Automated Alice

by Jeff Noon

  “I see that you’re admiring my suit, Alice,” the Badger Captain said, moving over to a mound of earth that rested on a leather-topped desk. “It’s quite splendidly chaotic isn’t it? Of course, it cost me not a penny, because I made this suit myself out of a book of tailor’s samples. One must make one’s ends meet, when one is a Randomologist.”

  “And what is a Randomologist?” asked Alice.

  “What else could it be but somebody who studies Randomology?” replied Captain Ramshackle.

  “And what is Randomology?”

  “What else could it be than what a Randomologist studies?”

  Alice felt that she was getting nowhere at all with her questions so she decided to ask no more. Instead she walked over to the desk where Captain Ramshackle was fiddling about with the mound of earth. Alice could see numerously numerous termites running hither and thither over the soil. “What I want to know,” Ramshackle asked, “is what in the earth were you, a young girl, doing in my computermite mound?”

  “I was trying to get out,” replied Alice.

  “And very glad I am that you managed it. Of course, every home’s got one these days; computermite mounds are most useful for the solving of problems. I dug this one up myself, you know, only yesterday, in a radish patch.”

  “A radish patch?” said Alice.

  “What’s so strange about that? Termites are vegetarians, you know?”

  “I know.”

  “My previous mound was getting rather antsy, you see. Anyway, I’d heard on the badgervine that a rather nice Queen had moved her troops into an old radish patch in Didsbury—”

  “Didsbury!”

  “Yes. Do you know it?”

  “I was there only a few minutes ago.”

  “Well, you must have very fast feet then, because it’s five miles from here.”

  “Oh dear,” said a very confused Alice.

  “However, this is only a portable mound.” Alice tried her very best to imagine a badger carrying a mound of earth through the streets, but no matter how hard she tried she still couldn’t imagine it. “They say that if you could get enough computermites into a big enough mound,” the badgerman continued, “you would have a termite brain equal in imagination to the human mind. But, according to my miscalculations, that would make the—”

  “Don’t you mean calculations,” interrupted Alice.

  “I thought I had already told you that I was a Randomologist?” replied the badgerman, crossly. “Now what would a Randomologist be doing making calculations? No, no; a Randomologist makes miscalculations, and according to my miscalculations, a computermite mound with the imagination-power of a single human would be as large as the whole world itself! But what I want to know, Alice, is this: how in the earth did you manage to get inside the mound?”

  “I just found myself there,” Alice said, quite dizzy from the Captain’s miscalculations. “Could you tell me the time, please?”

  “I most certainly can,” replied Ramshackle, rolling up his left shirt sleeve to reveal a tiny clock fastened around his wrist. “It’s seven minutes past five.”

  “Oh goodness. I have completely missed my afternoon writing lesson!”

  “No you haven’t; it’s seven minutes past five in the morning.”

  “In the morning?!”

  “That’s right. I do all my best miscalculations during the early hours. Maybe it’s a breakfast writing lesson that you’ve missed? I know that most young creatures these days learn how to read from studying the labels on jamjars.”

  “But what day is it today?” Alice asked.

  Captain Ramshackle rolled up his right shirt sleeve where a second wrist-clock was fastened. “It’s a Thursday,” he announced.

  “A Thursday! It should be a Sunday.”

  “It should always be a Sunday but, unfortunately, it hardly ever is.”

  “What month is it?” asked Alice.

  Ramshackle rolled up his right trouser leg. Another tiny clock was fastened to his ankle. “It’s a bleak twenty-fourth of November in shivery Manchester.”

  “At least that’s right!”

  “Of course it’s right: this is a right-leg watch, after all!”

  “And what year is it, please?” Alice then asked, quite confused.

  Ramshackle consulted yet another tiny clock, strapped to his left ankle this time. “It’s 1998, of course.”

  “1998!” cried Alice. “Oh dear, I am ever so very late for my lesson. I set out in 1860, and I still haven’t reached the writing table yet. Whatever shall I do?”

