Jeff Noon - Automated Alice

"Well..." began the professor, "a quark is a set of hypothetical elementary particles, postulated to be the fundamental and invisible units of all carryons and chrownons. Do you understand, Alice? It's quite simple: every single thing that exists is made out of tiny particles, and a quark is the invisible unit inside every carryon particle, and also inside every chrownon. The strangest thing about quarks is that we scientists know that they do exist, but we don't know where they exist!"

"That sounds rather too much like a certain parrot I know," said Alice.

"Quark, quark!" quarked Chrowdingler. "Come home to me, my kitten!" But the pet of a cat was nowhere to be seen. "This is why I called my cat Quark," said the professor to Alice; "because he was always so very prone to vanishing, and nothing can vanish quicker than a fundamental particle! I was doing an experiment, you see; one which tried to register the impact of the carryon particles on the innocent people of Manchester. The experiment entailed the encapturing of my pet cat in this particular box of tricks..." Professor Chrowdingler was tapping with her pipe upon the wooden box's lid; from within the box's interior came a further dismal call for help.

"So you placed your pet cat inside this box..." croaked Celia, "and then what did you do?"

"I funnelled a cloud of carry on particles into the box."

"And what is a carryon, when it's at home?" asked Alice.

"A carryon is the particle that allows the various species to mate with each other. This is why we are all currently suffering from the Newmonia."

"So you're a carryon crow?" pondered Alice.

"Exactly so! I uncovered and named that particle after myself."

"And this is where the disease called the Newmonia came from?"

"That's right; the Civil Serpents introduced the carryon particle into the nation's wavey length. They were hoping to make the populace succumb to quietude, I guess. The original idea was to turn everybody into gentle, law-abiding Mice-people. This inexact science is known as Djinnetic Engineering, on account of it being not unlike letting a rabid genie out of a bottle. The Serpents' silly experiment went dreadfully wrong of course, and the rampant carryon particle transformed the people into a mishmash of mutated creatures. My crowly shape is just one of the various outcomes. So it was that I devised this boxly experiment, containing both a domestic cat and a fog of the dreaded carryon particles."

"But your experimental cat must have mewled and spat at being forced inside the box of canyons," exclaimed Celia.

"Oh, how my little Quark mewled and spat! But really, I was only trying to prove the usage of carryon particles in the dissipation of the Newmonia disease. But my dear Quark was viciously attacked by the carryons!"

"What happened then?" asked Alice.

"Quark was mixed up with a chameleon's nature."

Just then, Alice noticed a translucent something moving through the scientifical equipment on one of Chrowdingler's workbenches. It looked very much like the nebulous smile of a feline beauty, long since admitted to the disappearing realms of catouflage. A soft and plaintive "Meowwwlll!" came out of nowhere as something unseen and furry knocked over a test-tube. "Quark, Quark!" screeched Chrowdingler upon the evidence of her phantom cat's misdemeanour. The professor made a feathery-fluttering move to trap the ghostly cat, ending up with only a few wisps of figmental fur in her pointed beak.

"Quark is an invisible cat!" cried Alice, recalling a certain incident in one of her previous adventures. (Although, never in the life of her, would she have suspected that one day in the future she would discover a scientific reason for the old Cheshire Cat's disappearance!)

"Quite so!" cawed the crow. "Quark has become a chamelecat."

"So it's the Civil Serpents who are to blame for the Newmonia disease?" asked Alice, returning (finally) to the subject.

"That's correct," replied Chrowdingler; "the Civil Serpents tried their very best to cover up the carryon mistake, claiming the pandemonious Newmonia disease to be no more than a natural aberration of nature. There are only twelve beings in the whole world that know of the Serpents' real misdeed."

Twelve! Alice, suddenly enlightened, asked, "Would these twelve beings include a computermite and a Ramshackle Badgerman and a sleepy snake? And would they also include a chicken-powered terbot musician and a Zebraman and a long-distance Snailman? Also, a Spider boy and a Catwoman and a bookish Plaiceman?"

"They would indeed!" answered Chrowdingler. "The Civil Serpents are determined to kill off all of the knowledgeable twelve, in order to hide their misuse of the carryon particles, and their ghastly crimes against humanity. Quark! The Serpents are determined to kill off every single carrier of the carryon clue; this includes myself of course. Very soon the Snakes of Law will rearrange my body into a deathly puzzle." With this utterance Chrowdingler reached into her wing's darkness to produce a little piece of jagged wood: "This arrived in the post this very morning..."

It was the jigsawed fragment from the aviary in the London Zoo puzzle, showing a crow's black feather. Alice took it quite pleasingly. "Oh, thank you, Professor, for delivering this jigsaw piece to me!" she cried. "I now have nine of my twelve missing pieces!"

"To be given such a jigsaw piece," warned the professor, "implies that the Civil Serpents will be wanting to kill you off for your dangerous knowledge. These are the jigsaw pieces of Cain!"

"But all along I thought the Civil Serpents," queried Celia, "had been urging the police to find the Jigsaw Murderer? Isn't this why they arrested Captain Ramshackle, and also Alice's poor, innocent, real self?"

"The police are ignorant of the real murderer, and the real crime. The Serpents are merely looking for escape-goats."

Alice dearly wanted to ask what an escape-goat was, but at that very moment, from the insides of the wooden box, came once more a shrill voice that pleaded, "Please let me out of this box!"

"I'm not letting you out of the box so early!" screeked the crow-woman in reply. "The experiment is not yet over!" Simultaneously to this screeking, there was also a terrible pounding on the stairs that led down to the Uniworseity of Manchester.

"This is the Civil Serpents!" pounded the pounding. "Alice Liddell and Professor Chrowdingler! You are both under arrest for the Jigsaw Murders!"

The pipe fell out of Chrowdingler's mouth! "Quickly, Alice!" she urged. "This is what you have to do next: you must find the remaining three of your missing jigsaw pieces. You must then take all twelve of the pieces to your Great Aunt's house in Didsbury village. Promise me that you will carry all twelve of the pieces to your puzzle back to the past, because only then will we futurites be saved from the Serpents' wrath!"

"We promise, Professor Chrowdingler," croaked Celia.

"But my tenth jigsaw piece is with the Civil Serpents!" added the Real Alice. "They are keeping it for evidence at the Town Hall."

"So to the Town Hall must you journey!" screeked the Crow-woman in a flurry of wing-beats. "But now you must hide inside the experiment box."

"I'm not getting in there!" announced Alice in a huff. But the pounding of the Serpents on the stairs caused Celia to add (in a second huff!), "But Alice, it's our only chance to escape!" Celia opened up the box's lid and climbed inside.

"But Professor," hesitated Alice, "you haven't yet told us about the chrownon particles."

"I haven't the time for that," replied Chrowdingler.

And so Alice (rather nervously) followed Celia into the box.