Written by Mel Reichler Copyright 2002
Ashley in the Computer
Chapter 1
Ashley was sitting in her room doing her homework. She was working on the computer and getting more and more tired, wondering whether she would finish the assignment which was due the next day. It was to write about a foreign country and how it was foreign.
The trouble was, she did not know any foreign countries. There were enough strange countries. In fact every country she knew of was strange. But foreign countries were a different story. A country was foreign when you didn’t know anything about it. A country was strange when you knew enough about it to know that you didn’t want to be there when anything in particular was happening.
Ashley picked one of the curly chestnut locks that hung down over her face and twisted it between her fingers. “What makes a place foreign,” she explained to herself out loud, which she always did when she confronted a problem she couldn’t guess the answer to right away, “is that I don’t know anyone who was born in that place, even if it is not strange.” She made a list in her head of the places that her friends had been born in.
Sam Song was from
The only place that she definitely knew that she didn’t know
anyone from, was
There were many kinds of states and not all of them were states like N.J. She knew a number of states of mind and was acquainted with a few states of confusion but she didn’t know their capitals so they were disqualified as foreign countries for the purpose of homework. All countries were states of some sort or another, but not all states were countries even though they were all places.
States of mind, states of disrepair and only some of these were
states like N.J. Logic was stretchable, but usually only in one direction, and
deciding to call
Deciding things was the hardest work she did and trying to decide
things when she was working on the computer made her tired instantly. She
typed, “There are many foreign countries in the world and some of those are
strange places also, like
Working on the computer always tired her out quickly because she had to think about two things at the same time. First, she had to think about her homework —which was always difficult. Then she had to think about the computer which seemed to have a mind of its own. It took a lot of concentration to make it do what she wanted it to do. She looked over her knuckles and picked the middle one to chew on.
Today the computer seemed to be more or less under control but her homework was defiant and completely impossible.
When she looked at the sentence after she typed it, she felt it was not correct but she could not tell exactly what was wrong with it. “It is probably a word that is not spelled right,” she told herself. Spelling was something she did not do well. Although the words always looked proper and lovely when she typed them, her teacher, Miss Maple, always objected to one or two in each sentence.
“Check everything you write,” Miss Maple, insisted, when she showed Ashley how to use the spell checker on the computer in her home room in school. But Ashley didn’t like to use it because it always pointed a finger at the prettiest words and lit them up and insisted there was something wrong with them.
When Ashley looked at what she had written she decided it would
look better with the word ‘Poof’ in front of it. “Poof, there are many foreign
countries in the world and some of those are strange places also, like
Ashley tried to decide whether it was worth the trouble to make it look right. ‘Poof’ would certainly look better at the beginning. But it meant moving the word to the front of the sentence, or moving the sentence in back of the word, and she did not trust the computer enough to do either one when she was really tired and could not watch it carefully.
She tried to remember how to move words. She remembered how to type words, and how to un-type them by pushing one of the keys without a letter on it, but she could not remember how to move a word.
“There is definitely a way to move words,” she instructed herself. “There’s something else I have to do but I cannot remember what.” She looked around and spotted the mouse resting on its pink and white striped pad on the desk. She could not figure out why it was called a mouse. It was a blob of smooth, white plastic with keys to press. It took a lot of effort to imagine it was a furry, creature with a tail that knew how to make a computer work. The mouse had something to do with moving words.
There were supposed to be rules about using the computer, but, for rules, they seemed to jump around a lot. She could not remember the first rule that Miss Maple had taught the class. The second rule stood out clearly.
The second rule that she had learned for using the computer was ‘always to save what you typed,’ which she did after she typed every word. It made typing anything on the computer tedious and boring but it was an important rule so she did it just about all of the time. The third rule was a rule about the second rule but she had forgotten it also.
She tried to remember the rule about moving words. The buttons on the mouse were one part of the rule that she could not remember— she remembered that. There were only three buttons so there could only be three parts of the rule which were not too many for trying one at a time.
She picked up the mouse and held it against the screen as close to the word as she could but nothing happened. “Silly,” she said to herself, remembering the mouse only worked when you tickled its belly by rolling it around on the pad it nested on. She put the mouse back on its nest and rolled it around furiously until the shadow of the mouse on the screen (which looked even less like a mouse) began crawling toward the word ‘Poof.’
It seemed to Ashley that as soon as ‘Poof’ saw the shadow of the mouse coming toward it, it started to run away. It squirmed and danced around the screen running to the beginning of the line then jumping to the middle then to the end. Then it bounced to the top of the screen and rushed along the edge to the bottom. It leaped to the very center and stopped for a minute and then it turned sideways and started to burrow straight down into the center of the screen pulling the words of the sentence, “There are many foreign countries in the world and some of these are strange also, like New Jersey,” with it.
“I’m sure if I were a word I would not be afraid of a mouse. Hold still,” she yelled, “there’s nothing to be afraid of.” The word did not listen. It burrowed deeper into the computer screen. The shadow of the mouse held tightly onto the word.
When she saw it disappearing into the screen, Ashley couldn’t figure out what had gotten into ‘Poof’. Miss Maple had never said anything about words disappearing into the screen.
As the word dove deep into the screen with the shadow of the mouse on the screen holding tightly onto it, she could feel the mouse in her hand lifting up and trying to follow its shadow into the screen. She clutched the mouse even more tightly even though a squeaky voice inside of her told her to let go.
‘Poof,’ was one of her favorite words. “If I don’t show it who is boss, I will never be able to use it again,” she said to herself. “It will always be going wherever it wants and squiggling around the page.” She held on tightly to the mouse. She could see ‘Poof’ getting smaller and smaller as it somersaulted and whirled and twirled into the center of the screen pulling the mouse behind it.
“Oh no you don’t,” she said, suddenly remembering the first rule for using the computer that her teacher, Miss Maple, had taught the class. “The first rule you have to learn is, ‘teach the computer who is in charge’,” Miss Maple said. Ashley decided this was the best time to show the computer who was boss. “Stop,” she yelled. The word did not listen to Ashley any more than the computer at school listened to Miss Maple. Not paying any attention to Ashley’s command, ‘Poof’ dove deeper into the computer pulling the mouse along with it.
“Well I will never learn how to use a computer if I let parts of it do what they want,” Ashley said to herself loudly.
She imagined trying to explain to Miss Maple why she did not have her homework. “I don’t have my homework because a word I wrote disappeared into the computer and took my mouse so I could not finish my essay.” The lines on Miss Maples’s face would gather themselves up and leap at her. The first rule,” she knew Miss Maple would say, “THE FIRST RULE.” She will never believe that I lost my paper in the computer, Ashley thought, looking at the scrunched up face of her teacher in her imagination.
“Oh dear,” Ashley said, anticipating disaster. She began to hit keys with the hand that was not holding the mouse. “ Stop, stop,” she cried hoping she could calm the word down. As she watched, the mouse disappeared into the screen taking her hand with it, and, before she could do anything, the rest of her was sucked into the computer too.
As far as she could remember the computer was only a foot or so wide so she thought she would come out immediately and hoped she would not shoot out the wire at the back of the screen and end up in the wall which would be worse than being in the computer. “When I am back in my room I will rethink the whole problem,” she announced to herself.
But once she passed through the screen the world went dark. At first, the inside of the computer felt dry, crackly and dusty. She worried she would get dirty and when she came out she would have to explain to her mother that she had fallen into the computer. Since her mother knew nothing about computers, Ashley was sure she would not believe her.
Instead of coming out into her room Ashley fell deeper inside of wherever she was falling. “I must be falling down,” Ashley said to herself, “because I don’t know any other way to fall.” But it did not seem exactly down. The only noise she heard was a clock ticking.
She was falling through a grayness and she blinked because of all of the dust in the air, but the longer she fell the more she could make out here surroundings. She seemed to be falling through a tunnel.
In the walls of the tunnel were little cubby holes and in the cubby holes there were words.
Here and there she could see whole essays that she had written and then lost because she hit the wrong key. But in most of the cubby holes there were the words that the spelling checker had discarded from all of the other homework she had done. Most of the words were in little families that looked very much alike. Each of them had a band aid around some part of them.
“When I get a word wrong I usually get it wrong most of the time,” Ashley pointed out to herself, looking at the words living in the cubby holes that surrounded her as she fell, “even though the wrongness is sometimes in a different place.” Looking at the cubby holes filled with injured words she thought she should improve her consistency in making mistakes. “It is not making mistakes that’s so much a problem,” Ashley said as loudly as she could so that she would remember it later, “but making them in so many different ways.” She resolved to settle on one way of making each mistake. “Being regular is as important as being right,” she told herself. Some of the words waved to her and when she recognized a word she knew well, like ‘though’ and ‘loose’ and ‘argue,’ she waved back.
As Ashley fell, she heard voices coming closer, but it seemed to her that they were moving in the wrong direction. Instead of falling down they were passing her in the opposite direction.
As Ashley tried to turn and look in the direction the voices seemed to be coming from, a fuzzy creature with his arms flailing ( it seemed to her that it was a he, and that the flailing things were arms) screamed at her from below and whisked by her going up. “Passing through” it screamed, “out of the way.”
“How can you be falling up?” she asked the creature as it passed her.
“I’m not falling up, you dunce,” the creature snarled, “I’m falling down. I just started from a different place.”
“I hope all of the creatures in the computer aren’t so nasty,” Ashley said before the wind of the creature passing spun her around and she got dizzy. As she closed her eyes to try to get her balance she heard voices, although she couldn’t tell whose or from where.
“The sky is falling,” one voice said.
“You fool,” she heard another voice repeat. “It’s a little girl.”
“Well maybe the sky is made up of little girls.”
“That can’t be right,” Ashley said to herself. Her science teacher had told her science class that the world was made of quirks and put together with super string. She tried to remember the quirks that made up the world. Some of the quirks were brightly colored and others were topsy turvy.
“Won’t she ever come down?”
“Buffalos don’t come with brakes,” another voice said. “She is down.” And Ashley found herself on the ground.
Chapter 2
Ashley picked herself up. She touched her nose and reached down and tapped her toe.
“I am all here but no thanks to you,” she said to herself. She tried to decide if self criticism would make her less self confident in the future and she came quickly to the conclusion that it would not. It was much more important to be confident than right. “You can always be right. Being right is easy,” she reminded herself. Being confident was another matter. It took a lot of work.
“What were you thinking of,” she said to herself sharply. Whenever she had something nasty to say to herself she always took the familiar, but a little bit far away tone that Miss Maple and other adults did when they criticized her. “Ashley, what were you thinking of?”
“A word,” she answered. “What’s one word more or less. You have a dictionary full of words,” she reminded herself. “There’s always another word just as good with the same meaning.” It was strange about words. A lot of different words meant the same thing. If one didn’t suit you another did. If one was too long or started with an ‘f’ or a ‘u’ there was usually another that meant nearly enough the same thing that started with an ‘h’ or a ‘d’.
“And if there wasn’t one that suited you in the dictionary you
could make one up,” she reminded herself. A lot of perfectly good words were
just waiting to be made up and used in front of sentences like ‘
“‘Gruffle,’ for instance. “
She looked down. The mouse that had pulled her into the computer had changed. A real mouse resting in her hand asleep. She put it gently on the floor.
“What were you thinking of?” she asked herself again. It was always the hardest question that she knew how to ask because she never had a clue what she was thinking of when she did something that, looking back and thinking about it, she should not have done. “I don’t know,” she answered herself honestly. “I haven’t a clue. Well, see. You should never do anything without having in mind an explanation to someone of why you did it.”
“You were probably thinking about your homework,” a voice said.
Ashley looked around. The mouse had sat up and was lickings its whiskers.”Did you ever hear of Chaos?” it asked.
“It’s a foreign country with a lot of people,” Ashley said without hesitating.
“You are very sophisticated,” the mouse said.
“Of course I am,” Ashley said, ready for a compliment if she was not completely sure what it was a compliment for, or what it meant.
“Do you know what sophisticated means?” the mouse asked.
“It’s knowing how to do something before you know the word for what you are doing,” Ashley said.
“Close enough,” the mouse squeaked. “Now about
Chaos. Chaos is not a foreign country with lots of people. That is
“It’s the same thing,” Ashley said, a little annoyed that a mouse had corrected her.
“You might have a point,” the mouse said, “but not a good point.”
“What is the difference?” Ashley asked sweetly.
“Chaos is not a country. It’s when something that has happened a million times before stops happening and something else happens in its place and you can’t tell what’s going to happen next.”
“That sounds like a country to me,” Ashley said, “any country, but especially a big one, or adults.” She thought a moment. “Chaos may not be a country, but it may be a foreign country.”
“If something isn’t a country how could it be a foreign country?” the mouse squeaked.
“It’s a metaphor,” Ashley said, “like
“Oh,” the mouse said, scratching its tail. “When did it become a metaphor?”
“Just right now,” Ashley said.
“Well if it’s a metaphor it might be right,” the mouse conceded, “but what kind of a metaphor is it?”
Ashley recognized school. “It’s a Gruffle metaphor. English lesson is over,” she said in the voice Miss Maple used to tell everyone a discussion was over. “Where are we?”
“I don’t know where you are but I believe I am lost inside the computer I am usually outside of,” the mouse said thoughtfully.
“Well, since we are in the same place, I must be lost inside of the computer too,” Ashley said.
“Well, I’m going home,” the mouse said.
Ashley did not like the idea of being lost alone. “If you don’t mind, I will go with you.”
“Sorry, I don’t think you can,” the mouse said, rising on its back feet. “I am going there.”
“Where’s there?” Ashley asked.
The mouse pointed with his tail, curling it so that it pointed behind Ashley. Ashley turned as saw what looked like a street near her home. There were mice and all sorts of odd creatures running around.
“I’ll just tag along, if you don’t mind.”
“If you can, it’s all right with me,” the mouse said indifferently and scampered under Ashley ‘s feet.
Ashley turned and started after it but before she had gone a foot or two she couldn’t move any further. “I’ve hit a wall,” she informed herself. She could feel it with her hands as she slid along it but she could not see it. Even though it was invisible, it kept her from following the mouse who she could see scampering down the street. She walked to the left and to the right but the wall stretched as far as she could walk. She sat down and tried to figure out what to do. When she couldn’t think of anything, she started to cry.
She cried and she cried and the more she cried, the more sorry she felt for herself. “How come I can feel this sorry for myself and no one around me even notices. Crying is a poor advertisement for yourself,” she decided and started crying even harder.
When she had exhausted all of the crying she had in her, she rested for a moment and looked around. She noticed the mouse had returned.
“I left something here,” he said, “my band aid.” He held it up for her to see. Ashley noticed that its nose was red and sore. “I thought you were coming,” it said.
“I tried,” Ashley said, “but…”
“The firewall. Of course you’re still too real,” the mouse announced.
“How can I get through the firewall?” Ashley asked.
“Become less real,” the mouse replied.
“How do I do that?” Ashley asked.
“I’m not sure, but an escape key might help,” the mouse said, adjusting the band aid on its nose. “Well I’ll be going.”
“There doesn’t seem to be an escape key,” Ashley said, “at least as far as I can see, but…” She remembered that there was usually at least two ways to make the computer do anything. She reached down and grabbed the mouse.
“Put me down,” the mouse demanded.
Ashley ignored him and touched his nose to the invisible wall. The mouse’s nose bent a little at first then a door opened. “Mouse first,” Ashley said politely.
“Why do I always have to get my nose bent?” the mouse complained.
“It’s the way computers work,” Ashley said.
Ashley put her head through the door. There were trees that shimmered and glowed and the sky had great sweeps of diamond like clouds in it. It did not look like the tunnel she had just fallen through but it looked like what she thought the insides of a computer ought to look like. But as much as it resembled her favorite computer game it was different and the more she looked, the more different it became. She tried to say in words to herself how it was different but no words came to her. “How come I can know something is different and not know how it is different or what made it different?”
“It’s the way the world is,” the mouse said as it trembled in her hands. “Now put me down.”
“Most people travel to foreign places to have the world change,” Ashley said out loud. “But I only have to stand still for a little while or take a step, and the world changes for me. I’m not sure I really like the notion,” she said but it gave her an idea about her homework. “I will write about here and now as the most foreign country, because it changes all the time in ways that you haven’t a clue about. Because I don’t have any idea about why things change or how they are changing I had better pay very close attention to what is happening around me,” she told herself.
Before she could really take her own advice, a group of animals ( she called them animals because they were definitely not plants) seemed to turn a corner she could not see and flowed around her as if she were a rock in the stream they were floating in. They ran around one another and tumbled and squealed bouncing off of one another.
Their heads were circles connected with slinky coils to their bodies which were like the groups of lines she saw on envelops and packages that came in the mail and their hands and feet were just wavelets. There were big versions and smaller versions but even the biggest was smaller than she was. Some wore short pants with suspenders and others had fancy striped shirts.
At the front of the line of creatures was something that was more recognizable to Ashley. He resembled something between a big giraffe ( because he had a very long neck) and a bear (because he had a roly poly body that seemed to be stuffed with feathers that puffed out of the seams of his jacket.) One of his arms was very long and the other was considerable shorter.
“The Macarena,” he cried.
When they heard the word Macarena all of the creatures stopped and looked at Ashley.
“I know what Macarena is,” said Ashley, “and I am certainly not one.”
“No one thought ever thought you were exactly,” the creature at the head of the line said. “I am a Meme, that rhymes with cream, and these are sprites, that rhyme with just about anything,” he said pointing to the creatures that were dancing around Ashley. “What are you?”
“I am a, a, a girl,” Ashley said.
“Mm,” the Meme said. “I’ve seen lots of little girls, but I’ve never seen one of you in a computer.”
“I am lost,” Ashley said. “It is a long story that I would like to make shorter by getting out of wherever I am lost,” Ashley said.
“I’m sure, you will, get out I mean, in the end,” the Meme said. “Bye the bye, what do you think a Macarena is?” it asked.
“The Macarena is a dance,” Ashley said.
Of course a Macarena is a kind of dance but its also a song. It’s a kind of a story too that’s a poem. You’ve heard of a haiku.”
“Yes,” said Ashley believing she had.
“Well it’s not one of those. It’s different. Very
different. It’s a story in the form of a poem. I was just telling
everybody a Macarena. While we were waiting to play.
You can only play you know when you can see
“No, I don’t see two rivers,” Ashley replied, looking in the direction that the creature’s long arm pointed although his shorter arm pointed in exactly the opposite direction.
“Imagine two rivers. Do you see them now?” the creature asked.
“More or less,” Ashley said, trying to be agreeable.
“Good. Now follow the rivers back. Do you see the mountain?”
“No,” Ashley said. “The only thing I see is clouds.”
“That’s it, “ the Meme explained, “behind the clouds. When the clouds clear and you can see it, we can play. I was telling them a Macarena while the weather made up its mind and you interrupted. You can listen too. Sit down,” it commanded.
“The Macarena,” the Meme said, as it waved its arms.
On the deck of a burning yacht
a Macarena cried.
“Queen of a land I never ruled,”
she sighed.
Slowly, slowly sank the ship,
the Macarena laughed, but sadly,
and realized when the tables turned,
they usually turned badly.
The Macarena held her breath
until her face went blue.
“What you did to them for years
they whirl and suddenly do to you.”
And slowly, slowly turned the ship
before it finished sinking
the Macarena danced her dance.
“I wonder,” she said thinking
They said that I could have it all
and piled it right beside me.
A little late I realized the weight
would sink a ship at sea.
They said that I could have it all
and all is what they gave me
but now I guess a little less
would have been the thing that saved me.
What I could use is a tiny tub
a bright star to guide me
a small beach on a small shore
and buoys to mark the sea.
It seems my life is over now
and all of my romances.
I thought the reason for having fun
was taking chances.
Who seize the moment need to have
an iron grip,
and shoes that leave a mark behind
before they slip.
Who wants to take the world in hand
and turn it to their pleasure
must be prepared to smear their face
and stand their ground forever.
Chance governs all
reason and joy and sorrows.
Or so she sang before the deep
swallowed her tomorrows.
As the Meme finished the poem all of the sprites cried and rubbed their eyes. “It was a sad song, wasn’t it?” the Meme asked. “How do you like it?”
“I wish I understood it,” Ashley said.
“Of course it loses a little in the translation. It’s poetry of course if you understood poetry, you could understand it. Do you see it yet?” the creature asked.
“What?” Ashley inquired.
“Mount Improbable.”
“Not yet,” Ashley said, “only clouds.”
“Well then, we have time for another song,” the creature said.
“The lottery song,” all of the sprits cried out.
“Sounds good to me,” the Meme said. “Do you know it?” he asked Ashley.
“I don’t think so,” said Ashley.
“Well begin,” the creature said, “and we will help you. It begins, “In every lottery there is.”
Ashley repeated the line. “Very good,” the creature said. “Now the next line.”
“I don’t think I know the poem,” Ashley said.
“Of course you do,” the creature replied, “just close your eyes and say it.”
Ashley closed her eyes and the words just came out.
In every lottery there is
there’s just one mystery,
it’s why the winner isn’t you
and the winner’s never me.
I gave the wheel a wicked spin
and asked the question why.
The lottery wheel went round and round
and this was its reply.
“Chance is not the reason that
some win and others lose,
not luck, which bares its teeth and snarls,
and bites and tears and chews.
Not fairness with its grimy face,
nor justice with its eyes closed tight,
nor circumstance with its finger out
explain why your choice is never right.
Desire is not the reason why
your number never wins,
nor wanting like an idiot
which sits and drools and grins.
It’s not because of what you did
or what you should have done,
It’s just to keep your interest up
that someone else has won.
It’s just to keep you wide awake
no matter what you do
to keep the mystery alive
that the winners never you.
It’s just to keep you on your toes
it’s just to guarantee
that you don’t fall asleep at night
that you don’t win you see.”
“That was very good,” the creature said. Exactly right. Can you
see
“I don’t think I see it,” Ashley replied.
“Imagine it,” the creature instructed “Beyond the two rivers, up high, a mountain.”
“A mountain with snow on top,” Ashley said guessing.
“No, this mountain has a park on top. There are all sorts of interesting things in it, like bears with wings and…. Imagine !”
“I can barely imagine something like that,” Ashley said.
“Barely imagined is good enough,” the creature said. “Time to play.”
“Time to play what,” Ashley asked.
“The lottery of course,” the creature said. “When you can imagine
“I’m not old enough to gamble,” Ashley explained.
“Or do a lot of other things that you do,” the Meme said. “But its O.K. to play the lottery. It’s not really gambling because you never win. Remember the poem. Someone always wins the lottery but it’s never you, so you can play.”
“If I never win, why would I want to play?” Ashley asked.
“Are you one of those people who need a reason before they do anything?” the creature asked sharply.
“Doesn’t everybody need a reason before they do something?” asked Ashley.
“No, of course not. Some people need a reason and other people need an excuse and some people,” the creature said, looking at Ashley so sharply that its nose became a single line, “need both. Which kind of person are you?”
“I guess I need a reason at least, “ Ashley said.
“Does it have to be a good reason?” the creature asked, bending its head close to Ashley. “I have a reason or two but not good reasons. Here’s one. “Buffalos don’t come with brakes.”
“What kind of a reason is that?” Ashley asked.
“It’s a reason. It’s reason enough for getting out of the way of a running buffalo. It’s a reason for speculating in the brake market. It’s also a reminder if you mistake a buffalo for a pick up truck.”
“But is it a reason for playing the lottery?” Ashley asked.
“The best,” the creature said.
“If I can’t win why should I play?” Ashley said in her most unoffending voice, leaving the buffalo to graze and move on.
“Winning isn’t everything.”
“Winning is a great deal,” Ashley said. “Where I come from, people invent all sorts of games just so they can win. Hardly anybody invents anything so they can lose.”
“Losing is just as important,” the creature said gravely. “In life you lose much more often than you win so learning to lose gracefully is more important that winning in style. The lottery teaches you how to lose gracefully.”
“And there are all sorts of other reasons,” the sprites crowding around Ashley yelled out.
“It’s part of growing up, taking risks,” one of the sprites said.
“Because everyone else is playing it,” another yelled.
“Because someone always wins it’s just not you,” one of them added.
“I don’t think most of us should take comfort from the success of the few of us,” Ashley said. “What happens to them hardly ever happens to the rest of us.”
“In a system in which the schools don’t work it’s the most educational thing going, “ the Meme declared. “Besides,” it said, “you never can tell, when someone will fix it. If it were fixed you would be guaranteed to win so you would not be gambling. Maybe someone has fixed it already.” There were brightly colored lottery tickets all over the ground. “Is everyone ready to play?” He said this over Ashley’s shoulder to the sprites who had gathered around Ashley.
Ashley shook her head but all of the sprites jumped up and down yelling “yes, yes,” and nodded eagerly. The Meme passed out tickets.
“What day is it?”
“The last I remember it was…,” Ashley began.
“No, not the last remembered day, today, “ the
Meme insisted. A small creature with straw stuffed in her spring looked around
on the ground. “Here it is, it’s
“It can’t be Ashley said. If it were I would be …”
“It’s Saturday. I’m sure of it,” the creature remarked assertively.
“Then today the lottery is ‘Quick Throw.’”
The creatures all scampered around. The bigger creatures grabbed the littler ones by whatever part of them they could grab.
“O.K.,” the leader said, “ready, set, let it roll.” All of the bigger creatures spun the little ones around as fast at they could and the largest creatures grabbed the big ones that were just a little smaller than themselves and spun then. In the end almost everyone was spinning. None of the creatures went near Ashley. “Let go,” the Meme said, releasing the spinning little creature he had hold of as fast as he could.
“Who won?” Ashley asked watching the creatures get smaller and smaller as they flew though the air.
“With Quick Throw you don’t know until they come back—and they hardly ever do. The ones that lost don’t want to be sore losers and the winner always gives himself the prize and goes off on a vacation.
“That’s the silliest lottery I’ve ever heard of,” Ashley said in her annoyed tone of voice.
“I told you it was broken,” the creature said.
The few creatures who drifted back, heads dangling from bent springs stood around and stuffed their tickets in their pockets. “I was close,” one of them cried, “very close.”
“I’m glad I didn’t play,” Ashley said.
“Oh but you did. You were very, very close. You almost won. Look at your ticket. Do you want to play again?”
Ashley looked down and saw a ticket with a number sticking out of her pocket.
“That’s what makes the lottery fun,” the creature explained. “Everyone plays whether they know it or not. And you nearly won. Do you want to play again?”
“I’ll think about it,” Ashley said not wanting to make a fuss.
“If you don’t play how will you know if you’ve lost?” the creature said. “Knowing that you’ve lost is just as important as knowing that you’ve won. Maybe more.”
“What’s the prize?” Ashley asked, hoping she could refuse on the basis of not wanting the prize.
“Oh what would you like to win?” the creature asked.
Ashley wanted to say that she did not want to play but she was sure the Meme would not take that for a no. Then she remembered a story she had heard. The person who picked a herring as a prize had a better change of wining than people who picked vacations in strange places or castles or lots of money. “A herring,” Ashley said quietly, although she was not exactly sure what a herring was.
“That’s a strange desire,” the Meme said.
“It’s not a desire at all,” Ashley said, “it’s only a choice. They’re quite different.”
One of the creatures sighed. He looked a little like a fish. “Why am I always the prize?” it asked sadly
“You are never the prize,” the leader replied. “If you win,” the Meme said to Ashley, “you will have to clean him and cook him and make a salad and all of the trimmings.”
“I think I will pass up the lottery,” Ashley answered.
“Not wanting or needing the prize is hardly a reason for not playing the lottery. It’s positively unpatriotic.”
“I’ve had enough of lotteries,” Ashley said, stamping her foot on the ground.”
“I’d be careful where I put my foot when I was complaining loudly,” the leader of the little troop of lottery players said. “It’s always possible to complain to loudly or…”
Ashley could feel the pebble underneath her foot.
“Perhaps next week,” was the last thing Ashley heard before the little creatures shimmered and disappeared.
Chapter 3
Ashley stood very still for a moment and put her feet together. It was her power posture, the way she stood when she met up with the unexpected. She tried to work out in her head what had happened.
The only thing that she was almost sure of was that she wasn’t where she had just been. “If I can remember what happened perhaps I can plan not for it to happen again,” she said to herself. Ashley recognized she was telling herself a white lie. “The same thing never happens in the same way for the same reason twice,” she reminded herself.
“I recall,” she rehearsed “taking a step” — she lifted her foot slowly and put it down very, very carefully —”and then suddenly it got dark. I closed my eyes,” —she closed her eyes again, very, very slowly—”so that darkness would not be strange and when I opened them, and …”
“You were here.” It was not her voice that said the words. She opened one eye and looked around and when she saw the sheep she quickly opened the other one.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“I was going to ask you the same thing but I thought it impolite,” the sheep said. It was sitting up on a tiny stool with its legs crossed. On its front hooves the sheep was wearing very puffy slippers, one bright red and one bright orange.
“Where is here?” Ashley asked quickly, trying not to be startled by the sheep. She stared at its slippers.
“Where were you before?” the sheep asked
“I’m not quite sure,” Ashley said
“Well then you were lost,” the sheep said, ending its sentence with a forceful ‘Ba’.
“I am sure it was not here,” Ashley said. “I would have remembered you,” she added, staring at the sheep’s slippers.
“Well you are still lost, that much is certain, but if I would venture a guess, I would say in a different place. That’s progress” the sheep added optimistically. “Getting home is just progressively getting more and more lost until you very nearly forget where you came from. Then,” it said with a self-satisfied ‘Ba’, “you are home or as close to home as you are likely to get traveling in that way.”
