The Creeps: A Samuel Johnson Tale

XXVII

In Which Dorothy Seems Slightly Confused

MARIA AND THE SCIENTISTS, trapped in the sweet factory with a hostile figure apparently made entirely from darkness, had considered their options and done the sensible thing, which was to leave as quickly as possible. They were now in Professor Hilbert’s car, heading in the direction of Wreckit & Sons by taking the shortcut through August Derleth Park. Professor Hilbert was driving, Professor Stefan was in the passenger seat, and Maria, Brian, and Dorothy were crammed in the back. Brian was beginning to recover from his encounter with the dark woman, although his entire body continued to tremble involuntarily, and he would occasionally emit a startled squeak.

Dorothy, meanwhile, was still wearing her beard. Maria had tried not to notice, but it was difficult as it was quite a big beard.

Dorothy caught Maria looking at it.

“It’s the beard, isn’t it?” she said, in her new deep voice.

Maria nodded.

“I was just wondering why you were still wearing it.”

“I like it. It’s warm.”

“Right,” said Maria. She would have moved over a little to put some space between herself and Dorothy, but there wasn’t room because of the human jelly that was Brian.

“And I don’t want to be called Dorothy anymore.”

Professor Hilbert, who had been listening, gave Dorothy a worried look in the rearview mirror. Professor Stefan turned round in his seat. His face wore the confused expression of a builder who has just been handed a glass hammer.

“What do you mean, you don’t want to be called Dorothy?” he said. “It’s your name, and it’s a perfectly lovely one.”

“I want to be called Reginald,” said Dorothy—er, Reginald. “Inside, I feel like a Reginald.”

Professor Stefan frowned.

“But why Reginald?” he said. “Nobody is called ‘Reginald’ these days. It would be like me announcing that I wanted to be called Elsie, or Boadicea.” ⁴⁷

“I like the name Reginald,” said Dorothy, or Reginald. “It was my mother’s name.”

Even Brian stopped shaking for long enough to look bewildered, then went back to trembling again.

“Right,” said Professor Hilbert. “I’m glad we cleared that one up.”

Any further discussion of the matter was postponed by the appearance of a Viking on the road. He wore a metal helmet, but was otherwise entirely naked. This might have been more disturbing had he not been little more than leathery skin and yellowed bone. In his right hand he held a rusty sword, and a shield hung from his left arm.

“You know, you really don’t see that very often,” said Professor Hilbert.

Even though he was a physicist, he had a scientist’s general fascination with anything new and unusual in the world, and a naked undead Viking counted as unusual in any world. Issues of personal safety took second place to things that were just plain interesting.

“How splendid!” said Professor Stefan. “Slow down, Hilbert, so we can take a good look at him.”

Professor Hilbert slowed the car to a crawl, and rolled down his window.

“Hello!” he said to the Viking.

“You look a bit lost,” said Professor Stefan.

The Viking glared at them. Darkness seethed and roiled in its eyes.

“Garrrgghhhh,” it said. “Urrurh.”

“Ah, yes, of course,” said Professor Hilbert. “How true, how true.”

He looked at Professor Stefan and shrugged. Professor Stefan rolled his eyes.

“Where. Are. You. From?” said Professor Hilbert. He spoke very slowly and very loudly, which is how English people who don’t speak foreign languages try to communicate with those who do.

“Harruraruh,” said the Viking.

“Where is that?” said Professor Stefan. “Could he show us on a map?”

“Map?” said Professor Hilbert to the Viking.

He drew squiggles in the air, in the faint hope that the Viking might make the connection. Instead the Viking simply waved his sword and said, “Rarh!”

“I don’t think we’re going to get much out of him, I’m afraid,” said Professor Hilbert. “His English leaves a lot to be desired.”

“What a shame,” said Professor Stefan. “You’d think the chap might have brought a phrase book with him so he could communicate a little better. You know, ‘Hello, I come from Norway.’ ‘Where is Buckingham Palace?’ That kind of thing. Hardly seems worth making the trip if you can’t speak the language. Never mind.”

He waved at the Viking.

“Bye, now!” he said. “Thanks for visiting.”

“Warrghhh,” said the Viking.

“Ha ha!” said Professor Stefan. “Absolutely, yes.”

He puffed out his cheeks as Professor Hilbert prepared to drive off.

“No idea what the chap was saying.”

He gave the Viking a final wave, just in time to witness a Saxon with one leg dragging brokenly behind him hit the Viking repeatedly on the top of the head with an ax.

“And they wonder why tourists don’t come here very often,” said Professor Hilbert.

“It’s the battlefield,” said Maria.

“What?”

“We’re close to the site of the Battle of Biddlecombe. Hilary Mould designed and built the visitor center there. It’s one of the points on the pentagram. I’ll bet there’s supernatural activity at the old asylum, too, and the crematorium, and the prison. Which makes me more certain than ever that the center of the activity is here.”

She tapped her finger on the map, right on the location of Wreckit & Sons.

A small troop of Christmas elves crossed their path, forcing Professor Hilbert to brake suddenly.

