And I said to the lady, “Where can I buy a map?”
And she said, “Pardon?”
And I said, “Where can I buy a map?” And I could feel the hand that was holding the knife shaking even though I wasn't shaking it.
And she said, “Patrick, put that down, it's dirty. A map of where?”
And I said, “A map of here.”
And she said, “I don't know.” And then she said, “Where do you want to get to?”
And I said, “I'm going to the train station.”
And she laughed and she said, “You don't need a map to get to the train station.”
And I said, “I do, because I don't know where the train station is.”
And she said, “You can see it from here.”
And I said, “No I can't. And also I need to know where there is a cash machine.”
And she pointed and said, “There. That building. Says Signal Point on the top. There's a British Rail sign on the other end. The station's at the bottom of that. Patrick, if I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times. Don't pick things off the pavement and stick them in your mouth.”
And I looked and I could see a building with writing at the top, but it was a long way away so it was hard to read, and I said, “Do you mean the stripy building with the horizontal windows?”
And she said, “That's the one.”
And I said, “How do I get to that building?”
And she said, “Gordon Bennett.” And then she said, “Follow that bus,” and she pointed to a bus that was going past.
So I started to run. But buses go really fast and I had to make sure that Toby didn't fall out of my pocket. But I managed to keep running after the bus for a long way and I crossed 6 side roads before it turned down another street and I couldn't see it anymore.
And then I stopped running because I was breathing really hard and my legs hurt. And I was in a street with lots of shops. And I remembered being in this street when I went shopping with Mother. And there were lots of people in the street doing their shopping, but I didn't want them to touch me, so I walked at the edge of the road. And I didn't like all the people being near me and all the noise because it was too much information in my head and it made it hard to think, like there was shouting in my head. So I put my hands over my ears and I groaned very quietly.
And then I noticed that I could still see the sign that the lady had pointed at, so I kept on walking toward it.
And then I couldn't see the sign anymore. And I had forgotten to remember where it was, and this was frightening because I was lost and because I do not forget things. And normally I would make a map in my head and I would follow the map and I would be a little cross on the map that showed where I was, but there was too much interference in my head and this had made me confused. So I stood under the green and white canvas roof outside a greengrocer's shop where there were carrots and onions and parsnips and broccoli in boxes that had a plastic furry green carpet in them, and I made a plan.
I knew that the train station was somewhere near. And if something is nearby you can find it by moving in a spiral, walking clockwise and taking every right turn until you come back to a road you've already walked on, then taking the next left, then taking every right turn and so on, like this (but this is a hypothetical diagram, too, and not a map of Swindon)
And that was how I found the train station, and I concentrated really hard on following the rules and making a map of the center of the town in my head as I walked, and that way it was easier to ignore all the people and all the noise around me.
And then I went into the train station.
181. I see everything.
That is why I don't like new places. If I am in a place I know, like home, or school, or the bus, or the shop, or the street, I have seen almost everything in it beforehand and all I have to do is to look at the things that have changed or moved. For example, one week the Shakespeare's Globe poster had fallen down in the classroom at school and you could tell because it had been put back slightly to the right and there were three little circles of Blu-Tack stain on the wall down the left-hand side of the poster. And the next day someone had graffitied CROW APTOK to lamppost 437 in our street, which is the one outside number 35.
But most people are lazy. They never look at everything. They do what is called glancing, which is the same word for bumping off something and carrying on in almost the same direction, e.g., when a snooker ball glances off another snooker ball. And the information in their head is really simple. For example, if they are in the countryside, it might be
1. I am standing in a field that is full of grass.
2. There are some cows in the fields.
3. It is sunny with a few clouds.
4. There are some flowers in the grass.
5. There is a village in the distance.
6. There is a fence at the edge of the field and it has a gate in it.
And then they would stop noticing anything because they would be thinking something else like, “Oh, it is very beautiful here,” or “I'm worried that I might have left the gas cooker on,” or “I wonder if Julie has given birth yet.”12
But if I am standing in a field in the countryside I notice everything. For example, I remember standing in a field on Wednesday, 15 June 1994, because Father and Mother and I were driving to Dover to get a ferry to France and we did what Father called Taking the Scenic Route, which means going by little roads and stopping for lunch in a pub garden, and I had to stop to go for a wee, and I went into a field with cows in it and after I'd had a wee I stopped and looked at the field and I noticed these things
1. There are 19 cows in the field, 15 of which are black and white and 4 of which are brown and white.
2. There is a village in the distance which has 31 visible houses and a church with a square tower and not a spire.
3. There are ridges in the field, which means that in medieval times it was what is called a ridge and furrow field and people who lived in the village would have a ridge each to do farming on.