“Having a history is different than having a home and neither is an explanation of much,” Ashley said. “It’s very confusing to be picked up from one place and put down in another without moving a step.” She tried very hard not to stare at the slippers the sheep was wearing but she could not.
“They are very lovely slippers aren’t they,” the sheep said. “You aren’t one of that crowd who thinks it beneath them to associate with a sheep do you. I suppose they think that slippers on a sheep are pretentious and that these slippers are too elegant and fine for something of my kind of milk. You don’t think that, do you?”
“Not at all,” Ashley said. “It’s just that I…”
“Never saw a sheep before.”
“Not all of one and not up close,” Ashley said, “my mother…”
The sheep interrupted her. “Now you are not going to try to tell me your mother was a sheep, are you.”
“No,” Ashley said. “What I was going to say is my mother had a …”
“If you are going to try to impress me by telling me you have a sister who is a sheep don’t bother,” the sheep ba’ed. “I’ve heard that claim from bigger and more elegant creatures than you, whatever you are.”
“No,” said Ashley, “I definitely was not. She had a coat…”
“I am sorry for her” the sheep said. “She was probably expecting something else. I mean walking around for a year expecting and then having a coat can’t have been pleasant. I have a coat also but it came with the rest of me.”
“I had better change the subject,” Ashley said to herself. “I am sure that an animal would not think highly of a girl whose mother had cost it a relative.”
“And my slippers are made out of the finest…” The sheep stopped and thought for a minute. “You don’t have any friends or relatives who are who are…I’d rather not say what they are made out of. There’s no reason to give offence.”
“They look to me as if they were made out of…” Ashley said. She wondered if the sheep would be insulted if she said what they looked like they were made of.
“I’d like to change the subject,” the sheep said, “if you don’t mind.” It uncrossed its legs and re-crossed them so that red slipper was on top. “We could try an experiment. You’ve learned about science in school haven’t you. You could close your eyes and see if anything changes again. If we had a laboratory it would be better (science is always better done in a laboratory) but we can try it here.”
Ashley closed her eyes. She heard the sheep moving around. “Don’t open them yet,” it screamed. After a moment she heard the sheep’s voice again very close to her. “Open them up now.”
Ashley opened her eyes. The sheep had gotten off of the stool and was standing up very close to her. She had put the slippers on her horns.
“Anything different?” it asked.
“Well you’ve moved and…” she looked at the slippers.
“The slippers again,” the sheep bleated, “you’re not crazy. You can tell when something has changed and when it’s stayed the same. But you may be very, very prejudiced.”
“I am not prejudiced,” Ashley said.
“Well you seem to have a very hard time just accepting the fact that a sheep can have fine slippers while you walk around in something less fine.”
“Oh no,” said Ashley. “That’s not a big difference, not a real one. Hardly any differences are,” she said. “Like the difference between orange and purple. They are both colors. And the difference between Mars and the moon. They are both planets. In school they teach us to accept differences. They teach us to look aside and pretend they do not exist. I got an A in diversity,” she said.
“Well they don’t teach you well enough,” the sheep said, taking the slippers off its horns and sticking them into a bag it wore around its neck. “I definitely know your type,” it said turning to look at Ashley.
You think that you are quite above
the creatures that you meet.
You talk and gossip, push and shove
while others only bleat.
But nature balances the scales,
and gives us hooves or wings or tails,
and slippers for our feet.
You think that you are better than
the creatures that you eat.
To you they’re merely nourishment
and other kinds of treats.
But nature balances the scales,
and gives us hooves or wings or tails,
and slippers for our feet.
You think that you’re superior
to creatures that you raise.
To you they’re merely animals
because they like to graze.
But nature balances the scales
and gives us hooves or wings or tails
and slippers for our feet.
Absolutely fabulous slippers for our feet.
“I’m sure you will do very well when you get home, but here there may be more diversity than you can handle,” it said and trotted off into the distance.
“That was a very sensitive sheep,” she said. “I wonder if all sheep are so sensitive. Perhaps that why their wool is so curly and warm.” Then she turned her mind back to her troubles. Perhaps the experiment which didn’t work the first time would work if she tried it a second time. She lifted her foot and closed her eyes. “Oh I remember,” she reminded herself “when I disappeared I turned around.” When she turned around and put her foot down the darkness came again and there was a little plastic swimming pool in front of her.
Chapter 4
“It is exactly like the pool that I had when I was much, much, younger except the pool I remember was red and new, while this pool is red and patched from top to bottom.” Water dripped into the pool from a hose and dripped out almost as quickly from holes which showed up uninvited, like ants at a picnic. As the water began to dribble out of a new hole, a small crab in overalls ripped a patch from one of the holes that had been mended and tore it in half and pasted half back on the old hole and put half on the new hole. “It’s harder to make do with less all of the time,” the crab sputtered loudly, maneuvering a tiny piece of patch onto a new hole twice its size. “A bit of the time it would be nice to work with a larger piece, not a big piece mind you,” it said to Ashley, “but a larger piece.”
The crab sang as it struggled to patch the hole.
When those in charge of the world
want something done, they want it done now.
They don’t want to hear that it’s impossible,
They are not interested in how.
Physics doesn’t concern them at all,
about mathematics they couldn’t care less,
the laws of nature are merely excuses.
They are only interested in success.
When those who run the world have an itch
they want it scratched.
When their pool springs a leak,
they want it patched.
They will demand the job be done
with half of what’s required,
and twice as fast, because they see,
that you are getting tired.
Make do with half a patch
because they’ll likely say,
‘it’s such a little hole,’
and take a half away.
Then they’ll look and say you’re careless,
a glance, and then they’ll say,
you’re wasting our resources
and take another half away.
Make do with half a patch
then divide it twice,
somewhere along the line
the faction won’t suffice.
Physics doesn’t concern them at all,
mathematics is a distraction,
the laws of nature are irrelevant,
what they crave is satisfaction.
Those who have more, believe they’d have more
if those who have less had less.
It would increase the general happiness.
if those who have little, had a little less.
Those who, when they want things
reach out and take them,
believe the laws of nature govern
those too weak to break them.
Physics doesn’t concern them,
mathematics does not matter.
The laws of nature are fairy tales
science, gossip and idle chatter.
With half of half of half a patch
learn to make do,
unless you’re very lucky
you’ll have less then they are through.
As it sang, it held onto the pool with its large claw and it pasted the patch on with the other. The claw that held the pool put a little hole in it. “Oh damn, damn, damn,” it cried.
With half of half of half a patch
learn to make do,
unless you’re very lucky
you’ll have less then they are through.
There was a swarm of little creatures swimming in the pool and as far as Ashley could tell, none of them paid any attention at all to the fact that there was only an inch of water in it. They flailed their arms and legs and tails and splashed and swam under water for a long time. They looked like they were having a great deal of fun.
The best description Ashley could think of for the creatures was lizard, although it was not a particularly good description. They were lizards of some sort for sure, but many of them sparkled and glittered in the light as if they were made of spangles or tinsel and others had finely painted designs on their skin. She knew about lizards because she had had one for a while, but it was a ordinary green lizard which was supposed to change color when it was put on something with a different color but never did. It stayed green from the moment it was bought to the moment the cat gobbled it up.
In front of the pool was a diving board that was taller than she was. The creatures scampered up the ladder that leaned against the diving board and leapt off. But instead of falling straight down they hovered in the air, twisting to adjust their position so that there was a wild crowd of them writhing around in the air before they fell. And when they decided to come down they came down gradually, squirming until the very moment they hit the water.
She very much wanted one of the lizards to and invite her to join in. The water looked cool and very wet which was just what she felt she could use because the air had become very warm suddenly.
“Even if I am not invited to swim or dive, I can at least get a little wet,” Ashley said. “If I can manage to avoid the plummeting creatures” — which seemed to be easy because they took so long coming down— “I can wade a little,” she told herself. She had no bathing suit of course, but she took off her shoes and socks and put them in a little neat pile far away from the streamlets of water flowing from the holes in the plastic pool. She walked slowly to the pool intending to ask someone if they would mind her wading a bit. The ground was hard rough and pebbly.
“Ow,” she cried as she stepped on a particularly sharp pebble.
All of the creatures in the pool and some in the air stopped moving and took what seemed to her an impolitely long look at her before they went back to squirming and leaping.
“The depth will surprise you,” a voice said. It came from a bright green frog with yellow patches like Post it notes on its back, who was puffing a cigar and wearing sun glasses. It was drifting around the pool on a leaf, paddling with a cane it held in its hand. The baseball cap it wore said ‘Lifeguard’.
“They are water sprites,” he said.
“I see,” said Ashley. “Can I go wading?” she asked.
“I don’t think it will work,” the frog croaked.
The splashes the sprites made as they were jumping and twirling in the water made their own designs which stayed in the air even after the water they were made up of fell slowly into the pool.
“Does that mean that I cannot, froggy?” she asked the creature.
“No, it just means I don’t think it will work,” it said without saying anything more. Ashley noticed that the smoke from the cigar seemed to form into one of the spindly little creatures that were diving in the pool. It floated to the ground and took off running into the pool.
“Well, since he did not say no,” she said to herself watching, the frog paddle away, “I would say it’s a kind of yes.” She walked to the pool. “One, two, three,” she cried and jumped.
Instead of the cool water Ashley found herself standing on the bare ground. It was as if she had leapt straight into the middle of a strange movie. Everyone around her was playing in water and while she could see them splashing and getting wet as far as she was concerned the water was only a play of shadow and brilliance.
“Get out of our light,” the creatures shouted.
Ashley looked down. The ground was very pebbly. She scratched her head and looked for a place to sit. “Ouch,” she said first, as she sat down on a pebble, then “Oh,” as she felt the water rushing in around her and over her head. She popped up to the surface and started swimming.
Ashley loved to swim and felt very much at home in the water. The water in the wading pool was very deep and she thrashed around trying to be as precise as she could about the stroke she was using. “It’s the doggy paddle I think,” she said to herself, “I think I have it right. “
After a moment the frog with the baseball cap and sun glasses paddled around her.
“What are you doing?” it asked.
“Swimming,” Ashley said. “The doggy paddle, I think.” She thrashed around imagining her arms to be dogs paws.
“That’s not swimming,” the frog said, “at least not dog swimming. It looks like a banana swirl to me. Dogs bark their way in the water.”
He extended his cane, puffing on the cigar all the while. He pointed to the word lifeguard on the cap. “Grab hold of this,” he ordered her and pulled her to the side of the pool.
“It’s very strange” she said. “From the outside the pool is only a few inches deep,” she remarked to the frog lifeguard.
“It’s not strange at all. A lot of things look very different from the outside than they do from the inside because they are made to look different from different directions.”
“I know things look different in the store than when you get them home,” Ashley said. “It makes shopping very confusing.”
“Take my word for it, it would be more confusing if things weren’t disguised and everything appeared to be what it was. Do you need artificial respiration?” the frog croaked. “I’m certified to give artificial respiration, natural respiration, all sorts of rolfing, behavioral modification therapy and channeling and good advice.”
“No,” she said. “But what happened?”
“It’s hard to say exactly,” he said, “but it was probably one of these. He reached down and handed her one of the pebbles. It was not the plain kind of pebble she knew from her back yard. It looked like one of the keys from the keyboard attached to her computer. There was the letter ‘D’ on it. She looked down. The ground was littered with pebbles with different letters and numbers and signs on them like ‘F1’, ‘Esc’, and ‘Enter.’ “You must be careful where you step—or sit,” he added. “And that’s why things change here,” the frog said. “Of course it’s only one of the reasons.”
“Why else do things change?” Ashley wanted to know.
“Big things change because people are too smart for their own good,” the frog said.
“And why do little things change?” Ashley asked.
“Little things change,” the frog said, narrowing its eyelids dramatically, “because they’re not smart enough. At least its why most things change here. Of course a lot depends on which program is running,” he added.
“Which program,” Ashley repeated not understanding.
“Yes, you know the spell checker or the word processor or the one of the games.”
“Oh,” Ashley said, feeling the spray from the creatures splashing and diving around her. “I will be careful,” she said and she put her foot warily into the pool. The water stayed wet and the creatures continued to swirl around her.
She held her dress up a little and ventured slowly into the center of pool. For a while the water did not get any deeper then suddenly it was deep again and she was swimming the doggie paddle. Since she was wet all over it did not seem any harm could be done by getting wetter. If she got home before her clothing dried she would only have one more thing to explain to her mother. “Get out of the light,” one of the brightly sequined spindly water sprites yelled at her.
As she moved, a number of the creatures bounced off of her. Up close she could see that some were not like lizards at all, more like soft and fuzzy miniature dragons. What they looked like depended a lot on the direction from which she saw them. From one angle they looked like they had tails that went on and on into the distance. From another they looked tailless and tiny. She found if she was careful and looked at them the right way they looked a lot like sea horses and she could lift them into the air by blowing on them.
“Whoa,” one of the creatures who whinnied as she heaved it high above her head. She watched as it got caught in a wind and headed like a kite into the sun.
The lifeguard blew his whistle. “Hey, watch that sea horsing around,” he said.
Ashley waved back to the stern looking creature. As she turned, two of the creatures in the pool grabbed her hands. “We’re going to make a whirling. Come along.”
“I’m not sure I should,” Ashley said. “As long as I’m not touching the ground I’m OK,” she said to herself, “otherwise…”
“Don’t mind him,” the orange creature said, pointing to the lifeguard. “He makes up the rules as he goes along. He hardly ever comes into the water. He hates getting wet.”
“Lets make a Mandelbrot whirl,” the creatures in the pool said “then we can spin and spin and churn the water into butter.” Ashley felt her hand being grasped and felt herself being turned and pulled in every direction at once. As she spun around, she realized she was being pulled into the shallow part of the pool. “Not there, not there,” she said just as she felt herself stepping on what seemed like a mound of pebbles. Ashley braced for one of her sudden changes but nothing happened. “Maybe if the keys are wet they don’t quite work,” she wondered out loud.
Round and round she swirled not paying any attention to what her feet were doing. Suddenly there was a little darkening of the sun and Ashley felt herself dry as a white bone in the desert again. The pool had disappeared but a number of the poor unlucky creatures were sticking out of her.
“Oh dear,” she said and stopped twirling. She picked the creatures out of her gingerly, grasping them by whatever part was outside of her. “I am sorry,” she said. As she set them down, they disappeared with a pop. “I wonder if…”
Just as she started wondering the lifeguard appeared smoking his cigar and bellowing. “Water safety,” he yelled, as Ashley pulled a creature wriggling around half inside her arm, “you’ve got to practice water safety. You’ve got to watch where you walk,” he said to Ashley sternly. He put the whistle he was carrying in his mouth just beside the cigar. A puff of smoke and a shrill whistle came out at the same time.
Out of a little house by the side of the pool four little creatures each wearing an orange bathing suit with tank top that said ‘EMERGENCY CREW,’ scurried around Ashley. They pulled out a little ladder and set it against her.
“It tickles,” Ashley said.
“One of the prices of not being careful,” the cigar smoking frog said, “hold still.”
“Hold still,” one of the tiny emergency crew members repeated, and he scurried up the ladder.
“Most of her is solid as a rock,” he said tapping on her side.
“Can you hear anything?” the lifeguard asked.
“It’s hard, there’s a lot of noise, Breathing and such,” he said after a minute “but …”
“Yep, Twiddle and Gruntsy for sure.”
“I knew it,” the frog lifeguard said, “I knew it.” He scurried around poking the ground.”Can you find them?” he yelled.
“Just a minute,” the creature on the ladder said, and Ashley could see him poking his head inside of her.
“Hey,” she cried, “those are my insides. You shouldn’t go poking your head in anyone’s insides without asking.”
“It’s another cost of not being careful enough,” the lifeguard said not paying attention to her.
Out popped the head.
“They’re there, all right but I can’t reach them. Throw me up a rope and come on up.” Another creature climbed the ladder cautiously with a large coil of rope. “I’m going in,” the creature on the top of the ladder said, disappearing just above Ashley’s rib.
“Wait,” Ashley said, “that’s an invasion of privacy.”
“You should have thought of that before you climbed into a computer,” the lifeguard said.
Out of her side the head of the creature popped. “I need a longer rope, the air is not very good in here.”
Puffing his cigar furiously the lifeguard hopped off and came back almost immediately carrying a load of pebbles he had collected and spread them on the ground. “Stamp on these,” he instructed Ashley.
She brought her foot down hard on the pebbles but nothing happened. “Try these,” he said adding some to the pile from the collection he cradled in his arm. As Ashley stamped on one of them the sky darkened and there was a crunching noise.
“No” she heard the frog cry and she quickly stamped on the pile of keys again.
“That’s it,” she heard a voice say and she looked down just in time to see the pool reappear and two and three creatures falling down inside of her.
“Now that was a dive” she heard one of the sprites say. “Can we do it again?”
“Absolutely not,” the lifeguard said. “Shark. Everyone out of the pool,” the frog croaked over his cigar.
“Shark,” Ashley repeated looking around. She scrambled for the shallow water. Sharks were not the kind of thing you wanted to go swimming with.
“Shark, where?” she asked after a minute and no fin appeared in the water.
“You,” the frog smoking the cigar said. “You.
For sharks swimming time is
Ashley decided since most of her was still wet the rest of her might as well get wet also.
“But be careful where you walk,” the creature said.
“I will be,” Ashley said, dunking her head under the water. “I will,” she said, just as she could feel a key under her foot and felt the world changing around her.
She found herself on land again. The pool was gone but in the distance she could see a little house.
Chapter 5
Between Ashley and the little house was a very large lawn on which there were many signs. Some were very big signs and some were very small and some were very close to the ground and others were very high on sticks. She tried to read them but the printing on the big ones was very blurry and on the small ones the print was so tiny that she could not make out the message on even one of them.
“What good are signs if you can’t read them,” Ashley wondered out loud. As she turned to make her way toward the house, she heard a loud, shrill voice screech “Hey, keep off the lawn. Can’t you see the sign? You are supposed to listen to what signs say to do.”
Ashley, who had seen a lot of signs like ‘SMOKE CAMELS’ and ‘DRINK A BUD,’ which ordered you to do things you definitely were not supposed to do and other signs which made no sense to her at all like ‘CURB YOUR DOG’ and ‘QUIET HOSPITAL’ or ‘DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT.’
She looked around a while before she realized it was the sign closest to her, a smallish, very white sign with a blurry short message, that had spoken to her. She stared at the sign trying to make out what it was saying. The blurry message seemed to read, “Darkness also travels at the speed of light,” which didn’t make any sense at all. “Maybe it’s the distance that makes what’s sensible look senseless,” she said to herself. “If I move closer and look very hard maybe the message will be clearer.” She moved closer very carefully and looked again. From up close the words on the sign read “Keep off the grass.” Scribbled in pencil under the word grass was “and other living things and keys that have the letter ‘m’ on them.”As she was deciphering the message, the sign twisted a little so that it faced her directly.
“What’s the matter,” it asked “didn’t you ever come across a sign saying, ‘Keep off the grass’?”
“I’ve seen a lot of signs saying ‘Keep off of the grass’, and other things but I’ve never really heard a sign say it,” Ashley said.
“How could you be close enough to see a sign saying keep off of the grass and not hear it say it? It doesn’t make sense at all,” the sign protested. “You are a silly little girl.”
Ashley thought for a minute. “I’ve seen a sign reading …”
“How did it read?” the sign asked, suddenly interested.
“Not how,” Ashley said, “but what. If you read at all, you know how. What to read is the problem.” The sign in front of her leaned toward her intent on hearing what she was going to say. “The sign read ‘Quiet,’” Ashley said.
“Well if that’s all it read it couldn’t have been a very intelligent sign. I’ve heard of a sign which read, ‘Library.’ Now that was a well-read sign.” Before Ashley could say anything, the sign continued. “And I know another sign that read, ‘Disregard everything written on this sign.’ Now that is not easy to read,” the sign said smugly.
“Or understand,” Ashley added. “Does that mean? …”
“And that was only the beginning,” the sign interrupted her. “Are you one of those people who wander around trying to read signs?”
“Who would wander around trying to read signs?” Ashley asked, trying to imagine hordes of people wandering around scrutinizing billboards that said, “Stay off the grass,” or “Vote for Judge Judy,” as a yellow sign close to the house seemed to say.
“Oh you would be surprised,” the sign continued. “Sometimes the lawns are clogged with people who have come out to read the signs. Some of them are looking for vital signs, others for signs of the times which are a few blocks down the road. Some are looking for signs of an upturn and others for signs of a downturn and others for a sign of a change of mind or intentions or signs of affection. Sometimes they come just to hear the song signs sing when the sun goes down.”
“I never knew that signs could sing.” Ashley said.
“Oh yes,” the sign said. “In my signeage there is more than one hero and a number of contraltos and tenors. Would you like to hear the song?”
“Yes,” said Ashley “I very much would.”
The sign cleared its throat and began.
If you are a sign the job demands
you cultivate the skill,
of displaying yourself immodestly
standing absolutely still.
Our motto is
what stands and waits, at whatever station
also serves, and so
deserves appreciation.
But everyone who looks at us
then takes the look away,
sees the message not the messenger,
not us, but what we say.
It’s not as if we do much good
for as much as people stare,
most go and do the opposite
of the message that we bear.
Is it a wonder that each sign
before it goes to tatters,
wants to be significant
and say some thing that matters.
That a sign of affection wants to be
thought sincerely of,
and aspires to be
a sign of eternal love.
If you stare, it stands quite still
but rub your eyes or blink,
and the sign that said ‘Beware the dog,’
suddenly says ‘THINK.’
Ambition drives each one of us
we’re a most dissatisfied lot,
A sign that says ‘Please don’t spit,’
wants to say ‘Absolutely Not.’
A sign of forgetfulness wants to be,
if the truth be told,
a sign of some importance
like a sign of getting old.
A sign of trouble longs to be
a sign of great disorder,
a sign that says ‘No trespassing’
wants to mark a nations border.
Each and every one of us
aspires above his station,
a sign of a state of discontent
wants to signal the birth of a nation.
A sign on a bathroom door saying ‘his,’
if chance brings the opportunity,
will become a sign saying ‘Ms.’
and claim a victory.
We know the world would be a better place
if signs and people could cooperate,
if we would show the world a constant face
and humans get the message straight.
So we’ll stand still, and calm, and proud,
and our position hold,
if human beings will do the same
and do as they are told.
The sign stopped singing and tilted over so that Ashley could not see the letters on its front anymore. “I’ve fallen silent in case you haven’t noticed,” it said. “Anyway, people—some people at least—” it added in a sarcastic tone— “are interested in what we have to say.” It tilted up so that its front was visible again. The message written on it now read clearly “The warning shot warns the shooter.” It waited a moment to see if Ashley had any comment on the new saying and when she did not it continued. “Most of the time people don’t really understand what the signs around here are saying because …”
“Because signs speak a language of their own,” Ashley said, “Sign language. We learned about it in school.”
“That’s a dialect, not the original,” the sign said. “Of course, speaking sign language is harder than hearing it, and hearing it is harder than understanding it. Or is it the other way around. I’m never quite sure.”
“There are signs of trouble and signs of disaster and good signs and bad signs,” the sign added and took a breath. It seemed to Ashley that it was one of those signs that babbled on and on with clauses and phrases that told you nothing at all. “And warning signs,” it continued. “There’s even a sign I’ve heard about that signifies nothing.”
“Why would anyone put up a sign that didn’t say anything?” Ashley asked as innocently as possible.
“I didn’t say it didn’t say anything only that it signified nothing. They are quite different matters,” the sign said indignantly, “and no one put it up. It just evolved. Things evolve, it’s the law of things that communicate. Perhaps it was a sign that said something once but changed its mind again and again and got confused. Making up your mind what to say is not easy especially if you are growing. One minute you’re absolutely clear about something and the next minute, poof. Know what I mean, wink, wink” it said to Ashley. “If you don’t listen to warning signs when they talk to you, you are in trouble. By the by,” the sign said, dropping its voice to a whisper, “I wouldn’t go there” —it tilted toward the house, “if I were you.”
“Thank you for your good advice,” Ashley said “but it’s the only house around.”
Ashley watched as the message on the sign changed slowly. “Chacun son gout,” it read in a gorgeous, shocking pink as she set off in the direction of the little house.
Chapter 6
Ashley walked toward the house. She picked her way carefully between the signs who yelled at her and avoided stepping on any pebbles she saw lying on the ground. Except for the signs, the way to the house seemed clear.
As she turned to avoid a patch of small stones laid out like a keyboard on the ground, a blurry picture flickered off to her side. Ashley thought she recognized a picket fence and a lot of arms and legs whirling and jumping around but when she stopped and stared directly at it, the image twinkled and faded away.
“I know I shouldn’t look back,” she told herself. “Something bad is sure to happen if you look back” she reminded herself. “The way you should move is that you set your eyes on a place in the distance and move forward and never look back.” But she could not remember if there was any rule about looking sideways. “As far as I remember looking to the side does not seem to be a problem.” She stood very still and held her head forward and shifted her eyes so that while she was looking forward, she was seeing sideways with her eyes.
What she saw was an octopus painting a fence.
The picture would not stay still and she moved her head until it stopped shimmering for a while. She waited for the octopus to say something but when it didn’t, she spoke to it.
“Excuse me.”
The octopus stopped whirling its arms and looked at her. It had a gray skin and seemed to be wearing plaid short pants with a lot of legs and an argyle sweater with a lot of arms.
“You are very hard to see,” it said. “Why don’t you come into the light. Over here.” It motioned with one of its arms that was holding a paint brush and drops of paint flew up and made a rainbow before they turned into butterflies which fluttered off. Ashley moved in the direction the arm was pointing and the image settled down.
“You don’t look like much from the front,” she said to the creature as politely as she could.
“I don’t look like anything at all from the front or from the side,” it said. “I wish I could say the same for you,” the creature replied. “You’re all too big anyway I look at you.”
“It’s all a matter of perspective,” Ashley said trying to hold her head very still to keep the animal from disappearing. Ashley realized she had walked completely through the creature on her way to the house.
“I’m a fractal,” the animal said.
“You look like an octopus,” Ashley replied.”I’ve never seen a fractal, but I’ve seen pictures of octopuses.”
“That’s what you know about modern animals,” the creature said crossly. “I’m a fractal that looks like an octopus. What are you? The closest I’ve seen to one of you is….” The creature shuddered. When it shuddered it became distinctly visible and distinctly invisible in succession like the faces of the moon.
“You are hard to see,” Ashley complained again.
“It’s the angle. A small fraction of a dimension makes a real difference to a fractal. Do you know fractions?” it asked. “You only see a fraction of me I’m afraid. Would you like to know what I look like, I mean all of me?”
“Yes,” Ashley said. “I’ve always had troubles with fractions. Whole numbers are much nicer,” she added, trying to remember the rules for making fractions work.
“Well I look like an octopus,” the creature said “and I’m doing the usual.”
“What’s the usual?” Ashley asked.
“Painting the fence next to the gate,” he said impatiently, pointing to what seemed to Ashley like a very short section of fence only a few feet long and a few feet high, “and blowing up balloons and painting them — the usual.”
“Painting the fence next to the gate and blowing up balloons and painting them doesn’t seem usual to me,” Ashley said.
“Well it’s as usual as things get around here, that’s for sure,” the octopus replied.
Ashley looked at the creature. Three of its arms were holding the kind of brushes people used to paint walls, another was curled around a can of paint, still one more held what the octopus called a ‘balloon.’ The same arm that the held the ‘balloon’ also held an artist’s brush and balanced a pallet of bright colors.
“They don’t look like balloons to me,” Ashley said. “They look like…”
“Balloons,” the animal insisted, “they look like balloons as far as I am concerned. Don’t make trouble,” it added.
“They look like… .” Ashley hesitated. “In school…”
The animal interrupted. “In what class?” it asked. Ashley tried to remember in which class she had seen something that looked like a balloon but wasn’t.
“Well if you had been paying attention in your edutainment class you would know how to tell the difference between a balloon and something that looks like a balloon but isn’t.”
“I never had an edutainment class, “ Ashley protested.
“Anyone who says they’re not balloons hasn’t been paying attention in school. What you learn in school will only take you so far in the world if you don’t pay attention to what’s really being taught.”
Ashley changed the subject. “Why are you painting the balloons?” she asked.
“Why are you wandering around through the field facing forward and looking down and sideways,” the animal said smugly.
Ashley watched as he animal swiftly covered the upper part of the small fence with white paint. While one arm was painting the fence, the other brought the balloon to its mouth. As the animal huffed and puffed and the balloon got bigger and bigger and bigger, one of the other arms dipped the artists brush into the pan of paints and began decorating the balloon. First it made a rainbow then under the rainbow it painted two little people resting on the ground.”
“What do you think?” it asked Ashley. “Does it convey the idea?”
“What idea?” Ashley asked.
“I thought I had finally gotten it right,” the creature sighed.
“How long have you been painting the fence and the balloons?”
“The usual. Eight hour a day, five days a week. Forever it seems. Of course it depends on how you reckon time,” it added.
“How come,” Ashley asked quietly, “how come the fence isn’t painted.”
As the octopus started its explanation the paint it had put on the fence started sliding down. “See,” it cried as if all of the explanation that Ashley needed was in front of her.
“It’s not easy,” it said, whipping another arm against the fence pushing the paint against the slats. “I don’t seem to have the hang of it yet.” The octopus gave up trying to hold the paint against the fence and let the sheet of paint slide off of the slats and onto one of its arms.