  “You say that you left Didsbury village in 1860? Why that’s…that’s…why I don’t know how long ago that is. Do you?” Alice tried to work it out, but she couldn’t. “No matter,” said Captain Ramshackle, “I’ll ask the mound how long ago it is.” And with that he picked up his pair of tweezers and proceeded to pluck a number of termites from the earth: he rearranged them here and there and then set them on their way back into the mound. “The answer should be arriving in a few minutes,” he said. And then he started to consult something lying on his desk beside the computermite mound.

  “Oh this is very confusing,” cried Alice, edging even closer to the desk in order to see what Captain Ramshackle was looking at.

  “Confusing? Splendid!” the Captain cried, not even looking up from his task.

  “It’s not at all splendid. It’s extremely confusing.”

  “Confusing is splendid.”

  “Is that a jigsaw you’re doing?” asked Alice, having finally dared to look over his shoulder.

  “No it is not,” fumed the Captain. “This is a jigglesaurus.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “A jigsaw is a modern creature that finally makes sense, whilst a jigglesaurus is a primitive creature that finally makes nonsense.”

  “None of the pieces seem to fit at all,” said Alice. “There’s no picture there.”

  “Exactly so. Everything adds up to nothing. You see, I’m a Randomologist: I believe the world is constructed out of chaos. I study the strange connections that make the world work. Did you know that the fluttering of a wurm’s wings in South America can bring about a horse-crash in England?”

  “No, I didn’t know that,” said Alice, “in fact I don’t even know what a horse-crash is, but I do know that a worm doesn’t have wings.”

  “Doesn’t it?” Ramshackle replied. “How on the earth then does it fly?”

  “A worm doesn’t fly. A worm wriggles.”

  “Does it? Excellent! Even better. The wriggling of a wurm in South America causes a horse-crash in England. Oh chaos, chaos! Splendid chaos! Now what’s this doing here?” Ramshackle had plucked a jigsaw piece up from his desk with the aid of his tweezers. “This little piece seems to fit perfectly in place!” he cried out loud. “We can’t have that! Indeed, no.” He slipped the jigsaw piece under his microscope. “It’s a section of a badger’s head I believe.”

  “That belongs in my jigsaw,” said Alice.

  “Splendid! And here was I fearing that my jigglesaurus was starting to make sense, of all things.” Alice took the offending piece from Ramshackle and then placed it in her pinafore pocket. “You know, I thought you were a wurm, Alice,” the Captain continued, “when first I saw you marching out of the mound.”

  “I’m not a worm,” answered Alice.

  “I didn’t say you were a worm, Alice. I said you were a wurm.”

  “Why do you keep saying the word with a U in the middle of it?”

  “Because it stands for Wisdom-Undoing-Randomised-Mechanism. Don’t you see, Alice? The world is totally random and all the Civil Serpents who try to find out the rules of it are just squeezing at strawberry jelly.”

  Finally, Alice got round to asking the Captain what a Civil Serpent was.

  “Those tightly knotted buffoons!” grunted the badgerman in reply. “The Civil Serpents are these hideous snakes that writhe around all day in the Town Hall, making up all these petty laws ag
ainst nature. Nature, of course, follows her own laws, and these are the laws of Randomology, as worked out by yours truly. The Civil Serpents regard me as a trouble-maker, as though I make the trouble! No, no: the Universe makes the trouble; I’m just the watcher of the trouble. And this is why they’re claiming the good Captain Ramshackle is guilty of the Jigsaw Murder.”

  “Has somebody been murdering jigsaws?”

  “Silly, silly, silly! It’s a murder by jigsaw. Not by jigglesaurus, mind. I mean, what interest have I in jigsaws? Those perfectly logical, slotting-together pictures? No indeed, jigsaws bore me to tears. Oh, those slithering oafs! Civil! I’ll give those serpents civil! And they’re claiming that I killed the spiderboy. Spidercide? Me? How could I possibly…why I love spiders!” At this moment Captain Ramshackle looked over to a (quite fearsomely large!) stuffed and mounted example of the arachnid species that rested amongst his miscellaneous objects. “Well, never you mind the details, Alice. Suffice it to say that I, the Captain of Ramshackle, am totally incapable of such a crime. Oh, I feel so ostracised!”

