Automated Alice

by Jeff Noon

  “I’m trying my squawking best to lead you back to the past,” replies Whippoorwill. “Only by following me will you get home in time for your writing lesson.”

  “Lessons! Pooh to lessons! Oh dear, I said a naughty! Well I don’t care. I want to be naughty! I like it here, really. Let me sink, my feathery friend…” And Alice does sink then, deeper and deeper.

  “Very well,” beaks the parrot, “I shall now leave you to the wurms. Let the crazies swallow you. You obviously want to be a pretty fool.” And with that utterance the parrot flies off into the far distance and Alice is suddenly alone again: suddenly alone with only the wurms of warmth to nuzzle at her cheekbones. Mister Dodgson and her sisters, Lorina and Edith; they have all vanished quite away. And Alice does feel like she is being swallowed, all of a sudden. At this moment Alice notices something else again nudging into the corner of her vision. She has a real job turning her head around in the wurms, but somehow she does. And this is what she sees: a large grandfather clock has appeared on the grass, a few yards away from Alice’s sinking visage. The clock’s hands are applauding the imminent arrival of two o’clock. And then the clock’s mouth dings a double dong; it’s two o’clock in Wurmland and out of the clock’s body come bouncing three large and very bulbous black dots!

  “Oh dear!” Alice murmurs to herself. “Here I am being eaten alive by the crazy wurms, without a hope of escape; and the time is two o’clock! I’m late for my lesson! And if I’m not mistaken, that trio of large, black and angry-looking bubbles racing towards me is an Ellipsis! Oh, what a horrible creature an Ellipsis is! Maybe I should escape from this wurmy world. But however can I manage it?” The wurms were now nudging against Alice’s nostrils! “I must try to think of a plan!” she mumbled. “Now let me see…the wurm came into my body through my mouth; how can I now get rid of that wrigglesome wanderer? Only by the never passage, I fear.”

  (The never passage is of course the nether passage: the passage that can never be written about. But if my dearest Alice can only escape the world of the wurms by this terrible evacuation, then so be it, for I must give my writing to the young girl’s future.)

  By this time (thanks to my hesitation in the story’s telling) the three dots of the Ellipsis monster are gathering around Alice’s head in a squelchy triangle of bubbles.

  “My name is Dot,” the first bubble says.

  “My name also is Dot,” the second bubble says.

  “My name is also and also Dot,” the third bubble says. The trio of bubbles move in on Alice, ever closer, ever closer…

  Alice feels herself being engulfed by the wurms and the Dots, and very terrified she is by the stifling presence of these two engulfers; so very terrified that she actually excretes the wurm.

  (May I by the way explain that the rather naughty word called excrete comes from the Latin for separate and discharge, and if a word comes from the Latin, it surely cannot be that naughty? Suffice it to say politely that Alice did separate and discharge the wurm from her body, through the never passage…)

  And through this passage Alice arrived back in her tiny cell below the police station. Long Distance Davis was curled up, snail-like, in his shell of a hat on the dirt floor, still travelling in the wurm’s dream. Alice shook her head from side to side twenty-seven-and-a-half times, in order to dispel the remnants of the wurminess, and then she announced sternly to herself, “Whippoorwill was right: I have been a pretty fool up to now. I have allowed myself to be carried along by strangers through this future world. From now on, I shall carry myself! I shall find my own way back to Great Aunt Ermintrude’s house.”

  Alice noticed the jigsaw pieces scattered on the floor. She picked them up carefully, added the snail piece from her pocket, and rearranged all six of them around the stolen feather from Whippoorwill. It was then that she found the real answer to Whippoorwill’s last riddle: Who is it that contains only the half of the whole? Alice realized that the parrot had said hole, and not whole. Who is it that contains only the half of the hole? That was the question. Alice now knew that the hole that Whippoorwill had riddled about was the hole in her jigsaw of London Zoo, or rather, the twelve holes that the missing pieces were waiting to fill.

