There was an infinite number of these switches, responsible for an infinite number of ideas. One of these switches was allowing holes in time to leak through into the Glix.
“And You want me to switch it off?” the Space Chicken asked. “You want me to travel into space just to flick a switch?”
“Yep,” Quack answered. “I assumed you’d be okay in space, seeing as you are the Space Chicken.”
“You should never make assumptions.”
“Well are you up for it?”
“Yes. But I don’t understand where these switches actually are.”
“They’re whizzing around the islands.”
“Then how do I know which one’s which?”
“You’ve got to command them,” Quack explained.
“What’s this specific switch or rift thingy called, then?” the Space Chicken asked. “You want me to say its name and command it towards me. That’s basically doing Your job, but for switches, not for people.”
“Not really,” Quack said dismissively. “In fact, not in the slightest. But in answer to your question, the switches don’t have names as such; you have to describe the rift you want before the Gate of Life and the switch will appear.”
“So You want me to go to the Gate of Life and say ‘Um, excuse me. But do you mind if I have the rift that lets through holes in time, please?’”
“Or some derivative thereof. Yes.”
“Wouldn’t it be much simpler if these time-hole-thingies had a name?”
“Yes. I was sort of hoping you’d come up with one.”
“I thought you said there are an infinite number of them,” the Space Chicken said in bemusement. “If You think I’m going to come up with endless names, You are greatly mistaken, my friend. An infinite number of names is an infinite number more than I’m prepared to create.”
“So you are prepared to create some?”
“No! Didn’t you hear me? It’s an infinite number too many. An infinite number! That means I want to think up zero names.”
“An infinite number minus an infinite number could still result in an infinite number.”
“Quack, seriously, I don’t want to name anything. I’m no good at thinking up names or anything imaginative really, because I’ve got no place to draw creativity from.”
“Said the spaceman-Chicken-prophet who recently laid an Egg despite being male… But don’t worry, Space Chicken. I’m not going to ask you to do that.”
“Thank You.”
“All I want is you to think about whether or not you’re interested in the search for the switch.”
“I’ll see what I can do. If I decide it sounds good, which I probably will do, I’ll start work on that as soon as I’ve caught David Gratton.” He sighed with both frustration and relief. “I’ll add it to my list.”
He switched his phone off. The first of many switch-offs, he thought. “I’ll add it all to my list.”
Chapter 22
“I know this will sound confusing,” Arthur said to Quack via the piece of rock. He had spent some time getting to grips with the power of this pious object and had eventually come to the conclusion that some of Quack’s might was stored inside it. He managed to hook up the stone to the frequency of Quack’s energy in the Overworld. And, at the end of it, Arthur had one maxim to draw from his interstellar and interdimensional technological work: ‘If it’s not working, talk to it and see what happens.’ “If I tell it correctly it will sound very confusing. But You are God, so You should understand.”
“I’m not God,” Quack denied, shocked at such a polite accusation. “The God Theory is way above me.”
“All right,” Arthur agreed, with complete, perfect confusion. “So You’re just an entirely normal person Who I’m talking to through this rock.”
“Granted I am a god,” Quack continued, “but that’s ‘god’ with a lower-case ‘g’.”
“He is right, you know,” Margery contributed. “And I am rather proud of Him for commentating on the subtle, mistreated punctuation of the obvious yet distant reaches of language.”
“Right,” Arthur accepted.
“Who are you anyway?” Quack asked Arthur.
“That…” Arthur began. “That is a question I have been wondering for a long time.”
Quack squirmed in disgust. “Do you intentionally base your life around clichés?”
Arthur was taken aback. “I thought You’d be impressed.”
“Why in Quack’s name would you think something like that?”
“It just seemed to be the kind of thing You would be into.”
“Far from it: I want creativity! I took my time to make the diversity of life on Glix. I made each of you unique. And this is how you repay me? You’re all... just the same,” he said in exasperation.
“All You gods and prophets are the same in that You spend Your lives obsessing over ‘the sound of punctuation’.”
