Vurt 3 - Automated Alice Read Online Free PDF Page B

funny little dance and to sing in a very untidy voice:
    "Oh spoons may dangle from a cow
      With laughter ten feet tall;
    But all I want to know is how
      It makes no sense at all.
    Oh shirts may sing to books who pout
      In rather rigid lines;
    But all I want to turn about
      Is how the world unwinds."
    Captain Ramshackle then knocked over a pile of his miscellaneous objects (one of which was a croquet mallet, which fell onto the shell of the Indian lobster, cracking it open). “That looks like a very crushed Asian lobster,” Alice stated.
    “That lobster is indeed a crustacean!” the Badgerman replied, before continuing with his song:
    "It makes no sense at all you see,
      This world it makes no sense.
    And all of those who disagree
      Are really rather dense.
    Oh dogs may crumble to the soap
      That jitters in the dark;
    But all I want to envelope
      Is how it makes no mark.
    Oh fish may spade and grow too late
      The trousers in the cup;
    But all I want to aggravate
      Is how the world adds up.
    It's got no sum at all you see,
      This life has got no sum.
    And all of those who disagree
      Are really rather dumb."
    The Captain broke off from singing and turned back to the computermite mound. “Ah ha!” he cried. “Here's your answer!” He had placed his eye against the microscope. “Oh dear. . .”
    “What is it?” asked Alice.
    “Young girl,” he said, “you are one-hundred-and-thirty-eight years late for your two o'clock writing lesson. You need to talk to Professor Gladys Crowdingler.”
    “Who's she?”
    “Chrowdingler is studying the Mysteries of Time. Chrownotransductionology, she calls it. Only Chrowdingler can help you now. Don't you realize, Alice? You've actually travelled through time!”
    “I'm just trying to find my lost parrot,” Alice replied.
    “I saw a green-and-yellow parrot flying out of the microscope, some two-and-a-feather minutes before you did.”
    “That's him!” Alice cried. “That's Whippoorwill. Where did he go to?”
    “He flew out of that window there.” Ramshackle pointed to a window that opened onto a garden. "He flew into the knot garden
    “I don't care if it is a garden, or not a garden,” said Alice, quite missing the point. “I simply must find my Great Aunt's parrot!” And with that she climbed up onto the window-sill and then jumped down into the garden. The garden was very large and filled with lots of hedges and trees, all of which were sprinkled with moon dust. And there, sitting on the branch of a tree some way off, was Whippoorwill himself!
    “Be careful out there, Alice,” shouted Ramshackle through the window. “Times may have changed since your day.”
    But Alice paid that badger no mind, no mind at all, so quickly was she running off in pursuit of her lost parrot.

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