“You don’t want to try talking to them as well, do you?” said Maria.

“Don’t be silly,” said Professor Stefan. “They’re elves.”

“Of course,” said Maria. “Duh.”

The elves paid them no notice. They were too busy running from something. Seconds later, one of the groundskeepers appeared. He was carrying a heavy rake, but was still making good progress. He caught up with the elves just as they reached the other side of the road, and began beating them to splinters.

“The sign said,” he screamed, “ ‘KEEP OFF THE GRASS.’ What part of keeping off the grass did you—Bang!—not—Smash!— understand—Thud!?”

When the elves were no more, the groundskeeper looked up to see five people watching him. He tipped his hat at them.

“Evening,” he said.

“Evening,” replied Professor Hilbert.

The groundskeeper indicated with a thumb the stack of firewood and splinters that had once been elves.

“Elves,” he said. “They trampled on the grass.”

“So we gathered.”

“And the flower beds,” added the groundskeeper. His tone suggested that, while some might feel reducing elves to kindling for trespassing on the grass was a bit of an overreaction, no sane person could take issue with pummeling them for stepping on the flower beds.

He wiped his sweating brow.

“I quite enjoyed that,” he said. “I think I’ll go and look for some more of them.”

And off he went, whistling what sounded like “Heigh-Ho, Heigh-Ho.”

It struck Professor Hilbert that, if the groundskeeper was anything to go by, the citizens of Biddlecombe were taking the evening’s events in their stride. This view was confirmed when they came across the Biddlecombe Ladies’ Football Team standing by half a dozen large and very bruised Christmas-tree fairies who had been tied to tree trunks with stout rope in order to prevent them from doing any further harm.

Professor Hilbert stopped the car.

“What are you doing?” said Professor Stefan.

“Look!” said Professor Hilbert, pointing to the west.

There was a faint shimmer to the air. Beyond it Maria could see more trees and, some way in the distance, the spire of the church in the nearest village, Rathford, but it was as though a mist had descended upon the landscape, blurring the image. It struck Maria that they shouldn’t even have been able to see Rathford. It was nighttime, and yet the spire of the Church of St. Roger the Inflammable was plainly visible, although there was a touch of shiny gray to it, like an old photographic negative.

Professor Hilbert stepped from the car and walked toward the location of the shimmering. The others followed, even Brian, although he was not so much curious as frightened to be left alone. As they drew closer, they saw that the ground came to a kind of end at the fence surrounding August Derleth Park. Beyond the boundary it was less actual firm ground than the memory of it, and its level didn’t quite match the grass on their side of the fence. Worse, the other ground was transparent, and beneath it Maria could see a terrible blackness spotted with the odd lonely star. It felt to her as though Biddlecombe had somehow been set adrift in the Multiverse while still bringing with it the memory of the planet of which it had once been a part. The dividing line was the shimmering, like the heat haze that rises from the ground on sunny summer days, except this one brought with it no warmth.

Reginald/Dorothy reached out to touch it, and only Professor Hilbert’s sudden grip on his/her wrist prevented him/her from doing so.⁴⁸

“I wouldn’t,” he said.

Reginald withdrew her hand. Professor Hilbert’s fingers tingled after touching her. It must be the power of the boundary, he thought.

“How can we see Rathford?” asked Maria. “We shouldn’t be able to. It’s night, and anyway Rathford is quite far from Biddlecombe. We can’t even see the church spire during the day.”

“You can see a Rathford,” said Professor Hilbert. “It’s one of an infinite number of Rathfords, or it may be the point at which all of those potential Rathfords are bound together until a decision is made on which one should come into being.”

“We’ve become unmoored from reality,” said Professor Stefan. “I believe that a dimensional shift has occurred, and we’re just fractionally off-kilter with the rest of the Multiverse.”

“But what’s on the other side of that boundary?” said Brian.

“Perhaps a version of Rathford, once you bring it into being by its observation, or nothing at all,” said Professor Hilbert. “Then again, you might thrust your fingers into another dimension, and who knows what could be waiting on the other side? Or your fingers might end up between dimensions, which could be just as bad. It might be like wearing fingerless gloves in space, which would be very unwise.” ⁴⁹

“Did we do this?” asked Brian. “I mean, all that fiddling around with particle accelerators and the nature of reality: could it have caused this?”

Professor Hilbert found something interesting to look at beside his right foot. Professor Stefan whistled and peered at the fathomless depths of space.

Eventually Professor Hilbert said, “This is not the time to go around blaming people for what may or may not have happened, Brian.”

“When would be a good time, Professor Hilbert?” said Brian.

“When I’m not here,” said Professor Hilbert, “but preferably when I’m dead and can’t get into any trouble. I’d advise you to think very hard about your part in all of this as well, young Brian. You’re an important part of our team, which means that you can be blamed, too.”

“But I only made the tea!” said Brian.

“Yes, but it was very good tea,” said Professor Hilbert. “If it had been bad tea, then we might not have been so productive, and none of this might have happened or, if it did, then it might have happened much more slowly.”