“And all you people identically don’t care about punctuation. And there are more of you being useless than there are gods, prophets and deities being pointless, so I win.” Quack paused for a moment. “How do you know so much about the sound of punctuation? I mean, surely it’s written down in legend, but you talk as an old acquaintance. Have we met – really met – before?” Quack shook his head in confusion. And it takes a lot to confuse a god, even one of Quack’s low standards. “I ask again, who are you?”
“That...” Arthur Cardigan began. “That is the long and complicated story I am about to tell You.”
Chapter 23
Dave hurriedly walked along the road with the twins just behind him and the Egg cradled in his hands.
I was so sure I understood this world, he thought. Now it seems the one person I thought I could rely on to help me—
By telling you the Glix’n varieties of pizza and hooking you up to God.
…walks out on his only son.
IT WAS A MOMENT OF FRUSTRATION. WE SHOULDN’T JUDGE OTHERS BASED ON SITUATIONS WE’VE NEVER BEEN IN.
But he was a role model to me. Who now will help me with my increasing number of personalities.
Maybe you should man up and sort your life out, rather than relying on a single father.
YOU WILL CATCH UP WITH HIM SHORTLY. YOU NEEDN’T FRET; YOU ARE STEADILY APPROACHING HIM.
You know, I’m beginning to like you… me… whoever, 3rd Dave.
THANK YOU.
And what about me then?
You’re a jerk.
Oh, really nice.
You know it’s true.
But I’m usually right, aren’t I?
No.
You know it’s true.
3rd Dave, what do you think of 2nd Dave?
I COULDN’T POSSIBLY COMMENT.
Who says you’re 1st Dave, anyway?
I was here first. I was fine until you came along.
I was fine until I had to meet you. I can’t believe we both had to share the same brain, but now sharing the same part of the brain of Dave. Urgh!
Look, I don’t especially like you either, but we all have to get along together and live in the same head. We’re causing him real mental trouble.
Don’t you get it? We are the mental trouble.
He must be so stressed out right now.
We are the stress!
HE IS GOING THROUGH ENOUGH PHYSICAL TROUBLE RIGHT NOW. HE IS RUNNING TOWARDS THE ETERNAL SPACE CHICKEN OF THE SACRED QUACK.
I wonder which part of the brain, or his thoughts, deal with that.
How can an idiot like you have the same brain as me?
IT IS BECAUSE YOU ARE DAVE’S SECOND THOUGHTS AND HE IS THE FIRST.
Can we please try to keep calm? Dave has just been abandoned by his role model and the only person he can relate to on Glix. If he gets any more stressed, I fear he may gain more voices.
Good. Hopefully one of the new voices will have something intelligent to say.
OH, LOOK. IT APPEARS WE ARE APPROACHING THE ETERNAL SPACE CHICKEN OF T
HE SACRED QUACK.
Chapter 24
The Space Chicken looked around and saw that he was no longer in Borg, but in a small town known as Ragnol.
“I didn’t think this was on the way to BongVe Bong.” The Space Chicken had never been here before. “Oh well, I must have gone down a wrong path. That just means that the others will never meet up with me… but I kind of want them to catch up with me. Oh, what have I done? I should never have mistreated that Egg.” Several people were starting to stare. A child ran up to ask for the prophet’s autograph, but its mother forced it away. “I should have held onto him closely. He was my son and I could have brought him up, looked after him and…” The Space Chicken started sobbing. “And he was going to be called Fred Jr,” the Space Chicken squealed, falling about on the floor and crying. “Now I have no-one but myself to talk to and I’m cracking up.”
Oh shut up, you nutcase.
“Where did he go?”
“I’m sure he must have gone down one of these streets.”
“Cheeseburger.”
‘I know he’ll have gone to a place we’ll go. He doesn’t realize it, but all our similar personalities mean that we will go to the same place as him. If anyone is ever separated and in need of help – as I know will happen in a short while from now – just follow your instincts and we will meet up together again.’