  “You feel so ostrich-sized?” asked Alice.

  “Not at all!” cried Ramshackle. “It’s the serpents who have buried their heads in the sand, not me. Surely you must see, Alice, that I couldn’t possibly kill a spider?”

  Alice accepted that fact quite easily, having witnessed the badgerman’s bristling indignation at such close quarters, not to mention the fresh cloud of talcum that billowed loose from his hair. (Oh dear, I just said I wasn’t going to mention the cloud of talcum powder, only to find that I already have mentioned it. I must be getting rather tired in my old age, Alice. In fact, I do believe that I will take to my bed now, because it is getting rather late, and this is quite enough writing for one day. I will see you in the morning, dear sweet girl…)

  Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

  (There, that’s better. Now then, where was I?)

  Oh yes; Alice tried her best to calm Captain Ramshackle down by asking for an explanation of what, exactly, a wurm (with a U in it) was.

  “The science of Randomology”, the Captain began, clearly relieved to have the subject changed, “states that a wurm is a parasite who likes to make a stolen home in a computermite mound. Once settled there the wurm does its very best to make the termites give the wrong answers. The Civil Serpents, of course, think that wurms are a pest to the orderly system: they try to kill the wurms. But I, Captain Ramshackle, inventor of Randomology, would like to invite the wurms into my mound. And you know something, Alice…?” And here the Captain looked around from side to side nervously and then bowed his head close to Alice’s ear in order to whisper, “Some people actually eat the wurms.”

  “Eat worms!” Alice exclaimed, quite forgetting the incorrect spelling.

  “Wurms, Alice. W…u…r…m…s! Some people eat them.”

  “But that’s…that’s…that’s disgusting! Whatever for?!”

  “It makes you go crazy, of course.”

  “But why would you want to go crazy? Why that’s…that’s crazy!”

  “Exactly so, Alice! Knowledge through nonsense. That’s my motto. I welcome the wrong answers! Would you like to hear a song I’ve written about it? It’s called ‘Trouser Cup.’”

  “Don’t you mean trouser cuff?”

  “What in the randomness is a Trouser Cuff?”

  “Isn’t it a kind of trouser turnup—”

  “A Trouser Turnip!” bellowed the Captain. “There’s no such vegetable!”

  “But there’s also no such thing as a Trouser Cup,” protested Alice.

  “Exactly!” cried the Captain, upon which he commenced to make a funny little dance and to sing in a very untidy voice:

  “Oh spoons may dangle from a cow

  With laughter ten feet tall;

  But all I want to know is how

  It makes no sense at all.

  Oh shirts may sing to books who pout

  In rather rigid lines;

  But all I want to turn about

  Is how the world unwinds.”

  Captain Ramshackle then knocked over a pile of his miscellaneous objects (one of which included a croquet mallet, which fell onto the shell of the Indian Lobster, cracking it open). “That looks like a very crushed Asian lobster,” Alice stated.

  “That lobster is indeed a crustacean!” the badgerman replied, before continuing with his song:

  “It makes no sense at all you see,

  This world it makes no sense.

  And all of those who disagree

  Are really rather dense.

  Oh dogs may crumble to the soap

  That jitters in the dark;

  But all I want to envelope

  Is how it makes no mark.

  Oh fish may spade and grow too late

  The trousers in the cup;

  But all I want to aggravate

  Is how the world adds up.

  It’s got no sum at all you see,

  This life has got no sum.

  And all of those who disagree

  Are really rather dumb.”

  The Captain broke off from singing and turned back to the computermite mound. “Ah ha!” he cried. “Here’s your answer!” He had placed his eye against the microscope. “Oh dear…”

  “What is it?” asked Alice.

  “Young girl,” he said, “you are one-hundred-and-thirty-eight years late for your two o’clock writing lesson. You need to talk to Professor Gladys Chrowdingler.”

  “Who’s she?”

