."

"What happened to the old Supreme Serpent?" asked Alice.

"He died from too much addition. I, on the other fork, subtract the crimes of this world; the Jigsaw Murder of a Spider boy, for instance..."