They walked past a small, wooden cottage in the row of houses. An elderly man who seemed to know them already stepped out of the building and beckoned them. An Old Man full of Tales.
“Please come in. I have been expecting you for many Haca.”
“Um, excuse me?” said Dave. “I don’t believe we’ve met. Who are you?”
“I am the man currently living under the name of Old Man Tales. You may enter my abode. Your friend is presently residing here.”
“You have the Space Chicken?” Dave turned back to look at Clint, Clein and Crazy Dave. They shrugged and entered the cottage.
Please don’t bother getting yourself killed today; I’m quite busy at the moment.
The Space Chicken sat in the elderly, pink living room filled with geraniums that belonged to Old Man Tales. The Fowl hadn’t been certain that the legendary Old Man did in fact exist. The probability of the man being factual had been about 50:50. But now the Space Chicken had met Old Man Tales, he was even less sure the geriatric was real. Old Man Tales was the most peculiar human being the Space Chicken had ever seen – and he’d seen some freaks in his time. Old Man Tales was very strange, yet he was just an ordinary old man. Old Man Tales (if he was indeed genuine) had a completely bald head and a very round scalp. His forehead was wrinkly and covered most of his eyes. His eyes themselves weren’t very clear through his round, misted-white glasses, although the Space Chicken could tell that they were looking into his soul. The Old Man’s nose and ears weren’t to be seen either: his thick, twisted, white beard intertwined with his glasses and held them in place thoroughly, concealing most of the usual facial features expected on a person. Not that you would want to look at his ears, though. The unusual scalp, glasses and beard each held more peculiar value than you would expect to find on an entire human, but the combination of the three sucked in concentration like a black hole. Anyone meeting Old Man Tales, though, wouldn’t be too surprised if a black hole suddenly did spring upon his face. Covering at least the bottom half of his face was the famous beard. It had rips and tears here and there, but remained mostly smooth and soft at the sides, eventually leading to a point. Even more extraordinary than that was that the beard was longer than Old Man Tales himself, and trailed behind him, along the floor.
The Space Chicken perched on the edge of the dull, brown sofa in the flowery-pink sitting room and thought about how much he was enjoying being with Old Man Tales; it was good to take his mind off things. He heard the front door close and Old Man Tales’s footsteps returning.
“So as I was saying,” he continued loudly, so that the wise senior could hear, “I think there is a new genre derived from the merger of fables and sci-fi. Like in that new novella by What’s-Her-Name. You know, The Star Fish.”
Old Man Tales re-entered the room, followed by the five friends left behind at the hotel by the Space Chicken.
Old Man Tales left the room weightlessly.
“Listen,” the Space Chicken said, “I’m sorry about what I did at the hotel. Clint, Clein and the two Daves, I let you down and I’m really ashamed of myself. But you,” he said to the Egg. “I can’t abandon my own son. How irresponsible am I? It doesn’t matter if I wanted you or if it was just another one of Quack’s mistakes, it’s my responsibility to look after you and I should never let anything hurt you, especially not me myself. More importantly, I should not— could not have left my friends behind, the only people I have in this world, and I’m probably one of the few people you have too. I thought the world was being tough on me, but I was the one making it tough. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay, Space Chicken,” Dave said. “We all make mistakes, whether we realise it or not, and the one thing we can do to make them disappear is to forgive and forget. I forgive you and I hope the rest of the group does, too.”
Dave and the Space Chicken looked and saw that they were all nodding.
“I guess I just didn’t understand what you guys meant to me. But we’re all in agreement I made a mistake and I’ll make sure to avoid it happening again.”
“Do you know what this means?” Dave asked him.
“No. What?”
Dave put on his cheesiest grin and made his best attempt to reassure the Space Chicken. “It means you didn’t make a mistake at all.”
Old Man Tales had offered them hospitality fit for a king (or whatever regal or political system there was on Glix) already and let the travelling gang stay overnight in the rooms of the house.