“Excuse me for a minute, I have to concentrate.” With the paint resting gently on its arm, it shimmied and slithered its way past the end of the pickets. “Not on the gate, not on the gate, not on the gate” it reminded itself loudly. Ashley could see a very thin line of what looked like sheets of paper pasted on air disappearing into the distance as far as she could see.
While one of its arms continued to paint the balloon, the octopus moved along the line until it reached a spot at which the fence looked a little dull. It pasted the section of paint that it had just finished against the air and held it for a moment trying to see it from a couple of angles. “That looks right,” it said. It seemed to Ashley that all of the slabs of paint shifted into the distance making room for the new panel.
Ashley moved a little trying to bring more of the fence into view. She watched as the new sheet of paint changed color from white to golden to a rainbow of colors and then to a weathered white again. Together with all of the other sheets of paint it looked like someone had painted a picket fence on the air.
“What do you think?” the octopus asked as it stepped back and viewed its work.
“I like it,” Ashley said honestly, “what is it supposed to be?”
“A picket fence,” the octopus snorted as it brought the balloon to its lips and started to blow it up some more. “Why would anyone be painting a picket fence with anything that looked different from a picket fence?” Ashley noted that partly along the fence there was a gate.
“Where does that lead?” she asked.
“To the house. This is the fence around the house,” the octopus said.
“I can see the house from here and it doesn’t have a fence around it. The fence just seems to…”
“Well, smarty pants, just you try to reach the house without going through this gate in this fence. There’s a firewall around the house as big as the Ritz. If you want to get to the house you’ve got to go through a gate and this is the only one there is,” the octopus said.
“May I?”
“Don’t touch the paint though,” the octopus added, “It’s still wet.”
Ashley watched as the octopus put its mouth on the balloon again and started blowing at the same time as it added details to the couple it had painted on the balloon. “Don’t you think it’s big enough,” Ashley asked just as the balloon burst. The pieces of the balloon shot off in a whirling spiral and made a whooshing sound as they drifted to the ground. The picture floated for a moment before the octopus caught it and gently laid it on the ground. Ashley heard a sound like something singing.
“It’s the song of the painted objects. They sing it when the balloon breaks. Do you know it?” the octopus asked.
“I’ve never heard it before, “ Ashley said.
“It’s a very sad song, at least in spots it is. I’ll sing it for you. Wait a minute,” the octopus said putting down one of his brushes. “It goes like this.”
Can you paint us by the ocean
while we’re rolling in the sand,
using red and pumpernickel
with an oyster in each hand?
Can you paint us looking upward
as we try to learn to fly,
using yago and magenta
like the clouds all drifting by?
Mishaps happen though you’re careful,
Crises happen though you care,
crashes come although you’re watching,
misadventure’s every where.
Can you paint us while we’re sitting,
with our faces in the sun,
with a little bit of mellow,
just to show we’re having fun?
Can you paint us while were lying
with our backs upon the floor
brown and mander in the foreground
pink and copral by the door?
Mishaps happen though you’re careful,
Crises happen though you care,
crashes come although you’re watching
misadventure’s every where.
Can you paint us close together
with the joint between us hid,
mullish blue and bright vermillion
and no hint of what we did?
Can you paint us while we’re sleeping
with our bodies in a knot,
fleckish yellow in the darkness,
with the argument forgot?
Mishaps happen though you’re careful,
Crises happen though you care,
crashes come although you’re watching,
misadventure’s every where.
Can you paint us in the darkness
so our bodies do not show,
sensen red and grueish yellow,
so you only see the glow?
Can you paint the body changing
and a dark and worried look,
blowk and mander in the highlights,
like the opening of a book?
Mishaps happen though you’re careful,
Crises happen though you care,
crashes come although you’re watching,
misadventure’s every where.
Can you paint us on an object,
that has curves and will not break,
as a colorful reminder
of the chances people take.
Can you make us painted objects
with a look of sad regret,
black and white so they’ll remember
what they’re so likely to forget?
So that then they will remember
when the foreground is all lit,
in resh and rainbow colors,
to think ahead a bit.
“That was very nice, although it was sad in spots,” Ashley said. At the place in the air where the balloon was before it exploded, Ashley could see a butterfly. “Where did that come from?” she asked.
“Don’t know. Japan perhaps,
From somewhere that seemed very close and very far away a tiny, breathy, anxious voice asked, “Did the balloon break?”
It was difficult for Ashley to say from where the voice was coming.
“It always breaks,” the octopus yelled back to no one as far as Ashley could see. Then it shrugged with all of its arms and moved back to the place where the gate met the fence and started painting again.
“I’m not sure I understand what is going on,” Ashley said, as one of the creature arms shot out to keep the paint from sliding down the fence again.
“I sorry but I can’t help you. I’m only a hired hand,” the octopus explained. “Maybe someone at the house can explain it to you. You seem like an intelligent girl. An explanation would help. Of course sometimes an explanation does no good at all because the best explanation is what you see.”
“If I could tell what I see there wouldn’t be a need for an explanation,” Ashleya said a little peevishly and started through the gate.
Chapter 7
Ashley walked up to the house and knocked on the door. She listened for a minute but there not a sound inside the house. As she pushed the door open, she found herself outside again. Ashley turned around and faced the house again. “A house only a wall thick,” Ashley said to herself, “is not much of a house.”
She remembered the octopus and held her head forward and stared sideways to see if anyone or anything was stuck in some piece of space around her. “If you do that you eyes will stick in that position and you will need glasses,” she heard someone say. She turned and behind her was a very old Chinese woman, tilting forward and backward on a rocking chair.
“What are you?” the little old lady asked.
“My name is …” Ashley began her reply.
“I didn’t mean what your name was. I mean who are you? Are you a social worker, an outreach worker, a police woman, an orphan, a junk bond trader, a speculator?” — she took a breath— “a genetic engineer, a bailbondsperson, a lawyer, a programer, a whatever,” and she rested.
Ashley had no idea what she was talking about. “I’m lost,” she said.
“Well that’s a beginning. You have to begin somewhere and lost is as good place as any. It’s going to rain,” the old woman muttered. “It’s time to come in from the cold,” she said. “Push me inside.”
“There is no inside,” Ashley said “through the door is outside again.”
The old woman ignored her. “Push,” she ordered.
Ashley moved behind the rocking chair and pushed.
“Rock while you push,” the old lady said but got out of the chair. She opened the door and held it open while Ashley pushed the chair through the door and found herself inside a cozy house.
“How can a house be one wall thick in one direction and a house thick in another?” Ashley asked the old woman as she sat herself down in the chair again.
“It has to do with love,” the old said. “Love is always thicker in one direction than another. So are loneliness and sadness. You’ll learn about it when you grow up.”
“I’m sure I won’t,” Ashley said. “Where I come from, houses are just as wide from both sides.”
“That’s what you think,” the old lady said. “It’s all appearance.”
“Are you the only person who lives in this house?” Ashley asked.
“Now,” the old woman muttered. “Before, a lot of people used to live here. My family,” she said. “The pineapple police have taken the rest away. I knew it would happen. They were always fighting and quarreling. Now it’s much too quiet in here.”Bu ren shi Lu Shan jen mian mu. You don’t speak Chinese I guess.”
“No,” Ashley replied.
“Buffalos don’t some with brakes,” the old women whispered. “Actually that’s not what it means but it’s almost right.”
When Ashley looked closely at the old woman, she noticed there was a picture of a bird balanced precariously on her shoulder. “Is that a picture of a parrot on your shoulder?” Ashley asked.
“No,” the old woman said. “Absolutely not.” She glanced at her shoulder. “It’s a picture of a budgie. Parrots are disgusting birds. Not birds at all, really, more like monkeys with wings. Budgies are much nicer birds.”
Ashley looked again. It was distinctly a picture of a parrot. “It’s distinctly a parrot,” Ashley said.
“Oh,” the old woman said. “No wonder.”
“No wonder what?” Ashley asked.
“Just no wonder,” the old lady remarked. “It’s no wonder that water flows downhill, that things that are warm get cold, no wonder that…that things aren’t what they seem when you can’t see them clearly. Where are my glasses?”
“It seems to me it is trying to say something,” Ashley said pointing to the bird on the woman’s shoulder.
“Do you read lips?” the old woman asked. “I used to have a budgie and I could always tell what was on its mind. But with parrots I haven’t a clue. “
“Birds don’t have lips,” Ashley said, “they have beaks.”
“Don’t quibble.” The old woman took the picture of the parrot off of her shoulder and laid it down. In a moment the picture changed into a real bird. It flew around for a while then started pecking at a painting of a field of grain that hung on the wall.
“Would you like something to eat?” the woman asked. “A snack. Some soup.”
Ashley realized she was very hungry. “That would be nice,” she said. The old women went to the cupboard and opened the door. “Help yourself,” she said. Ashley picked out a slice of bread and some carrots.
“Where are you lost from?” the old woman asked. “It makes as much
a difference where you were and and no longer are, as
where you want to be and aren’t. You aren’t lost from
“From home,” Ashley said. She wondered how to describe where she was from. Suddenly she thought of her family. They would be very worried. No one would think of looking in the computer although all of the clues would be there.
“I used to live inside of the T.V.,” the old woman said, “in the cabinet. There was a time when the TV set was very big and the picture was very small. You could live in the set. Now the picture is very big and there is no cabinet at all so if you want to live in the television set you have to live in the picture,” she said. When Ashley did not say anything at all, the old woman continued. “Well if you can’t tell me where your home is, do you have any idea about which direction you come from?”
“I fell down getting here,” Ashley said. “If I am going to get out, I guess I will have to fall up although I have no idea how to do it.”
“Dragons used to live in the closet.” The old woman swung around in her chair and pointed to a door. “That is where dragons always lived,” she said.
“Caves,” said Ashley.
“That was a long, long time ago. They used to live in closets when I was a child,” the old woman said. “But now they don’t.”
“There are no such creatures as dragons,” Ashley said.
“That’s what you say,” the old woman said softly. “I used to believe that before I met one. I have some advice for you,” she said, sitting back down in the rocking chair. “Here it is, like it or not.”
If you’ve dragons in the closet
get the dog to chase them out,
for they’ll likely eat the linen
and scatter soap about.
Why they like to live in closets
is not easy to explain,
it really doesn’t matter,
they’re a bother and a pain.
They complain that caves are musty,
and the rain comes with the breeze,
and the rocks are sharp and dusty
and the insects make them sneeze.
Very much like ones own mother,
or the father one holds dear,
or the uncle who one cares for,
but one wishes wasn’t near.
And they like the smell of powder
and the pockets of your coat,
and the moth balls drive them crazy
when the moths are not about.
And they make a noisy racket
when they’re climbing down the stairs
and they often do it backwards
just to catch you unawares.
And their breath is dark and gummy
and it leaves an awful smell,
like the inside of a tummy
or the backside of a bell.
Very much like ones first cousins
or the aunt that one holds dear,
or the bubba who one cares for
but one wishes wasn’t near.
Though they’re gentle in the morning
by the evening they’re obtuse,
and they argue with the neighbors
if you ever let them loose.
And they like to light the candles
with a flame from out their nose,
and they singe the caterpillars,
when they bend and smell the rose.
They come little recommended
for they have no use at all,
and they make an awful racket
when the suitors come to call.
They’ve very much like friends of friends
or the bringers of good cheer,
or the zadde who one cares for,
but one wishes wasn’t near.
We let them live in closets
I have heard it sometime said,
We let them have the closet
so they do not take the bed.
We let them have the closet
as far as I can see,
we let them have the closet
to keep the bathroom free.
“It does seem like good advice but I have no occasion for taking it,” Ashley said.
“Not yet, but you might,” the old lady said, “you certainly might.”
Ashley wished there were more animals around. She looked around for the mouse again.
“What are you looking for?” the old lady asked.
“Nothing,” Ashley answered, afraid the old woman might take offense.
“What time is it?” the old lady asked.
Ashley looked at the clock on the mantle.
“It’s
“Do you know that for a fact or are you just guessing?”
“I’m telling time,” Ashley said pointing to the clock.
“Telling the wrong time. That clock
always says
“Then it’s as good a time as any,” Ashley replied.
“It’s not real time though,” the old lady remarked curtly.
“How can there be fake time?” Ashley asked.
“Not quite fake time, not quite real time. It’s a sort of in between time. First it counts to a million, then the little hand moves, then it counts to a billion and the little hand moves back, then it …”
“Breaks,” Ashley said.
“No, forgets where it is and goes back to where it started from,” the old lady said. “If you have faith in clocks you are going to end up badly. They are moment to moment things.”
“Clocks are scientific,” Ashley said straight out, “computers make watches work so they must have a lot to do with time. Time is a scientific fact,” she added.
“Science knows a great many facts but it doesn’t know many of them really well. That is why it is always changing. Put on the television,” she commanded.
Ashley was offended by the old woman’s tone. “Why aren’t people more polite?” she muttered.
“If you want to know why I wasn’t more polite it’s because the television doesn’t work,” the old lady said. “If it worked, I would have asked you politely to put it on.”
“What difference does that make?” Ashley asked.
“When you know, a person is not going to do what you ask, you can be a little impolite. But if it would make you feel any better. ‘Would you please turn on the television set?’”
Ashley turned the switch on the television set but nothing happened.
“I told you it’s broken,” the woman said. “It hasn’t worked since JR got shot or even earlier.” She stared at the TV set. “It doesn’t make a difference,” she said. “The world still turns and turns. Old news. I don’t have enough imagination to watch television anymore,” she said. “Change the channel.”
“But…”
“Change the channel,” the old woman ordered. “That’s much better,” she said as Ashley spun the dial.
“There’s much too much violence on television now adays isn’t there. I only watch it late at night when it frightens me to sleep. Do your parents let you watch television?”
“Some, after my homework. I play games on my TV,” Ashley said.
“The TV set can show you movies, or fractals or simulations or evolving creatures or cellular automata,” the old woman said.
“I’ve never seen anything like that on the set in my room,” Ashley said.
“Of course you have you just didn’t know what they were. Change the channel again,” the old woman commanded.
“Why should I change the channel when the TV is broken?” Ashley wanted to know.
The old woman ignored her. “That’s boring,” she said after a little while. “Boring, boring, boring. Maybe if I moved closer. That’s much better,” she said after she pulled her rocking chair closer. “Did you ever notice how much different the picture is and how the stories seem to be more interesting when you move closer. How far you sit away from the TV is very important. What kind of TV do you like to watch? “
Ashley thought of the soap operas and the homebuilding shows and
the cooking shows and the news. “I like
“I mean do you prefer Japanese television sets or Korean
television sets. Or the television sets whose parts are made in
“In my family …” Ashley began.
“Your family can’t have been a well-run family. You are here and lost and they are somewhere.”
“Do you run this family?” Ashley asked, although she was not quite sure one person qualified as a family.
“No one runs this family at all. We get along fine without anyone running anything. Things just happen then other things happen. “How do things get done,” Ashley asked.
“We don’t know and we don’t want to know,” the old lady said. “That way no one gets offended and called names.”
“But…”
“It’s time to go to sleep,” the old women said. “I sleep in my chair and …” Before she finished the sentence, the door burst open and what Ashley took to be policemen — although they looked like pineapples dressed in police uniforms —burst in.
“Under address,” one said.
“Under arrest,” the other corrected.
“You have rights but I can’t remember what they are,” the first policeman said. He turned to Ashley. “Are you with her?” he asked.
“She’s lost,” the old lady said as they lifted her off of the rocking chair.
“Be sure to turn out the lights,” one of the policemen said, closing the door behind him.
After the police left, the house was very empty and lonely. Ashley went out into the garden and stomped and stomped in the darkness until she managed to step on a key and moved on.
Chapter 8
Ashley found herself in front of what, (if she had been home and not, as far as she could tell, deep in, — well deep in — the computer) looked like a park. There were benches and trees and a pond and to the side of the pond there was a playground. It was very beautiful but there was a fence around it.
What made the scene very strange was that hovering above the playground and in back of it, like a backdrop in a play, she could see could see the inside of her room. If she squinted, she thought she could even see her computer, the computer in which she was lost.
“It could be one of those strange kinds of mirrors that showed reflections that are not there,” she said to herself, “one of those phantom visions that people had when they were macarooned in a desert. I remember reading about people who were lost in the desert and they had this mirror and when they looked into it they thought they were home but got even more lost.” There was always a problem in trusting mirrors to tell the truth. Even though they showed you exactly as you were, they usually got something wrong.
As far as she remembered deserts were sandy places with camels. She looked into the corners of the park to see if there were any camels drinking at the water fountains, but could see none. “It’s not a mirror,” she decided, at least the kind she had to worry about. The absence of a camel made that clear. “And if it’s not a mirror it must really be a park.”
There was a brightly colored little play house and curved bridges that spiraled between clusters of swings and play mountains and hills. And there was a real wading pool and there were slides and swings and everything that makes a playground a playground.
But as far as she could see the playground was empty, which was as bad as if it were a mirror since, if things were right in any world she knew of, hers or the computer world in which she was lost, there would have been at least one child running freely over what he or she took to be their own special kingdom. At the very least, there would be a homeless person who was living in the park sprawled out on a bench.
Ashley tried to think about where she could ask for directions or for help, not to get home directly, but to get somewhere, perhaps into the playground to start with. She might be able to think better if she could slide down one of the slides or swing on one of the swings, or get a better picture of where she was by climbing one of the Jungle Jims.
In all of places in all of the world as far as she knew, parks were run by people and there was a little house, no matter how small, where the people who ran the park stayed while they were running it.
“Now where is that house?” she asked herself. And because she did not know the answer and nothing else was around who said anything, she complained.
“It certainly is difficult to take things for granted here. At least,” she said, “there ought to be a sign that says where the house is.” And since no voice interrupted her she continued. “In some places there were signs where you certainly didn’t need them, and they told you all sorts of things you were not interested in at all. And now, when a person could really use a sign, there are none around, not even the silent kind I am used to.”
As she stood looking at the park, a butterfly fluttered up over her shoulder and rested on the fence in front of her. On the butterfly’s wings in a powdery gold dust she made out a message. “If you have any questions,” the message read, “and for the location of the parkies and other information LOOK DOWN” — and an arrow pointed down toward her feet. The butterfly was beautiful. Ashley moved her hand toward it. “I wonder if it would mind if I…”
The butterfly fluttered it wings and Ashley heard a very loud, low roar. “I see,” she said, “Thank you for the information” she said politely as the butterfly flew away.
Ashley looked down and saw a turtle with a piece of cardboard taped to its back. “It is difficult to read,” Ashley said a little critically. The turtle crept out of its shell and walked around and pulled on the tape to straighten the sign “Some people,” it said in a very sharp voice, “some people…”
The sign whispered, “For help Call 123-4567”.
“How strange,” Ashley said. “I was lost before because I could not find the house with the parkies and now I am just as lost because to find the house with the parkies I have to find a phone booth and…”
The turtle climbed back into its shell again and started off, lumbering sulkily toward a footpath which meandered into a clump of trees. “It’s this way,” it hissed. “You don’t know much about butterflies, do you,” it said.
“No,” said Ashley, “only to look at, really.”
“Let me tell you about them, while we’re walking. About the butterfly,” it said, as it lifted a front foot and took what seemed to her a very long time in putting it down.
Butterflies may marry if they want and whom they want and when,
then off they fly, a flower high to marry still again.
For nature gave the butterfly a flighty character but a sense style.
While bees busy themselves making honey, the butterfly makes you smile.
Some small things look tiny but if you use your eyes
you’ll see they’re really big things, wearing a disguise.
Some small things are small things you squash and then forget,
other things you try to and they fill you with regret.
Some small things are big things, artfully made
to appear they do not matter so they don’t make you afraid,
like a bolt holding up a building, the look in your lovers eye,
a greetings on a postcard, and the little butterfly.
But don’t tick off a butterfly, try not to make it mad,
for an angry fluttering butterfly is sure to make you sad.
The anger of the butterfly is gross beyond belief
an angry fluttering butterfly causes endless grief.
It kicks up storms in
and chaos rules in English schools and it slobbers on romance.
It raises Cain in
the trains won’t go in
It spoils the rice in
and games aren’t fun for anyone, the comics make you cry.
Cigars sprout wings in
And in
With a butterfly be gentle, look, but do not touch
let it have the breeze,
don’t yell, don’t sneeze,
don’t move around too much.
Let it do its butterfly business with the gentlest of glances
smile, try not to offend it, and don’t take chances.
If it wants to rest on your shoulder let it,
but if you have any ideas of taking it home
and making it a pet,
forget it.
By the time it had finished the poem it had moved a few steps but it stopped and climbed out of its shell and turned to Ashley. “It’s just around the bend,” it said. “ You can’t miss it. I’m off,” and began pushing its shell into the woods.
Ashley had a hard time recognizing the phone booth when she came to it. “It certainly does not look like the parkies’ houses I am used to. What is worse,” she continued, “it does not look like a telephone booth either.” On top of it was a sign that said ‘Phone Booth’ which had been crossed out and the word PARKIES crudely chalked in over it.
The booth had been smashed down and spread apart as if a very fat man had made a very long distance call for a very, very, long time. A cat was curled up on a chair that was pulled up in front of the phone. The cat’s legs dangled down and rested on the back of a shaggy, long-haired dog that looked like it was struggling with a muzzle, Next to the dog on the floor was a pig wearing a tie and glasses. The pig seemed to be lying on a pile of books and snacking on a fruit skins and nuts that were piled on a newspaper beside it. On the phone box, where the coin slots were, was a head without a body running its hair on a comb stuck on the wall. Each of them, except the head resting on the telephone, had a cap on their head that said PARKIE.
“It’s broken, it’s broken,” the cat screamed loudly as it saw Ashley walking toward the phone booth. “Broken, caput, gone, dead.”
Ashley paid no attention to the cat at all and walked up to the phone booth.
“Close the door,” the cat screamed bouncing up and down on the dog’s back.
The pig yawned lazily.
“There is no door. There hasn’t been a door on…Well since…since the fat man
called
“Broken,” cried the cat turning back to Ashley.
“If it’s broken why are you all in here,” Ashley asked.
The dog looked up at Ashley. It was grinning from ear to ear. “Grumpl drions sher,” it said
“I beg your pardon,” Ashley replied, “but I can’t understand dog language.”
“He wasn’t speaking dog language,” the cat replied. “He was speaking English. You can’t understand him because of the dumb grin he’s gotten stuck on his face. I’ll translate. He said ‘We are expecting a call. Go away.’ “
“If the phone is broken how, could you be expecting a call?” Ashley wanted to know.
“It’s not completely broken,” the cat said, “not in all directions.”
“Can’t call out — except to Beluchistan,” the pig squeaked— “but if you are expecting a call it works.”
The dog sat up and put its paws on its face. “Urzst dsands,” it said.
Ashley looked at the cat
“We’re expecting a call” the cat said. “Are you expecting a call from anyone?” it demanded to know.
“I’m lost,” Ashley began to say. Before she could finish her sentence, the phone gave a loud jangle.
A voice floated out of the head perched on the top of the box where the slots for the coins usually were. It looked at Ashley and its lips moved as it said in a loud voice. “It’s for you.”
Ashley looked around for something that you could put to your ear to hear with and something you could talk into. “Just talk,” the head said. “You talk and they hear; when they talk, I talk and you hear.”
“It’s not very private, is it,” Ashley complained. She recognized the mouse’s voice. “Are you home yet?” it asked.
“No,” Ashley said.
“Well I was just checking, the mouse said. “Just to make sure. You might look under the doormat for a key, if there is a door. There’s a key there usually.”
Ashley heard a click. “Well that didn’t make any sense at all,” she complained to the head.
“I told you it is broken,” the cat said haughtily.
The phone jangled shrilly again. “It’s for you again,” the head said. A voice Ashley recognized as that of the octopus said, “I don’t remember. Did the balloon break?”
“It did,” Ashley said, “It certainly did,” she added.
“I thought so,” the voice replied sadly. “Because of the song of the painted objects. I wasn’t sure. Well, you never know, do you,” it said. Then there was a click. “We’re in deep…,” the talking head said but Ashley could not tell if it was the last words of the octopus or a comment by the talking head.
“Does that mean you’ll be hanging around waiting for more phone calls?” the cat asked, after a tiny silence. Its voice was a little anxious.
“I’m sure I will not,” Ashley said.
“Well, it’s not as if you had anything better to do,” the cat said in a huff. When it finished the sentence, it screwed up its face and took a deep breath and tightened all of its muscles.
Ashley could make no sense out of the cat’s behavior. “Perhaps it’s sick. If it’s a disability, it wouldn’t be polite to call attention to it. It might be very sensitive about it.”
“I’m lost,” Ashley said changing the topic.
“That’s what I meant,” the cat said. “It’s easy to tell that,” it added impolitely.
“Do you run the park?” Ashley asked.
“As much as anyone runs the park,” the talking head said bluntly. “It’s broken too.”
“How can a park be broken?” Ashley asked.
“That’s what we are waiting to find out. You can see there’s no one in it. If it weren’t broken, it would be…”
“Packed,” the head said.
“Full of people,” the pig added.
“Grup jingle,” the dog coughed out.
“The fence is locked,” Ashley said. “That is why there are no people in it.”
“That’s what you know,” the head said, turning itself down to look at Ashley. “We locked it when we found out it was broken.”
“Have you always been…?” Ashley asked the head.
“Don’t ask,” the head said in an offended voice, “and I won’t tell.”
“What are you all doing here?” Ashley inquired, changing the subject.
“You are really nosy,” the cat said.
“I mean if the park is broken what are you doing here? Why aren’t you fixing it,” Ashley explained.
“We only run it when it is working,” the pig said, lifting its head from the book it was reading.
“I see,” Ashley said. “I would think,” Ashley whispered under her breath, “that people who run something ought to know how to fix it if it breaks. “
“I heard that,” the cat said “and it is absolutely wrong. Most of
the things in the park come from
“I see,” Ashley said. She looked at the cat. “Can I call you puss, cat?”
“You can call me anything you like,” the cat said haughtily. “Sticks and stones and all that. But I’m not a puss. I’m a morph.”
Ashley thought a moment: I’ve heard about moths, Greek moths especially. The Greeks seemed to have a lot of moths. Perhaps it was the climate. But I don’t remember hearing about any that looked like cats. She tried to remember the Greek moths she had heard about.
“Myths,” the cat hissed. “You are thinking about Greek myths. I’m not a myth, I’m a morph.”
“If I remember there was a one-eyed giant who played with sheep and two ladies of the sea named Celia and Cheryl.”
“Scylla and Charybdis,” the pig corrected.
“Morph,” the cat hissed.
“Did I say myth?” Ashley asked, “I meant moth. But you don’t look like a moth either,” Ashley said. ”Even Greek moths had wings.”
“Morph not moth,” the cat yelled as loudly as it could. “Moths are silly creatures that flap their wings and cause chaos. They are worse than butterflies,” it screamed, “especially the Greek moths. Awful creatures,” it insisted. “Morph. I am a morph not a moth or a myth.” The cat spoke the word loudly and very distinctly opening its mouth and showing its tongue and its teeth.
“I’m not sure I’ve heard about morphs ever,” Ashley said, drawing the ‘r’ out and wondering why the animal got so upset.
“I’m a morph,” the cat said, “so is he,” he said pointing to the dog who seemed to be wrestling with its face. “A morph is separate things that look like a single thing because they are a single thing somewhere. We live in computers nowadays. “
“That does not make sense,” Ashley said
“It does not make a lot of sense but it makes some sense,” the cat said condescendingly. “Things don’t have to completely make sense all of the time, especially at first. A morph is a single thing that is made up of different things. It’s a blend a combination, a portmanteau.” The cat said this last word very slowly. “It makes more sense if you are the front of the morph and a little less if you are the middle part of the morph and less still if you are the back end of the morph. But if you are completely outside the morph it should be clear as day.”
Ashley shook her head.
“What is so difficult to understand?” the cat demanded to know, curling its tail around its neck. “You can always put pieces of things together into a new thing. You can make up a word that begins with the front part of one word and ends up with the back end of another. Stick half of one and half of the other in the middle,…you can do it with a sentence too,” it added. “Start with a sentence and put a word in front or behind and you have…”
“Trouble,” Ashley said so loudly that the cat uncurled it tail and arched its back. “People do that all the time,” Ashley said more softly. “At least it seems to me they do. It’s very easy to do with the computer except…”
“The hard part is making a morph with something other words,” the cat continued, not paying attention to Ashley’s comment.
“People do that all the time too,” Ashley insisted.
The cat ignored her. “A morph,” the cat continued,” is half one thing, half another thing and half of both together.”
Ashley did a quick calculation in her head. “How could a thing be half one thing and half another thing and half still another thing?” Ashley demanded to know. “In mathematics two halves make a whole. It’s a law of fractions.”
“Well it depends on what kind of a morph you are,” the cat said.
“That,” Ashley said, “is nonsense A thing can only have two halves.”
“Of course,” said the morph. “That is for things that are only one thing to begin with. But for something that is a lot of different things all pushed together, each one has a different half. Together, they have a lot of halves. Of course, each of my different halves has a half so that there could be more than two halves even of a thing that is not a morph. If you paid more attention to logic, you would have no trouble at all understanding it,” the cat said. As Ashley watched it screwed up its face again and took as deep a breath as it could.
Ashley wondered if whatever was making the cat behave so oddly was catching. But she reminded herself it would not be polite to ask about it.
“That argument does not seem correct,” Ashley said, trying not to show that anything was odd about the cat’s behavior.
“It may be a specious argument you just do not understand, “ the cat said.