4. There is an old plastic bag from Asda in the hedge, and a squashed Coca-Cola can with a snail on it, and a long piece of orange string.
5. The northeast corner of the field is highest and the southwest corner is lowest (I had a compass because we were going on holiday and I wanted to know where Swindon was when we were in France) and the field is folded downward slightly along the line between these two corners so that the northwest and southeast corners are slightly lower than they would be if the field was an inclined plane.
6. I can see three different types of grass and two colors of flowers in the grass.
7. The cows are mostly facing uphill.
And there were 31 more things in this list of things I noticed but Siobhan said I didn't need to write them all down. And it means that it is very tiring if I am in a new place because I see all these things, and if someone asked me afterward what the cows looked like, I could ask which one, and I could do a drawing of them at home and say that a particular cow had patterns on it like this
And I realize that I told a lie in Chapter 13 because I said “I cannot tell jokes,” because I do know 3 jokes that I can tell and I understand and one of them is about a cow, and Siobhan said I didn't have to go back and change what I wrote in Chapter 13 because it doesn't matter because it is not a lie, just a clarification.
And this is the joke.
There are three men on a train. One of them is an economist and one of them is a logician and one of them is a mathematician. And they have just crossed the border into Scotland (I don't know why they are going to Scotland) and they see a brown cow standing in a field from the window of the train (and the cow is standing parallel to the train).
And the economist says, “Look, the cows in Scotland are brown.”
And the logician says, “No. There are cows in Scotland of which one at least is brown.”
And the mathematician says, “No. There is at least one cow in Scotland, of w
hich one side appears to be brown.”
And it is funny because economists are not real scientists, and because logicians think more clearly, but mathematicians are best.
And when I am in a new place, because I see everything, it is like when a computer is doing too many things at the same time and the central processor unit is blocked up and there isn't any space left to think about other things. And when I am in a new place and there are lots of people there it is even harder because people are not like cows and flowers and grass and they can talk to you and do things that you don't expect, so you have to notice everything that is in the place, and also you have to notice things that might happen as well. And sometimes when I am in a new place and there are lots of people there it is like a computer crashing and I have to close my eyes and put my hands over my ears and groan, which is like pressing CTRL + ALT + DEL and shutting down programs and turning the computer off and rebooting so that I can remember what I am doing and where I am meant to be going.
And that is why I am good at chess and maths and logic, because most people are almost blind and they don't see most things and there is lots of spare capacity in their heads and it is filled with things which aren't connected and are silly, like, “I'm worried that I might have left the gas cooker on.”
191. My train set had a little building that was two rooms with a corridor between them, and one was the ticket office where you bought the tickets, and one was a waiting room where you waited for the train. But the train station in Swindon wasn't like that. It was a tunnel and some stairs, and a shop and café and a waiting room like this
But this is not a very accurate map of the station because I was scared so I was not noticing things very well, and this is just what I remember so it is an approximation.
And it was like standing on a cliff in a really strong wind because it made me feel giddy and sick because there were lots of people walking into and out of the tunnel and it was really echoey and there was only one way to go and that was down the tunnel, and it smelled of toilets and cigarettes. So I stood against the wall and held on to the edge of a sign that said Customers seeking access to car park please use assistance phone opposite, right of the ticket office to make sure that I didn't fall over and go into a crouch on the ground. And I wanted to go home but I was frightened of going home and I tried to make a plan of what I should do in my head but there were too many things to look at and too many things to hear.
So I put my hands over my ears to block out the noise and think. And I thought that I had to stay in the station to get on a train and I had to sit down somewhere and there was nowhere to sit down near the door of the station so I had to walk down the tunnel. So I said to myself, in my head, not out loud, “I will walk down the tunnel and there might be somewhere I can sit down and then I can shut my eyes and I can think,” and I walk down the tunnel trying to concentrate on the sign at the end of the tunnel that said WARNING CCTV in operation. And it was like stepping off the cliff on a tightrope.
And eventually I got to the end of the tunnel and there were some stairs and I went up the stairs and there were still lots of people and I groaned and there was a shop at the top of the stairs and a room with chairs in it but there were too many people in the room with chairs in it, so I walked past it. And there were signs saying Great Western and cold beers and lagers and CAUTION WET FLOOR and Your 50p will keep a premature baby alive for 1.8 seconds and transforming travel and Refreshingly Different and IT'S DELICIOUS IT'S CREAMY AND IT'S ONLY £1.30 HOT CHOC DELUXE and 0870 777 7676 and The Lemon Tree and No Smoking and FINE TEAS and there were some little tables with chairs next to them and no one was sitting at one of the tables and it was in a corner and I sat down on one of the chairs next to it and I closed my eyes. And I put my hands in my pockets and Toby climbed into my hand and I gave him two pellets of rat food from my bag and I gripped the Swiss Army knife in the other hand, and I groaned to cover up the noise because I had taken my hands off my ears, but not so loud that other people would hear me groaning and come and talk to me.
