Muddle and Win
Authors: John Dickinson
Contents
14: The Battle of Food Tech Block
About the Author
Everyone has a Lifetime Deed Counter (LDC). It works like this:
You offer to help with the housework: Lifetime Good Deeds +1
You steal your little brother’s sweets: Lifetime Bad Deeds +1
Looks straightforward, huh? But what if your every thought was disputed by opposing forces of good and evil – by an angel wearing ray bans (called Windleberry) and a demon in the form of a wart (called Muddlespot)? And within your mind they were fighting a fierce battle over your actions, a battle dictated by a game of poker?
When Muddlespot is promoted from a devil’s janitor to special agent, the pressure is on for him to infiltrate Sally Jones and make her Bad. If he doesn’t, it will be Very Bad for him. But as his mission leads him down Sally’s ear and into the deepest recesses of her mind, all becomes unclear. Just what does it mean to be good? And can it be good to be bad?
PANDEMONIUM IS A
place. To get there you go down.
That’s not ‘down’ as in the bottom of a mine. You can go to the deepest mine you like and dig and dig and dig until there’s so much air pressing on top of you that it squashes you to treacle. But you don’t get to Pandemonium that way. It’s the
other
sort of down.
Think of your mind like it’s a house. What you’re looking for is in one of the little rooms at the back. There won’t be much light there, and there’ll be things scattered all over the floor. Most of it’s stuff you’ve always known about but don’t get out and look at too much. You start clearing it to one side. Never mind the dust. Never mind the smell. (Listen – even the best-kept minds have
rooms
like this.) When you find you’re shifting aside thoughts you would never,
ever
try to explain to anybody – and there will be some – then you’re in the right place.
Underneath it all, there’ll be a trap door. It may have a padlock on it. It may be marked with mystic runes or with bright black-and-yellow stickers that say
DANGER! DON’T GO HERE
! Or it may already be open. It depends what sort of mind you have.
If it’s locked, you open it. You have the key, of course.
The trap door opens onto darkness. There are no steps. No lift, no ladder, not even a rope. You just step over the void and drop.
And you fall. Your stomach goes hollow and hits the back of your throat. The darkness rushes up past you like wind, faster and faster. There’s a tingling in your feet because they’re standing on nothing. Above you, the trap door has already dwindled to a point of light as small as a distant star. You think you’re going to hit the bottom at any moment and be squashed. But there
is
no bottom.
Still you fall, faster and faster! You’re sorry you did this now, but there’s no going back. You can’t see anything. There’s nothing to feel or hear except the
rush
of the darkness. Maybe you aren’t even falling any more, but just hanging there with all that nothingness blasting up past you.
It goes on like that. On and on. And it’s beginning to get warm.
For most people, going to Pandemonium is a one-way trip. You probably didn’t want to know that. But of course
you’ll
come back. (You hope.)
Now look down! You see it – a dull glow spreading below your feet. Not flames, but a kind of slow, black-red pulse like the embers of a huge fire. You’re getting somewhere at last.
You don’t look at the glow itself, already swelling as you rush towards it. That comes from a
long
way down. You’re not going that far this time. You keep your eyes fixed around the edges, where the shapes of huge towers have begun to appear, rising like rockets towards you as you fall. They’re built of brass and domed with metals that gleam dully in the furnace light. There are cupolas and turrets and battlements and hanging gardens where nothing grows but branches of hammered gold. There are bell towers and terraces and ziggurats and monuments and arches and staircases as wide as football pitches that do nothing but go down, down, down.
Speaking of which . . .
Start running!
You’re careering down a huge staircase – so steep that really you’re still falling as you run, your legs clattering madly as they try to keep up with the rest of you! Shapes whirl past in the gloom – buildings, pillars, the glow of a furnace, glimpsed and gone in a moment. More and more of them. It’s like a huge city built on a slope that falls for ever downwards, and you’re a train coming into the station. Your feet are bruised, your lungs are gasping, but your speed’s easing. Not quite so mad now. You can almost control it. In fact, you’d
better
control it because the stairs are ending. There’s level ground ahead, ground that you hit stumbling, pitching to the floor (ouch!) where you lie gasping and feeling sick for long moments before you can finally lift your head.
Now.
Pick yourself up, and look at Pandemonium.
You’re in an alley, of sorts, between two huge buildings. On either side are rows of great arches with nothing but blackness behind them. They yawn wide, as if they are mouths about to swallow you. It feels like being caught in the middle of a pack of giant stone tigers. Or flesh-eating ghouls, perhaps.
The air is warm enough to make you sweat. It smells of hot metal and it’s humming with sounds. You can’t quite hear what they are, but you can feel them crawling on your skin. Sounds like gongs, maybe drums, crowds murmuring. And yes, faint screams.