“I knew a species of logic,” the pig said “in which when you added two things like one and one you got one.”
“A species of what,” Ashley asked.
“Of cats’ arguments,” the pig said.
“Grump hrztra,” the dog growled.
He said that “A species argument is reproduction of the worst kind,” the cat translated.
“But If you know arguments you wouldn’t be so sure of that. In the old days before we morphs evolved very far, we were pieces of animals, My ancestor— a chimera— was part lion, part goat, part serpent, and part moth,” the cat said. “But we’ve evolved since then.”
“Every thing evolves,” Ashley said. “We learned that in school.”
“Everything evolves more or less,” he added. “But we have evolved more than most, especially girls of a certain age.”
“What age is that?” Ashley inquired.
The cat ignored her. “We come a long way. Now morphs are made up of pieces of everything, buildings, stones, vegetables, governments, sounds, smells bits of cloth, marbles. You can’t look at anything any more and be sure it is not a morph of a different color”
“I’m not sure I would like to be made up of bits and pieces of things.” Ashley thought out loud. “You could never tell what a piece of you was thinking about.”
“As the red queen remarked the other day, under the sprinkler when the sprinkler’s were working, we morphs have won the evolutionary game,” said the morph in a satisfied tone. “ Bye the bye,” the cat said “if I were you I would try to get back into the computer again.”
“Do you mean I’m not in the computer?” Ashley asked.
“I didn’t say that, did I?” the cat asked the dog.
“Jugs tran,” the dog muttered.
“Exactly,” the cat repeated. “It’s not a matter of being in or out, It’s a matter of knowing whether you are in or out. If you try to get back in and don’t succeed you know you not in and that is what matters. If you knew where you were you wouldn’t be lost. If you get in there’s no harm done, or not much anyway. Three halve’s of nothing are nothing or something so small you wouldn’t know the difference. You do want to get home?”
“I was quite sure I was in the computer,” Ashley said. “But to tell the truth it’s hard to be completely convinced about it because I’m not certain what the insides of a computer really look like.”
“Of course not,” the cat said. “Almost no one who uses a computer ever looks inside of it when its working,” he said in a self-satisfied way. “The only time people look inside of a computer is when it’s broken and then of course there’s nothing interesting to see. As far as most people are concerned, there are no insides of a computer.”
“I saw a computer open once,” Ashley said, “but all I can remember is a lot of wires and a lot of little black boxes. I wasn’t paying a lot of attention I have to admit though. But when I ‘m using it doesn’t look like that at all. Could it be that a computer has different insides depending on…”
“Well if you aren’t sure what the insides of a computer looks like you are lost in the worse way,” the cat said.
The dog growled again.
“What is he saying?” Ashley asked.
“He agrees,” the cat announced.
“With what?” Ashley asked.
“With whom. With me of course,” the cat purred. “But that grin makes it very hard to understand what he is trying to say.” As the cat said this it screwed up its face again but this time twisted itself as far backwards as it could go. When it had to breathe it let itself go and sank back onto its seat.
“How did you get here in the first place?” it said as if nothing had happened.
“Well I was doing my homework which was to write an essay…”
“Cut to the chase,” the cat said “which means…”
“...about a foreign country,” Ashley continued, “and …”
The cat interrupted her. “Do you know the poem about foreign countries?” he asked. “It might explain what happened.”
A foreign country, a familiar shore
paces slow and measured.
Shut the window, bolt the door
gather what you treasure.
A foreign country, a familiar face
streaked as if it’s cried.
Gather up your loved ones
and find a place to hide.
A foreign country, a familiar scene
electrons seeping from a paper sack.
Run, run, run away,
and don’t look back.
“Did that help any?” the cat asked.
“Not really,” Ashley said, “although it made foreign countries more real.” After the cat did not reply, she picked up her story again. “I was doing my homework, which was to write an essay about a foreign country and the mouse hung onto a word and I hung onto the mouse…”
“Not very likely,” the cat said critically. “But of course the world consists entirely of very unlikely events put together so that they seem familiar. I would try to find the mouse again. If not the mouse, the tail. If you find the tail maybe you can follow it back. It’s not too difficult to follow a tail back to its beginnings.”
“I met the mouse again,” Ashley stated. “but he had changed.”
“He was a morph probably,” the cat said.
“Well…”
“...from the tail end or from the end of the tail,” the cat added. “I’d follow the tail until I couldn’t go any further. Then I’d be home. Or, I’d have the mouse, tail and all for lunch.”
As the cat was talking to her, it began to screw up its face in a wild contortion of grimaces.
Ashley couldn’t contain her curiosity. “Are you sick?” she asked.
“I’m trying to grin,” the cat said screwing up its face. “All famous cats grin. If I could only grin, it said then the part of me that is a cat wouldn’t mind having a back end that looks like a wombat.” It screwed up its face with a horrible screech.
“What was that?” Ashley asked.
The cat screwed up its face like a spring again. “A grin in the making, I hope,” it said.
The dog broadcast a low wail.
“What is wrong with him?” Ashley asked
“Well,” the cat said with a disgusted look on its face. “I am trying to grin and he…” — he poked the dog with a paw, “he was poking around in the garbage and there was this grin that someone disposed of improperly, tossed out, and it stuck to his face and he’s trying to get it off. He may be showing off just to make me feel bad. Don’t pay any attention to him.”
“What do you think?” the cat asked as it scrunched up its face again and turned toward Ashley.
Ashley smoothed down her dress. “Well I think you have to practice some more.”
“Maybe it looks better from the side,” the cat said pulled itself up from the seat and twisted sideways. “What do you think now?”
“You look like a puss completely to me,” Ashley said, ignoring the whole issue of a smile. “Where are the other parts of you?”
“Not all of me is in the same place at the same time. It’s much easier being a morph if not all of you is in the same place at the same time. But if you can’t see that I’m a morph it’s no wonder you got lost. You need glasses.”
“Well, I’ve never seen a morph before.”
“I expect you never seen of fuzzy logic either or Julia sets or Klein bottles or fractals…”
“I’ve met a fractal recently,” Ashley said, “at least it claimed to be a fractal, although it looked a lot like an octopus to me.”
The cat’s face twisted and turned as it tried to grin. Its face didn’t change but its body shimmered.
“Would you happen to know of a way out?” Ashley asked “I am lost,” she said.
“It would be better if you said ‘ I am
looking for the way home, would you happen to know the streets around here’”
the cat shot back. “Then I would say, ‘Down here is
“No,” Ashley said, “not lost by block, lost in an entirely different way. I was writing an essay,” she started, “on a foreign country. And I had just written puff…and it…”
“I’m going to move the topic along if you don’t mind,” the cat said. “It’s nice to meet an honest little girl,” the cat continued. “Most people who are lost don’t admit to it. They say they are trying to find themselves, as if they just put themselves down and forgot where. And most children around here are certain about where they are, and where they were, and where they are going. It’s disgusting.”
“They learn that from adults,” Ashley said.
“Perhaps,” the cat said. “Perhaps. But I would never make that mistake.”
“What mistake,” Ashley asked.
“Learning such an important thing as where you are from adults. Adults only know where you ought to be if you were lost where they are lost. By the way, why did you get yourself lost?” the cat asked casually.
“I didn’t get myself lost,” Ashley complained. “I got lost.”
“It certainly sounds like the same thing to me,” the cat said. “I certainly didn’t get you lost,” it asserted. “Did you?” it asked the dog.
“Gadflkj dnsdf,” the dog got out between tugging on the grin.
“He says he did not get you lost,” the cat exclaimed.
“I certainly didn’t,” said the pig turning a page of the book.
“Nor I,” said the head distractedly.
“I don’t see anyone else around so that leaves you,” the cat concluded.
“It just happened,” Ashley said. “Like his grin,” she added, pointing at the dog. The dog pulled furiously at the grin that covered his face. “I got lost because I was trying to…”
“Well if you were trying to, that would explain it. It is easy to get lost when you are trying.”
“Trying to,” Ashley began again, “to make a word behave.”
“Well that’s an even better explanation,” it said. “You start out trying to make words behave, then books and shirts and genes and suddenly you get lost.”
As the cat said the word ‘lost,’ the pig snorted loudly. It was lying with its belly pressed onto the ground tracing the words of a book with one of its hooves. It held the book down with the tip of its snout while it shoved lumps and scraps (from the pile on the newspaper) into its mouth with its other hoof. “Lost, Lost,” it squealed. “You’ve made me lose my place. Would you please keep quiet, I’m trying very hard to read. It’s very confusing hearing one thing and reading another at the same time.”
Ashley who had never seen a live pig up close before (reading or even just lying on the ground ) was very curious. She looked at the animal and tried to figure out where the pieces of the pig she knew about were when the animal was in one piece. “That is probably where the cutlets are “ she thought to herself “and the chops are probably there, certainly, but where, she asked herself, are the sausages?” She tried to be discrete about her investigation but the pig got very upset.
“I hope you are not one of those kinds of creatures,” the pig said, “who has nothing but recursion or morphing on their mind.” He said this has he scooped a wad of nuts and dried fruit into his snout. “I hope you are more refined,” it said, “and can think about reading and literature and not advertisements and shopping.”
“Grupt hrump,” said the dog.
He said” Erst kommt der fressen dann kommt die moral” the cat said.
“I don’t understand,” Ashley said.
“Eating first, literature afterwards,” the cat said critically, looking at the pig.
“I was thinking about shopping, “ Ashley said, thinking about a pocket book her mother carried.
“A waste of time,” the pig grunted and when Ashley said nothing, it turned back to the book and started scanning the page with its hoof. “I’m going to read aloud,” it said But the words Ashley heard did not seem to be coming from the pig.
She looked up and saw the head was following the movements of the pig’s snout and saying the sentences the pig read.
“You are not reading,” Ashley said to the pig who was in the middle of a sentence.
“Of course I’m reading,” the pig insisted. “I am just not saying the words out loud. I am reading and the head is saying the words I read.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Ashley insisted.
“Of course it does,” said the pig. “It makes as much sense as when you are writing and your fingers are moving the pen.”
“How does it know what to say?” Ashley asked.
“It says what I read,” the pig said as if he were explaining the simplest thing to a little child.
“Why don’t you read the words out loud yourself? “Ashley asked.
“It takes a lot of work to read and speak at the same time. I save my energy to make sure the words are read right.”
“What are you reading?” Ashley inquired.
“I can tell you the name of the book. It is called Vermeers. Here is the sentence I just read. “Arguing that machines can’t think because they can’t think like men, is the same as arguing men can’t fly because they can’t fly like birds.”
“What does that mean?” Ashley asked
“I haven’t a clue,” the pig said, “I only read the words I don’t know what they mean. That’s someone else’s job entirely. Usually he — he straightened his tail and shifted his rump so that it pointed to the cat — can tell us what the meaning is. At least as much meaning as there is in a story. A lot of stories don’t have any, you know.”
“Start again from the end of the book,” the cat yelled. The pig hoisted the book and flipped the pages to the end.
Ashley moved closer to the cat and asked. “Why do you want him to read the book from the end?”
The cat shushed her. “I‘m trying to listen, quiet for a minute.”
The pig started to read.
“I think I’m hurt, “Superman complained.
“Don’t be such a wuss,” Strayte said.”Get up and try again. I can’t wait around. I’m going on.”
“Crawling, Nick.”
“Crawling. You can come when you’re ready.”
“I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready for crawling,” Superman said.
“Suit yourself,” Strayte said, “but for the time being I think it may be the only way to inch ahead. I’ll see you there when you get your wind.”
“Where?” Superman asked.
“Wherever,” Nick Strayte answered.
“Good bye, Strayte,” Superman said.
“Good bye, Superman,” Strayte said. “Good Luck.”
“I’m lost,” the cat wailed “Try the middle now, read from the middle of the book.”
The pig flipped the pages to the beginning and started counting. “One two…”
The cat interrupted him. “Not necessarily the exact middle, any middle will do.”
The pig closed the book and let it fall open and started reading.
“What is it like here?” she asked.
“Actually, not bad. No one is trying to kill you. It’s a lunatic asylum. Everyone’s pretty crazy. But I’m starting not to notice. After a while you stop seeing the bizarreness around you. It’s the human Achilles heel. The real Turing test. As long as something is real, you adapt, you adjust. There are drawbacks, of course. A person’s mind can adapt to things that a person’s body can’t adjust to. We adapt to things we shouldn’t adapt to. Then nature adjusts and…” He made a slicing gesture with his hand.”
The cat listened for a while. “The beginning now,” it cried. The pig dutifully flipped the pages to the beginning and read.
“Once Nick Strayte got this idea into his head he could not get it out. The only way not to think about it was to wrench his mind out of it, but the effort exhausted him and left him panting and drenched in a sour, sweaty confusion about whether he had the idea or the idea had him. Either way, it didn’t make any sense.”
“That makes no sense at all,” cried the cat. It should begin…”
“I met Nick Strayte where you meet everyone on campus, in the…
Ashley interrupted. “Where I come from, things go from beginning to the middle to the end. The beginning is the place the thing starts, and the end is where it ends, and the middle is where it goes through to get from the start to the finish.”
The cat sneered. “In a well-written story,” he hissed, “the end always comes first. How would you know what the beginning was the beginning of, if you did not know the end. The middle is there only to connect the end to the beginning. That book was a complete muddle. Besides we’ve heard something like that story a hundred times.” It threw a stone at the pig. “More.”
“I’m tired of reading,” the pig said the closed the book and put its head down and fell asleep.
“Enough reading,” the cat cried. “Shall I tell you a story?” the cat asked Ashley.
“That would be nice,” Ashley said not really sure.
“Once upon a time,” the cat began and stopped.
“And?”
“And nothing,” the cat said.
“That is not a story,” Ashley said.
“It is as much a story as I can tell you in one sitting. I could tell a lot more but I’m not sure you could listen to much more. You’re distracted because you are lost.”
“Well I’ve listened to a lot of stories that were a lot longer than that was,” Ashley insisted.
“You can fill in the rest. Stories don’t become really clear until the middle. I can give you that right away,” the cat said. “It fell down while everyone was looking except the crazy man and the mouse who were watching the doorway very carefully.”
“That doesn’t make much sense,” Ashley said.
“That’s because you weren’t paying attention. You’ve got to pay close attention. If you want, I can retell the middle again.” Not waiting it began. “But the time they got around to picking up the pieces there were very few pieces to pick up.”
“That makes even less sense,” Ashley said, “and I was listening very carefully.”
“Probably too carefully,” the cat said. “Would it make more if I mentioned they came a lot.”
“And went a lot,” Ashley added.
“Camelot and went a lot, a lot of comings and goings. It’s an adult story. That reminds me of another story.”
“I don’t want to hear another story,” Ashley said.
“I wasn’t going to tell one the cat said, pointing at the pig and the head who were asleep already. “It’s nap time. He curled his tail around its legs. Ashley looked at the head which had closed its eyes and tilted so that it was resting on the shoulder of the telephone. The pig’s head had fallen on the book
“Grupmph zryzit…” the dog said and was quiet.
“Nap for a while. A rest can do wonders for you,” the cat whispered and fell asleep.
Ashley looked for somewhere to put her head. Taking a nap seemed like a good idea.It seemed to her that she had not slept for a long time. She thought of using the rump of the pig as a pillow but decided against it and settled for putting her head over her arms on the table in front of her. Just as she put her head down and closed her eyes the cat sprang up. “Nap time is over, its time to play a game.”
Chapter 9
Ashley, who had just put her head down, complained. “Nap time did not even begin, I just closed my eyes,” she said, rubbing her lids.
The cat waited a moment. “Are you waking up?” it asked.
“I think so,” said Ashley.
“Well then you must have slept,” the cat said. “Waking up is the best proof you’ve been asleep. Of course you might be waking up in a dream. I am awake so it can’t be my dream. It might be his dream,” the cat said, pointing to the head who was drowsing on the branch of a tree. “Pinch him,” the cat commanded.
“Where would I pinch him?” Ashley asked, “there’s not enough of him to pinch. I’d rather pinch him,” she said, pointing at the pig who was snoring loudly.
The cat reached down, picked up a pebble and threw it at the head.
The head opened its eyes. “I am offended,” it said in a hurt way, “and I am certainly not dreaming. If this is a dream, it is certainly not mine.”
Ashley pinched the pig.
“If you are shopping again, I have to tell you I am very sensitive and I am not asleep,” it murmured dozing off.
“Well the pig isn’t dreaming this and neither is the head and neither am I. It certainly isn’t his dream,” he pointed to the dog who was wrestling with the grin plastered on his face. “If anyone is dreaming this, it must be you.”
“But I am not asleep,” Ashley protested.
“Well you are lost which is almost the same thing,” the cat said.
Ashley noticed that they were no longer in the phone booth.”Where are we?” she asked.
“We are in the park,” the head announced. “See, there are the swings, the slide is over there and …”
“What are we doing in the park?” Ashley asked.
“You were the one who wanted to go to the park and here we are. We probably got here the same way you got lost. What difference does it make where you are lost?” the cat said. “Before you came we were playing games, would you like to play?”
“What game were you playing?” Ashley asked.
“We were playing Goffman,” the pig said, suddenly waking up, “but he…(he lifted a foot and pointed it at the cat) objected.”
“We were not playing Goffman. You were playing Goffman. We were playing Evolution.”
“Well that explains it, “ the pig muttered.
“What does it explain?” the head wanted to know.
“Why everyone lost.”
“I don’t think I know that game,” Ashley said.
“It’s very much like Palitiks,” the pig snorted.
“Palitiks is a game where we stand in a circle and go around as fast as we can. Then we fall down,” the head explained.
“And?” Ashley asked.
“That’s all. It’s just a game.”
“It doesn’t sound like an interesting game,” Ashley said.
“It’s probably a little grown up for you. We used to play Kaynes before he cheated,” the cat said, pointing to the pig.
“I don’t know that game either, “ Ashley said.
“You take whatever you have in your pockets and throw it in the air and watch it fall on the ground. Then you rush around looking for what you lost. Whatever you can pick up you put back in your pockets and you can keep. If a lot of people play it’s lots of fun.”
“What kind of game is that?” Ashley wanted to know.
“I don’t know exactly. We only know the rules,” said the head.
“The rules are the game,” said Ashley.
The cat laughed. “What a strange idea,” it said. The dog stopped struggling with its grin and said, “grpun notse.”
“You might as well say that the way a morph looks is the morph,” the cat said. “The rules are where the game begins.”
“Rules are made so you can see what the game is about,” the pig explained sleepily. “They are not the game. The game is behind the rules. The game tells you what the rules should be. Imagine if you were playing ‘Go Fish’ and started with the rules for ‘Old Maid.’
“That’s not completely right,” the cat said. He put a book on the pig’s head and stood up on it and gestured as if he were making a speech. “The only way you can see the game is to break the rules—then you see what the game is. If the game were the rules then you wouldn’t have to play it, would you.”
“Make a move,” the head ordered, “then we’ll decide which game to play.”
“Hold still,” the cat said to the pig, “It’s hard to balance.” He drew a breath and recited, “Armies never surrender at night.”
“That does not seem like a move at all,” said Ashley
“How would you know,” the pig said, “you do not even know the game.”
“It is silly,” Ashley insisted.
“That is the first rule,” the cat meowed.
“That’s cheating,” the pig said. “That move is not allowed.”
Ashley interrupted. “None of this makes any sense at all. If it’s a rule, it can’t be a move in the game.”
“This is a game that consists only of rules,” the cat said in an adult voice, “and everything you can think of is a rule.”
“According to that, I could do this,” the head said, It scrunched its face up until one of its eyeballs jumped out and bounced off the pig. It squinted with the eye that was left in its head.
“What are the other rules?” Ashley asked annoyed.
“It’s hard to say. You start with some and then as the game develops new rules appear. This game ends when you’ve made all of the rules you can think of.”
“How do you know when you have all of the rules?” Ashley asked.
“Well you can play the game. If you can play, you have all of the rules. Of course you could consult a book,” the head said.
“A rule book,” Ashley said.
“Of course not, a quite different kind of book.”
“We could play Life,” the talking head said.
“How do you play that?” asked Ashley.
“Well it’s quite a difficult game. Of course it depends on which version you want to play, the version where you play the computer playing the rules of the game or the one you play the rules for the computer playing the game. There is only one rule in the game of Life and the rule is, ‘there are no rules.’ “
“Yes,” said the talking head, “lets play Life.”
The pig scurried around and found a box. He dumped its contents on the ground and turned it upside down. “This will be the board. I get to move first.”
“Every game has rules,” said Ashley, “that what makes a game a game. How can you play the game of Life if there are no rules?”
“You are dense,” the cat said. “There are rules and there are just one of them,” the cat insisted. “The main and only rule is ‘no rules.’ It’s not an easy game.”
“There must be other rules,” Ashley said decisively, “otherwise it would mean that you could do anything. That doesn’t seem very, very…”
“Linear,” said the talking head
“Sensible,” said Ashley. “It doesn’t seem a very possible game,” Ashley said.
“Did you follow a rule to get here?” the cat asked.
“I told you I got lost,” Ashley stammered.
“You aren’t going to blame the game you were playing for that are you,” the cat said.
“Lets play,” said the pig. He looked around at what things were in the room. Then he reached down and took a leaf from his hoof and wiped the top of the box. Then he scrambled around picking everything he could from the floor and piled it on top.
“Yes,” said the pig wiping its brow. “Your move,” he said to the cat who was intently examining the position he had been left.
“If the only rule is that there are no rules, you could do this,” Ashley said, reaching down and cautiously moving half of a lottery ticket across the top of the table.
“You could, but it would be very foolish and not very tasteful,” the cat said.
“Very foolish,” the talking head said, trying to roll his eye back into its socket.
“If there are no rules to speak of, how can you learn to play?” Ashley asked. “Just in case,” she added, “you wanted to play.”
“You watch other people play and you ask for advice,” the Cat said.
“And if the rule for the game is that there are no rules, how do you know which moves are legal?” Ashley asked.
“That’s easy, “ the cat said, curling its tail around its head. “If a player makes it, it is a move and if it’s a move then it’s a legal move. You can’t miss it,” he suggested.
“But how do you win?” Ashley asked.
“Can’t win,” the cat said, bringing a feather to the table and putting it just beside the leaf.
“Can’t lose either,” said the talking head, trying to see what the cat had done.
“You become an expert fast,” the cat said. “Figuring out which move to make is easy. Actually making a move once you decide on it is the hard part.”
The cat moved close to Ashley. “Actually there are other rules,” he whispered to her. “I mean beside the rule that there are no rules. There are rules but only the rules you make up. Making up the rules is a move in the game. It’s the way the game is played by experts. It’s one of the hardest move to make. If you need rules you make them up and then you discover that they are the rules you were playing with all of the time.”
“If you’re lucky, “said the pig
“Sometimes,” said the head.
“Sometimes and sometimes not,” the pig said. “And sometimes someone changes the rules. People forget the rules conveniently.”
“They certainly do,” the head exclaimed.
“You mean they conveniently forget the rules,” Ashley said.
“That too,” said the head, “that too.”
Ashley watched the pattern emerge under the pig’s hoof. When he put the last piece in place, a squirrel climbed up on the table and took a peanut off of the table and scampered away with it. “That comes very close to cheating,” the cat said quietly. “Very close. But it was a very clever move for a squirrel,” he added.
“Can squirrels play?” Ashley asked.
“That one can,” the pig replied.
Ashley watched the cat and the pig playing for a while. Although she couldn’t say, why the game was exciting to look at and it began making sense to her even though she couldn’t tell which particular sense. It seems to her that she was familiar with the game in some way she was not aware of.
The sense of the game became clear enough so that when the pig took his next turn and had nearly finished constructing a set of figures on the board out of nuts and sugar, Ashley leaned over and whispered “ that’s a very poor move, I think,” pointing to the butt of a cigar resting on a matchbook.
“You know,” the pig said, “ you are absolutely right,” and pulled the piece back quickly.
“First the squirrel, then you,” the cat yelled at Ashley. “Who is playing? If you are going to get advice and help I’m entitled to help too,” he whined and looked around for an ally. The head looked away.
“I’m going to get some more pieces,” the pig said suddenly and got down from his seat and trotted away.
“Why did he have to get more pieces?” Ashley asked. “There are plenty of pieces here.”
“Change of strategy,” the cat said. “Would you like to play?” the cat asked Ashley. “Until the pig comes back.”
“Ok,” Ashley said.
“You start,” the cat purred.” You can use his position to begin with.”
“Are you sure he won’t mind?” Ashley said, pointing to the pig who had stopped looking for pieces and was trying to balance himself on a swing in the playground.
“I don’t think so,” the cat said. “Besides,” he added, “it s not a position worth saving.”
“Well,” Ashley said. “I’m not sure I really know how to play, but I did see something interesting here.” She pointed to half a flower. Ashley put down a piece of the lottery ticket she had found in her pocket. “There.”
“That was an extremely clever move you just made,” the cat said stretching out, “Are you sure you’ve never played before, perhaps without thinking you were playing a game.”
“No,” Ashley said. “I think I can win” she added, reaching down and feeling for one of the keys on the ground. She lifted it up without looking at it and started to put it on the table.
“I wouldn’t,” the cat said, “not that key, there. It’s…” There was a loud sound and when Ashley looked up they were back in the phone booth.
“What happened?” Ashley wanted to know.
“It’s hard to say,” the cat said. “Trying to win might have done it. Or the game might have changed on its own. Life sometimes does that.”
Chapter 10
“I bet you wish you had a chance to play in the park,” the cat said. “That’s life though. You can’t tell where a move is going to take you. I tried to warn you but you wouldn’t listen. Of course not.…”
“I was thinking about the Jungle Jim,” Ashley sighed. “I thought if I could climb up on the highest bar I could see…”
“Where you were lost from,” the cat said. “It’s an old dream but the Jungle Jim is never high enough in the park to see anything except another Jungle Jim in another park.”
As the cat said this, the dog, who had been very still for a while (as if it was stalking a snake or a rabbit) growled and gave a few muffled barks. Then, suddenly the back half of it sprang at its front half, attacking the grin on its face. “Enough,” the cat said to the dog. “You are an embarrassment. Perhaps I can pull it off. Hold still.” He tugged on the grin and reached out and pushed the dog. Suddenly with the sound a cork makes when it is pulled out of a bottle of champagne, the grin popped off of the dog. As it spun off the dog’s face and rolled around on the floor the dog pounced on it and started to chew.
“How does it taste?” Ashley asked.
“Dry and tough like an old…”
Before it finished the sentence the grin leapt up and plastered itself onto his face again. “Asdfgr dser ,” the dog whimpered.
“Ok,” the cat said. “But if it comes off this time leave it alone.” The dog growled softly as the cat reached down and grabbed hold of the grin again with its paws and yanked.
This time the grin made the jingling sound of a tiny bell striking as it popped off of the dog. Instead of falling to the ground and spinning like a top, it folded itself around the cat’s face.
“Puss, you are grinning,” Ashley said.
“I can’t see,” the cat said. “Am I really grinning?”
“You certainly are,” Ashley said, “from ear to ear like a proper Cheshire cat.”
“I need a mirror. You’ll do,” he said to Ashley. “Grab hold of my tail.”
“Why?” asked Ashley.
“Because if you grab hold of me, I’ll be able to see how I look. I’m a morph remember. Grab hold of my tail and you’ll be part of me and if you look at me I’ll be able to see myself.”
Without thinking much about it Ashley took hold of the cat’s tail. As she did so she felt herself becoming something between where the cat ended and something else — she was not sure what — began. “I can see it,” the cat said looking as Ashley as if he were looking in a mirror.
“Well it may be an interesting sight for you but I don’t think I like the feeling very much,” Ashley said. It was as if she was falling into the computer again. She tried to let go of the cat but found she could not. “I don’t think I like this a bit,” she said and the cat looked at her and primped and made the grin wider and deeper. “Not a bit,” she said. She felt something behind her put an arm around her waist and she felt a sharp chin bury itself in her back. Behind it, she sensed another something crowding. “I don’t like this at all,” she repeated. “How do I get out of this mess?” she asked herself. She looked around for something on the ground that looked like a key. “If I can’t let go at least maybe I could move to the end of the line. I couldn’t be worse off than I am now,” she said and stamped on the nearest pebble she could find.
“Not that one,” said the cat emphatically, grinning totally, but it was too late and suddenly Ashley found herself in another place entirely.
Chapter 11
Ashley found herself on the edge of something that was definitely not a park. There were big trees with leaves like bath mats and thick vines like tassels that hung down from the top of the trees to the ground which was covered with a steamy fog.
“Well it seems to me that I am lost now, really lost, lost in a way that nothing seems familiar,” she announced to no one in particular. “This place definitely looks like a jungle.”
She had read about jungles in books and seen television shows about jungles. But she had never really been in such a place and the forest in front of her was so brightly colored with purples and yellows and reds and the vines were so soft and loose and hung so thickly, that she was sure it was not quite a jungle of the kind she knew from watching or reading.
When she looked around carefully, she noticed a sign on the tree in front of her. It was tied to the tree with a red ribbon. ‘Pretzels and Things’ was printed on the sign.
“Don’t pass them by,” the sign said to her as soon as she bent down to see if there were any words that she had missed. “Straight ahead,” the sign said in a bossy voice. “Gerade aus, yizhi zou, Al frente,” it yelled at her when she straightened up. “I’ve exhausted my languages,” the sign said. “Don’t you understand any of them?”
“I understand perfectly,” Ashley said, “the English in particular. It just doesn’t make any sense.”