  “Chrowdingler is studying the Mysteries of Time. Chrownotransductionology, she calls it. Only Chrowdingler can help you now. Don’t you realise, Alice? You’ve actually travelled through time!”

  “I’m just trying to find my lost parrot,” Alice replied.

  “I saw a green-and-yellow parrot flying out of the microscope, some two-and-a-feather minutes before you did.”

  “That’s him!” Alice cried. “That’s Whippoorwill. Where did he go to?”

  “He flew out of that window there.” Ramshackle pointed to a window that opened onto a garden. “He flew into the knot garden…”

  “I don’t care if it is a garden, or not a garden,” said Alice, quite missing the point. “I simply must find my Great Aunt’s parrot!” And with that she climbed up onto the windowsill and then jumped down into the garden. The garden was very large and filled with lots of hedges and trees, all of which were sprinkled with moon dust. And there, sitting on the branch of a tree some way off, was Whippoorwill himself!

  “Be careful out there, Alice,” shouted Ramshackle through the window. “Times may have changed since your day.”

  But Alice paid that badger no mind, no mind at all, so quickly was she running off in pursuit of her lost parrot.

  ALICE’S

  TWIN TWISTER

  ALICE was glad to be aboveground and out-of-doors at last, even if she was rushing madly around in rectangles through the garden’s pathways. “This garden is so complicated!” she exclaimed to herself. Again and again she scampered down long, gloomy corridors lined with hedgerows and around tight corners only to bump—at the end of each breathless journey—against yet another solid wall of greenery. “This is a garden, this is not a garden,” she repeated to herself endlessly as she ran along: Alice couldn’t get Captain Ramshackle’s description of the garden out of her head. “And if this really is a not garden,” she told herself, “well then I really shouldn’t be here at all! Because I most definitely am a young girl. I’m not not a young girl.” All these tangled thoughts made Alice’s head spin with confusion. It reminded her of Miss Computermite’s description of the beanery system. “A garden, like a bean,” Alice thought, “is either here, or it’s not here. And this garden is most definitely here! Even if it is terribly gloomy and frightening.” Putting her fear aside (in a little red pocket inside her head which she kept for just such a purpose), Alice sped on and on through the morning’s darkness, around more and more corners.

  Ev
ery so often she would come upon small clearings, in each of which a gruesome statue would be waiting, silent and still in the ghostly moonlight. These statues weren’t anything at all like the statues that Alice had seen in the few art galleries that she had visited. For one thing they weren’t carved from stone; rather they were made out of bits and pieces of this and that, all glued together higgledy-piggledy; shoes and suitcases and coins and spectacles and curtains and books and hooks and jamjars and tiny velvet gloves and horses’ hooves and a thousand other discarded objects. And for another thing—unlike the works in the art galleries—these garden statues didn’t seem to want to portray real people at all; rather they looked like monstrous, perverted images of the subject, especially in this spectral light and with the rustling of dying leaves all around. “What strange portraits you have in 1998,” Alice announced to a statue that looked a little bit like her Great Aunt Ermintrude and even more like a sewing-machine having a fight with a thermometer and a stuffed walrus. And then she was off and running once again.

  “I’m sure I’m only going around in squares and circles,” cried Alice, presently. “The trouble is—I think I’m totally lost now.” Alice pondered for a moment on what being partially lost might be like, but could come up with no better answer than that it would be like being only partially found. “And I wouldn’t like that at all,” she whispered, shivering at the thought of it. “Now, where in the garden has Whippoorwill got to? Why, only a few minutes ago I could see him clearly sitting in his tree: now I can’t see anything at all other than these tall hedges and all these corners and corridors in the darkness and all these funny statues. And I don’t even know how to get back to Captain Ramshackle’s house any more! I shall be forever lost at this rate, never mind totally! This garden is more like a maze than a garden.” And then it came to her: “This garden is a maze!” she cried aloud. “It’s a knot garden. Not a not garden. That’s what Captain Ramshackle meant. Oh how silly of me! The word has a K in it, rather than an empty space. All I have to do now is work out which knot the garden is tied up in. Then I can untie it and find out where Whippoorwill is perched.”