Jeff Noon - Automated Alice

"My Alish, can you engrashp

The venom of thish Ashp?

Or even the thirdly Boa

Shmuggled aboard with Noah?"

"According to my lessons," stated Alice, "there were only a pair of boas allowed aboard the Ark. Are you saying that a third boa snake crept into Noah's cargo?"

"That extra Sherpent eshcaped from the Garden of Eden," answered the Supreme Snake, "and from there he shlithered aboard the Ark. It was Shatan himshelf in shcaly dishguishe."

"Satan was a stowaway on Noah's Ark?" Alice shuddered.

"Shatan shurvived the flood of your little god by hiding in the water closhet of the Ark. Forty daysh and forty nightsh of torture did he shuffer until he could eshcape to plague mankind onsh more. Shatan Sherpent rulesh Shupreme!"

But Alice wasn't listening. "Why do you keep putting an H after every S?" she complained. "I'm getting covered in your spittle!" (She wouldn't usually have been so impolite, but the shower of snakely saliva was actually burning her skin!)

"It'sh a shpeech impediment I have," replied the Serpent with an angry flick of her tongue, before continuing with her story. "We Shivil Sherpentsh are the children of that illishit cargo. We are the mosht Shupreme Sherpent!"

"I thought Mrs Minus was trying to become the Supreme Serpent?"

"You don't become the Shupreme Sherpent; you become a mere coil of the Shupreme Sherpent. We shnakes are the leadersh. There ish only one Sherpent. We are Leviathan! We are the World Shnake! The Bashilishk!"

By this time Alice was more or less smothered in snake juice and her skin was very nearly aflame! But this discomfort didn't stop her noticing the small piece of jagged wood impaled upon the Serpent's left fang. "That must be the spider piece from my jigsaw!" Alice said to herself, "but how can I possibly steal it back? I doubt if even the Lord's Prayer would work this time; for what single poem could possibly put such a fearsome snake to sleep?"

"Little Alish..." the Serpent said with a lishp and an ellipshish, "I have an all-sheeing eye. I have followed your progresh through thish tale. I have sheen you hunting down cash piesh of the jigshaw. I have sheen you uncovering evidensh of my mishtakes with the Newmonia fever. I wash only trying to make thish world a better world! You musht have realished how absholutely random shoshiety wash becoming? I only wanted the people to conform to the rulesh! Ish that shuch a crime? Sho I fed the Newmonia germ to them all, hoping to make followersh out of them all. Ish it my fault that the exshperiment went wrong? And can you blame myself and my Contortium, Alish, for trying to cover it up with the Jigshaw Murdersh?"

"Yes, I can blame you," answered Alice. "I blame you for everything!

At this accusation, the Supreme Serpent snapped her jaws down and all around Alice. Alice was gathered up into the giant mouth; the twin spears were pricking into her skin! Alice (in her final moments) managed to wriggle free the spidery jigsaw piece from the left-hand fang. And then she was swallowed whole!

Down, down and down! Along, along and along! Around, around and around! Alice had no idea that the insides of a snake could have so many twistings and turnings. Being swallowed was making her quite dizzy, but this didn't stop her from carefully adding the spider's jigsaw piece to the other nine in her pinafore pocket. "What a strange coincidence!" she said to herself whilst being further ingested. "Only a few hours ago I swallowed a wurm, and now I'm being swallowed by a snake! The future is filled with writhing!"

Eventually Alice was deposited into a small, dark chamber which contained only a neat and tidy desk; behind the desk sat a neat and tidy man with a neat and tidy fountain pen in his hand; he was scribbling away at a neat and tidy ledger. "Your name, please?" he neated and tidied.

"Alice."

The neat and tidy man scribbled Alice's name into the ledger, without even looking at her. "Your purpose in the city of Munchester?" he asked.

"To find a way out," answered Alice, which made the neat and tidy man look up at last.

"A way out?" he spluttered. "There is no way out! This is Munchester! The place where food goes after being swallowed."

"What is your name, neat and tidy man?" asked Alice.

"My name is Neathan Tidyman; what of it?"

"I want to get back to Manchester, Neathan."

"Manchester? Have you your tickling ticket?"

"Oh what a coincidence, Mister Tidyman!" said Alice, remembering Zenith O'Clock's promise. "I have just such a tickling ticket!" Alice pulled Whippoorwill's green-and-yellow feather from her pinafore pocket.

"Ooh, a green-and-yellow feather!" cried Neathan, snatching it from Alice's hand. "I've always wanted a green-and-yellow tickling feather! I can visit the Chimera!" He then proceeded to tickle Alice's nose with it! And then his own! "Oh yes!" he squealed, completely untidying himself. "Oh yes! Oh take me!"

Alice saw that three closed doors were waiting beyond the desk. Each had its own little handwritten sign: the first door read THE THIRD DOOR IS THE SAFE DOOR; the second read THE FIRST DOOR IS LYING; the third read THE SECOND DOOR IS REALLY THE FIRST DOOR. "Young girl, choose your door wisely!" Tidyman giggled as he tickled. "One of them leads to Munchester; another leads to Unchester; a further one of them leads to Manchester, and that's the only safe door: the other two are deadly."

"But which door should I choose?" asked Alice of herself. "Oh, if only Automated Alice was still with me! Celia would quite logically work out the problem. But as Celia isn't with me, I shall have to pretend to be her. Now then, let me consider..." Alice then logicuted thus: The first door claims the third door to be the safe door, but the second door claims that the first door is lying, so maybe the second door is the safe door. But then the third door says that the second door is really the first door, so it's the second door that is lying, which means that the first door is telling the truth: therefore the third door must be the safe door..."

"Quickly, Alice!" laughed Tidyman. "It's make your mind up time!"

Alice opened up the third door and walked through it.

The third door shivered and vanished as soon as Alice stepped through it; now she was standing on a small hill which overlooked a most pleasant landscape. The sun was greeting her with a cheery smile on its bright face. There was a winding country lane that stretched lazily into the haze of summer. A bluebird softly whistled a lovely melody from a nearby willowing tree, and a pair of rabbits in courtship gambolled happily through a field of buttercups. "I must surely have chosen the correct door," Alice congratulated herself, "for this is a very pretty land indeed! If only Celia were here to enjoy this particular part of Manchester with me!"

This was a world where it never could rain, and in the warm and shimmering distance a languid curl of smoke was rising from the chimney of a little wooden cottage. Alice set off down the hill and along the lane towards the cottage, and as she went along the bluebirds and the rabbits called out to her from the hedgerows. "Dear little Alice," they twittered, "how nice of you to visit us!" Alice was quite taken aback by this tenderness, so much so that she completely forgot all about the time and the jigsaw and the murders and even the writing lesson! Her worries were like mists dispersing. Alice walked along without a single care in the whole world, until she came eventually to the small rose-enshrouded cottage. There was a beautifully engraved name-plate on the door, which read DONE WONDERING. Alice gently tapped her knuckles upon the door and from within, in answer, came a kindly voice saying, "Come in. It's open."