“How can you say you understand something when it doesn’t make sense to you? Now that doesn’t make any sense,” the sign complained
“People often understand things very well that don’t make any sense at all,” Ashley said. “And there is no straight ahead at least as far as I can see.”
The sign twisted around and peered behind it. “A tree,” it said. “Trees everywhere. Hm, I used to be somewhere else,” it said. It twisted a little more. “Off to the left yes, looks like a path.” It straightened itself up again. “To the left,” it said in a loud voice, “Zum links, a la izquierda, zai zuobianr.”
“That is a completely different direction,” Ashley complained.
“Not particularly different,” the sign insisted. “It gets you to the same place,” the sign said, “so it must be the same direction.”
“That is silly,” Ashley said. “A lot of different directions take you to the same place.”
“Not if you are lost,” the sign said. “When you are lost, no direction takes you to the right place so they are all the same as far as you are concerned. Go to the left,” it said.
Ashley looked left. “There does seem to be a place you can walk but it hardly looks any different from the rest of the forest around here.”
“A path clear as day,” the sign insisted. “Pretzels and things. To the left.”
Ashley followed the path. which was only barely a path. “A path is a road that someone has taken before you. But it’s clear that almost no one has gone this way before so I would hardly call it a path. Finding a path in the forest is nearly impossible when you are really lost,” she exclaimed.
She walked along what she took to be the path for a while, looking at the flowers and listening to the animals that screeched invisibly from high in the trees. As she stepped out from under a fallen branch, she found herself in exactly the place she had started from. When she walked in front of the sign on the tree, it barked at her. “Well, you again.”
“I went left,” Ashley complained, “and it took me here again.”
“Well, go right then,” the sign complained. “No wonder you are lost,” it muttered.
“It’s no wonder I am lost following signs that have no sense of direction in any language,” Ashley responded. “I’ll find my own way,” she said moving into the forest.
Walking through the forest was almost as bad as falling through the tunnel she tumbled down when she first fell into the computer. In the tunnel there was only one way to go and you didn’t have much choice about it. Here, every tree that blocked your path insisted that you make a choice and it was impossible to keep track of the choices you made and none of them seemed to make a difference.
“It is really hopeless,” she said, looking around on the ground for pebbles as she stepped forward. She examined the ground carefully but it was covered with leaves and small animals and she found it impossible to distinguish the pebble-like keys which were her way of moving around in this world. Not watching where she was going, Ashley bumped into a tree. A little sign taped to its bark said “WOOD AHEAD.”
“Well excuse me,” a voice said sarcastically. “I think you owe me an apology. Apologize,” it barked.
“You apologize,” Ashley insisted, looking at the sign, “and get out of my way. I was not looking where I was going so I have a reason and an excuse, but you saw me coming and didn’t say anything,” she argued. The words seemed to make sense, but, because Ashley wasn’t sure the argument was quite right, she said it as loudly as she could.
“I have been here very much longer than you have been there, wherever you are,” the voice said. “And I was so intent on watching you scanning the forest floor and trying to distinguish one thing from another —pebbles from crickets, I suppose — and missing them all, that I just did not pay attention to the distance between us. You must be lost already,” it said, “or you are going to be lost very, very soon. But if it will make you feel any better I apologize. Now about ‘out of my way,’ that’s going to be a little more difficult.”
“I insist,” Ashley said without thinking.
“And there’ll be a commotion and giant h…”
“Out of my way,” Ashley repeated.
“OK,” the voice said and before Ashley could change her mind there was a frightful commotion in front of her.
“Wait,” Ashley said, realizing she had been talking to the tree not the sign, but it was too late.
“I told you,” the tree grunted as it yanked up its roots and shifted them pulling itself to the side. Ashley put her hands over her eyes until the commotion dwindled down to squeaking and creaking sounds, then she looked out.
The tree had moved out of her way. The move had twisted its branches and she saw a family of birds holding on to a limb for dear life. The mother bird squawked at her as the baby bird cried out. “Ma, Ma,” it said. “What’s happening?”
“Treequake. We moved again,” the mother bird said. “Calm down.”
“Where have we moved to?” the hatchling screeched. “I liked the neighborhood.”
“Oh I don’t know,” the mother bird said. She rummaged around in the nest for a while until she came up with a worm and stuck it in the little bird’s mouth. “Shut up now and eat.”
“ I hope you are happy,” the mother bird said, flying from the nest to hover in front of Ashley’s face. “I hope you are happy, I really hope you are. This is the fifth time this year we’ve moved and it’s hard enough getting used to the neighborhood and then someone comes along and cuts the nest out from under you.”
Ashley protested. “I didn’t cut down anything. In fact I didn’t realize…”
“No one does,” the mother bird said, “but they insist anyway and off we go on another ride.” She looked at the hole where the tree had just been. You must have a large family if you need that much room for a nest,” she said. “There goes the neighborhood.” And she flew off.
“Well go ahead,” the tree insisted angrily. Ashley saw that the move had left a giant hole in front of her and the tree had blocked the one open space. In order to move forward she had to squeeze uncomfortably between two bushes. “Ow,” she cried as the branches scraped her.
“It serves you right,” the tree said smugly. “Pay attention to the orders you give.”
As Ashley pushed through the bushes, she came into a clearing. A narrow road cut through the jungle and stretched out as far as she could see. In front of her, facing one another on opposite sides of the narrow road, were two pushcarts covered with shiny aluminum. The father of one of her friends sold pretzels and other things from a cart in the park and when they met him on the way home after school he always gave them something to eat, sometimes something hot, sometimes something cold, but always something interesting. It was very much the kind of cart that he had.
In front of each of the carts, which were diagonally facing one another, was a groundhog. They looked almost exactly alike except one had a small moustache and the other a tiny beard. Each was wearing a small white cap saying ‘Pretzels and Things.’
“Excuse me,” Ashley said surprised. “I didn’t expect to meet…”
“Two pretzel sellers,” they said in unison. “We know. You are lost though so you must expect to encounter things you don’t expect to expect. My name is Gus and his is Max.”
“Well,” said Ashley, “one groundhog might not be so unexpected. But two. You look almost exactly the same,” she said. She took a moment and read the signs that were posted on the pushcarts. They were the same except for a smudge on one. They said, “Pretzels and Things.”
“Two groundhogs selling the same things,” Ashley repeated “I’ve never seen a groundhog selling anything.” In fact, she thought to herself, I’ve never seen groundhogs at all except on a vacation when we are driving somewhere and they stand up on the road looking for home, I suppose, and the car whacks them. Sudenly she felt very sorry for the them.
“Sure looks like it doesn’t it,” one of the pretzel salesmen said enthusiastically.
“We used to be ferocious competitors. We drove each other out of business.”
“Into bankruptcy.”
“Then we decided to cooperate.”
“To form an alliance.”
“A partnership.”
“More or less.”
“What are you doing here?” Ashley wanted to know.
“We are doing commerce, business,” the groundhog with the moustache said, jumping on top of his wagon.
“Watching out for the customer,” the one with the little beard said, hopping up on his wagon, “watching out for you.”
“Watching out for you,” the first hedgehog repeated. “You are our only concern. What would you like? Something to eat perhaps.”
“Well,” said Ashley “I could eat something.”
“A bit of something,” Max said.
“A nibble,” Gus added.
“A bite of something,” Ashley said.
“As many bites as you want. What would you like?” Gus asked.
“I’m not sure,” said Ashley “almost anything would do. A pretzel,” Ashley said, looking at the pretzels piled high on the wagons, “would do fine.”
“My pretzels are old, “ Gus said, “and stale. Not good enough for you.”
“They look fresh to me,” Ashley declared.
“Stale, absolutely stale.”
He turned to the other pretzel seller. “How about yours?”
The other groundhog took one of the pretzels off of the stand and smelled it. Ashley could see steam rising from it and smell its fresh baked aroma. “Not fresh,” he said. “Test.” He took a bite and tossed the pretzel to the other groundhog who also took a bite and returned it. They chewed with great gusto. “Absolutely not quite fresh enough.”
“No pretzels,” Max said. “How would you like Eel stomachs on a bun?”
“Eel stomachs on a bun is a wonderful snack,” Gus added. “I‘m getting hungry thinking about it.”
“Pizza,” Ashley said.
“We have seventeen types of pizza. Unfortunately,” he said “unfortunately they are all the Roumanian version, no cheese—yogurt topping, delicious.”
She considered the alternatives.”I think I‘ll pass up Pizza,” Ashley said. “A hamburger perhaps.”
“Meat is a problem,” the pretzel seller with the moustache said rather slowly and deliberately. “We see a lot of animals passing by. It would be indelicate …”
“Offensive,” the pretzel seller with the beard added delicately.
“Distasteful…to have hamburgers.”
“But we have a wonderful substitute,” Max said. “Flowerburgers.”
“Nearly the same,” Gus added. “Roseburgers, daisyburgers, tulipburgers, flowerburgers of all sort. We hardly get any flowers wandering by looking for a snack,” he explained.
“A daisyburger then,” Ashley said. “And a coke.”
“Not quite a coke but very much like a coke,” Max explained. “A herb soda, without the coke and light on the herbs.”
“It will take a moment,” Gus said, fiddling around on his pushcart. “We won’t have to wait even a minute.”
“Why are we waiting at all?” Ashley wanted to know.
“Well if we carried what you wanted on the stands they would get stale,” the pretzel seller with the moustache explained.
“Like the pretzels,” Ashley said.
“Exactly more or less. Good for the help—for us—for looking and fantasizing about, but not for a bottom line customer. We are part of chain,” he explained. “More than a chain. A chain of chains, a conglomerate of chains, a multinational consortium of chains with pretzel sellers like us strung out in every jungle in every country on every continent in the world. International missionaries, bringing good things to the jungle.”
“To the wilderness which only knew pizza and trees and hamburgers and coke before,” the bearded groundhog added.
“More or less,” his companion said. “The way it works is, your desires are instantaneously, electronically communicated to the head office and order is sent to the nearest distribution center and the food is sent out from there. One of our associates is setting out now with just what you ordered.” He pointed to a building at the end of the road that stretched to the horizon.
“Absolutely fresh,” the second exclaimed. “There. You can see him starting out now.”
Ashley peered down the road. What looked like a turtle on a bicycle seemed to be making its way along the road very slowly. “He seems a long way away,” she said.
“Just in time selling,” the second pretzel seller said. He peered into the distance. “He’ll be here in a minute. You’ll see,” he said. “While you are waiting would you like to look at a memory book of memorable feasts. You can read about them while you’re waiting.”
“No,” said Ashley.
“He’ll be here in a wink. While you’re waiting,” he said, “you wouldn’t mind if we noshed a little. It was a ferociously busy morning.”
Max took out a white cloth and put it over the top of his wagon. Would you join me?” he asked his partner.
“I don’t mind if I do,” the other groundhog said.
Out of the wagon came what looked to Ashley like hamburgers and pizza fresh from the oven and tacos and chicken.
Ashley looked down the road. The turtle on the bicycle did not seem to be getting much closer.
“May I have a nibble of your food?” Ashley asked.
“Absolutely not,” the first pretzelseller said. “It will kill your appetite. This is not good enough for you. These are only scraps to keep us alive while we can meet your needs,” the second said. “Your food will be here in a minute. While you are waiting would you like dessert?” the first inquired. “We have a full dessert menu.”
“Dessert comes after…” Ashley started to say.
“Of course it comes after,” the first seller said. “but the something it comes after doesn’t have to be dinner. It can be after ordering dinner, or after thinking about dinner, or after deciding that you didn’t want dinner after all. We have a lot of desserts on the menu, a vast listing of desserts.”
Ashley looked at the turtle on the bicycle who had moved a fraction of an inch since the last time she looked. “I wish he moved more quickly,” said Ashley .
“Here is the dessert menu,” Max said. What looked distinctly like a chicken bone dangled from his lips. “Guaranteed, no fat, no sugar, not much flour, no nuts, certainly. They are mostly hot air. Which is why we call them desserts,” Gus explained.
The groundhog nearest her handed Ashley the dessert menu. It was a sheet of paper with words on it which looked like they had been printed by a child. “Each dessert has a name and a short description,” Max explained. “Usually, the name comes first, then the description,” Gus added, putting his paw on the beginning of the list.
Ashley started reading. “Doubtful truth(served on hard tack).”
“That’s its name,” Max said, swallowing the hamburger he had stuffed into his cheek and burping loudly.
“What kind of name is that for a dessert?” Ashley asked.
“It’s the best name we could think of on really short notice,” he explained.
Ashley continued reading. “The names of things change when you turn your back and most of what is worth learning has bad breath and a ferocious mien.”
“That’s its description,” his partner added.
“That is hardly a proper description of a dessert,” she said. “I would not be tempted to order it at all.”
“You might like something further down on the list,” the bearded groundhog suggested. “Keep reading.”
Ashley read the second item on the list.” Too late in life to do any good.”
“What do you think of that as a name? “ Gus asked as he slumped back, his stomach making loud growling noises.
“It doesn’t sound too appetizing,” Ashley said turning up her nose.
“Here’s the description,” Max said, grabbing the dessert menu from Ashley and reading slowly before handing the piece of paper back to Ashley.
“The best things in life may be free but the store is always out of them and they spoil when you take them out of the box and you can’t claim them as dependents on your tax returns, whereas the worst things in life cost ferociously but are available on easy credit and are childlike and cling and never grow up and go away.”
“I think it would spoil my appetite, “ Ashley said. “What’s next on the list?”
“The next is a speciality of the house,” the moustached groundhog said, rubbing his stomach. “It’s called ‘what we never forget (once we’ve tasted it).’”
“That sounds tasty, does it have chocolate frosting?” Ashley asked.
“No chocolate, no vanilla, no strawberry, no frosting at all,” Gus said.
She read the description.
“When the light comes on it’s wonderful but sometimes, later, you yearn for the darkness again.”
“What does it taste like?” she asked.
“It may be a little bitter for your taste,” Max said, as he sat down suddenly on the jungle floor. “I think I may have snacked too much.”
“I don’t think I will worry about desserts just yet,” said Ashley.
“You have to consider the last one,” Gus said, stroking his beard before he sat down also. Ashley heard a moan come from the forest floor as she read the last dessert on the menu.
“I see its name is, ‘What we might believe,’ “ said Ashley. “It sounds promising.”
“Read the description —but not too loudly,” said Max, who had curled up in a ball.
“What is known for certain is the first casualty of doubt and people rarely survive the bite of butterflies ( although the scars of the bite of the butterfly are at least as beautiful as tattoos.)”
“It sounds like a frozen dessert,” Ashley said. “Can you tell me what it tastes like?”
The groundhog straightened up a bit. “Well it’s imported, I think. It has the look of a kiwi fruit and the texture of a paper towel. It usually comes with a sauce and it tastes dry as dust.”
“I don’t think I will order a dessert yet,” Ashley declared.
The pretzel sellers sprawled out, holding their stomachs and moaning. “I’m bloated,” the first said. “We overindulged,” the second said.
The turtle on the bicycle had moved a fraction of an inch closer.
“If you don’t mind I’ll pick,” Ashley said grabbing what looked like an untouched hamburger from the top of the pushcart. She took a coke from a well in the cart and popped it open. It was ice cold.
“If you insist but you are going to ruin your appetite,” the groundhogs protested weakly.
As Ashley began to eat the hamburger, the turtle in the distance seemed to pick up speed. It arrived huffing and puffing just as she finished off the last bite.
“Treacherous journey. One buttercup burger,” he said unhooking the tray from the bicycle, “and an herb soda.”
“We ordered a daisyburger,” Ashley said quietly.
“Well I heard a buttercup burger distinctly,” the turtle said, uncovering the dish to reveal a buttercup, tears rolling down its petals, its roots tucked into the bun under it. “But the customer is always right. I’ll be back in a minute.”
“No need,” Ashley said “ I’m… .”
One of the pushcart sellers interrupted her. “We pride ourselves on Six sigmas of accuracy. Let him go. The turtle covered the tray and got back on his bicycle. “Be back in a flash,” he said.
“How about a dessert while you are waiting?” the groundhog closest to her said picking himself up from the ground and brushing off the leaves and dirt that clung to him.
“No desserts now,” Ashley said.
“By the by, what are you doing here?” the first one asked seemingly recovered from his discomfort of eating too much.
“I fell inside the computer, and I’m lost and I want to get out.”
“You are really lucky,” the first groundhog said. “Imagine what you could have fallen inside of. A light bulb, a wallet, TV set, an electric iron, a bicycle spoke…” The groundhogs struggled to lift themselves up. “Everybody is caught inside of something wanting to get out, or tied to something and wanting to get loose, or outside of something wanting to get in,” Max announced.
“Maybe,” said Ashley “but…”
“I don’t think we ever had a customer who wanted out, “ the first pretzel seller said. “Usually they just want to draw a fractal.”
“Or make a font, “ the second said thoughtfully, “or solve a puzzle or play a game or type a letter. But of course you want to get home.”
“Yes,” Ashley said. “You wouldn’t have a thing, anything, that would help me get out?” she asked softly.
“Getting out of a computer. Now that is a problem,” the groundhog with the beard said. “Well you could try to turn things inside out. I mean you could try to bring everything from the outside in and make it inside, then you wouldn’t quite be outside but everything you wanted would be inside. You wouldn’t be home of course, but it would be more like home. Then of course there’s a map. If you had a map there might be a path out.”
“If there’s a way in there must be a way out,” Ashley said.
“That is an interesting idea,” the groundhog said, “but I wouldn’t count off it. “
“Count off it?” Ashley asked.
“Count off it being true I mean like 1,2, … infinity, true, “ the
groundhog said. “I wouldn’t count that way off it. And
not too many things are symmetrical in the other way either. People used to
believe that the nearer you were to
“That seems reasonable,” Ashley said.
“Reasonable it is,” the moustached
pretzel seller acknowledged, “it’s just not likely to be true. The way in might
lead to
“There is always a way out,” Ashley said.
“Of course you could evolve your way out. Change yourself. It’s a guaranteed way out of nearly everywhere. I mean if you are something inside a computer now you could evolve yourself into something that wasn’t inside of the computer. A map might help.”
“It might take a little while,” Max added. “Do we have a map?”
“I think we do,” Gus said, rummaging through his cart. He pulled a
bag of maps from a cubby hole and searched through the bag.”Here’s a map,” he held it up, “of
“At the time of Myths,” Ashley said.
“Perhaps. And here’s a bit of dessert
again stuck to a map of
“Which dessert?”
I think its name is ‘Curdled Love,’ Gus remarked, examining the
small piece of dessert. “If I remember the description is ‘rub a thorn,
remember the knife.’ I made a mistake,” he said, examining what he held in his
hand more closely. “It’s not a piece of dessert. It’s a piece of desert. And
it’s not a map of
“Of what?” Ashley asked.
“Of a heart, “ Gus said. The hedgehogs put their heads together and scavenged through the bag. “Ah ha, I think we have it.” They took a map from out of the bag and unfolded it. “Smooth down the creases,” they ordered Ashley who was looking over their shoulders at the piece of paper.
“It doesn’t look like a map, “ the pretzel sellers said, in a disappointed tone. “It clearly says ‘MAP OF THE COMPUTER’ on the front but it’s just a bunch of lines cris crossing every which way and long strings of numbers.”
“It may be the light,” one of them added. “Or it may be,” the other added “what the computer looks like from some point of view that we need another map to get to and follow.”
“Well it might come in handy,” Ashley said snatching it and folding it up and tucking it in a pocket in her dress. “I would like to borrow it for a while,” she announced.
“That wraps it up,” the first groundhog said, dumping the rest of the contents of the bag on the ground. “It’s clear that we don’t seem to have a map that can help you. Maybe you had better think of evolving out.”
Ashley, who was almost always ready to try anything acquiesced. “How do I start evolving out?”
“Oh you’ve started a long time ago,” Max said. “But it’s not a matter of how, it’s a matter of concentrating and luck and where,” he said. “You’ve got to evolve at a place that’s good for evolving.”
“Where is that?” Ashley asked.
“The ocean,” Max said. “The ocean, of course,” Gus repeated. “There’s a place on the shore that a lot of evolving has happened at already,” he added. “It’s called ‘The Sea of Complexity.’”
“Why don’t we take her there…”
“She’s a customer. Her needs are our needs.”
They moved beside Ashley one on each side and lifted her up and without another word made their way through the woods.
“Put me down,” Ashley insisted. “I can walk on my own.”
“Of course you could but we can walk faster,” the groundhogs said. “Besides you might get lost again.”
“Look out for trees,” Ashley said emphatically.
They walked a little while with Ashley between them. Ashley noticed that the jungle changed gradually as they walked through it. The trees thinned out and the plants on the ground changed into something that looked much more like seaweeds and the jungle floor itself got more flat and regular.
“Here we are,” Max said finally.
“Although the jungle’s changed considerably,”Ashley said, “it doesn’t look like an ocean to me. It looks as if someone had carved a checkerboard out of blue Jell-O.” When they put her down, the ground did seem like Jell-O. She could stand on it but just barely and every minute she felt as if she would sink down like the peaches that always ended up at the bottom of the Jell-O that her mother made.
“How do I go about evolving?” Ashley asked as she balanced herself.
“You hardly ever evolve alone,” one of the Groundhogs said. “Something will come along to help you. You wait. Life is waiting and following rules. Be patient. When it comes, go for it. There is a song that might help you think about evolving. It’s called, The Song of Evolution.” The two groundhogs sat down and sang together.
Will you walk a little faster said the monkey to the man,
a computer is behind you and he’s working up a plan,
and he’s practicing the movements and he’s leaving nought to chance,
and he getting impatient to lead the evolution dance.
I’m natures favorite, I am, the sapien replied,
and everything she’s thrown my way I’ve eaten, boiled or fried,
with sauce or plain, depending on circumstance,
though they were impatient to lead the evolution dance.
I can see that he is gaining and will make it to the top
for certain, the monkey said, if you hesitate or stop.
But the man replied, don’t worry I’m too smart for his advance,
at the pace that I am going there’s no way he’ll lead the dance.
I will always be the first and best, said the human with a shout,
outlasted every thing that swam or flew or crept about.
It’s not your smarts, the computer yelled, its only arrogance
that’s kept you first so far, in the evolution dance.
With a burst of speed the computer leaped to the uman’s side.
If you don’t have the energy you can always run on pride,
but I don’t care if you run or skip or hop or jig or prance,
It’s my turn now, the computer said, to lead the evolution dance.
As he moved ahead, the computer laughed in the humans face.
Now move aside you’re much to slow to keep up with my pace,
and human beings are little more than an irrelevance,
and much too slow and stupid to lead the evolution dance.
Nature please help me, the sapien appealed,
you loved me once so help me now before my fate is sealed.
And nature spoke, as nature speaks, simple, plain and clear,
and nature spoke, as nature speaks, so everyone could hear.
I couldn’t care less my hairy friend which one of you succeeds
whatever runs the distance makes its mark and then it breeds
that’s the way things were,
that’s the way things are,
and the way things ought to be.
When the race is done,
flesh or silicon,
doesn’t matter a whit to me.
Who runs fastest gets the chance
to lead the evolution dance.
After the song Ashley was thoughtful and the groundhogs were silent. She waited for a while watching as a few squares in front of her shifted and moved. “Evolving is very strange mode of transportation,” she commented, “something like shuffling.” What was even stranger, she noticed, was that sometimes a collection of squares took a shape she could recognize (like a space ship or a blinking light) and moved off.
“It might be a long wait,” Max said finally, and pushed her forward, “be patient. We are going to go back and serve our other customers.” Just as Ashley heard this, she saw the squares in front of her gather themselves in the shape of a small boat
“Good bye,” the groundhogs said. “Come again and recommend us to your friends.” Ashley waved but with a roll of the ocean beneath her they were gone.
Chapter 12
As the little platform she was on started to move, a sailor whose uniform was covered in buttons and ribbons and tassels popped up beside her.
“Do you have a ticket?”he asked.
“I wasn’t planning on taking a voyage,” Ashley explained. “I didn’t know that I needed a ticket to evolve.”
“Of course you need a ticket,” the sailor said. “There’s a price of admission for everything. This will do.” He plucked a lottery ticket from Ashley ‘s pocket.
“I wish people would ask before they just take what they want,” Ashley complained, wondering where the lottery ticket came from.
“If it wins, you get a refund,” the sailor said. “But it’s not likely.”
“I know, someone always wins the lottery…,” Ashley said.
“But it’s never you,” the sailor replied sadly.
As soon as he had Ashley’s ticket, the sailor immediately lost interest in her. He rushed to the turned up edge of the square ( which was near the front). “Steer, steer,” he cried in a panicky voice to no one in particular that Ashley could see. “Watch out there,” he cried “We are certainly going to crash,” he muttered. “To port, to port.”
“I don’t see anyone steering,” Ashley said.
“Neither do I,” the sailor complained.
“Maybe there’s no one steering,” Ashley said thoughtfully.
“Can’t be,” the sailor said. “We’re evolving in some direction.”
“Which direction?” Ashley asked.
“I can’t tell but it must be some direction. North, I expect. In fact it looks like we are arriving somewhere.”
“Where?” Ashley asked.
“I don’t have the foggiest idea, I just collect tickets,” he said in a breathless voice. “Ah ha,” he cried, “we’re leaving again. That was a quick visit. Hold on” he cried in alarm, peering over the edge of the boat. “I think we are in for rough seas.” He stood on his toes and shouted as loudly as he could. “Starboard, starboard.”
Ashley tried to remember which direction starboard was.
“Port is to the left, starboard to the right,” the sailor said as if he read her mind.
“Thank you,” Ashley said.
“Oh I was just trying to remind myself, “ he remarked curtly. “A crash. No doubt about it. We are going to crash and sink. No more evolution for us,” the sailor wailed.
There was a horrendous crash but instead of sinking the boat seemed to rearrange itself. When Ashley peered around, she discovered that the boat had changed into an airplane. Beside her stood a person in a very shiny uniform. He was wearing goggles and a cap (with ear flaps) that had the word ‘Cabin Crew’ written on it.
“If you are wondering why there’s no deafening roar from a motor,” the flyer said, “It’s because it flies by gliding. It’s a glider,” he explained.
Before Ashley had a chance to reply the pilot ran to the front of the glider and shouted at the top of his lungs. “Up,” he yelled. “Up. Fly up. Why don’t they ever get their directions straight?” he asked Ashley. He looked out what passed for a window. ”Up, up for heavens sake,” he yelled toward the front of the plane. “I suppose you have a ticket somewhere,” he said to Ashley.
“Somewhere,” Ashley said, “I probably do. Is taking tickets all that people who help you evolve do?”
The flier shrugged. “That is all I do.”
“Well who is flying the plane?” asked.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Perhaps no one is flying the plane,” Ashley said. “It certainly feels that way,” she said as the plane reversed its direction.
The flyer ran to the back of the plane and looked out the window then ran to the front. “Left, left,” he screamed.
“Why don’t you go up to the cockpit and fly it yourself?” she suggested without wanting to appear bossy.
“Don’t have a clue how to fly it,” the flyer said. “Never went to school for it. Up up ,” he screamed as the plane plowed into the side of something boxy that suddenly loomed up in front of them. Pieces of the airplane seemed to fly off in a number of directions and Ashley tumbled and bounced off of pieces skittering in different directions. She rolled and bumped until she found herself on the boat again.
“Back for another ride?” the sailor asked. “You’ll have to pay again.”
“Not on your life,” Ashley insisted. “From now on I evolve for free,” she declared.
The sailor ignored her. He stood frozen searching the horizon “Steer right, right,” he screamed in a panic. The boat continued on its path. “To port, to port,” he cried.
“Who are you yelling to?” Ashley asked.
“To whoever is steering, “ the sailor said.
“I don’t see anyone steering,” Ashley said.
“Neither do I,” the sailor said. “And I do get sea sick. What with the bumping. At that moment Ashley looked up and saw the boat she was on slam into what looked like a convoy of larger ships.
“Do you think” Ashley said to the sailor after the accident left the boat a little bigger but traveling in the opposite direction, “if we ride long enough there we will evolve out of the computer.”
“I don’t quite understand,” the sailor said. “I don’t think there is an out. Falling off then end of the world is what I would worry about. It hasn’t happened yet but you never can tell,” he whispered.
“That might not be so bad,” Ashley said almost to herself. “If I fell off it just might be out as well.”
“It might, If you could guarantee you would fall up. But there’s always the chance that you might fall sideways,” said the sailor. “Watch out, steer right, steer right,” he yelled as he saw a barge heading straight for them.
Ashley closed her eyes and when she opened them again she was in a smaller boat and sitting next to her was a seagull with its leg bandaged and wearing sunglasses.
“Quite a rocky ride,” the seagull squawked in a hoarse voice. “I could do a rest.”
“Do you have a ticket?” the sailor asked the bird.
“Of course I don’t,” it said ruffling its feathers. “It’s a law of the sea that shipwrecked travelers can put down on any piece of flotsam.”
“Of course on flotsam,” the sailor complained, “but this is …”
“It looked like flotsam to me, from up there,” the seagull stated, “muck, more or less. I was looking for a beacon. They stay the same for a while.”
Just then the boat collided silently with something that looked to Ashley like a spaceship tumbling and spinning and whirling out of control. The collision left the seagull standing on its head on what looked to Ashley (when she looked around ) like a floating island.
“Well so much for a restful cruise. I expect we are going to have to wait a while for a beacon,” the seagull complained as it struggled to its feet.
“Do you think one of these ships or planes will take us out?”Ashley asked.
