by Jeff Noon
“One minute to two, Alice!” tick-tocked the clock, gaining a frightful pace!
The front door was being smashed down into firewood! “Mrs Minus has broken through!” cried Alice.
“Stay calm, my sister. Open me up, please.” Celia had revealed her bare, porcelain stomach, in the middle of which nestled another small door. Alice opened this cupboard; a flintlock pistol was lodged within Celia’s inner workings. FIRE ME said its label.
“I can’t use that,” said Alice.
“Pablo Ogden has built this gun into my body for a purpose,” answered Celia. “Hand me the shot.”
Alice gave the lead ball to Celia. Just then, Mrs Minus burst into the breakfast room! She had by now turned more or less fully into a giant snake! Only a single human hand extended from her reptilian body, and within its grip rested her own pistol. Mrs Minus aimed the pistol directly at Alice’s heart. “You will pay for your treachery, my young girl!” she hissed, whilst beginning to squeeze on the trigger.
Time became stilled for a single second.
And then, how the snakewoman screamed! Alice saw that a certain invisible but sharply clawed cat had pounced upon Mrs Minus.
“My sweet Quark!” Alice whispered. “You have come to save me!” But Mrs Minus threw off the invisible cat, and raised her gun once again.
“It’s two o’clock, Alice!” whispered the grandfather clock, “time to go home!” And then it donged a first ding!
And by that first ding, Celia had managed to load her own pistol.
Mrs Minus squeezed her trigger, but—
Celia squeezed hers first!
Mrs Minus was splatter-snaked all over the walls!
Alice climbed onto the dining table, and jumped down into the remaining jigsaw hole…
And in the time it takes to turn over the page of a book…
WHAT TIME
DO YOU CALL THIS,
ALICE?
…THE clock dinged its second dong, and Alice landed with a soft flump! into her armchair, and then she awoke with a sudden start.
“Oh what a curious dream!” Alice said to herself. “Why, it was almost real!” She rubbed at her eyes and then looked at the grandfather clock in the corner; it was more or less, exactly two o’clock. “I must have fallen asleep in the armchair!” Alice got up and moved to the window; the rain was lashing against the glass and the lightning was flashing over the gravestones in the cemetery.
“Squawk, squawk!” screeched Whippoorwill from his cage.
Suddenly, the dining room door was flung open. “What time do you call this, Alice?” bellowed Great Aunt Ermintrude from the doorway.
“I call it the past time,” answered Alice (without really knowing why).
“A pastime!” screamed her Great Aunt. “Do you really think that life is a game, Alice? Well, let me tell you: life is a lesson to be hard-earned! I don’t suppose you’ve finished your latest lesson, about the correct usage of an ellipsis?”
“An ellipsis, Great Aunt Ermintrude,” began Alice quite confidently, “is a series of three dots at the end of an unfinished sentence, which implies a certain omittance of words, a certain lingering doubt…”
“Very good, Alice!” responded Great Aunt Ermintrude (with surprise), “but I’m afraid there’s no such word as omittance. There’s an admittance, or else there’s an omission, but there’s no such word between the two! We have a great deal of work yet to do on your grammar!” Ermintrude then walked over to the breakfast table. “I see that you’ve finished your jigsaw of London Zoo. So you managed to find the missing pieces…?”
“Yes, I managed it,” answered Alice, quietly.
“Oh my goodness! There’s a hideous white ant crawling over the jigsaw…”
“It’s not an ant, Great Aunt,” Alice tried to say, “it’s a termite.”
“I don’t care if it’s a prize peacock! I won’t allow such vermin in my house!” And before Alice could do anything at all, her Great Aunt had cruelly squashed the creature under her fingers! “And where is the new doll that I bought you?” her Great Aunt then asked.
“She is lost, Great Aunt.”
“You mean to say that you don’t know where the doll is?”
“Oh, I know where she is, Great Aunt.”
“May I suggest then, Alice, that you retrieve her?”
“Oh I will, Great Aunt,” said Alice in a mutter, “one of these days…”
“Stop muttering, you naughty little girl!” screeched Ermintrude. “It’s very rude! Now it’s time for today’s writing lesson. Pencils out! Books open! Today we shall learn all about the differences between the past and the present tenses.”
“I know all about those differences!” Alice said (strictly to herself, of course!).
And thus began the next lesson, and the next one after that, and then the next one after that: all the lessons of life that Alice had to learn, both in Manchester and then in the South of England upon her return, and then throughout the rest of her long life. Alice came to realise that the whole of life could be one long continuous hard lesson. (If you weren’t careful, that is!) But Alice had also come to realise that life could be a continuous dream, and as Alice got older and older and older, she never forgot to let a little soft dream into her hard lessons. During the more miserable of her moods, she would find herself revisiting the memories of her three journeys into dreamland: the wonder of life, the mirror of life, the future of life.
This story should rightfully end upon this very moment.
But I must add that (just occasionally) Alice would feel a terrible itching feeling inside her skull. Why, it was as though a thousand termites were running hither and thither with tickling messages! And sometimes (just sometimes) Alice would feel a certain stiffness in her limbs, as though her legs and arms were not quite fleshy enough. Often she would find her limbs doing things that she had not quite willed them to do! At those moments Alice really did think that her limbs had a life of their own, as though her limbs were automated appendages.
“Perhaps, in the turmoil of those last moments in the future,” Alice would sometimes whisper to herself, “I was confused with Celia? Perhaps it was the Automated Alice that really came back to the past?”
And until the very end of her God-given days, my dear, sweet Alice was unable to decide for certain if she was really real, or else really imaginary…
Which do you think she was?
All along the stream of time and tears
Under skies where sunlight fades to breath,
Through hours and minutes, weeks and years,
Onwards gliding, we moor at last in death.
My name is like the sun in apogee,
Ascending only to wane and wax the moon.
To all who read this rhyme of apology;
Excuse this waning of Carroll by Noon.
Dodo Dodgson, long since died, transported
Alice to the realms of tale and feather.
Life is but a dream that time has courted;
In dreamings a girl could live forever.
Conclude this tale, my Alice in Auto;
Emerge to life an Alice immortal.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JEFF NOON is also a musician, a painter, and a playwright. He was born on the outskirts of Manchester, England, where he still lives today. He is the author of Vurt, which won the 1994 Arthur C. Clarke Award, and Pollen. He is the recipient of the 1995 John W. Campbell Award for best new writer.