“Don’t forget the biscuits,” Professor Stefan chimed in.

“Oh yes, the biscuits,” said Professor Hilbert. “Don’t get me started on the biscuits. All I can say is that you’re up to your neck in this, Brian, mark my words. If the world comes to an end because of our experiments, you’ll be in big trouble. They’ll throw the book at you, or they will if there’s anyone still around to throw books, or anything else, which there probably won’t be. You know, now that I come to think about it, everything is fine at our end. If the world doesn’t get destroyed, we’re free and clear, and if it does end, then there’s not much anybody can do to make us feel bad about it.”

Professor Hilbert smiled happily.

“There, glad that’s sorted out. Still, all things considered, it would be nice if we could prevent the end of the world from happening. With that in mind, onward we go.”

He began to lead them back to the car. Brian didn’t move. He just stood where he was, looking confused.

“But I only made the tea,” he said.

Professor Stefan steered him toward the car.

“Never mind,” he said. “Try looking on the bright side.”

“Is there one?”

“Not really.”

“Oh.”

“But if you come up with one, do let us know, won’t you?”

And high above their heads the stars were swallowed, one by one.

47. Boadicea was the queen of the Iceni tribe in Britain who led a rebellion against the Roman Empire in A.D. 60 or 61. Three settlements were destroyed during her war, including the young city of Londinium, or London. She was finally defeated in a battle in the West Midlands, but died without being captured. The Roman historian Dio said of her that she was “possessed of greater intelligence than often belongs to women.” Mind you, he said that after she was safely dead and gone, otherwise she’d have cut his head off and stuck it on a spike for saying stupid things about women.

48. Look, this is going to get very confusing. Unless someone decides otherwise, let’s call Dorothy “Reginald,” but stick with the use of the feminine pronoun. That way, she’ll be Reginald, and we can still refer to her as “her,” if you see what I mean.

It’s very troubling when characters take a funny unplanned turn in a book. They really should do what their creators tell them to do, but that brings us to the whole thorny subject of the problem of free will. If I knew what was going to happen at the end of this book—which, at this point, I don’t—then characters like Reginald/Dorothy would have to do whatever I told them to do, because that would be what was needed to make the plot work.

But right now I’m not sure what’s going to happen, and I’m discovering the plot of the book as I write it. This makes me a bit like a god, in that I created these characters, but not the type of god who knows everything in advance. The thing is, if I was that kind of god, and characters like Reginald/Dorothy were, in fact, real, would the fact that I knew what was going to happen to them mean that they had no free will of their own?

Some philosophers have argued that, if there is a god, and he knows everything that will happen in the future, then free will doesn’t really exist. I’m not sure that’s the case because, if it is, then we are all like characters in a book being written by a writer who knows the ending. Maybe it’s truer to say that, if there is a god, then he just happens to know how our story ends, and the choices we make are the ones that will lead to that particular ending.

So can we ever really predict what people will do? Perhaps on one level we can: we are biological machines, each of us made up of—remember?—atoms, and those atoms are made up of—yes, that’s right—quarks and gluons. If we can predict how each of these particles will behave in a given situation, then we can predict how lots of them packed together into a single human body will behave, right?

Yes, theoretically. In practice, it’s a bit harder. We like to think that we’re something more than just a collection of atoms. We use the term I to describe ourselves. We have a consciousnesss. (Philosophers call this experience of mental states—seeing colors, smelling food, feeling pain—the “qualia.”) But what if even consciousness is just an illusion, another product of the actions of all those quarks and gluons in our brains? “I” may not even exist, and if I start having doubts about that, then where does it leave you? You may not exist either. My brain may just have invented you. In that case, you’re as real as Reginald/Dorothy, and I can make you do what I want.

Right, I want you all to club together to buy me a yacht. You can send it care of my publishers. Thank you. After all, even an imaginary yacht is better than no yacht at all.

49. Deepest, darkest space is very cold, so cold that all molecules stop moving. This is called “absolute zero” and is calculated as −273 degrees Celsius, although the temperature in space is probably closer to −270 degrees Celsius because of three degrees of background microwave radiation.

So how long could you survive in space if you weren’t wearing a suit? First of all, you shouldn’t try to hold your breath, as that will cause the air in your lungs to expand and burst things that shouldn’t burst, so you’d die painfully but quickly. If you didn’t hold your breath, you’d probably have about fifteen seconds before you passed out. You wouldn’t get frostbite at first, as you would in cold temperatures on Earth, because there’s no air in space, and frostbite is a result of heat transfer accelerated by air. But your skin would start to burn because of ultraviolet radiation, and your skin tissue would swell.

Overall, then, you’d probably have a good thirty seconds before serious, permanent injury occurred, and a minute or two before you’d begin to die. In 1965, a spacesuit leaked in a vacuum chamber at NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center. The gentleman involved, who was rescued and recovered, remained conscious for about fourteen seconds. His last memory of the incident was of the saliva on his tongue beginning to boil. I just thought you’d like to know that.