"Quark is an invisible cat!" cried Alice, recalling a certain incident in one of her previous adventures. (Although, never in the life of her, would she have suspected that one day in the future she would discover a scientific reason for the old Cheshire Cat's disappearance!)

"Quite so!" cawed the crow. "Quark has become a chamelecat."

"So it's the Civil Serpents who are to blame for the Newmonia disease?" asked Alice, returning (finally) to the subject.

"That's correct," replied Chrowdingler; "the Civil Serpents tried their very best to cover up the carryon mistake, claiming the pandemonious Newmonia disease to be no more than a natural aberration of nature. There are only twelve beings in the whole world that know of the Serpents' real misdeed."

Twelve! Alice, suddenly enlightened, asked, "Would these twelve beings include a computermite and a Ramshackle Badgerman and a sleepy snake? And would they also include a chicken-powered terbot musician and a Zebraman and a long-distance Snailman? Also, a Spider boy and a Catwoman and a bookish Plaiceman?"

"They would indeed!" answered Chrowdingler. "The Civil Serpents are determined to kill off all of the knowledgeable twelve, in order to hide their misuse of the carryon particles, and their ghastly crimes against humanity. Quark! The Serpents are determined to kill off every single carrier of the carryon clue; this includes myself of course. Very soon the Snakes of Law will rearrange my body into a deathly puzzle." With this utterance Chrowdingler reached into her wing's darkness to produce a little piece of jagged wood: "This arrived in the post this very morning..."

It was the jigsawed fragment from the aviary in the London Zoo puzzle, showing a crow's black feather. Alice took it quite pleasingly. "Oh, thank you, Professor, for delivering this jigsaw piece to me!" she cried. "I now have nine of my twelve missing pieces!"

"To be given such a jigsaw piece," warned the professor, "implies that the Civil Serpents will be wanting to kill you off for your dangerous knowledge. These are the jigsaw pieces of Cain!"

"But all along I thought the Civil Serpents," queried Celia, "had been urging the police to find the Jigsaw Murderer? Isn't this why they arrested Captain Ramshackle, and also Alice's poor, innocent, real self?"

"The police are ignorant of the real murderer, and the real crime. The Serpents are merely looking for escape-goats."

Alice dearly wanted to ask what an escape-goat was, but at that very moment, from the insides of the wooden box, came once more a shrill voice that pleaded, "Please let me out of this box!"

"I'm not letting you out of the box so early!" screeked the crow-woman in reply. "The experiment is not yet over!" Simultaneously to this screeking, there was also a terrible pounding on the stairs that led down to the Uniworseity of Manchester.

"This is the Civil Serpents!" pounded the pounding. "Alice Liddell and Professor Chrowdingler! You are both under arrest for the Jigsaw Murders!"

The pipe fell out of Chrowdingler's mouth! "Quickly, Alice!" she urged. "This is what you have to do next: you must find the remaining three of your missing jigsaw pieces. You must then take all twelve of the pieces to your Great Aunt's house in Didsbury village. Promise me that you will carry all twelve of the pieces to your puzzle back to the past, because only then will we futurites be saved from the Serpents' wrath!"

"We promise, Professor Chrowdingler," croaked Celia.

"But my tenth jigsaw piece is with the Civil Serpents!" added the Real Alice. "They are keeping it for evidence at the Town Hall."

"So to the Town Hall must you journey!" screeked the Crow-woman in a flurry of wing-beats. "But now you must hide inside the experiment box."

"I'm not getting in there!" announced Alice in a huff. But the pounding of the Serpents on the stairs caused Celia to add (in a second huff!), "But Alice, it's our only chance to escape!" Celia opened up the box's lid and climbed inside.

"But Professor," hesitated Alice, "you haven't yet told us about the chrownon particles."

"I haven't the time for that," replied Chrowdingler.

And so Alice (rather nervously) followed Celia into the box.

Snakes and Leaders

It was very dark inside the box, and very cramped; so much so that Alice couldn't see her own nose in front of her face! But her unseen nose could smell a waft of sickly talcum powder. "Captain Ramshackle!" cried Alice to the darkness, upon smelling that dusty aroma, "it was you in here, trying to find a way out!"

"Indeed it is my very own self, trying to escape," answered the boxed-up Badgerman from the darkness.

"But what are you doing inside here?" questioned Alice.

"I was hoping to follow the example of Quark the cat," came the miserable, invisible reply.

"In order to make yourself invisible to the Civil Serpents...?"

"Precisely so!" admitted Ramshackle. "I was hoping that Professor Chrowdingler could turn me into a Badgermeleon! Am I correct to suspect that the experiment has failed?"

"I suspect, Captain Ramshackle," said Alice, "that you are no more invisible than I am! And that is not very invisible at all! Even though it's completely dark in this dangerous box!"

"What's happening outside the box?" whispered Ramshackle, fearfully.

"The Civil Serpents have come to find us," whispered Celia, hoarsely.

"Who are you?!" cried Ramshackle. "Are there two Alices in the box?"

"This is my Automated Sister, Captain," introduced Alice. "She's called Celia."

"Alice has been split in two?!"

"Well yes," answered Alice, "I suppose I have."

"How superbly random that must be!" exclaimed the Badgerman, finding a little of his old bravado. "Should we look outside just yet, do you think?"

"No, we should not!" cried Alice, as something heavy started hammering on the roof of the box. "Is there a way to lock this box from the inside?"

"There is indeed..." responded Ramshackle, reaching upwards to turn a small latch on the box's ceiling.

The noise from outside seemed to recede. Alice felt safe enough to ask some questions: "What do you know about the Radishes of Time, Captain Ramshackle?" was her first enquiry.

"Professor Chrowdingler told me nearly everything that she knew. The Radishes of Time are where the chrownon particles live and breed."

"And what is a chrownon?" asked Alice with her second question.

"A chrownon is another particle that Chrowdingler has uncovered; it is the elementary unit of time itself! My dear Alice... you must have eaten some forwards chrownons in the past; this is why you have travelled to 1998! To get back to 1860, you would have to swallow some backwards chrownons."

"I must swallow a radish, backwards?" protested Alice with her third question.

"That is correct, and you must swallow them at the very place of your leaving, and at the very same time as your leaving."

"In other words, Alice," explained Celia, helpfully, "we must travel to your Great Aunt's house in Didsbury. Once there, we must eat some of the radishes in your Great Uncle's vegetable patch, and we have to do all of this at precisely two o'clock."

"Your Automated Sister is most wise," said Ramshackle. "This whole process, according to Chrowdingler, is known as Chrownotransductionology; in other words: timely travel."

Just then, Alice's nose noticed a pungent whiff of gas over and above the Badgerman's talcum waft. "Have you made a social faux pas, Captain?" she discreetly enquired.

"No, I have not made a social fart-pants!" pleaded the Badgerman.