  “Why, this whole future I’m trapped within,” Alice cried out loud, “is nothing more than a jigsaw of the past. If I can gather together all of the lost pieces, perhaps I will find my way back through the hole in time!” She then counted the pieces she had already collected: the termite piece, the badger piece, the snake, the chicken, the zebra and the snail piece. “That makes six pieces,” she added to herself. “I have six more to find, because twelve pieces were missing from my long-ago jigsaw. I did give the right answer to Whippoorwill’s riddle, but for all the wrong reasons. I am the girl that contains only the half of the hole.”

  Alice tried her best to remember the six pieces she was still missing: “There was a spider from the spider house, and a cat from the cat house, but they are both in the possession of the police! And what about the other four pieces? There was a fish missing from the aquarium, I’m sure, and also a crow from the aviary, and a parrot, I believe. Why, that piece must represent Whippoorwill! I must surely catch him so that I can arrive back in time for my writing lesson. And I still don’t know the correct usage for an ellipsis, even though a three-dotted monster wanted to eat me in Wurmland! But there was one other jigsaw piece missing as well. Now then, what was it? Oh bother, I simply cannot recall it, no matter how hard I try! And anyway, however shall I find those jigsawed creatures while I am languishing in jail? And what about Celia? I must also find my Automated Alice. And I expect I must also try to find out who the real Jigsaw Murderer is, in order to prove my innocence! Oh dear! I’ve got so many things to find. I shall never get home!”

  Just then the door to the cell opened. It was Inspector Jack Russell, popping his furry head in. “Alice,” he barked, “please come with me and quickly! Our Lady of the Snakes is now ready for you. Your conviction will play a vigorous role in her election campaign.”

  Alice was quite fearful of meeting such a high-up Civil Serpent, but really she had no choice at all. Indeed, she had less than a second’s chance to pat Long Distance’s sleeping shell-shape, and to gather up all the jigsaw pieces and the parrot’s feather, before Jack Russell whiskered her out of the cell. Down a long twisting of corridors they travelled, and up an ever-increasing series of stairways. Alice became disorientated yet again. “Why, the future is so full of mazes,” she said to herself, “it’s a wonder anybody can get anywhere!”

  Presently she was led through a door marked CHAMBER OF INTERROGATION, into a room of mirrors. “Wait here,” Jack Russell growled at her. “The Over Assistant will be along shortly to question you.” He left the room, banging the mirrored door shut behind him. Alice looked all around in order to find an escape, but the mirrored walls repeated her image time and time again, until Alice was quite lost in her reflections. There was an infinitude of Alices in the room!

  “This is really all too much!” she reflected to herself, reflected to herself, reflected to herself, reflected to herself, reflected to herself (ad infinitum). “I shall never find my true self in this room of mirrors.”

  Just then, a thousand elusive images of Whippoorwill started to dance around the room!

  “Oh dear!” cried Alice, as she flickered here and there trying to catch even one of the thousand feathery images: “How shall I know which is the real Whippoorwill?” she cried, “and which the unreal? And in any case, I wonder what the collective noun for parrots is?”

  “The collective noun,” answered a croaky voice from out of nowhere, “is a pandemonium of parrots.”

  “Who said that?” asked Alice in surprise.

  “Celia said it,” answered the voice of a thousand parrots, as one of Alice’s reflections peeled itself free from the mirrors.

  “Is that really you, Celia?” asked Alice of the wayward reflection.

  The reflection reflected, “.uoy eucs
er ot gniyrt m’I .aileC yllaer si siht, seY” And the reflection vanished once more into a merely mirrored image, taking all the reflections of Whippoorwill with it.

  One of the mirrors then opened, and a snakewoman came slithering forwards from the reflection of the reflection of a snakewoman, whose curling body was somehow arranged into a vaguely human shape.

  Alice was quite taken aback. “What do you want of me?” she asked of the snakewoman. “Are you an adder?”

  “I am a Subtracter,” replied the snakewoman. “My name is Mrs Minus. I am the prime candidate for imminent election to the position of New Supreme Serpent.”

  “What happened to the old Supreme Serpent?” asked Alice.

  “He died from too much addition. I, on the other fork, subtract the crimes of this world: the jigsaw murder of a spiderboy, for instance…”

  “But, you must understand, I was in the year 1860 when the spiderboy was killed!”

