The Machine That Goes Ping
Part 7
Posted Fri, Sep 2 2005 7:13 am
A week late and a bit short, but here’s the new episode. Bit expositiony, but I haven’t been able to avoid it. There are now Three Exciting Episodes Left.
Probably.
So, I have been made the leader of the DXO Special Operations Cambridge Office,
by dint of the fact that I’ve met someone fictional, and therefore know more
about what’s going on than anyone else. I arrived in Cambridge to discover we
had commandeered what was once a primary school as our base of operations, and
that there was a gapping leadership void awaiting my arrival, which the more
military arm of our quasi-governmental, quasi-military, quasi-sane organisation
had taken to like a duck to an oil slick. Getting them to give up command was
difficult, but even more difficult was stopping them trying to turn me into
their commander in chief, to whom they merely had to report to as they did
whatever they wanted. I had the piece of paper that said I was in charge, but
they didn’t really want to be led.
So, they report to me still, but they take orders only when they understand
them, like a particularly stubborn form of text adventure game. You can’t ask
them to “Lock the fence” because they want to “Secure the perimeter”, and the
Kitchen is a Mess. Albeit a tidy one. I’m starting to find these phrases drift
into my vocabulary, and it was partly to delay this – but mostly to get help – that I arranged to go out for coffee with our fictional spy.
She is tall, slim in a kind of bountiful way, and classically beautiful with
flame red hair. Behind the dark glasses she rarely removes her eyes are gold. If
she hadn’t already told me she was fictional, I’d expect her to be some kind of
fantasy, to be honest. She won’t tell me her name, nor give me a fake one.
“I didn’t realise there were any cafes open anymore” she said.
“At least this one isn’t selling Gingerbread Men.”
“That isn’t nice.”
“Neither is the nagging feeling you’re eating your co-workers”. We sipped at our
coffee for a while before I asked…
“So, how do we stop all this?”
“I said last time, we have to find Gretal.”
“Gretal. Gretal… The same seems familiar, but I can’t quite place it. Who is
he?”
“Gretal is a she. From the fairy-tale Hansel and Gretal?”
“That’s it. I saw the tale in an old book while I was studying. Haven’t seen it
for years… Always seemed one of the dullest of the classic fairy tales to me.
Nothing actually happens, does it?”
She looked shocked and confused for a moment, and I asked:
“You said you had to go quickly last time. Was that a clue as to who you are?
Are you Cinderella?”
“No.” she said quietly. “I had to meet someone. And I think I’d like you to tell
me the story of Hansel and Gretal as you remember it, please.”
“Yes. Of course… It’s quite simple. Hansel and Gretal lived in the forest with
their father, who was some kind of lumberjack. Their mother had died a few years
ago, and her father had shacked up with this terrible woman – another classic
evil stepmother type – and she convinced him that they couldn’t be really happy
unless they got rid of the children. The kids overheard this plan, though, and
so when their father took them out for a ‘walk in the forest’, they dropped
bread-crumbs behind them so they could find their way home. Unfortunately the
birds ate the bread-crumbs, they got lost in the woods, and the story ends. I
assume they died. Why do you ask?”
“Because that wasn’t the story two weeks ago. Something strange is happening to
the story on the other side, it’s almost as if neither of them made it out of
the witch’s cottage.”
“Witch’s cottage? What do you mean?”
She told me the story of Hansel and Gretal as she knew it, and as she told it it
struck me with the heaviest sense of Deja Vu I have ever witnessed. She was
right, that was the version I had known. Something had screwed with my head
somewhere along the line.
“So, We know Gretal is missing by the message I got.”
“Who sent that?”
“My sister”
“…who is?”
“Someone you’ve heard of. Gretal is here, which means she escaped from the
cottage.”
“How do we know she got to the cottage?”
“Because otherwise nothing would be after her, I think. That would mean that the
person chasing her…”
“…would be the wicked witch. Who – unlike Gretal – isn’t close enough to a
normal person to fit though without weakening the reality in this world. Causing
the problems. So, where do the fairies fit in?”
“Fairies?”
I explained to her the attack last week, and she looked confused.
“Fairies come in ones and twos. They can do anything they want by waving a wand.
Why would they come with swords? How would there be so many of them? That’s
impossible.”
“Last week I would have said the same about gingerbread rain. So this isn’t
related?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Something else to worry about, then. How do we track down Gretal.”
“I think I can sense if she’s close by. And she’s in Cambridge.”
“Okay, so it’s time to go site-seeing.”
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