Jeff Noon - Automated Alice

It was very dark inside the box, and very cramped; so much so that Alice couldn't see her own nose in front of her face! But her unseen nose could smell a waft of sickly talcum powder. "Captain Ramshackle!" cried Alice to the darkness, upon smelling that dusty aroma, "it was you in here, trying to find a way out!"

"Indeed it is my very own self, trying to escape," answered the boxed-up Badgerman from the darkness.

"But what are you doing inside here?" questioned Alice.

"I was hoping to follow the example of Quark the cat," came the miserable, invisible reply.

"In order to make yourself invisible to the Civil Serpents...?"

"Precisely so!" admitted Ramshackle. "I was hoping that Professor Chrowdingler could turn me into a Badgermeleon! Am I correct to suspect that the experiment has failed?"

"I suspect, Captain Ramshackle," said Alice, "that you are no more invisible than I am! And that is not very invisible at all! Even though it's completely dark in this dangerous box!"

"What's happening outside the box?" whispered Ramshackle, fearfully.

"The Civil Serpents have come to find us," whispered Celia, hoarsely.

"Who are you?!" cried Ramshackle. "Are there two Alices in the box?"

"This is my Automated Sister, Captain," introduced Alice. "She's called Celia."

"Alice has been split in two?!"

"Well yes," answered Alice, "I suppose I have."

"How superbly random that must be!" exclaimed the Badgerman, finding a little of his old bravado. "Should we look outside just yet, do you think?"

"No, we should not!" cried Alice, as something heavy started hammering on the roof of the box. "Is there a way to lock this box from the inside?"

"There is indeed..." responded Ramshackle, reaching upwards to turn a small latch on the box's ceiling.

The noise from outside seemed to recede. Alice felt safe enough to ask some questions: "What do you know about the Radishes of Time, Captain Ramshackle?" was her first enquiry.

"Professor Chrowdingler told me nearly everything that she knew. The Radishes of Time are where the chrownon particles live and breed."

"And what is a chrownon?" asked Alice with her second question.

"A chrownon is another particle that Chrowdingler has uncovered; it is the elementary unit of time itself! My dear Alice... you must have eaten some forwards chrownons in the past; this is why you have travelled to 1998! To get back to 1860, you would have to swallow some backwards chrownons."

"I must swallow a radish, backwards?" protested Alice with her third question.

"That is correct, and you must swallow them at the very place of your leaving, and at the very same time as your leaving."

"In other words, Alice," explained Celia, helpfully, "we must travel to your Great Aunt's house in Didsbury. Once there, we must eat some of the radishes in your Great Uncle's vegetable patch, and we have to do all of this at precisely two o'clock."

"Your Automated Sister is most wise," said Ramshackle. "This whole process, according to Chrowdingler, is known as Chrownotransductionology; in other words: timely travel."

Just then, Alice's nose noticed a pungent whiff of gas over and above the Badgerman's talcum waft. "Have you made a social faux pas, Captain?" she discreetly enquired.

"No, I have not made a social fart-pants!" pleaded the Badgerman.

"Captain Ramshackle!" cried Alice. "One should not say such things!"

"You said it first!"

"I did not! I said faux pas! It's quite different; why, it's French, for one thing! Therefore it's much more polite!" Alice was here following her Great Aunt's instructions in etiquette. (Great Uncle Mortimer did eat an awful amount of radishes, remember?)

"In the future, Alice..." explained Celia, "there are hardly any words at all that cannot be said aloud. Why, you can even say --"

"Well I don't like the future," Alice cut in. "It's beastly, and I want to go home!"

"Sisters, sisters! This is not the smell of my netherness," said Ramshackle; "this is the smell of carryon gas, seeping into the box."

Alice screamed: "I don't want to be changed! I don't want to catch Newmonia! I want to be just me!" She nudged open the latch and began to push against the lid.

Oh dear! The box wouldn't open!

Alice pushed and pushed, but still the lid wouldn't open. It wouldn't budge, not an inch! "The Civil Serpents have locked us in!" she cried, as the rotten smell of carryons stenched up her nostrils. "Celia, quickly! We must pull your right-hand thigh-cupboard lever once again; perhaps your telescoping legs will break open the lid..."

"I'm afraid I can use each of my thigh-cupboards only once," was Celia's reply to that suggestion.

"We must open your left-hand thigh-cupboard then!"

"But that cupboard is to be used only in an extreme emergency."

"This is an extremely extreme emergency!"

"I'm not so sure it is, Alice," said Ramshackle. "Maybe if we all three of us pushed together, we could get out?"

So all three of them did push together, and lo and behold! The box wasn't locked at all, the Civil Serpents had merely placed something very heavy on top of it. This heavy something fell to the floor with a dull thud as the trio opened up the lid in order to peer (surreptitiously!) over the box's rim...

The laboratory was quite empty.

Alice (and then Celia in a pair of nervous brackets) ((and then Captain Ramshackle, in a pair of doubly nervous brackets)) climbed out of the experiment box. They all seemed quite unchanged by their adventure. "I do believe the carryon gas needs much longer than that to work," explained Ramshackle.

"Oh dear!" whispered Celia, as she noticed what exactly they had dislodged from the lid to the floor...

It was the corpse of Professor Gladys Chrowdingler! The Crow-woman's wings were now flapping lifelessly from either side of her eyes! Her sooty tail was sprouting from her lips! Her eyes were lifelessly peering from each of her knees!

"The professor has been Jigsaw Murdered!" cried Celia. "The Civil Serpents have reorganized her!"

And the laboratory wasn't quite so empty, because Alice saw a certain translucent whispering of fur rubbing against the professor's mixed-up body. Alice picked up the translucent whispering, gently, and began to stroke it. (Have you ever tried to stroke an invisible cat? I can assure you it's a very strange task; but if anybody could do it, Alice could, and Alice did do it.

For some almost unknown reason Alice was the only one of her party who could see anything at all of Quark, the invisible cat. The cat purred at being treated so kindly. "You'll have to find your own way in the world now, invisible puss-cat," Alice said, lowering the cat to the floor. Alice then turned to Captain Ramshackle. "What time is it, please?" she enquired of him. Ramshackle rolled up his left shirt-sleeve to reveal a little wrist-clock there. "It's almost exactly one o'clock in the afternoon," he answered.

"I therefore have only sixty minutes in which to find the tenth, spidery jigsaw piece," deduced Alice, catching hold of Celia's hand, "and then the eleventh parroty piece, and then the mysterious twelfth and final piece. Quickly, Celia... activate your automated speeding legs; back to the Town Hall of Manchester we must travel!"

"I'm coming with you," said Captain Ramshackle, trying to climb aboard the doll's already moving body. But Alice pushed him back gently. "This is my task alone, Captain," she informed him. "Don't worry, I shall try my very best to save you from the Serpents..."

It took Alice and Celia only a single few minutes to journey the distance from the Uniworseity to the Town Hall.