  “That is not nearly good enough, my little suspect!” Mrs Minus replied, wrapping a strangulation of her thick coils around Alice’s body. “Your alibi smells of high wantonness. You have already admitted to the ownership of the murderous jigsaw pieces. I am hereby charging you with Probable Involvement in the crime of murder. Captain Ramshackle is the killer of the spiderboy and the catgirl; he wants nothing more than to bring chaos to the world, and you, troublesome Alice, are the badgerman’s helper in this endeavour. You shall be executed for this.” Mrs Minus then produced an evil-looking pistol from a pocket in her skin. She pointed it at Alice…

  “But I’m innocent!” squealed Alice. (“Innocent…innocent…innocent…” reflected the thousand mirrors, all to no avail: Mrs Minus had every single image of Alice wrapped in her tightening coils.) At which thankful moment Inspector Jack Russell came bursting into the room.

  “Has my election campaign mascot arrived, Inspector?” asked the snakewoman.

  “Not yet, Our Lady of Slitherness,” replied Inspector Jack, nervously, “but I have to report that there has been an escape from the cells…”

  “Who has escaped, Inspector Russell?”

  “Captain Ramshackle.”

  “Captain Ramshackle! You puppified fool!”

  Mrs Minus released Alice in order to wrap her slinky knots around Jack Russell’s body. A pack of wild policedogmen came howling by, and Mrs Minus and Inspector Jack Russell swiftly joined them in the search for Captain Ramshackle. Alice peeked out of the cell and looked along the corridor. In the long distance she saw Long Distance Davis escaping (at quite a pace for a snail!). On the other side of the corridor rested another door. This one was marked with the number forty-five and the words ROOM OF EVIDENCE, and it was through this forty-fived door that Alice slipped, to escape from the police.

  THE STROKE

  OF NOON

  THE Room of Evidence was freezing cold, and Alice was shivering as soon as she closed the door behind her. She hugged her red pinafore around herself (checking her pockets to be sure that the six jigsaw pieces and the feather were still safe) and ventured forth into the coldness.

  The Room of Evidence was lined with cabinets wall to wall, and filled up with large tables, all of which were empty except for one, on which lay a white sheet covering a lumpy shape. Alice noticed that a notice attached to the sheet was labelled with a label that read WHISKERS MACDUFF. Alice slowly lifted up the sheet…

  Alice screamed then as she had never screamed before! “Upon my kittens!” was her strangled cry. She backed away from the table in a rush, fell over her own legs, and ended up in a heap of herself on the floor!

  The reason for Alice’s discomfort was that, upon lifting the sheet, she had uncovered the dead and rearranged body of the catgirl, Whiskers Macduff. Alice had never seen anything dead before, and the sight of such a thing made her go all wobbly. “I must be a strong young girl!” she was now saying to herself as she got back to her feet. “I must grow myself up!” Alice forced herself to look at the body. The catgirl’s face was covered in a fine gingery fur from which a pair of startled, human eyes were staring, lifelessly. The head of the catgirl was melded to the juncture between her furry legs; her whiskers were sprouting from her thighs; her hind paws were growing out of her gingery chest. Her furry ears were planted upon each of her elbows (if cats have elbows, that is; Alice wasn’t sure). And clipped with a brass safety pin to the catgirl’s left ear was a small linen bag. Alice, being curious, searched inside the bag and found a piece from a wooden jigsaw. She quite rightly decided to keep the jigsaw piece, which illustrated the golden eye of a wildcat. She added this feline fragment to the collection in her pocket. She had now collected seven pieces of the puzzle. Alice was more than halfway home!

  But it was so cold in that freezing room that Alice’s tears were forming icicles, and she decided to find a way out. “I certainly can’t escape through the door I came in by,” she shivered to herself; “those horrible policedogmen might still be lingering there. But there seems to be no other doorway! Whatever shall I do now?” She was still looking all around when the only door opened and a very tired-looking, old bloodhoundman came lolloping in! He was dressed in a crisply clean and spotless white gown and his long face hung down with a hangdog expression, complete with briefcase eyes, a dripping wet nose and a long and lollingly pink tongue. This creature sniffed at the air with a gruff huff, twice times, and then lowly growled, “Who in the iciness are you?”