Dave’s room was the same old-man pink colour as the lounge with the flowery border friezes. He lay there in the deep, down bed and tried to work out how much water there must have been in the paint in order to get the walls looking such a faint, pale tone. He stared in the assumption that he was watching paint dry. He didn’t fall asleep, though. The hectic voices chimed on in his head. The busy day’s thoughts swirled in his mind. The memories fought each other for a place at the front of his cortex. The arguments raged once more around him. He lay there. There was a bedside table with chipped white paint, on top of which was a desk lamp, which Dave wasn’t sure worked. There was a star-shaped clock hanging on the wall, which apparently rang 15 times a day. He watched the clock.
The Eternal Space Chicken of the Sacred Quack and the Egg’s room was another old-man shade, this time a gentle blue coating all the walls and the ceiling. They had an oak bedside table with a small light switched on atop it. The room was rather bare. It only had the bed, the bedside and a round clock on the wall. They watched the clock.
Clint was tucked up in bed. He was comfortable. He was technically comfortable. He saw a lot of plates and shelves hung on the olive-green walls. There was also a clock. He watched the clock.
Clein lay down in his old-man blue room. He had a bedside lamp on a small desk, which was lighting the room in stressfully calm shades. There were scraps of paper adorning all the walls. Some were in cases and frames and some were there on their own. Some scraps were glued together. They all had the old man’s handwriting on them. It was the neatest and most perfect writing Clein had ever seen, as if the man had spent a lot of time practising. Lots of a lot of time practising. In the middle of these neat, calligraphic sheets was a very different one with numbers etched oddly around it. It also had moving hands. He watched the clock.
Crazy Dave lay there. His room was old-man pink. It also had many items adorning the walls. But Crazy Dave didn’t see these things. He didn’t feel at all uncomfortable or thoughtful, nor did he have any interest in watching the clock. He was asleep. And he felt right at home.
The elderly man lay in his bed. He thought about the day that had g
one by. He thought of how long he had waited for this moment. He thought of how it didn’t feel like home any more. And how it wouldn’t be home for much longer anyway. He watched the clock.
Chapter 25
I think he’s an absolute idiot.
Y-o-u w-o-u-l-d s-a-y t-ha-t-, w-o-u-l-d-n-‘-t y-o-u-?
LET’S ALL PLAY NICE.
‘F’ to the ‘R’ to the ‘I’ to the ‘Ends’!
oh look its unnecessary use of punctuation
You sound just like Margery. Although I agree entirely, Dave 5 is incredibly annoying. Even more so than Dave 1.
If anyone (ANYONE!!) uses exclamation marks! A lot!! It’s me!!!
Oh Quack.
tell me about it
Loads of Daves are here now. It used to be just the idiot, the upper case one and me.
it seems there are seven of us now
I like you. You’re all right.
D-a-v-e i-s o-b-v-i-o-u-s-l-y t-r-o-u-b-l-e-d-, o-t-h-e-r-w-i-s-e w-e w-o-u-l-d-n-’-t b-e h-e-r-e-.
wow youre smart
Genius in the building… Or maybe in the head.
ſorry I’m latter ; traffic haſt ſlown me down.
Itookaliftwithhim.
we didnt need you here speedy and just plain weird
Calmdownyoupetulanttwoyearoldpunctuationfail.
woah looks like someone forgot to step off the train
Good one!
I’m the exclamatory one!!!!
IalreadytoldyouItookaliftwithDave8.
It iſt truthe : —we didſt lift-ſhare.
Crazy freak.
W-h-y w-o-u-l-d h-e h-a-v-e f-o-r-g-o-t-t-o-n t-o s-t-e-p o-f-f t-h-e t-r-a-i-n-?
because he was speaking so quickly duh
I t-h-o-u-g-h-t h-e w-e-n-t i-n a c-a-r w-i-t-h D-a-v-e t-h-e E-i-g-h-t-h-.
HE ARRIVED IN SOME FORM OF SHARED VEHICLE. CLEARLY IT WASN’T A VERY WELL THOUGHT-OUT JOKE.