Jeff Noon - Automated Alice

Alice pushed open the cottage door and stepped inside.

An old, old man was sitting at a dining table, on which two plates of hot roast beef, carrots and potatoes were gently steaming. The smell of food reminded Alice that she hadn't eaten in a long, long time (except for a little wurm, that is!). "You must be hungry, Alice," the man said, gesturing to the second plate, "won't you join me?"

"Thank you, kind sir," said Alice as she sat down.

The old man looked at Alice then. He explored her keenly, as though to remember her forever, but the young girl was so busily feeding her face with the roast beef that she never noticed his eager study. "Have you forgotten me so easily, Alice?" the old man finally found the courage to enquire.

This question caused Alice to pause for a second (with a forkful of boiled carrot halfway to her lips), and to look across the table at the old man. What she saw then made her lower her knife and fork to the plate. "Mister Dodgson!" she cried, and she excused herself from the table and ran all the way around it until she was hugging and snuggling the old man. "You look dreadfully old, kind sir," she whispered to him, "and are those tears in your eyes?"

"And is this beef gravy dribbling from your mouth?" the old man answered.

"But what are you doing in Manchester, Mister Dodgson?"

"This isn't Manchester, Alice; you chose the third door, which was the wrong door."

"But I solved the problem so logically! How could I be wrong?"

"You forgot to remember that the second door was really the first door, and therefore the third door was really the second door."

"So it was the second door I should have taken?"

"That is correct, dear Alice," answered the old man, with a further tear. "The second door would have led you to safely, whereas the third door has led you only to Unchester. This world is where the living come to live after they have finished off living. This is where I live now, having finished my living in the year 1898."

"Oh Mister Dodgson!" cried Alice, "does this mean that I have also died?"

"You were swallowed by the Supreme Serpent, Alice, in the third of my books about you. I tried my best to save you, but I was too old and too tired to rescue you. I'm afraid that this does mean that you have died."

"And has dear Celia also been swallowed?" asked Alice.

"Luckily, I managed to allow Celia an escape. I found that her superior automated powers enabled her to resist the Serpent's maw."

"But where is Celia now?"

"Would you like some treacle pudding, Alice?" asked the old man.

"I haven't got time for your trequel pudding!" cried Alice (rather too rudely, I think). "I want my twin twister back! And I want to go home!"

"But that's vurtually impossible, Alice. What's gone is gone..."

"But if a thing is only virtually impossible, doesn't that mean that it just might be possible?"

"I didn't say virtually: I said vurtually, with a U in the word, instead of an I."

"But I want to escape, unlike you, Mister Dodgson."

"Well let me see," considered the old man; "I was a real person who once upon a time naturally died: but you, Alice, are both a real and an imaginary character, and how can imagination be killed? Maybe there is a little way yet for your story to continue... although it would mean going against all the rules of life, death and narrative." The Reverend's tears fell like puddles onto his unfinished roast beef. "I was rather hoping we could spend some time together, Alice," he choked, "but perhaps you must really leave me now..." And then the Reverend Dodgson leaned close to Alice's face and said these final words, "Will this young Alice kiss me goodbye?"

Alice kissed him, and the old man's lips were salty with life.

"Flummoxy Wummoxy!"

"I beg your pardon?" said Alice.

"Wibbily Wobbily!"

"I'm afraid I don't understand."

"Lubberlyjubberly!"

"Who are you?" asked Alice.

"Flippety Floppety!"

"Oh, where am I now?" cried Alice.

"Chimeree Shimmeree!"

"This is the Chimera?"

"Flutterly Utterly!"

"Oh dear!" said Alice. "I seem to have landed inside a Chimera show. Mister Dodgson must have kissed me here, somehow or other."

"Misterly Dodgily!"

"So you're Flippety Floppety?" Alice asked the orange and blue rabbit that galumphed all around her. "I saw your name on a Chimera poster, isn't that right, Mister Rabbit?"

"Posterly Mosterly!" guffawed the animated rabbit as he jumped, and clung onto Alice's leg!

"What am I doing here?" cried Alice, as she looked all around for an escape. A soft white light covered the whole emptiness she was trapped inside, and within and around the emptiness danced and laughed a group of teasing children. These children were all laughing gleefully at Alice's attempts to shake off the clinging Flippety Floppety rabbit.

"Alice, you've made it at last!" cried another voice. I've been waiting simply ages! It was Captain Ramshackle's voice calling to Alice from nowhere at all, until she noticed that amidst the children lurked the adult badger-face that belonged to Captain Ramshackle!

"Captain Ramshackle!" Alice cried. "What are you doing here?!"

"A little birdy told me where to find you," answered the Badgerman.

"Could that birdy be Whippoorwill the parrot?" asked Alice.

"The very same," replied Ramshackle. "He told me you were currently playing the flutters at the Palace of Chimera in Rusholme. This matinee show is called Flippety Floppety Comes Unstuck; it's a children's projection, and you, Alice, are this week's guest artiste."

"Questingly Guestingly!" squeaked the rabbit as he climbed further up Alice's body.

"But what is Chimera?" asked Alice of the Captain. "And how can I escape this rather rampant rabbit?"

And the children laughed to see such fun!

"Chimera is like the theatre or a lantern show," Ramshackle replied, "except that it's more real. You have to tickle your nose with a tickling feather, and then you actually become a part of the story. You get turned on to it. It's called a collected vurtual experience."

"But how can I escape being vurtually collected?" asked Alice with a U.

"It's quite easy," said the Badgerman, "you must turn yourself off."

"But how do I turn myself off?"

"Just say the words DONE WONDERING out loud."

And as Ramshackle said the words DONE WONDERING out loud he dissolved into the light and disappeared from the Chimera. So Alice immediately followed suit. "DONE WONDERING!" she cried out loud.

Alice then found herself sitting in a cold, damp seat in the dark beside Captain Ramshackle. In front of them on the vast wall fluttered the images of Flippety Floppety and the children, and all around her in the rows of seats sat the children themselves, tickling their pert little noses with a collection of tickling feathers. The children's eyes were all glazed over like cup-cakes and filled with wonder-dust. Captain Ramshackle untickled his own nose and then took Alice's hand, to lead her towards an illuminated REALITY THIS WAY sign.

Outside, in the grounds of the Rusholme Palace of Chimera, Pablo Ogden's garden shed was sitting patiently upon the concrete. Captain Ramshackle led Alice to the shed door, relating upon the way, "After hearing Professor Chrowdingler's tale of woe, I decided it best to gather together all the remaining-alive witnesses to the Civil Serpents' murderously jigsawing plan, in order to best protect them. And here they all are!" At which he opened up the shed door and pushed Alice inside.

Alice looked around the crowded garden shed, and there indeed they all were! There was Miss Computermite grown to human size; and there was the Zebraman (whose name turned out to be Stripey); and there was Long Distance Davis, the Snailman, playing a lonesome note upon his trumpet! And there, oh there! was Pablo Ogden, the reverse butcher himself, weeping over a pile of rubbish that Alice recognized to be James Marshall Hentrails's jig-sawed remains. "How dare they rearrange my finest creation so?" Pablo was wailing. "Those silly Serpents will pay for this undoing!"