  “I’m icy Alice,” replied Alice; “and who are you?”

  “My name is Doctor Sniffer,” the bloodhound replied sniffingly. “I am the Chief Examiner of Corpses. What are you doing standing so close to my next job of work? And why is the body uncovered?”

  “I was only being curious,” answered Alice, quite truthfully.

  “Curiosity killed the cat,” growled Sniffer, stepping forwards to examine the catgirl’s corpse for tampering. “I trust you haven’t been too curious?”

  “Of course not,” replied Alice (not so truthfully). “I was only trying to work out the reason for the catgirl’s…that is to say…the reason why she had to die…”

  “That’s my job, young girl! And you’re hindering my examination!”

  Alice stepped back then and watched with trepidation as Doctor Sniffer snipped some locks of ginger fur from the body of Whiskers Macduff. These locks he then examined under a microscope. (Luckily he never bothered to examine the contents of the small linen bag.) “This is such a mysterious case,” Sniffer gruffed after a few moments. “We cannot find out exactly how the victims died, only that their bodies are in some way strangely jigsawed. The prime suspect is one Captain Ramshackle, but he seems to have escaped us. Confound it! But no matter: all I have to do is find some traces of badger fur on the body.” Sniffer was twiddling at the knurled knob of his microscope as he said these words.

  “I do not believe that Captain Ramshackle is the culprit,” stated Alice.

  Doctor Sniffer raised up his luggagey eyes from the microscope. “That is for me to decide, young girl! Am I not, after all, the Chief Examiner of Corpses?”

  “You most certainly are the Chiefest Examiner of Corpses,” replied Alice, before adding, “Could you therefore please tell me where the first victim of the Jigsaw Murderer might be?”

  “The spiderboy called Quentin Tarantula has long since passed through my paws, I’m afraid; his body has been buried.”

  “And what would have happened to any clues found on his body?”

  “That now belongs to the Civil Serpents: the Big Snakes are making their own examination of the clues.”

  “So the spiderboy’s jigsaw piece must be inside the Town Hall?”

  “Exactly so!” answered Doctor Sniffer. “And quite rightly; deep, down below the Town Hall.”

  “Oh dear,” sighed Alice to herself, “I shall have a hard time finding it then.”

  “And may I ask what you are doing”, Sniffer sniffed, “in my Room of Evidence?”

  “I’m looking for a way out,” replied Ali
ce, calmly.

  “There are only two ways out of this room: the first is through the front door.” Sniffer pointed with a limp paw towards the door that Alice had entered by.

  “And where is the second way out?” asked Alice (rather too eagerly).

  “Through this door here, of course,” Sniffer answered, tapping with his claws on an iron trapdoor set in the floor of the Room of Evidence. “This is where I shovel the corpses when I’ve finished my examination.” Sniffer lifted up the trapdoor to reveal a gaping hole in the floor. “This is the only other way out of the room,” he growled at Alice. “This orifice leads directly to the cemetery, but you have to be officially dead to descend that far.”

  “But I am officially dead!” squealed Alice, triumphantly (and rather desperate to make her escape from the Room of Evidence).

  “You look very much alive to me,” breathed Sniffer.

  “I was born in 1852! Which means that I’m one hundred and forty-six years old! Surely nobody can be that old, Doctor Sniffer?”

  “You should certainly be extremely dead by now, Alice; but can you prove your age to me? Have you your birth certificate, for instance?”

  “I’m afraid not,” Alice replied, “but I have this…” She pulled Whippoorwill’s lost feather from her pinafore pocket.

  “Well, let me investigate it,” growled Sniffer, taking the feather from Alice’s hand, and then placing it under his microscope. “But this is preposterous!” he then barked, lifting his baggy eye from the lens. “According to my forensic examination, this feather comes from a parrot that was alive in 1860! Either you’re an obsessive collector of Nineteenth Century Avarian Accessories, or else you should really have died a long, long time ago.”

  “Now will you believe me, Doctor Sniffer?”

  “But then you must be the very ghost of a girl!”

  Alice grabbed the feather from the microscope and then said, “I do feel like the ghost of a girl, actually. I feel like I’m neither here nor there, or anywhere at all, come to think of it!”