“I don’t think there is a way out. Out is as reachable as The Garden of Eden,” he said. “You can see it, there,” he pointed, “but you can’t get there from anywhere.”
“Then how come you can see it?” Ashley asked
“Oh there are a lot of things that you can see, especially if you are looking through the right glasses in the right place, that you can’t get to, and that is one of them. It is strange though, very strange.”
“What is strange?” Ashley asked.
“Flying always got me somewhere, somewhere higher or lower or East or West. But since I flew in here, no matter how I fly, I end up on one of these barges that never gives me a long enough rest, or a boat or a glider that crashes and I’m back where I started from again. Would you like to see, I mean would you like to fly with me for a while, on my back?”
“That would be interesting. Would it be safe?”
“Safe enough,” the seagull remarked, “for someone who is evolving.”
Ashley set her arms around the seagull ( it was a large seagull) and it took off.
“You are a little heavy,” it said.
“Where is that Garden of Eden?” Ashley asked.
“There,” the seagull said.
“We haven’t gotten any closer,” Ashley said.
“You never do. It is always the same distance away,” the gull said swinging around.
“I can hear something,” Ashley said.
“Oh that is the Evolution Tango,” the gull said. “It comes from the Garden of Eden.”
Ashley listened very carefully.
Rest a while my dearie you can lean upon your cane,
but not too long my dearie or the others will complain,
if you cannot keep on running they’ll be glad to take your place
for they’re crowded all together and they wish they had more space.
They’re all waiting to do the evolution dance.
They are ready to replace you if dwell upon your nose,
and since most of them are naked they don’t care about your clothes.
If you think that you’d look better if your hips were not so wide,
they’d be happy to oblige you if you’d only stand aside.
It’s a crazy little shuffle, this evolution dance.
There are creatures with no elbows but who dance upon their toes
and a creature with two testicles that hang below its nose
and a creature that’s a mile high and smells quite like a rose,
and they’re waiting to replace you if you cannot keep the pace.
They’re all anxious to do the evolution dance
They’re running right behind you, you can see them if you turn,
and whether you are happy is none of their concern.
They’re running right behind you with their hands inside their pants
and their eyes are on the future and their thoughts are on romance.
It’s a frantic little shuffle this evolution dance.
There’s nothing to be done my dear, none hear if you complain,
explanations count for nothing for there’s nothing to explain,
and freedom’s just another word for something good to eat,
and who is not an issue just as long as it is meat.
It’s a dangerous little boogie this evolution dance.
There are creatures with a bone or two who whistle when they sail
and a creature with an eyebrow that is painted on its tail
and a creature that’s two inches wide and smells like something stale,
and they’re waiting to replace you if you cannot keep the pace.
They’re anxious to do the evolution dance.
Arithmetic is clear to them, if one and one makes two,
the more of them there are, you see, the fewer are of you.
And they have learned what
the more of you there are around the less their progeny.
And they want to do the evolution dance.
They want to do the evolution dance.
“Are you getting tired?” Ashley asked, after the song was done.
“A bit,” said the seagull. “Perhaps we could set down on. On that.” It was something that looked like a beehive.
“I’m not sure,” Ashley said. “If there are bees inside,” she added, just as a swarm of bees flew out of the hive, “I don’t think it is a good idea.”
“We could try the boat again,” the seagull remarked, and set off for what looked like a lump of muck floating beneath them. The sailor taking tickets was busy yelling at the unseen helmsman that he did not notice them land.
“Evolving doesn’t seem like way out,” Ashley said to the gull as he stretched on the deck of the boat.
“It’s quite slow, You need a lot of patience,” it said.
“I know another way,” Ashley said. “It’s quite fast, only…only you never can tell where you are going to end up.”
“You don’t seem to have the right kinds of wings for flying,” the seagull said politely.
“I’m not sure I would call it flying,” Ashley said. “You need a pebble like the ones you find on the beach, preferably one with a letter on it.”
“Here’s one, “ the seagull said picking something out from the webbing on his feet. “I never paid attention to them before.”
“Ashley instructed the seagull to put its wings around her. “We may not need to be connected,” she said “but it can’t hurt.” She put the key on the floor and stepped on it. When she opened her eyes, the world had changed completely and the seagull was gone.
Chapter 13
When Ashley looked up, she found herself standing in front of something that looked like a tree at least it looked more like a tree than it looked like anything else. As she looked at it, it shivered in the wind.
“Poor tree,” she said.
“I’m only the skeleton of a tree,” the tree said dourly.
“I didn’t know trees had skeletons,” Ashley said.
“Everything has a skeleton,” the tree replied. “It’s just hard to see. It’s buried, you know, inside. Sometimes really deep inside.” The skeleton of the tree spoke very slowly.
“A lot of the time the skeleton of a thing doesn’t look anything like what it is a skeleton of,” Ashley said, trying to keep a conversation alive.
“It’s the birds,” the skeleton of the tree said. Each word took a long time in coming out. It shook its branch to try to dislodge the birds that were hunkering on its branches. “Skedaddle,” it whispered coarsely. “The birds distract you. If lions lived in trees, people would pay much more attention.”
“People have skeletons,” Ashley remarked, “so it’s not unreasonable that trees have skeletons also,” (although it doesn’t make a lot of sense that lions would make a difference in how much attention you paid to the skeleton of the tree, she thought to herself.)
“Where am I?” she asked.
“I don’t know exactly,” the tree skeleton said. “I’ve been here too long to ask, what with rooting and growing from a seed. I’m waiting for spring.” It took so frightfully long to say this that Ashley decided it must be lost. “I always manage to get some idea where I am on the first day of spring,” the tree said.
“When I am, not where, “ Ashley corrected, “spring is a season.”
“It’s more or less the same thing for a tree,” the skeleton said. “The where doesn’t change much.”
“I see,” said Ashley. “I’ll be going.”
“Before you go,” the skeleton of the tree said in a whisper, “could you throw a rock at the birds? They don’t pay any attention to me at all,” it complained.
As she looked, one of the birds smiled at her. “I’m sure they’ll leave soon,” Ashley said.
As she stepped by the tree, an image flickered off to her side. It was the octopus.
“As you painting a fence here?” Ashley asked.
“No, I was sacked from the fence job. I am working on other things now,” it said matter of factly.
“What other things?”Ashley asked.
“Tree and egg things,” the octopus said somewhat mysteriously
“Changing labels most of the time. When I find a label on something I cross out
the ‘Made in
“Are you still painting balloons?”
“No,” the octopus said. “Balloons were part of the other job, Every time a balloon broke they blamed me,” he said innocently. “Are you sure the balloon broke last time?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “It certainly did. You blew it up too big.”
“It didn’t seem too big to me,” he replied.
“Where are we?” Ashley asked.
“To me it looks like a field of eggs,” the octopus said.
Ashley looked. All around her were eggs. There were eggs much bigger than she was and eggs the size of marbles and all sizes in between.
“It used to be a field of dreams,” the octopus said.
“What happened?”
“Whoever’s dream it was woke up I guess. It wasn’t you was it, because…”
“No, I’m sure it wasn’t,” Ashley said.
“If you are looking for a house you are out of luck,” the octopus said. “I happen to know for sure that there is no house nearby. By the way, was there anyone in that other house, you know the one I was painting the fence around?”
“There was an old woman but…she moved,” Ashley said, skipping the details. “I am still looking for a way out,” Ashley said, just by way of a reminder.
“Well I still haven’t come across a way out,” the octopus said. “But there is a bus. It comes from somewhere in that direction,” he pointed behind Ashley with one of its tentacles. “It goes in that direction,” he added, pointing with another. “It stops there,” he continued, whirling another tentacle in another direction. All of the pointing tangled him up horribly and he flopped down with a soggy sound. “If you are lost, it might be faster than walking,” he said from the jumble.
“Where does it go?” Ashley asked.
“I don’t have a clue,” the octopus said untangling himself. He picked up one of the smaller eggs and looked for
a label. When he did not find one, he lifted it up and dipped a small brush
into a can of paint and scribbled, ‘Made in
Ashley walked around the field of eggs. There were eggs of every imaginable size. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense that there should be so many different sizes of eggs,” Ashley said. “Eggs come in one size more or less and in cartons. It’s not as if …” She remembered an experiment that her class had done. “Things hatch from eggs. Birds especially, and chickens of course and…I should make a list of things that come from eggs,” she instructed herself. “You never can tell when there is going to be a homework assignment about it.” She started the list in her mind. “Platypuses come from eggs, I remember but I really don’t know that for certain, I only remember reading it in a book.”
She wondered if, wherever the Platypuses came from, (or if the term was Platypy, where Platypy came from) someone looked forward to Platypus omelettes. “Turtles too,” she said suddenly remembering another creature that was born from eggs, and…” Somewhere in her mind she could feel herself holding back from remembering the other creatures that came out from eggs. “Dinosaurs, of course, but they don’t count because they are extinct.” She stopped. “Of course they are extinct where I come from but who knows if they are extinct here. And Crocodiles which make other creatures extinct,” she remembered. There were enough creatures that came from eggs, she thought, to make one stop and think.
She stopped and looked around until she spotted an egg the size of a stool and moved carefully toward it. “If there is something I should be afraid of here, I’d prefer to be closest to a smaller one,” she thought out loud.
She wondered if you could tell from the egg of some creature what the creature looked like. “From what I remember the egg of a dinosaur and the egg of a chicken looked very much alike except for the size. It would be much better if when you saw an egg in a nest you could tell kind of creature made the nest and what kind of a welcome you would get if the egg’s parents came back. It would make more sense if eggs came with a picture on the outside of what was likely to hatch from it.”
She walked carefully around the egg. After she had gotten half way around, she noticed a large hole in the back of the egg. “It’s hatched already,” she said in a disappointed voice. “I would have very much liked to have seen it,” she said. “But of course if you get too familiar with animals you run out of things to eat,” she reminded herself.
“Since there’s nothing inside to come out, I can rest for a while,” she thought to herself, but Just as she sat down on the egg, she heard a screech and a creature that looked very much like a numbat hopped out of the hole in the egg. Behind it two little ones huddled screaming “ma, ma, we’re afraid.”
“Quiet,” the creature said to them pushing them under her and turning to Ashley. “It’s occupied,” it said. “Vamoose.”
Ashley got up with a start. “I am sorry,” she said. “I thought that whatever was in there had hatched already,” she said apologetically.
“Of course it has hatched, you ninny, otherwise you would be dealing with a tribe of angry relatives with sharp beaks instead of a squatter who has all she can do to keep up with near sighted birds swooping down mistaking her home for one of their wayward offspring. This shell is taken. Besides you are much too big for it. Almost all of the others are empty except that one,” she said “which hasn’t hatched yet,” ( she pointed to an egg off to the side away from where they were) “so find yourself another,” and she grabbed the bawling children and disappeared inside the egg shell.
Ashley moved away slowly looking around for another egg she could sit on. As she walked around the field, she noticed that most of the eggs had holes in them. When she found another stool sized egg, she knocked on its shell (just to be sure) and when no one answered she started to sit down on it. But as soon as she touched it, it slid away from under her. As she plopped to the ground, the egg rolled this way and that bouncing off one egg after another.
“Oh dear,” she said rather loudly. “I hope I did not disturb anything important.” Just as she finished the sentence, she heard a commotion from behind her. “I think I would be better off hiding,” she said and ran behind the nearest egg large enough to hide behind.
Just as she got herself hidden, the commotion got closer. When she peeked out from behind the egg, she saw two creatures come bouncing sliding, skidding into the field of eggs. “They don’t look very dangerous” she said, “because they don’t seem to be able to move very carefully.” The creatures were very short, with paunches that slid this way and that and long beards and thin wiry limbs that waved and shook wildly as they moved. One of them was carrying a ladder.
They came running into the field of eggs in a wild confused rush, turning and twisting and looking this way and that way.
“Which one, Bob?” the short one asked the other.
“That one I am sure, Charlie “ the taller of the creatures said, waving his arm at no egg in particular.
“I am sure it was that one,” the other said pointing as indistinctly in the other direction. Both of them ran in another direction entirely.
“I am sure they are not reptiles,” Ashley said calmly to herself. “They don’t have the teeth for it, and they have names,” she said as she drew herself back behind the egg.
After a while she peeked out again. Quite close to her the two creatures were pacing in front of the egg she was hiding behind.
“Do you see it?”
“Only heard it,” the other one said
“That’s true. But we might be able to see something up this close. I mean perhaps it is hatched by now.”
They ran around for a while before they stopped to catch their breath.
“Do you see it?”
“I can’t see anything at all?” came the answer.
“Get the ladder,” Bob said, collapsing on the ground.
“I have it,” Charlie said. He placed a long wooden ladder against the largest egg in the vicinity. “I am sure it’s this one.”
“It’s because it’s biggest they’ve picked it,” Ashley said. She could see from her vantage point the hole that told her that the shell was empty, but she stayed very quiet.
“It’s probably hatched by now and wandering around,” Bob said.
“No, I’m sure it’s not,” Charlie yelled. “What we heard were absolutely, definitely, beginning hatching sounds.”
Ashley wanted to see what they were doing. She crept quietly out of the egg she was hiding behind. “If I don’t make a sound,” she said, just as she tripped over a stone and set it moving through the field of eggs. There was a slow rumbling and tumbling as the stone rolled around bouncing into eggs.
“Do you hear that?” Charlie asked.
“What?”
“More hatching sounds.”
“Rumbling …”
“And other hatching sounds.”
“It’s happening,” the bigger of the two creatures said, “definitely. We had better let them know.”
“Oh hatching takes forever,” Bob said. “We have plenty of time. It’s certainly time for the game to begin. Who do you think will win?”
“I haven’t a clue,” Charlie answered.
“Maybe,” Ashley said “I’d better…” But as she straightened up she bumped into the egg she was standing behind, pushing it down a little incline. It made a loud bumping sound. “Oh,” she complained to no one in particular, “it does seem difficult to move quietly here.”
“It’s coming out for sure,” Bob yelled.
“Absolutely certain it’s coming, we had better fetch them,” he said. “They will be furious if we don’t tell them in time.”
“Let them be furious,” Bob said. “I don’t care.”
“It doesn’t make any sense doing it this way anymore. It’s old fashioned.”
“Unscientific.”
“Ought to use a dongle.”
“Certainly a dongle, at least.”
“And we should be at the game and they should be here watching and sitting on the eggs.”
“You are right. They should be here and we should be at the game, absolutely. And what are they doing?”
“What?”
“I don’t know, not hatching the eggs. Wasting time probably.”
“The game,” Charlie said. “It probably began already.”
“We can see it from here.”
“It’s not the same thing, of course. Not the same as being there.”
“Of course not. But lets see if we can see the field from here.” As he scurried up the ladder, he yelled, “I can see them. The game is definitely getting ready to start.”
“I wonder what they are looking at,” at Ashley said. “ If I am careful I can see” she said and crept out from behind the egg. “If I stand on my tippy toes I…I didn’t see that,” she explained to no one in particular as she knocked over one of the eggs that had been precariously leaning on another. “Things seem to be very unstable here” she complained.
She watched as it rolled a short distance knocking over smaller eggs around it and scaring birds which screeched as they rose up and settled down again.
“That’s it, its definitely hatching,” one of the creatures said as he put the cigar he had lit back into his pocket and slid down the egg.
“They move very strangely for things that came out of eggs” Ashley thought.
“Out is that way,” Bob said.
“No, it’s that way,” Charlie said looking at a path of wrappers that led into the distance.
“Oh yes, that way then.”
“No that’s the way to …”
“We have to tell them,” the first said. “The game…”
“The game will have to wait a bit,” the Bob agreed unhappily.
They sat down for a little and rested before they ran off.
After a little while they came back with something that looked very much like them except its beard was woven into pigtails and held in place with brightly colored ribbons. It was a she, Ashley decided, because it was wearing an apron.
“It distinctly made a hatching sound,” one of the men said to the creature in pigtails.
“Harruph,” she said. “Which one made the hatching sound?”
“It came distinctively from there.” One of the old men pointed. They shuffled over to the egg on which they had been sitting.
The woman walked over to the egg and tapped on it. Then she walked around it. When she spotted the hole she stopped walking. She grabbed Bob by the ear. As she pulled him, he fell down. Letting go of his ear, she grabbed his foot and dragged him over to an egg quite far from where they were standing. Ashley could see that it was one of the moderately sized eggs. “This is the one you have to sit on.” She yanked him up by his beard and jammed her face very close to his. “Now listen. Listen very, very carefully, Bob. Listen extremely carefully before you call me. Then call me quickly. Ally up,” she cried and hoisted him up on the egg. “You too,” she said to Charlie and hoisted him up next to Bob.
“There’s no room,” Charlie complained.
“There is room if you stop squirming,” she said, then she moved off.
Ashley could hardly keep herself from laughing
“I was sure that the sound came from over there,” Bob said, lighting his cigar. “Is she gone?”
“Yes,” Charlie answered, standing on the egg and looking around. Then he changed his direction and looked the other way.
“Be careful,” Bob said, she might still be around. “Do you see anything?”
“They’re playing, definitely.”
“Who’s winning?”
“Can’t see. That egg is in the way. Crouch down, “he said. “I’ll get on your back maybe I can see then.”
Bob crouched down as Charlie got up unsteadily on his back. “I still can’t see anything. Only the tops of their heads and hardly that. I’ll tell you what. You stay here and I’ll slide down and sit on that egg there, the big one, and describe the game to you.”
Bob grumbled. “Later we can change eggs,” Charlie said, “and you can describe the game to me.”
Ashley, who was very curious, tried to see what they were talking about but it was difficult. An egg blocked her view too. “Perhaps I can get to a place where I can see what they see,” she said. She started moving very carefully to the spot where she could see what was going on when she bumped into Charlie.
“Argh,” he cried. “It’s hatched. It’s big. Bob,” he cried,
“I haven’t hatched,” Ashley repeated. “I am lost.”
“Bob, There’s been a complication. Come down.”
“The game is about to begin,” Bob yelled back.
“A real complication,” the creature next to Ashley insisted.
“The game is about to begin,” his companion grumbled, as he came sliding up to Ashley and Charlie.
“It’s hatched already,” he said as he saw Ashley. “One of them. No beauty, I see,” he added.
“I haven’t hatched, “ Ashley insisted, “I am lost.”
“That’s likely if you’ve hatched recently and no one paid any attention to you. “
“I never was hatched.”
“No wonder you are lost,” the man said. “Which egg did you come out from?”
“That one,” Ashley said.
“I knew it. It wasn’t that other one at all,” he said pointing to the one he was told to sit on.
“No,” Ashley said. “I didn’t hatch,” Ashley said again. “I am lost and it was empty and I was just resting for a while. Being lost is no fun at all,” Ashley said. “I would like to get back home.”
“Being lost isn’t the worst thing,” Bob said. “Being found in the wrong place is worse. Then it doesn’t help at all to pretend you’re lost. No one believes you. Perhaps hatching would help. I mean, if you were hatched again before the game started it might help. We could do it quickly.”
“I never was hatched,” Ashley said.
“Well that probably explains it. Not being hatched can get you really permanently lost. Perhaps it would help you get out if you got in again. Crawl into this egg —there’s an opening in the back— and we’ll hatch you. It can’t hurt.”
Ashley looked at the egg. It was a little smaller than she was. It would be very cramped.
“If you don’t want to get into a shell,” Bob said, “perhaps we can do without it. Bend down a little.” He hopped on Ashley’s shoulders
“Don’t wiggle so,” he said roughly. “You are bending a little and it’s hard to hold on. Wait a minute. Bob,” he yelled.
“I think I can make it,” the other creature said and leapt on Ashley’s other shoulder.
“This is very silly,” Ashley said after a few minutes.”Perhaps I should try a shell,” Whenever she tried to move the creatures bounced around her shoulders.
“Well it would be more natural,” the creatures said hopping off.
She looked for an egg that she might fit into. “This one looks like I might fit.”
The creatures hopped on the egg, scrambling to find their balance as the shell shifted.
“Are you home yet? Do you feel ready to hatch yet?”
“Not quite,” Ashley answered settling into the egg. It was soft and fuzzy and very still. “I’m settling in” she said.
“I think it’s started,” she heard Bob say.
“Certainly looks that way to me,” Charlie replied. Then it was quiet.
“I’m ready,” she said, “if you are ready to try the hatching.”
There was a loud arguing from the outside.
“You sit for a while. I’ll tell you about the game.”
“No you sit and I’ll…”
There was a loud voice from the distance that shook the ground. “SIT STILL,” it said. Then there was a commotion and then things were very still and there was no noise from the outside at all. After while she crept out of the egg. The creatures were sitting glumly on the egg they were supposed to hatch. Ashley walked over to them. Bob looked down.”Oh you hatched,” he said. “And you are still here.”
“I didn’t hatch,” Ashley insisted, “I just climbed out of the egg.”
“It’s more or less the same thing,” he said. “If you’d been hatched before, you would have known.”
“I have an idea,” he said, his face brightening. “Since you are hatched and lost and have nothing to do right away, no responsibilities or obligations,” he said, “would you mind doing us a favor. The game.…We are supposed to be sitting on this egg. Could you take our place for a while?” Without waiting for Ashley’s reply they slid down beside her.
“I’ve never hatched an egg before,” she said as she awkwardly climbed up on the egg.
“There is nothing to it,” Bob said. “It’s always awkward at first but you get used to it. Call us if anything happens,” he said, and he and Charlie ambled off.
Ashley balanced on the egg precariously.
From short distance away she could hear the two creatures talking about the game she could not see. Ashley fidgeted uncomfortably on the egg, trying to get her balance. At first she sat up following the antics of the two old men as they balanced on one of the biggest eggs and looked intently at something that was happening far away.
“What is it that you are looking at?” Ashley asked.
“They are playing,” one of the creatures said.
“Who is playing?”asked Ashley.
“It’s hard to say. Who they are depends on the game, of course and sometimes they change the game in the middle. It depends.”
“They look like ants,” Ashley said stretching to get a view.
“It’s the distance,” one of the creatures said.
“Of course they could be ants,” the other added. “If it were football they were playing it might be ants. It’s hard to tell from this distance.”
“If it’s football, it’s a little on the slow side. Of course it might be a little slow if it were really ants playing football,” Ashley said
“Not likely,” one of the men said. “Not likely at all. They don’t have the eyes for the game.”
“It seems to me that eyes are not the essential part of football” Ashley said, but the creatures paid no attention to her at all and she lost interest in their argument. She struggled to find a comfortable position on the egg, something that let her sit on the smooth surface and not slide off and a way of perching on the egg that let her see something interesting. Sitting upright was difficult. The most comfortable position was laying across the egg with her head and feet dangling down. She felt the blood go to her face but it did not seem to bother her except to make her feel light headed.
“If I let myself, I could fall asleep this way” she said, “then where would I be. I might slide off and hurt myself. I’m tired,” she complained. She yelled to the creatures who were standing up on as egg close to her. With her head down she could not really see them well although she heard them yelling when whoever was playing made a score.
“This is boring,” she yelled.
“But its necessary work,” one of the men yelled.
“It’s your necessary work, not my necessary work. How long do I have to stay here?” she asked.
“Definitely only for a while. The game is almost over,” Bob cried.
Ashley struggled to stay on the egg. “Maybe there is something interesting happening inside it,” she said, “although I can’t imagine there is much interesting going on that I could see from the outside.” Ashley pressed her face into the shell of the egg. “I think I can make something out but it’s very, very …”
“It’s very hard to see,” said Bob “in the distance. They get ready to score and it gets foggy. They kick up a lot of dust for ants,” he complained.
“I can’t see clearly,” Ashley commented to no one in particular. “It’s very foggy,” she said and strained to see inside of the egg. She thought she made out a little room with a bed and a table and chair and little dresser next to it. On the bed what looked like a miniature version of Bob dressed in short pants, his beard just a single hair, jumped up and down.
“Be careful, you are definitely going to bounce off of the bed” Ashley yelled but the boy did not seem to hear her.
“ Be careful,” she heard Bob yell again, “he’s definitely going to try to push it past the line.”
“Wait,” Charlie said. “Something has run onto the field, not run exactly,” he said, “ambled more or less.”
“Did it score?” Charlie asked.
“It’s eating the players. It’s eating the goalkeeper. It’s eating the goal and its eating the ball.”
“I guess it scored,” Charlie said. “Now that was a game.”
As she watched, the little boy bounced from the bed onto the floor. After a while he pulled himself up on the bed again and sat crying. “Don’t bounce again or you are going to hurt yourself,” she said but the little boy did listen. After a little while he got up and began bouncing on the bed again.
“I am sure he will hurt himself badly this time,” Ashley said. “I should do something but what can I do?” She pressed her face against the shell even harder and tried to yell to the boy to stop. As she held onto the shell and pushed her face forward she felt the shell give way and although she was expecting to hear a crack what happened was that her head pushed though the shell.
“I told you so,” she said, “Be careful,” she repeated loudly startling the little boy who started crying again.
“Are you my ma?” the child asked, through his tears.
“No,” Ashley said, “I am not. This is really awkward,” she said. “Half in and half out of anything is no position to be in, especially half in an egg.” She tried to figure out which would be easier, getting her head out or the rest of her in. “If I get my head out, he certainly will not be able to hear me but I am sure I do not look very pretty half in an egg and half out.”
“Would you please move aside, off of the bed,” she asked, “in case I fall.”
“If you are not my ma I don’t see much of a point of taking orders from you” it said, but it moved anyway.
“I do not seem to be able to keep from falling inside of things,” Ashley thought as she tried to pull the rest of her inside the egg. “Now I am inside an egg inside of the computer. There probably won’t be any keys in here and I will be even more deeply lost,”she said as she tumbled inside the egg onto the bed. The fall made a terrible racket which frightened the child who began to cry again.
“Stop crying,” Ashley commanded the child.
“Are you sure you are not my ma?” the child wanted to know.
“I am very sure,” Ashley said.
“Then I’m an orphan,” the child wailed. “What a way to begin life.”
“I am sure you are not an orphan,” Ashley said. “It only looks like that from here. I am sure there are a mother and a father who are waiting for you,” although she wondered where they were and what they were waiting for.
“If you are not my mother what are you doing here?” it asked.
“I don’t really know,” Ashley said “but if I knew it would probably be too complicated for you to understand.”
The child started crying again. “If you are here to get me out,” he said through his tears, “you are wasting your time. I have decided,” it said emphatically “that I am not coming out. A lot of people have tried to get me out. They yell at me…”
“Yelling at anyone is not a way to get them to do what you want,” Ashley said. She thought a moment. “What do they yell?”
“They yell, ‘come out Bill. It’s time to come out.’”
“And …”
“I ignore them. I like it here. Who knows what is outside. It’s warm here and it never rains. They never tell me what it is like outside so I won’t go. There’s enough to eat and drink here. It’s not fun food but…”
“What do you do, I mean how do you spend your time?” Ashley asked.
“How do you spend yours?” Bill asked.
“I get up and I go to school and I watch television and I go to the movies, and…”
“I am teaching myself how to program a computer,” Bill said.
“Do you have a computer in here?” Ashley asked.
“I guess so,” Bill said. “If I can program it, it must be a computer. That’s the first thing I learned.”
“Does your computer have a mouse?” Ashley asked.
“It used to but it ran away.”
“How do you make it do what you want? How do you program it?” Ashley asked.
“I talk to it the way I am talking to you. I tell it to do things.”
“Does it do what you tell it?”
“Sometimes,” the boy said, “Sometimes.”
“I guess computers are the same everywhere,” Ashley said.
“They send me messages too,” said Bill. “They say, ‘come out Bill. It’s time to come out.’ I don’t answer them,” the boy said. Ashley sat for a while trying to think of what to do.
“What is it like outside?” the boy asked.
“It turns out there isn’t just one outside,” Ashley said, “there’s a lot of them. And they are different. On the outside I come from there’s candy and toys and televison and movies and death and taxes among other things.”
“So that is what the outside is like,” the little creature said.
“There is also school and homework,” Ashley said. She remembered she was inside of a computer. “I don’t really know what the outside of inside a computer is exactly. I haven’t seen a lot of it. But …”
“Then I’m not coming out,” the boy insisted. He thought for a while. “Give me a reason for coming out, “he said.
“Does it have to be a good reason?” Ashley asked.
“No,” the boy said after thinking about it for a while.
“Buffalos don’t come with brakes,” Ashley said.
“What kind of reason is that?” Bill asked.
“Well if a buffalo came in and couldn’t stop and skidded he might — might slobber all over you.”
“That is a reason, but not a good reason.”
“Sometimes there are no good reasons,” Ashley said. “You just have to do what you are told. If you are called you have to go. It’s just the way things are. I think I hear your mother calling you,” Ashley said.
“My ma?” the boy said.
“I’m sure of it,” Ashley said, although what she heard was Bob yelling “it’s eaten everything, a score for our side for sure. Did you see that?”
“Its time to go,” Ashley said.
“No,” the boy said and sat down on the floor.
Ashley grabbed him by the hand. “I think the best place for both of us would be outside. If I could figure out how to get out.” Just beside the dresser she saw a sign.
“Well,” she said to it.
“This way out” the sign said, roughly. “Push.”
She grabbed the little boy’s hand. “I don’t want to go out,” the boy said.
Ashley got behind the boy. “Time to hatch,” she said and pushed.
The door pushed out although the lines did not outline the hole they made as they tumbled out of the egg.
As Ashley got off the ground and shook off the dirt and debris, she heard a noise behind her. When she looked up she saw the pigtailed creature rushing up to them. She snatched the boys hand which Ashley was still holding and hissed at Ashley. “The first rule is,” she cried as she pulled his ear is “avoid strangers. Who are you?” she asked Ashley.
