Jeff Noon - Automated Alice

Alice mopped up some of her tears with her pinafore, and then sauntered over to the Fishman. Celia followed, wondering what Alice was hoping to achieve by gently tapping like that on the Fishman's shoulder? (Now then, the question of the exact position of a fish's shoulders; this is the riddle that has puzzled ichthyologists -- the examiners of fish -- down the ages, and I shan't go into it here.) Suffice it to say that Alice did tap on the Fishman's shoulders, achieving no response at all. "Celia..." Alice breathed, "I do believe this Plaiceman is dead."

"What makes you say that, Alice," asked Celia.

"Firstly, I can't waken him; secondly, his left fin is sprouting from his forehead; thirdly, his gills are where his eyes should be; and fourthly, his tail is flopping out of his mouth!"

"Alice, you have become automated to the subject of death!" said Celia.

"It's time for us both to grow up," Alice responded. "This poor Plaiceman has been Jigsaw Murdered, and that is a crime. And look! He's got a jigsaw piece clutched in his right fin. It's one of my missing ones: a fish's fin belonging in the aquarium of my London Zoo puzzle. And look! He's slumped over a book called Reality and Realicey! Oh Celia, maybe I've finally found my place in history?"

The other readers were making a racketing protest by now (despite the SILENCE PLEASE! signs) at Alice's shouts of jubilation. Alice paid them no mind at all; instead she quickly added the fishy jigsaw piece to the other seven in her pinafore pocket, and gently slid the history book from under the Fishman's glistening (and rather smelly) body. The book called Reality and Realicey was so large and thick and fish-stained that Alice had a rare time trying to get it open at the first page; but eventually she managed to reach the first sentence of the book, and this is what she read:

"The Reality set is a subset of the Existence set, which also contains the Unreality set and the Nureality set. The three subsets of Existence correspond exactly to the three subsets of Alistence, namely: the Real Alice, the Imagined Alice and the Automated Alice."

"Celia?" Alice called out, upon reaching the end of the passage. "Could you please explain these words to me?" But Celia was suddenly nowhere to be seen! "Celia, where have you vanished to this time? Oh, but I haven't got time to be chasing that doll just now -- and there simply isn't enough time in the whole of history to read this entire book -- so I think I'll skip through all the pages until I reach the last one; surely there I'll find my answer?" Of course Alice didn't quite skip through the pages, because they were so heavy; it was more like a trudge through sludge, but eventually she managed to reach the last lines of the book, and this is what she read there:

"...by which time the Real and the Imagined Alices were indistinguishable in Lewis Carroll's mind. This confusion caused him to project the combined Alices into the future. Only by sending Alice on one final epic journey in search of her past, back into childhood's dream, so to speak, could he hope to cleanse his own imagination in the dying moments of a mental ellipsis..."

"Oh, poppycock!" exclaimed Alice. "This is no help at all! Why, the author has ended this giant of a book with an ellipsis! Surely there cannot be more to be said on the subject! Who wrote this rubbish?" (Alice was becoming really rather modern by this time.) She heaved the book shut in order to look at the front cover more closely.

"Reality and Realicey", it said, "by Professor Gladys Chrowdingler."

"Professor Chrowdingler wrote this!" Alice shrieked. "Why, she's one of the things I'm searching for!" Alice once again wrestled with the book, until she forced it to turn to the inside back cover. There she found a photograph of an aged pipe-sucking Crow-woman in a bowler hat, and below the picture, a brief biography of the author:

"Gladys Chrowdingler was born in 1910. Her previous bestselling tomes include Oz and Ozzification, Pooh and Poohtrefaction and Peter Pandemonia. She is currently Professor of Chrownotransductionology at the Uniworseity of Manchester. She lives with a cat called Quark, who sometimes helps with experiments."

"Now then," Alice thought, "I'm sure that I passed the University of Manchester on my police-auto journey into the city: perhaps the Uniworseity of Manchester could be somewhere near to that? Surely I must go there to find this professor called Chrowdingler? But however shall I manage it in time?"

Just then Celia came thumping down a book-lined corridor. "Alice, quickly!" the Automated Alice croaked out. "We must make our escape, the police are here!" At which all the other readers vanished like bookworms into the deeply tangled word-tunnels.

"Where are they?" gasped Alice, looking around in a panic.

"Suddenly everywhere!" answered Celia.

Indeed the police were suddenly everywhere! They were creeping out of every alleyway, every tunnel, every single maze-path of the librarinth. In no time at all, Alice and Celia were completely surrounded by a champing circle of dog officers. Mrs Minus and Inspector Jack Russell emerged from the ragged circumference. Mrs Minus was snakely fingering the corpse of the aquatic reader. "Girl Alice," the subtracter snake hissed, "you are under arrest for Hindering the Police in their Enquiries. You are further under arrest for the Jigsaw Murder of this poor innocent Fishman."

"Oh, what shall we do now, Celia?" pleaded Alice.

"Open up the cupboard in my right-hand thigh," whispered Celia.

"I didn't know you had a cupboard in your right-hand thigh!"

"Pablo Ogden made many rearrangements to my body. Take a little look."

So Alice did take a little look. Upon Celia's right-hand thigh was a small cupboard door, labelled TO BE OPENED IN AN EMERGENCY ONLY.

"I don't know what's in there," Celia croaked, "but won't you please open it up, Alice? The police are closing in!"

The police were closing in!

So Alice opened up the cupboard in Celia's thigh. There she found a shiny brass lever, and next to it the message PULL ME AND HANG ON TIGHTLY! Alice pulled the lever...

Four-and-a-fearsome minutes later, Alice and Celia were speeding down the Oxford Road in search of the Uniworseity of Manchester. And there was Whippoorwill the parrot, fluttering along just ahead of them, always just so tantalizingly out of reach. Police sirens were singing a plaintive song through the rain, but Celia was running at such a terbo-charged speed that the twinly twisted pair very soon escaped from their pursuers.

Six-and-a-slickety minutes later, Alice and Celia arrived at the imposing stone-built bulk of the University of Manchester. Once inside the campus, they managed (of course!) to lose Whippoorwill, but also managed to find a series of hand-painted signs that led them towards a small hole in the ground, marked with a downwards-pointing arrow: THE UNIWORSEITY THIS WAY.

Down the hole Alice and her twin twister went.

(Dearest readers, in my old age I seem to have mislaid the passage that tells of what happened when Alice pulled the lever in Celia's right-hand thigh. I must now deliver that story to you; or else the reader will surely bang shut this final Book of Alice in frustration.)

Pablo Ogden had kitted-out the Automated Alice with two thigh-cupboards, the left and the right. The left-leg cupboard was marked with the words TO BE OPENED IN AN EXTREME EMERGENCY ONLY. The right-leg cupboard was to be opened in a lesser-than-extreme emergency, and this was the door that Alice had opened, revealing the shiny brass lever which Alice pulled...

Celia's legs then started to grow up like two tree trunks, towards the ceiling of the librarinth! Alice clung onto these telescoping legs, as Celia towered towards the skylight, through which Whippoorwill the parrot had previously flown. Ever so high! Alice looked down (always a mistake) and felt quite giddy from the upwards-rushing journey.