Don’t worry. You’ll be quite safe. Somewhere, you’ve got some rules for staying alive in Pandemonium. Let’s have a look . . .
RULES FOR STAYING ALIVE IN PANDEMONIUM
1. DON’T EVER GO THERE. DON’T EVER
THINK
OF GOING THERE. LOOK, YOU REALLY, REALLY DON’T WANT TO KNOW. THE PEOPLE AREN’T FRIENDLY. AT ALL. IN FACT, IT’S STRETCHING A POINT TO CALL THEM ‘PEOPLE’ . . .
(Whoops! Blown that one. What else does it say?)
. . . ENTRAILS WITH RED-HOT FORKS AND SPLIT YOUR TONGUE WITH RAZORS AND PULL OUT EVERY ONE OF YOUR FINGERNAILS
VERY SLOWLY
AND
THEN THEY’LL FLAY YOUR SKIN OFF WITH ESPECIALLY BLUNT KNIVES WHILE LISTENING TO CHEESY POP MUSIC – AND THAT’S JUST THE FIRST MORNING, OK?
2. ALL RIGHT, SO YOU’VE BROKEN RULE 1. SACK YOUR TRAVEL AGENT. MEANWHILE, IF YOU WANT TO LIVE TO SEE YOUR TRAVEL AGENT AGAIN,
LOOK AS THOUGH YOU’RE MEANT TO BE THERE
. ALWAYS TRY TO LOOK AS THOUGH YOU’RE IN A HURRY AND YOU’VE BEEN SENT BY SOMEONE IMPORTANT.
3. IF YOU MEET ANYONE, DON’T SPEAK TO THEM. DON’T LOOK THEM IN THE EYES. (IF THEY HAVE EYES. SOME OF THEM HAVEN’T.)
4. DON’T ASSUME YOU CAN’T BE SEEN, EVEN WHEN YOU’RE IN SHADOW. YOU CAN BE. SEE THAT ARCHED WINDOW UP THERE, LIKE A MOUTH IN THAT TOWER?
Er . . .
Window?
There
is
a window up there. Creepy.
. . . THERE’S SOMEONE IN THERE. YOU CAN’T SEE THEM, BUT THEY’RE THERE, ALL RIGHT. THEY’RE WATCHING YOU. THEY’RE BEGINNING TO WONDER. YOU NEED TO MOVE.
NOW
.
Move. Quickly. Think:
I’m meant to be here. I’ve been sent by someone important. And bad-tempered. Nobody mess with me, OK?
Keep thinking that. Your footsteps make an ugly, metallic sound on the paving. That’s because the paving isn’t stone. It’s brass. They like brass here.
At the end of the alley there’s a smaller building that looks a bit like a chapel. There’s a round-arched doorway covered with carvings which . . .
. . . On a hurried look, seems to be illustrating exactly what happens to anyone caught breaking Rule 1 down here.
And on a closer look . . .
Yup. Whatever this little building is, it’s definitely
not
a chapel. And whoever built it has a twisted sense of humour.
Round the corner. A big terrace. It seems empty, but take no chances. Don’t run – just move quickly. Beyond the balcony you can see the towers and battlements and domes of the next level of palaces. They’re
even
bigger than the ones around you. Pandemonium’s built on a slope. The further down the slope a person lives, the more important they are. That’s how it works here.
The palace in front of you has twisty turrets and curvy, pointy roofs like horns. It’s six storeys high and walled in brass. The windows are great open arches framed with zigzag tooth carvings. They glow with the light of a huge fire within. The person who lives there likes fire. His sort often do.
You look through the window. He’s got a visitor. The visitor doesn’t want to be there. Right now, he wants to be anywhere else but where he is. His huge eyes are popping, bouncing a little like ping-pong balls in his leathery skull. There’s sweat on his green-grey skin, running down his domed forehead and dripping from his pointy nose. His big, bat-like ears flap in distress. His mouth is gaping, pleading. He’s begging for mercy, but down here using the word ‘mercy’ is like trying to put out a Bunsen burner with a tube of ethanol. (Sometimes literally. They really do like fire here.)
He struggles, but he can’t escape. He’s held by two great, grinning fiends, each bigger by half than he is. His desperate eyes roll upwards to the ceiling. He sees, with sudden clearness, the intricate, writhing, oh-so-
funny
carvings there, richly painted in colours and gold leaf to bring out just how funny they are. And with his last thought he thinks – as a brass hammer the size of a cathedral bell-clapper blocks it all from view – that they’re
not funny at all
.
Don’t look!