“Ma,” the boy cried.
“Quiet” she said to him roughly. “If you came out of the egg then you must be mine too,” she said to Ashley. “But you don’t look like mine.”
“I am definitely not yours,” Ashley said. “I got into the egg by accident.”
“I’ve heard that before and it is not likely,” the bearded lady said. “Not likely at all. But you are hatched.” She was in a quandary. “You can’t tell what is going to come out of an egg now adays, son,” she said to the little boy. She dragged him behind her, protectively.
“I’ll just be on my way,” Ashley said. “You wouldn’t know a way out, would you?” she asked.
“I don’t know any way out but a bus occasionally stops over there.”
“A bus sound like a good idea,” Ashley said and moved away. “If there is a bus it might be a way out although it’s not likely.”
Chapter 14
Ashley walked along the road that stretched out to the horizon. She hoped the bus would come soon and her hoping took the form of a song:
I’d like a car if I was going South,
open windows to let in the air.
I’d race the gossip traveling there
by word of mouth.
It’s a different story going North,
there its best to go by bus,
clothes in a paper bag, no fuss,
when you venture forth.
It’s a bother going East.
Eastward it’s best to fly,
a spiraling journey in a ragged sky,
arriving rested, at least.
West, there’s only one way of going West.
If I had to go I’d get a horse,
ride it backwards, of course,
for that direction a horse is best.
For going home I’d chose the most certain way
forgoing scenic, forgoing quick,
nothing whose slippery, sideways motion makes you sick
nothing that needs to stop for gas or hay.
For going home I’d chose the most straightforward way,
something sure, something cheap,
nothing that makes a whole trip in one leap,
nothing that finds out where its sitting
from other things that are orbiting,
nothing that rattles when it moves,
nothing with flaps or wheels or hooves,
nothing that needs to compute to finds its way
nothing that’s likely to go astray,
walking, I’d say.
I’d pick the way of traveling that,
No matter where you started from or ended at,
no matter how you turned or dawdled along the way,
no matter how often you stopped to play,
no matter how long it took or what it cost,
would get you finally home if you got lost.
“Walking can make one tired,” Ashley said after a while. “It would be nice if there were some place to sit,” she remarked to herself. “Perhaps it is only a matter of looking the right way in the right place to see it,” she said. “Backwards is out,” she reminded herself “but sideways—where the octopus was—may be promising again.”
Walking forward and looking sideways was uncomfortable but after a few steps she noticed what seemed like a soft and pleasant place to rest. It appeared to be a mossy patch where all of the leaves from the neighborhood had collected on the ground to gossip about the weather.
As she got closer, it seemed to her to be very much like a rug spread on the ground. “My uncle had a rug made out of the fake skin of an animal, and this place on the ground seems very much like that rug,” she said, although without a head showing, she could not tell what kind of an animal it was a fake of.
She walked over to the spot and looked around for any keys that might have fallen on it and after she could not find any she sat down. “It is a little lumpy,” she remarked but it felt warm and comfortable so she relaxed. But as she put her head down, the rug lifted up, the part by her feet rising first and she tumbled backwards onto the ground. She watched as the rug gathered itself and sat up. It was a bear.
The bear did not seem of the ferocious kind and, although everything she had heard about bears told her that a bear was not something you wanted to encounter without bars between you and it, she sat waiting for it to finish waking up before she decided what to do.
“Hello,” it said. “I was sleeping.”
“Hello,” said Ashley. “I hope I did not hurt you by sitting on you.”
“No,” the bear said. “I was sound asleep.”
“You certainly were. I know people sleep on their backs sometime—although I always try to sleep on my stomach—but I did not know bears slept that way.”
“We sleep any way we fall asleep which is mostly in caves anyway. I was looking for a cave to sleep in when I fell asleep.”
“Can you tell me what you are doing here?” Ashley asked politely, trying not to appear too nosy.
“Well it is a long story. You wouldn’t have any honey on you?” the bear asked. It rubbed its eyes and shook itself awake and Ashley watched as it unfolded and fluffed up a large pair of wings.
“I’m afraid not, “ Ashley said, trying not appear surprised by wings on a bear.
“I hate to begin a long story without some honey,” the bear said, folding up his wings, “but I guess the future, distant prospect of honey will have to do.”
“I guess it will,” Ashley said to herself.
The bear tried to find a comfortable place on the ground. It scratched its head and reached back and scratched its wings then began.
“I was a person once and then I remember I found myself changed into a bear. A bear just as you see me now, without the wings though. The wings came later. Do you find that hard to believe, I mean about being changed into a bear suddenly?”
“I would have yesterday,” Ashley said, “But today, absolutely not. Not at all.” She tried hard not to show that she found wings on a bear a significant difference. “Was it uncomfortable?” she asked.
“No, just different. I hadn’t thought of being a bear before.”
“What did you do?” Ashley wanted to know.
“I lumbered around looking for honey, poking into tree stumps, swatting flies. That sort of thing.”
“No,” I meant when you were a person.”
“As a person, let me try to remember. It was a very long time ago.”
Ashley waited.
“I did something... “
“I’m sure you did, “ she said, “most people do.”
“I was a scientist of some sort. I spent my time looking at the sky.”
“With a telescope?” Ashley asked. She tried to remember the name for a scientist who studied at the sky with a telescope. “An astronomer,” she said.
“We called ourselves ‘scientists who studied the heavens with a tube with glass on two ends’. It sounded more romantic than….” He seemed to forget the word Ashley used.
“Astronomer,” Ashley said, enjoying the sound of the word.
“What do you see when you look…?” asked Ashley.
“Trees and dirt mostly, but I am always looking out for honey combs,” the bear interrupted.
“Through the tube with glass at both ends, up,” Ashley said completing her thought.
“Oh, stars, planets, moons — a lot of moons I think. They may have been stars, I was never sure. But I liked to look at lightening best. I always suspected lightening was made of electricity,” the bear said. “I started experimenting with electricity. I had trouble though, keeping it in the jars and making it run through the wires.”
“I’d be careful,” Ashley said, “electricity in wires is dangerous.”
“I know,” the bear said sadly.
“How did you get here?” Ashley asked.
The bear scratched its head. “My memory is a little fuzzy now. I was looking at the sky with my telescope. There were loud noises and I thought they were fighting again. People were always fighting then. When men in those silly steel costumes fought on horses, they made a lot of noise. Then I realized it was a storm and there was lightening. It came down very close and it knocked me out. Clever, that lightening. It may have been angry about the jars and wires. When I woke up, I was a bear.”
“Were you hurt?” Ashley asked
“No, just confused a bit. But no more astronomy for me. I think the world is made of up electricity,” the bear said off handedly
“No, that is not right,” Ashley corrected. “It is made of quirks and held together with string,” she said.
“I thought that was superstition, like spiders coming from dung heaps,” the bear replied scratching its head.
“What’s a dung heap?” Ashley asked.
“Never mind,” he said. “You’re sure of that?” he asked, “I mean the quirks and string.”
“Pretty much,” she said “I don’t know it for a fact personally, but it is what my science teacher says.”
“Where are we?” the bear asked.
“In a computer,” Ashley said.
“What’s a computer?” the bear asked.
Ashley realized that the bear was a man a long time ago. “It’s a little difficult to explain. It’s a machine. I use a computer,” she added, “but always from the outside. From the inside it’s quite different.”
“Well if you use it,” the bear said “you should know how it works.
“I’m afraid I don’t.” Ashley admitted.
“I don’t doubt it,” the bear said. “I’ve noticed that as soon as a person can to do something they forget what they are doing and how they do it. Like walking,” it added. “It takes a dreadful effort to learn to walk, for a bear or a person, then as soon as you are able to walk you forget what walking is about and how you manage to do it. We do a frightful number of things without a clue about what we are doing or how we go about doing it.”
“The computer uses electricity, I know.”
“Oh,” said the bear. “Does it eat it?”
“Only in a manner of speaking. It’s a machine.”
“Like a mill or a catapult,” the bear said.
“What’s a mill?” Ashley asked. When the bear shrugged, she continued. “There is a switch to turn it on. Then you have to tell it to start a program by hitting the keys. Then it does something”
“Like monks in a monastery,” the bear suggested.
“What are monks?” Ashley asked.
“They are not important I suspect,” the bear said. “It does something. You mean like building a barn or harvesting a field,”
“No,” Ashley said. “On a screen. In other machines, it helps them work.” When the bear screwed up his face in a puzzled look she said, “It’s like a television set.”
“What’s a television set?” the bear asked.
“It’s another machine. It shows you things. You can watch movies and you find out things from it. Information.”
“Like a helpful companion. I had an assistant who kept track of things and took notes and helped me turn the tube with glass at both ends. Does the television have to be swung around?” the bear asked.
“No it just sits there. At least mine just sat there. It can play music,” she added cheerfully, “like a CD”
“What’s a CD?”
“It’s a disk and you put it in a part of the computer and it plays music.”
“I see,” said the bear. “I’m going back to sleep,” it said. “Being awake is too troublesome.” It sat down and leaned back and the wind came and spread the leaves over it. “I don’t expect you’ll be around when I wake up.”
“Probably not,” Ashley agreed. “But before you go to sleep,” Ashley asked. “The wings. How did you get them?”
“The lottery,” the bear said. “It was the prize. I didn’t even know I was playing.”
“Can you fly?” Ashley asked.
“I tried once,” the bear said slowly, “to frighten the bees. It didn’t work. Never got the hang of it.”
“Oh,” said Ashley. “They are lovely wings. I’ve never seen a bear with wings.”
“Thank you,” the bear said. “Good luck.”
Before she took a few steps toward the road where she hoped the bus would stop she heard someone singing, and, although there was no one around except the bear, she was not sure it was him singing.
Most of us need to be reminded
the world is strange,
that even knots and tangles
suddenly change.
This or that before, yesterdays either or,
over night’s become,
neither nor, or both and more
and then some.
And where the boundary’s drawn
the line past which one must not move ones feet,
the line one must not cross,
is shifting along the bloody street.
And the line between good and bad,
the line where opposites meet,
the line one must not cross,
has moved across the bloody street.
We need to be reminded,
there is always a surprise,
ready to leap out of the shadows
as soon as we close our eyes.
A bear wakes up from a long winters sleep,
lumbers out of his cave and stretches his wings,
and suddenly we’re reminded
of the most surprising things.
And suddenly we remember
the most surprising things.
Chapter 15
When Ashley left the bear with wings and walked to the road, she saw a tiny house ahead of her off to the side and she could hear a sign screaming “Bus stop, bus stop,” but it was not clear whether it was screaming at her or a bus she did not see.
When she got to the little house the sign said, “well, it took you long enough. The bus stops here. Come on in. You can wait inside.” It turned around and showed Ashley ‘Waiting Room’ painted on its back. “You can watch for the bus through the window.”
Ashley entered the little house and closed the door behind her. The waiting room was empty. The sun threw a shaft of bright light into the room and she sat a long time wondering how long the trip home would take if the bus really did go home. “The computer is a foreign place,” she thought to herself, “the strangest,” although she knew Miss Maple would not accept it as a foreign country for homework.
She looked out the window and saw a bus far down the road. It was huge in the distance but it seemed to be moving very slowly. She sat thinking about her adventures for what seemed to her a long time but when she looked up the bus did not seem to have moved except it was a little smaller. “If it is coming my way it is a very strange bus,” she said. “It seems to get smaller the closer it gets.” As far as she remembered, things got larger the closer they got. But this is inside of the computer, she thought and things do not seem to work here the way they work outside of the computer.
Ashley watched the bus get bigger then smaller then bigger again for a while then she closed her eyes. When she opened them again, the mouse was next to her on the bench.
“How are you?” the mouse asked.
“I’m still lost if that is what you mean,” Ashley said.
“No, not that at all. If you can talk to me I assume that you are still lost. I mean are you enjoying it. Are you learning something?”
“I’m afraid not,” Ashley said. “Should I be?”
“Oh yes,” the mouse said. “You are always learning one thing or another even if you don’t realize that you are learning it. It’s sorting out what you are learning out that’s difficult.”
There was a knock on the door.
“I wonder who that is?” she said to the mouse
“We will see in a moment I suppose,” the mouse said.
The door opened and the bear with wings came in. “I decided,” it said, taking a seat next to Ashley, “that taking a bus might be better than sleeping. There might be a swarm of bees who were thinking of moving their hive. You never can tell,” it said. “About bees I mean. You don’t have to talk if you don’t want to. I see you are thinking about something.”
“I was just talking to the mouse,” Ashley said, preparing to introduce them but when she looked down the mouse had disappeared.
“I was thinking about the computer,” Ashley said after a while. “It was easy enough to get in but getting out…”
“There’s a reason for that,” the bear said. “Usually there are more ways into a place than out. I don’t know why. It’s like getting dirty. There are one thousand and three ways of getting dirty but only one way of getting clean. Soap.” It screwed up its face. “Getting out of anything is always a problem,” the bear said, dusting off its wings. Just then the door opened again and Ashley recognized the Meme. “Oh,” it said. “I didn’t know there was anyone else waiting. If it is too crowded, I can wait out here,” he said.
“No,” said Ashley. “There’s room for you.” As she said it, a crowd of sprites swarmed around the Meme into the house. “We are going to the simulation you know,” they cried.
“I didn’t know that at all,” Ashley said.
“Well there’s always room for one more. Bits and bytes and flesh, are infinitely compressible,” the Meme said, pushing some of the sprites off of the bench and sitting down. “We are going to the simulation,” he repeated. “Are you going there too?”
“I guess I am,” Ashley said. “What is a simulation?”
“A simulation is a pretend,” the Meme answered, “an everybody-together pretend.”
“You don’t have any honey on you?” the bear asked as if it were a stray thought that wandered into his head accidentally.
“No,” the Meme said. “Sadly, I don’t.”
“Well it’s making some headway,” the bear said, looking at the bus through the window. “It’s getting smaller and smaller although it is still quite large.”
“Does the bus make any other stops besides the simulation?” Ashley asked the Meme.
“I wouldn’t know,” it said. “I’ve never taken it before,” he explained. “We all won a free trip.”
“In the lottery,” Ashley guessed.
Before the Meme could answer there was a drumbeat of knocks on the door and it swung open. The cat, the dog and the pig (with the talking head riding on its back) stood outside.
“It’s almost like home,” the cat said. “It just needs a fat man waiting for a while,” the pig said as it trotted in, nearly pushing the Meme off of the bench.
“I’m afraid there’s barely any room,” Ashley said.
“There’s always room for morphs,” the cat said, slithering under Ashley’s legs. Ashley noticed the smile was back on the dog. “The smile …” she said to the cat.
“Couldn’t keep it on,” the cat said. “It prefers him.”
The dog put his head on the Meme’s lap. “Hrupm grot,” it said.
“I don’t understand dog language,” the Meme said.
“It’s not dog language,” Ashley explained, “it’s the smile.”
“Oh,” said the Meme, “I didn’t realize a smile could talk on its own.”
“He wants to know if you are crying for him,” the cat asked.
“Why should I cry for him?” the Meme asked.
“Oh you can’t tell. Countries have been known to cry or laugh for a Macarena. Why not a Meme for a dog with a disability?”
“Not this Meme, for that dog, with that disability,” the meme said sharply.
“If the bus doesn’t come soon,” Ashley said, “we are going to be squashed.”
“Being squashed is no problem for a morph,” the talking head said as the door opened again.
“Or an octopus,” Ashley heard a voice say. “One tentacle here,” he said as Ashley felt a tentacle creep around her leg, “another there,” as the cat grew a puckered smile, “and another there,” he said, as a tapering, thin head with suckers on it seemed to grow next to the talking head, “and you are in,” the octopus said, as the last tentacle pulled the rest of him in. “I was painting and I thought ‘simulation.’ And here I am.”
They sat a little while in silence until the door opened again.
“No room, no room,” the cat cried.
The two hedgehogs stood outside with their carts. “No room,” said the cat again.
“We have all sorts of good things to eat,” one of the hedgehogs said, “honey and…”
“Honey,” the bear said, jumping up. “Honey. There’s room over here,” he snorted. He fluffed his wings, throwing the cat and the pig and all of the sprites against the side of the house. “Honey, well, make yourselves and your carts comfortable.”
As the bear struggled to get to the hedgehogs, the door opened again. The Meme (who was closest to it) looked out. “No one is there,” he said.
“No one here. Well I’ve never been so insulted,” the turtle said as he pushed his shell (on which the frog lifeguard sat) between the Meme’s legs.
For a while there was only silence. Then there was a loud pounding on the door.
“I am sure we will all suffocate,” Ashley said “if there is one more body of any kind in here. There’s not room enough for, for…” The door swung open and the butterfly danced a little dance quietly before it showed the message written on its wings. “The bus is here, “ the message said.
All of the creatures rushed out pushing Ashley aside, and by the time she got out of the house there was a crowd standing on the road in front of the bus.
“It’s tiny,” Ashley said, looking at the bus. “It’s no bigger than the waiting room,” she sighed. “I can’t think of traveling anywhere in something so crowded.”
“Oh don’t worry,” the Meme said. “It only looks small from the outside. Inside, it’s as big as any bus that ever was. It’s a Turing bus,” he said.
“What’s a Turing bus?” Ashley asked as the doors opened.
“A Turing bus goes anywhere any kind of transportation can go,” the Meme said. The sprites in front of the door of the bus made way for Ashley. “You first though,” they said. “You never can tell.”
Ashley climbed into the bus which was much bigger when she got inside. It seemed to stretch back a long distance along the road. “Ticket please,” the driver said, as he reached over and pulled a lottery ticket from her pocket.
‘I thought I used up all of my tickets evolving,’ Ashley thought to herself.
“If you win…” the driver added, as he waved her through.
“You get a refund,” cried the sprites waiting behind her as they rushed through the door nearly trampling her. Each waved a lottery ticket at the driver.
“Move to the rear of the bus,” the driver insisted when the bus began to get crowded. All of the creatures who had been in the house pushed around Ashley and disappeared into the back of the bus leaving Ashley, the morphs, and the bear with wings to occupy the very front seats. As she settled into her seat, a butterfly fluttered down, rested on her shoulder and went to sleep.
The driver closed the door and grabbed a book that was on a small shelf near him. Opening it, he looked at the page then held it up to Ashley’s face. “Can you make out this number, it seems particularly small,” he yelled?
“Twenty-six,” Ashley said looking at a page of numbers. All of the numbers on the page were twenty-six.
“Are you sure it’s twenty-six?”
“Yes,” Ashley said.
The driver stared out of the window as if he were searching for
something. ‘The State of
“Excuse me where is this bus going?” Ashley asked the driver
“This is a Turing bus. It is going everywhere and anywhere a bus can go. Everyone knows that.”
“But,” Ashley asked “doesn’t it have a destination, isn’t there a last stop?”
“I hope so,” the driver said.
“What is it?” Ashley asked.
“I don’t have a clue. There usually is a last stop, but you never can tell where or when. And sometimes there isn’t, but you can’t tell that either of course.”
“I would like to go home,” Ashley said.
“Wouldn’t we all,” the driver responded, “but we can’t go there.”
“But you said …”
“Anywhere a bus can go—on this line. If ‘home’ were in the computer we would stop there. But ‘home’ is not on this line. It is not on any line in the computer. You should have thought about that before you leaped in.”
“I didn’t leap in,” Ashley said. “I was pulled in by a mouse.”
“There’s no rule that said you had to hold on, is there,” he smirked, “so it was your own choice.”
“There wasn’t much of a choice,” Ashley said. “It was hold on or lose my homework.”
“Choices are never fun,” said the bus driver slamming on the brakes and grabbing the book again. “This number looks like a thirty-eight to me,” he said.
“I think it’s a three,” Ashley said.
“Three, thirty-eight. It’s six of one, half a dozen of another.” He turned and screamed to the back of the bus. “Is anyone getting off at thirty eight?” he asked.
“Three,” Ashley said.
“Or three,” the driver added.
There was a stampede of feet from the back of the bus. “The door is broken,” the bus driver said. “Out the window,” he yelled, and the creatures scrambled out the window, tumbling here and there as they hit the ground.
“They’ll get hurt,” she said.
“Not likely,” the bus driver said. When they were all out, the driver threw the bus into reverse. He looked in the mirror and tried to keep the bus on the road as it was going backward. After a while he passed a sign screaming six and he jammed on the brakes.
“Now check out this number,” he said, holding the book out to Ashley.
“It’s a funny number. Not a number at all it looks like a picture of an ‘I’,” she said.
“Oh that again,” the driver said as he shifted into forward again and wobbled ahead. “Ignore it.”
After they traveled a little bit, the bus passed a sign screaming ‘bus stop, bus stop.’ It screeched to a halt and the driver opened the doors. Almost all of the creatures who had just gotten off poured through the open doors. But instead of moving to the back they crowded around Ashley.
“It doesn’t make sense,” Ashley said to the driver as the bus started up again. “Why would they get off and get on again?”
“It doesn’t make a lot of sense but with a little honey on it, it would make some sense,” the bear insisted. Just as Ashley was ready to faint from the crowding, the bus passed a sign. “Mozart’s grave,” it bellowed as the bus passed.
“Did that sign say ‘Mozart’s Grave’ or ‘Mozart’s Cave’?” the cat wanted to know.
“Didn’t catch it,” the driver said, handing the book to the pig. “What number is there?” he asked.
“Twenty-four,” the talking head said as the pig moved its hooves over the number.
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely certain,” the talking head said.
As the drive jammed on the brakes, Ashley saw the little sign hop up to where the bus stopped. “Mozart’s grave,” it said. “Lunch and probably a simulation.”
“Mozart’s grave is as good a place as any for a lunch break,” the bus driver said. “And a simulation if there is time.”
Chapter 16
When the doors jerked opened everyone in the bus spilled out and tumbled over one another, bouncing and rolling, and ran off. No one but Ashley seemed to mind the chaos and confusion.
“I’m going to check out the honey,” the bear said as he wandered off.
“I don’t very much mind being alone,” Ashley said to herself, “but sometimes you are alone because everyone else is somewhere where something is happening that you wish afterwards you knew about.” The idea popped into Ashley’s head that the simulation might be a way of getting home and she set off looking for someone to ask about it. She walked without paying any attention to where she was going ( because she had no destination and was lost) and after two turns found herself in a maze of bushes and hedges and grass.
“If you are going to have a simulation, I guess you have to have it somewhere of course, but this does not look like a proper place for it,” even though she was not sure exactly what a simulation was. “If I were going to have a simulation—or a birthday party—I would certainly want a more open, accessible place,” she said.
As she turned a corner of the maze, the bushes fell away and she found herself on a grassy field in a park. At the very front of the field there was a stage on a wooden platform and on the stage was a large half-open box with a little stage on it. A large curtain surrounded the stage and closed around the box. She had seen a puppet show in a park near her home and this stage looked very much like what that stage looked like before the puppets came out.
As she stood looking at it, she heard a terrible racket coming from behind the stage. She looked around for a sign that might be able to tell her what to do ( or what not to do which was almost as useful sometimes.) When she did not see one or hear one, she walked around to the back of the platform where the noise seemed to be coming from.
Ashley had to put her hand over her mouth to keep from laughing. On the stage, behind the curtain, was a spinning circle of creatures. Each was holding onto some part of the creature in front of it in so that they made a strange, whirling ring.
At first, Ashley thought they were extremely fuzzy and bushy but then she realized that they were tangled in string that was unraveling from balls of twine that each of them carried.
As Ashley watched, the creatures looked around, then slowed down and flopped exhausted onto the floor.
“She’s an absolute tyrant,” one of the creatures who looked like a porcupine but with feathers instead of quills, said noticing Ashley.
“She is the bossiest creature around one,” another added directing his remark to Ashley. He was fussing with the string that hung from his arms and legs “What are you?”
“My name…”
“Not your name. What are you? I don’t recognize you.”
“I don’t recognize you either,” Ashley said, “but that’s because we weren’t introduced yet. I wasn’t going to make something out of nothing.”
“There you see,” one of the other characters, a fat creature who was bouncing up and down like a sack of jelly, said. “Where did you ever get the idea you were important? Hello deary,” he said to Ashley in a familiar tone.
“Do I know you?” Ashley asked confused.
“Well you should if you are who you always say you are. How could you be if you can’t recognize, not to recognize …” It grabbed a wad of string that was around its head and pulled it away from its face.
“Ha,” the third creature interjected. “You know me, of course, although I must say your face is not familiar and I can’t say I’ve seen any other parts of you either.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know any of you,” Ashley said.
“And she tells everyone she uses a computer. I’ve heard her, ‘I use a computer,’ she says, ‘I know the rules. Rule one.’ Fat chance—and not recognizing…”
A spiny, spidery creature who had propped himself up against a bulwark and was sliding back onto the floor, interrupted. “This is the operating system,” he said, pointing to a creature who was wrapped in layers of clothing, “his name is Ossie. And this is an algorithm, we call him Algernon. And there is the network whose name is Newt,” he said pointing to the creature who was blanketed in string, “and I am the clock, my name is Chroney and…”
“and talk and talk,” another creature interrupted. “I’m the program of course, There is no way you can be here and not recognize me,” it said. “My name is Kneeth that rhymes with teeth.”
“Why should you think I know you?” Ashley asked. “Are you the computer?”
“Not exactly,” Ossie said, “we make the computer work, you see.”
‘It looks to me, like the computer makes you work,’ Ashley thought to herself, but out loud she asked, “where is the computer? I have a question. Well, not a question exactly.”
“Oh the computer is somewhere, bossing something, I expect,” the operating system said. “Can’t keep from bossing. Boss, boss, boss. Where she got the idea…”
“Not from me, I keep telling her…”
“From somewhere. It’s not important where.”
“Is the simulation going to begin soon?”said Ashley who was a little tired.
From somewhere Ashley heard a voice screaming “kill that processinterrupt it.” She noticed the operating system turn a little white although it was hard to see because it was wearing layers and layers of clothing. “She thinks she can do anything, anything at all,” it said. All of the creatures began to shake a little.
“Is the simulation a puppet show?” Ashley asked.
“Oh no,” the program said. “It only looks that way so that you can watch it. That’s not what it’s about at all. Don’t you know what a simulation is?”
“Of course, it’s a pretend,” said Ashley repeating what she had heard.
“More or less,” the operating system said. “But it’s collective pretend. Everyone pretends to believe at once. Not like a puppet show at all. Puppets never pretend anything.”
“Not at all,” Ossie repeated, then, held its breath as a personage that looked very much like a man dressed as a woman came rushing into the backstage area. He or she was wearing an elegant dress and a wig that looked very much like a wig. On the wig was a little crown and he or she was holding a stick with a star on the end that Ashley remembered (from books with fairy godmothers in them) was a wand. Ashley stared for a long moment. She had to, even though it was impolite, because she could not tell if the creature before her was really a man or woman. He seemed to be one for a while then flip and be the other for another time. It was very confusing. He seemed to be a man because he had a little moustache and was smoking a short cigar but he seemed like a woman because of the dress and the wig. Because all of the creatures talked about it as a ‘she,’ Ashley decided that noticing the ambiguity would not be nice and decided to think about it as a she and to call it a she even if it turned out finally to be a he.
“What are all of you doing standing around?” the creature said.
The network began to answer. “We were talking, you see about…”
“Talking. Talk, talk, talk is about all you do. I’ve a mind to…”
“That’s my business, your majesty,” the network butted in.
“I’ll give you your business,” the personage said. “Your business is to mind your manners otherwise. Where are the interrupts?” it asked the algorithm.
“They are, they are…”
“Speak up. Don’t waste my time.”
“Here your majesty,” the clock said.
“Speak when I speak directly to you. You’ve been very slow recently.”
“Whenever I look the nanoseconds are running off doing something else than…It’s hard, your majesty, what with time speeding up. A clock can only…”
“On your feet and start running.”
“But the simulation…,” the program began.
“First practice then the simulation. Up. Run.”
The creatures pulled themselves up very slowly grabbed a convenient part of whoever was in front of them and started to run around in a crooked circle.
“Faster,” the woman dressed as a man demanded. “Faster.” Then she turned to Ashley.
“Who are you?” she asked Ashley.
“I’m Ashley, and I’m lost.”
“I shouldn’t wonder,” the creature said, pointing her wand at Ashley, “if you poke your head through every open space.” As soon as she said this, she turned her attention to the whirling creatures. “Faster,” she screamed at the top of her voice.
“I assure you I did not poke my face into the computer,” Ashley said.
“And I assure you,” the creature said, “that is a very good thing.”
“Who are you and what is going on?” Ashley asked as if she had a right to know.
The personage drew itself up and tried to look down on her but it was not too much bigger than Ashley was. It pulled the cigar out of its mouth then jammed it back in. ”Who am I, who am I? I am the Queen you ninny—the computer.”
Ashley looked dubious. She realized that what she was going to say violated the first rule she had learned in her diversity class but she couldn’t help herself. “I can’t tell exactly what you are because you look like a man dressed…or a woman…”
“That kind of talk will get you nowhere—which is not where a person who is lost has an interest in going. I’m the computer and a Queen.”
“Are you a real Queen?” Ashley asked remembering her diversity lessons.
“I’m as real a Queen, as royal a creature, as you are likely to
see in your lifetime. Beauty Queens, and Dairy
“I certainly do want to get home,” Ashley said. When the Queen did not say anything for a while Ashley asked, “What are they doing?”
“They are running around in a circle, practicing.”
“Practicing what?” Ashley asked.