And then I tried to think about what I had to do, but I couldn't think because there were too many other things in my head, so I did a maths problem to make my head clearer.
And the maths problem that I did was called Conway's Soldiers. And in Conway's Soldiers you have a chessboard that continues infinitely in all directions and every square below a horizontal line has a colored tile on it like this
And you can move a colored tile only if it can jump over a colored tile horizontally or vertically (but not diagonally) into an empty square 2 squares away. And when you move a colored tile in this way you have to remove the colored tile that it jumped over, like this
And you have to see how far you get the colored tiles above the starting horizontal line, and you start by doing something like this
And then you do something like this
And I know what the answer is because however you move the colored tiles you will never get a colored tile more than 4 squares above the starting horizontal line, but it is a good maths problem to do in your head when you don't want to think about something else because you can make it as complicated as you need to fill your brain by making the board as big as you want and the moves as complicated as you want.
And I had got to
and then I looked up and saw that there was a policeman standing in front of me and he was saying, “Anyone at home?” but I didn't know what that meant.
And then he said, “Are you all right, young man?”
I looked at him and I thought for a bit so that I would answer the question correctly and I said, “No.”
And he said, “You're looking a bit worse for wear.”
He had a gold ring on one of his fingers and it had curly letters on it but I couldn't see what the letters were.
Then he said, “The lady at the café says you've been here for 21⁄2 hours, and when she tried talking to you, you were in a complete trance.”
Then he said, “What's your name?”
And I said, “Christopher Boone.”
And he said, “Where do you live?”
And I said, “36 Randolph Street,” and I started feeling better because I like policemen and it was an easy question, and I wondered whether I should tell him that Father killed Wellington and whether he would arrest Father.
And he said, “What are you doing here?”
And I said, “I needed to sit down and be quiet and think.”
And he said, “OK, let's keep it simple. What are you doing at the railway station?”
And I said, “I'm going to see Mother.”
And he said, “Mother?”
And I said, “Yes, Mother.”
And he said, “When's your train?”
And I said, “I don't know. She lives in London. I don't know when there's a train to London.”
And he said, “So, you don't live with your mother?”
And I said, “No. But I'm going to.”
And then he sat down next to me and said, “So, where does your mother live?”
And I said, “In London.”
And he said, “Yes, but where in London?”
And I said, “451c Chapter Road, London NW2 5NG.”
And he said, “Jesus. What is that?”
And I looked down and I said, “That's my pet rat, Toby,” because he was looking out of my pocket at the policeman.
And the policeman said, “A pet rat?”
And I said, “Yes, a pet rat. He's very clean and he hasn't got bubonic plague.”
And the policeman said, “Well that's reassuring.”
And I said, “Yes.”
And he said, “Have you got a ticket?”
And I said, “No.”
And he said, “Have you got any money to get a ticket?”
And I said, “No.”
And he said, “So, how precisely were you going to get to London, then?”
And then I didn't know what to say because I had Father's cash
point card in my pocket and it was illegal to steal things, but he was a policeman so I had to tell the truth, so I said, “I have a cashpoint card,” and I took it out of my pocket and I showed it to him. And this was a white lie.
But the policeman said, “Is this your card?”
And then I thought he might arrest me, and I said, “No, it's Father's.”
And he said, “Father's?”
And I said, “Yes, Father's.”
And he said, “OK,” but he said it really slowly and he squeezed his nose between his thumb and his forefinger.
And I said, “He told me the number,” which was another white lie.
And he said, “Why don't you and I take a stroll to the cashpoint machine, eh?”
And I said, “You mustn't touch me.”
And he said, “Why would I want to touch you?”
And I said, “I don't know.”
And he said, “Well neither do I.”
And I said, “Because I got a caution for hitting a policeman, but I didn't mean to hurt him and if I do it again I'll get into even bigger trouble.”
Then he looked at me and he said, “You're serious, aren't you.”
And I said, “Yes.”
And he said, “You lead the way.”
And I said, “Where?”
And he said, “Back by the ticket office,” and he pointed with his thumb.
And then we walked back through the tunnel, but it wasn't so frightening this time because there was a policeman with me.
And I put the cashpoint card into the machine like Father had let me do sometimes when we were shopping together and it said ENTER YOUR PERSONAL NUMBER and I typed in 3558 and pressed the ENTER button and the machine said PLEASE ENTER AMOUNT and there was a choice