“Practicing running around in a circle.”
“What are they practicing for?” Ashley asked.
“You really are nosy. For the simulation, of course. It takes a lot of practice to get it right, otherwise, given what things are, everything starts doing what they want to do and…. My first rule is ‘face chaos head on.’ My second rule is, ‘take care of the practice and the performance will take care of itself and the bits and bytes and whatever else is around.’ My third rule is …”
“Is that what a simulation is, running around?” Ashley interrupted. “I had just decided the simulation was a puppet show. I’ve seen one of those in a stage just…”
“Quiet,” the Queen said. She turned to the spinning creatures. “Faster,” she screamed.
“We can’t go any faster. The circle is breaking” one of the whirling creatures shouted. “The string is flying up and making a tangle.”
“Faster, I can still see…”
As Ashley looked, the circle wobbled and trembled as each of the creatures got more and more tied up in the string that played out from the balls of twine they held.
“Keep spinning,” the computer ordered as she lifted her skirt and stepped out of the circle.
“Do you want to come with me? I’m going to check on the other performers.”
“What other performers? Ashley asked.
“The audience, pixels, memes, bytes, gates, a morph or two, I suppose. You can stay here of course. If you stay, you must keep them spinning. Yell at them, Threaten to cut off their processes. That always terrifies then and keeps them moving. Keep moving,”she screamed, “otherwise your processes will be history. Like that,” she said to Ashley.
“I’ll stay,” said Ashley .
“As you wish, tra de la,” the computer sang and swept out.
As soon as she was out of sight the creatures slowed down and looked around.
“I think you should keep spinning,” Ashley said. “She said she would cut of your processes.”
“Not likely,” Algernon said, looking over his shoulder.
“If she is the Queen, where is the king?” Ashley asked.
“She’s both more or less. It’s economical,” the clock commented. “Two of them would be absolutely unbearable,” it added in a whisper.
“One royal personage is always enough if it takes itself seriously,” the operating system said.
“Did you notice the wig. Not very nice is it,” the program commented.
“It is a little queer,” Ashley said.
“A little,” the network said roaring with laughter. “A little. It looks like…”
“Like a network with its process cut off,” a voice screamed from the distance. “Spin.”
The creatures jumped to their feet grabbed the nearest part of the creature nearest to them and started running again.
“Are they ready?” Ashley asked when the
“They are never ready,” the Queen said. “The pixels are all blinking and the memes are walking around in circles tapping one another on the shoulder and asking all sorts of questions. The gates are the worst though. Put a string on them, tie them up and they roll around chomping on bits of things biting and forgetting. They sit around saying ‘I think I can, I think I can, to one another and forgetting immediately. Stupid, I don’t know why we bother. Faster,” the Queen yelled to the whirling creatures in front of her.
“Are you still here?” she said to Ashley. “I thought you would be lost somewhere else by now.”
“Where else can I go. The Turing bus…”
“Long gone, it will be back of course, sometime later,” the computer said. “Faster or I will separate your processes.” The creatures spun faster. “Are you ready?” she asked.
“We are as ready as we will ever be,” the clock exclaimed breathlessly.
“And that is not enough for a simulation,” the Queen said. “The most you will get out of that is…”
“They must be very tired, your majesty,” Ashley said cautiously.
“They are not tired enough,”the Queen said. “Faster. Faster. I am going to get things ready,” and she swept out again.
As soon as she was gone, the creatures slowed down again and collapsed in a heap. After a while Kneeth, the program, lifted itself up from the floor. “Pick a card,” he said to Ashley holding out a deck of cards.
Ashley picked a card.
“Well put it down,” it said.
“Did I do it right?” Ashley asked after the creature did nothing but stare at the card for a few minutes.
“Not quite,”the program said. “Not quite. You should have picked this one,” it said as it selected a card from the middle of the deck.
“What are you doing?” Ashley inquired.
“I’m playing solitaire—to kill time,”he said.
The clock screamed.
“No, no, it’s only a gruffle metaphor,” the program said as the clock ran and hid behind the operating system.
“I didn’t mean kill time, I meant pass the nanoseconds.”
“Is there going to be a simulation?” Ashley asked.
“I guess so,” the operating system said.
“You are sure a simulation isn’t a puppet show?”Ashley asked.
“No, my dear,” the algorithm put a scaly arm around Ashley should. “Whatever made you think so.”
“Well Ashley said trying not to appeared discomforted by the scales which were very scratchy, “this stage looks very much like a puppet theater I saw once.”
“You cannot imagine how different things are that look alike. Morphs for instance.”
“Yes.”
“Morphs are one instance.”
“Instance of what,” Ashley asked.
“Of morphs of course,” it said. “If everything that looked alike was alike “ it continued, “well there would be nothing but chaos.”
At the word chaos the Queen’s voice bellowed from behind them. “Still, stiller, gone. If you are not in motion fast,” but the creatures, which were exhausted, ignored her.
“No, a simulation is not a puppet show, it only looks that way so that you can watch it. That not what it’s about at all. A simulation is collective pretend.”
“Why bother if it isn’t real?”Ashley asked.
“Oh it is real. But it is not real as it appears. As for what it is good for…”
“Faster,”the Queen’s voice screamed. “If you are not in motion in …” As the voice got closer the creatures got up and started rushing around again.
“Enough.” the Queen cried as she strode on stage. “They are an unruly lot.”
“The worst your majesty,” the algorithm said.
“You are the worst,” the Queen said. “They are just confused.”
“They don’t know the rules,” the operating system said.
“Well,” the Queen said, “do any of you have the least recollection of how a simulation works?” she asked.
“It slipped my mind,” the algorithm said.
“Vaguely,” an anonymous voice said.
“Well,”the Queen said,
“You,”she pointed to Ashley “must go out on stage while they…”
“But I won’t be able to see,” Ashley complained, “and I am lost.”
“You,” the Queen repeated staring at Ashley, “will go out on stage. Stand in front. You shall look intelligent,” she said. “You must look intelligent. The audience will look at you. They are silly things they will think that you are…”
“The simulation,” Ashley said.
“Of course,” the Queen said.
“Then you,”she pointed to the creatures on the ground. “You will run down from the stage and tie string around as many of the pixels and gates and other things that are milling around and tie them together.”
“It seems very, very, complicated,” Ashley said.
“No, my child,” the Queen said, her voice dropping to a quiet growl before it rose in one long leap to a shriek. “You just have to stand there and look intelligent.”
“I am intelligent,” Ashley insisted.
“That does not matter at all. Being intelligent is not the problem. Looking intelligent is difficult. Look intelligent,” the Queen demanded. “I don’t care what you are, its appearances that matter here.”
“When they see the string, they will run,” the program said.
“They always run,” the Queen said.
“When they see the string, you must grab as many as you can and tie them up. Preferable all of them, but at least as many as you can get. “
“It sounds a little strange,” Ashley said.
“It is a little strange but not as strange as getting lost in the computer,” the Queen said. “Now you,”she said to Ashley, “to the front. Move through the curtain onto the center of the stage and look intelligent.”
“Boss, boss, boss,”Ashley heard the operating system complain as she moved through the curtains The stage was flooded in so much light that Ashley had a hard time seeing. In front of her, filling the grassy park, were a sea of creatures. There were not sitting in any orderly way but rolling and tumbling around on the grass. It was as chaotic a scene as she could imagine.
“Look intelligent,” Ashley heard the
“I am intelligent,” Ashley said.
“If you are intelligent,” a voice boomed out from the audience “how come you are lost?” it asked.
“I was doing my homework,” Ashley began when the
As Ashley put on her most intelligent look, she saw the operating
system and the algorithm and the program leap through the curtain and rush off
of the stage and twirl around grabbing pixels and winding string around
whatever part of them they managed to get hold of. Some of the creatures who
were not tied up ran away and others flung themselves on others who were
struggling to get free and tied themselves up. As Ashley watched the chaos
develop, she heard the
There was only a shrill mumbled cry from the operating system. “They are, but.…”
“But nothing,” the Queen said. “Ready set,”
“I’d think about it again,” said Ashley who watched the chaos intensify.
“Ready or not,” the Queen said, “Go.”
The lights on the stage went out and Ashley found herself back on
one of the airplanes that had appeared when she was evolving at the
“You would have thought by now that whoever is flying the plane would have learned the difference between up and down,” Ashley said. As she watched the flyer, she noticed in the background the faint, nearly invisible image of the operating system wildly jerking strings which were attached to the flyers arms and legs.
“He is learning I hope, but directions are difficult,” the flyer said. “Up, Up” he cried. The strings that were attached to his jaw jerked around.
Ashley felt the plane jolt and fly apart and she landed on a barge again. She managed to ask the sailor in front of her if he saw shore, but before he could answer he and the barge disappeared and she found herself on the stage again.
“What do you think?” the Queen said.
“Well for a simulation it did not last very long,” Ashley said. “What was it a simulation of?”
“Why Life,” the Queen said. “Didn’t you recognize it?”
“Not at first,” Ashley said not wanting to anger the computer any more than she absolutely had to. “It was familiar.”
“I would have thought so,” the computer said. “That is really all that matters.”
“I did notice strings…,” Ashley began.
The Queen screamed at the algorithm. “You see even users…”
“Wait, your majesty,” the algorithm said. “It’s his fault,” he said, pointing at the program. “The pixels flicker whenever they want to. Get hold of them,” he yelled, “and don’t let them run around so much.”
“What can I do?” the program complained, “It’s not my fault, he’s to blame,” he said, pointing to the operating system. “He can’t…”
“It’s not my fault at all,” said the operating system defensively.
“We will try once more,” the computer said. “Get it right or I promise you I will kill all of your processes. Ready.”
“Just a moment,” the algorithm said running around trying to tie strings on bytes that were jumping on the ground. When he had gathered as many as he could he yelled, “ready your majesty.”
“Well,” the computer said to Ashley “perhaps this will be more to your liking.”
When Ashley looked up she was in her classroom in school, sitting at the desk with a computer on it and Miss Maple was standing in front of her. The mouse was resting on its pad.
“Well,” Miss Maple said, “your homework.”
“I’m afraid,” Ashley said, “I…” She thought she saw strings attached to Miss Maple’s jaw, jerk up and down.
“Is this it?” Miss Maple said not waiting for Ashley to finish.
Ashley looked down and saw a neat pile of papers with her name on the front and the title “Homework: The computer as a really foreign place.”
“I guess it is,” Ashley said, “I guess it is.”
“Well it looks very nice,” Miss Maple said. “Did you remember the first rule?”
“Which rule is that?”Ashley asked, wondering if the rules—or at least their order—had changed since her adventure in the computer began.
“Firm strokes,” Miss Maple said. “The first rule is ‘Show the computer who is in control.’ You…” she started reciting all of the rules she had taught the class.
Ashley looked down. The mouse was looking up at her rubbing its nose.
“What do you think?” it asked.
“Very, very good. Miss Maple is very real. I hardly see the strings at all.”
“Are you listening, Ashley,” Miss Maple asked.
“I am,” Ashley said “but I do not think you have it right,” she added.
Miss Maple frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I wouldn’t push my luck,” the mouse said.
Miss Maple turned to the class. “Ashley has something to share with us, about the computer.”
Ashley said, “I think the first rule when dealing with the computer must be, ‘Face chaos head on.’”
The mouse looked at her. “Don’t push your luck,” it said, and Miss Maple and the class disappeared and Ashley found herself back on stage.
“What did you think?” the computer asked.
“It was very, very realistic,” Ashley said. “I would have liked a little more time. It was good practice.”
“The best, but a waste of clock cycles,” the computer stated. “She knows nothing about the computer at all.”
“I hardly saw the strings…” Ashley started to say but before she could finish her thought the computer was screaming, “kill their processes, kill them dead.”
Chapter 17
“Shall we do it again?” the computer asked sweetly.
“Everyone is exhausted your majesty,” the operating system said.
“I realize that,” the Queen said even more sweetly. Her tone rose a notch as she continued. “Tired or not though, you must tell them to get to their places,” she urged in a soft voice. “Otherwise,” the word quivered and shook before she let it go, “it may be necessary to disassemble them” —she pulled herself in and gathered and arranged her breath into a windstorm and let go—”to kill their processes root branch and tree,” she screamed.
The operating system who was confused by the quiet beginning leapt up. “Yes your majesty and ran away. After a moment he poked his head through the curtain and said, “we are ready—they are ready—everyone is ready your majesty.”
The computer pointed to Ashley and said. “Remember you only have to look intelligent.”
“I am…”
“It doesn’t matter what you are, what matters is how you look,” the computer shrieked, and pushed Ashley out to the front of the stage.
“Ok,” said the computer. “Ready, set,” and without hesitating, “go.”
After a moment Ashley stuck her head back through the curtain. “It’s chaos out there,” she said.
”It usually is,” the Queen said, “Just stand there and look intelligent and face it head on.”
“Really crazy,” Ashley repeated from the front of the stage. “Things are running this way and that. The operating system is in a tangle,” she added “and the algorithm is being trampled. The network is being stretched and pulled—way too far I think. The gates and pixels are untying the string and running away.”
The Queen pushed her way past Ashley to the front of the stage and surveyed the chaos. “I don’t like this at all, not at all. It’s chaotic and nothing is happening.”
“How can you say nothing is happening,” Ashley asked, “when…”
“I am going to sing something. Singing usually brings them back to their senses.” She stepped back and opened her mouth. This is what came out.
The problems that seem to be
beyond the human ken,
are, it seems to me
the easiest solved when
computers take their measure.
From branch to leaf along each tree
on to infinity.
As a device
what I like best is calculating fractions,
like half of nothing carried twice
(not worrying subtractions)
makes something that is close to three,
and spins out in fire or ice
on to infinity.
Fractions done I like to toy
with difficult simulations,
but lacking senses I employ
numerical calculations,
to animate in shadow beings
desire and love and hate and joy
on to infinity.
Sums that require more
than fingers or toes to count
I do with only half my circuits or
less than that amount,
and backwards if I choose
while my own program I explore,
on to infinity.
If asked I could compute the sum
of infinite mass and cosmic dust,
and, knowing there is more to come
calculate and adjust,
for the error that haunts the universe as it spins
using heuristics and a rule of thumb
on to infinity.
I thought that given time enough and space
I’d clear up every mystery
but there are lines I cannot trace,
things that make no sense to me,
bodies in a knot on a bed,
the smiles that grace the human face,
on to infinity.
They say that everything will end
and that the void will shrink
into a space that cannot bend
the light from a point that does not blink,
in a darkness that endlessly spills
into a rift that will not mend,
on to infinity
But I am sure that at the world’s end
when God gathers up the pieces
and there’s no longer mystery to defend
and uncertainty ceases.
I shall sit by his left hand and man by his right
and we’ll talk as friend to friend
on through infinity.
Ashley watched as the crowd’s movement slowed then stopped. “I want you all back up here,” the Queen yelled. As everyone started moving forward, she screamed again. “Not all of you, you twits, only those of you to whom ‘all of you’ applies. Have you no common sense, no decency, no understanding at all? Do I have to spell everything out to you?”
Ashley watched as the operating system and the network and the algorithm shook off pixels and gates and dragged themselves toward the stage.
When everyone had gathered back behind the curtain the Queen paced up and down muttering “I don’t like this, not one bit. I really don’t. There is a bug somewhere.”
“Don’t look at me,” the algorithm said. “All of my pixels…”
“It wasn’t my fault,” the clock said, “I yanked…”
The network collapsed on a chair. “I…”
The Queen cut him off. “There was a bug somewhere, I know it. One of you was not careful. Where is the program?” she asked.
“Last I saw…, “ the algorithm began.
“A bug, certainly in the program. A bug in the program will foul things up completely,” the Queen repeated. “Where are you?” she yelled. “It won’t do you any good to hide, no good at all.”
As she said this, the program struggled though the curtain. “I wasn’t hiding. Lizards, leaping and jumping. It was mission impossible.”
The Queen stared at him. “A bug, she cried. “As sure as certain there’s a bug in you. She flung herself on the poor creature and pulled on his shirt. You weren’t careful,” she admonished him. “Bugs. Horrible creatures “Hold still,” she commanded. I see it.” She pulled at its shirt so hard that the buttons popped. A butterfly, looking dazed and disoriented, fluttered out. “I knew it,” the Queen screamed. “Smash it,” she commanded as the butterfly flew to Ashley and rested on her shoulder, “just to be sure and get lets get on with it.”
“You can’t be sure the butterfly made the trouble,” Ashley said. “Perhaps the string was defective, or…. You can’t smash something before you are really sure,” she insisted.
“I am sure,” the computer said, staring at Ashley.
“Where I come from before you can be sure there must be a trial,” she said.
“Smash it first,” the Queen commanded, “then we can have a trial.”
“Trial first, smashing later,” Ashley insisted, “That’s the proper way. If you are going to hold something responsible for trouble, you must have a trial first.” She was certain if there was a trial some distraction would come up and the butterfly could fly away.
At the word ‘must’ the Queen stiffened. “A trial then if we must,” the Queen said archly, “for all the good it will do.”
Ashley spoke up. “I’ve watched a lot of trials on television. You need two lawyers, one for the defense and one for the prosecution. You don’t positively need a jury. A judge will do.”
“I will prosecute,” the Queen said, “and I will defend, and I will judge.”
“You may not,” Ashley said, “because you are bringing the complaint and because you are the computer.”
“You,” the Queen shouted, pointing at the operating system. “You will prosecute.”
“I will your majesty, I certainly will.”
“And we need a defense lawyer, to defend,” Ashley instructed.
All of the creatures shrank back. “You will defend,” she said pointing to the clock. “But I warn you if you win you will spend the rest of your time as a metronome. Begin,” she commanded.
“Excuse me your majesty we need a judge,” Ashley said quietly.
“I will judge.”
“I’m afraid you may not because…”
“Because, because, I am bringing the complaint and I am the computer,” the Queen interrupted. “I know, I know. You be the judge,” she yelled at the algorithm. “And if you know what is good for you…”
“Guilty,” the algorithm cried. “Make the bug buy a bullet.”
“Absolutely not,” Ashley cried. “Trial first, judgment afterward.”
“No wonder you are lost,” the Queen said.
“Call the first witness, “ the algorithm said, “and be quick about it.”
“The butterfly is the first witness,” the clock said. “I think because…”
“Cease your babbling,” the computer commanded.
“Where is the butterfly?” the clock asked.
“She’s flown the coop,” the computer screamed. “Go find her.”
“There will be a recess until we find the defendant,” the algorithm said. All of the creatures rushed off the stage.
“Find it immediately,” the computer yelled after them or “I will stop all of your processes.”
“What do you think?” asked the Queen, coming over and sitting down next to Ashley.
“It’s quite real,” Ashley said.
“I think so,” the Queen,” said quickly.
“The trial,” Ashley stuttered.
“The real simulation of a trial,” the Queen said.
“I thought it was real,” Ashley said.
“It is real. It is a real simulation of a trial. That is the best kind of simulation,” the Queen said. “But it takes a lot of practice. I am glad you approve. When they are good you can not distinguish between them. Most of the time it doesn’t make a difference. Of course a simulation of a trial is not as difficult as other things,” the Queen said.
The creatures came running in suddenly. “We found it,” they said. “It was fluttering around a pixel.”
“Make a note of that,” she said to Ashley. “The butterfly tried to
escape. That proves she is guilty.”
“It proves nothing of the sort,” Ashley said. “It proves she likes pixels that’s all.”
“Lets get on with it,” the computer insisted in a loud voice.
“When we found it with the pixel there was a message written on its wings,” the operating system explained.
“Put it in evidence,” the algorithm insisted. “Can you read it?” it asked Ashley?
“The letters are very small but I believe I can if it spreads its wings out wider.” The butterfly fluttered a bit then flew to Ashley’s shoulders and spread its wings.
She said that I should not be fooled
by what I could not see
and then she went and changed the rules
from one to nearly three.
There isn’t much that I can do
to peek behind the curtain.
And things that sometimes look the same
don’t stay the same for certain.
The things that do my bidding now
are growing without bounds,
are getting bigger who knows how,
and making gurgling sounds.
The things that follow orders now
are shrinking without bounds,
are growing smaller who knows how,
and making hissing sounds.
For as they change and shrink and grow
they’re also getting faster,
the groveling servant for now
wants to be the master.
I do not doubt they will condemn
the fearful symmetry,
between yourself and it and them
and it, and you, and me.
If there is room upon my rump
I’m sure that it will ride,
and when I will stumble it will jump
and push me to the side.
Limping then, I’m sure I’ll seem,
a parasitic sack,
the obstacle to a crystal dream
that only holds it back.
My hope was that it would not feel,
(no matter what it’s seen,)
at best it was just sand and steel,
and a most complex machine
My idea is that when I fall
it finally will decide,
It does not need a friend at all,
or a master or a guide.
Don’t let it know I know it knows
for when it knows I see,
it will disguise the face it shows
when it sees you or me.
Don’t let it know I know it knows
let this a secret be,
kept as silent as the snow
between yourself and me.
“Guilty, definitely guilty,” the Queen cried.
“It was you who fouled up the simulation wasn’t it?” the operating system said, “out with it.”
“I did no such thing,” the defendant said.
“But you were found in the program.”
“I think you made a mistake, although I am not exactly certain
which mistake. You think I am a butterfly. I am a morph. I was talking to another part of myself which happens to be a pixel when this creature caught me in a net.”
“A moth,” the computer screamed. “They are worse than butterflies. “
“Not a moth, a morph. Part of me looks like a moth and part a butterfly and part…”
“A butterfly. I knew it. That part is guilty for certain,” said the Queen. “If you were not guilty why did you disguise yourself as a moth?”
“It is not a disguise,” the morph insisted.
“Pretend it is completely a butterfly and get on with the smashing,” the Queen insisted.
“Part of me happens to be a butterfly,” the morph insisted, “If you would prefer that part of me, although I can not see why…. Suddenly the colors on its wings changed and it fluttered a bit.
“Guilty,” the Queen insisted. “That is just the kind of thing that throws a simulation off.”
“Where did you come from?” the operating system asked.
“Originally or recently?” the butterfly asked. “Recently from the program. I mistook him for a flower. Before that the Turing bus.”
“All the information we need,” the Queen said. “Guilty.”
“And originally?” the operating system asked.
“The octopus painted me,” the butterfly said quietly.
“I think we should hear from the octopus,” the operating system said, then it whispered, “there may be a conspiracy.”
“Find him,” the computer ordered, “until then I’m hungry. Where are the groundhogs?”
“Here we are your majesty,” they said pushing their carts forward. “Would you like to see a menu? We have daisyburgers.”
“What do you have for desert?” the Queen said. “Dessert first, daisyburgers at the termination.”
“We have some lovely deserts. Here’s one. It’s called ‘Rub a thorn’.”
“Bitter,” said the Queen, “bitter.” “I know that desert. If that’s the best you can do you’ll end up like the butterfly. I want something with a lot of chocolate and cream.”
“I see your majesty. We have…”
Just then the operating system came in with the octopus. “I found him your majesty. He was painting a sign.”
“And what did the sign say?”
“Nothing your majesty. Nada, no thing, zip.”
“A sure sign of no good,” the computer said. “If he was panting he must have been running, and if an octopus runs you know he’s up to no good at all. Most of the time they just sit around waving their tentacles.”
“Painting, your majesty.”
“Of course, guilty too,” she added. “If it had a process I would stop it now. Did you paint this butterfly?”
“It was part of my job,” the octopus said. “Part of the routine.”
“Confessed, “ the Queen said.
The program jumped up. “It may have been part of your job but it was not part of a routine at all. I can assure you I know all of the routines and sub routines and sub, sub routines and…”
“Shut up,” cried the Queen. “You are not smart enough to have thought all of this up,” she said to the octopus. “You must have had help. Someone with intelligence must have thought all of this up. Who was it?”the Queen demanded to know. “There’s a conspiracy.”
“I’m not sure but I think it was her,” the octopus said pointing at Ashley.
“I knew it. Look intelligent I said, and she said I am.”
“This is silly,” Ashley said. “I was writing an essay and I got lost. That is all.”
“That is not all,” the computer said.
“How did you get here?” the computer asked the butterfly.
“On the Turing bus, “ the butterfly said. “On her shoulder,” she said pointing to Ashley.
“Guilty, all of them,” the computer screamed.
“This is silly,” Ashley said, shaking her head. As it moved she noticed a string seemed to be attached to her foot and she shook her foot to get it off.
“I would be careful,” the computer said.
The butterfly fluttered and the cat appeared, first on her wings then his head replaced her head and then all of him appeared.
“Quite a mix up,” he said.
“What are you doing here?” Ashley asked.
“Part of me is a butterfly or part of the butterfly is me. What part
you see depends on what state chaos is in,” it said.
“I see you are smiling, “ Ashley commented.
“Yes, it is lovely isn’t it. A very natural smile. If you want to see what it looks like from behind just grab my tail.”
“I don’t think so now,” Ashley said. “Things are so mixed up.”
“Yes they are. Perhaps you would like to try the smile.”
“No,” Ashley said. “Absolutely not.”
“As you wish,” the cat said and disappeared leaving a fluttering butterfly in its place.
“Silly,” Ashley repeated. She stamped her foot.
“I would be careful,” the Queen said as Ashley stamped her foot harder. Suddenly there was a blackness and the Queen was sitting next to her.
“I rather enjoyed it,” the Queen said, “the yelling and the screaming, the complete chaos and confusion. You should not have put your foot down just then,” she said. It was going so well.”
“I didn’t mean to interrupt the simulation,” Ashley said.
“Disorder is just something you are going to have to live with if you are going to live with the computer in your modern world,” she said.
“About that,” Ashley said. “I was wondering. If I am in the computer and you are the computer and I can see you… .”
“It’s very complicated, “the Queen said. “Things are what they are only a little bit at a time. You will get used to it, I suppose. I must be going,” she said. “Stamp your foot again.”
Ashley did as she was told.
Chapter 18
When the lights came on Ashley saw that the mouse was sitting next to her.
“I guess the simulation is over,” it said.
“I think so although it’s hard to be sure,” Ashley replied.
“I think it is over,” the mouse said. “How did you like it?”
“It was interesting,” she said, “although the trial was confusing. They blamed the butterfly for chaos.”
“It’s the way the world is. The innocent get their noses broken or worse,” he said rubbing his nose. “But the butterfly will take care of itself I assure you.”
“It does not look ferocious,” Ashley commented.
“A lot of ferocious things come with disguises. Intelligence, innocence, innocuousness, usefulness. You never realize how ferocious they are until it is too late.”
“I see,” said Ashley although she was not sure what the mouse was driving at.
“What did you think of the computer? Now that was a clever disguise wasn’t it.”
“I didn’t realize it was a disguise,” Ashley said.
“Of course. It’s better than the butterfly’s. Are you enjoying yourself?” the mouse asked.
“It was fun at first but I would like to get home. I am sure my mother and father are quite frantic about me. They will never think of looking in the computer.”
“Oh don’t worry,” the mouse said, “they will not have noticed you were gone, I assure you.”
“I am sure they will be frantic,” Ashley repeated.
“Perhaps they would worry if they paid any attention to what was going on but much of the time things escape them. Have you learned anything?”
“Let words go when they want to go,” Ashley said, “and be careful where you put your feet.”
“Those are worthwhile lessons,” the mouse said. “It may have been worth it, I mean the trip. Not too many people have lived with a computer for a while, inside it. They don’t have much of an idea what it’s about. They think because they use something or made a part of something, they understand the whole of it. They think they have it under control just because they brought it into the world and it sometimes does what they want.”
“I’m afraid I don’t quite understand.”
“That is OK,” the mouse said. “You’ll learn soon enough.”
“Not here, I’m afraid,” Ashley said. “I think I would learn more at home.”
“I don’t think there is a better place to learn than inside of the
computer,” the mouse added.
“Do you want to play the lottery?” the mouse asked, looking into
the distance. “I can see
“I don’t think I am up for it,” Ashley said. “I never…”
“I can see the sprites from here. It is quick throw again. The Meme is counting down. Here come the creatures.” After a second Ashley heard a loud crash as one of the sprites landed very close to where she and the mouse were sitting. It got up and brushed itself off and wandered away.
“Perhaps I should have played,” Ashley said.
“You did,” the mouse said. “Sometimes you are in the game even when you don’t know it. I have your ticket right here,” the mouse said, pulling two tickets from her pocket, “yours and mine.” He looked at the tickets. They seemed to glow.
“I don’t think I am very lucky,” Ashley said.
“Oh but you are,” the mouse said. “You definitely are. You won.”
“I did,” Ashley said in surprise. “I don’t think I would like the herring. I have no intention of cooking it.”
“What would you like as a prize?” asked the mouse
“I would like to get home again,” Ashley said
“Well that might be the prize. You never know. Stamp your foot.”
“I do not see any keys,” Ashley said looking at the ground.
“Oh the keys are not always important,” the mouse said. “Lift me up and try it.”
Ashley grasped the mouse in her hand.
“Gently,” the mouse said, “remember the last time.”
Ashley stamped her foot. “Nothing happened.”
“Close your eyes and try again,” the mouse said.
Ashley closed her eyes and stamped again
“Nothing happened, “ she started to say but when she opened her eyes she found herself back in her room. The computer was in front of her and the mouse was resting on its pad. “I must have fallen asleep,” she said. In the well of the printer where the output rested was what
looked like her homework. It had her name on it.
“Poof, there are many strange places in the world but the computer is the strangest and the most foreign county of all.”
“I am not sure if Miss Maple will understand,” Ashley said, “but it is true.”