Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

The Librarian accompanies the narrator to the Power Station because the Woods are dangerous. The morning is pleasant but cloudy, and they hold hands in his pocket. The beasts look sad as they walk along the River to a footpath into the Woods. A hill allows them to look over the Town from the east. They begin to be able to hear the sound of the station when they enter the Woods. When they arrive, the doors of the Power Station are locked, as are the doors to a smaller house behind it. No one answers when they knock. The Librarian sees an iron door in the back of the Power Station that is open. The narrator squeezes through it, takes off his sunglasses inside, and sees a figure in the darkness of the station in front of a column that contains a fan collecting wind.

They go back outside and walk far enough away from the sound of the wind to be able to talk. The Caretaker explains that the wind comes out of the earth once every three days. They talk about his life—he also has cleared some of the Woods for his garden, so he grows food in addition to getting a delivery from the Town once a week. He has seen but does not talk to the people who dig coal, clear trees, and live in the Woods. The Librarian asks him if he has seen a woman (her mother), but the Caretaker only has seen men in the Woods.

The Professor tells the narrator that the second circuit (the shuffling black box) in his mind died six hours ago, and that’s when bridging started (the false memories started appearing as visions). The first circuit of the mind—the conscious level—is shocked by the breakdown of the second circuit (also called Junction B), so it creates memories and tries to reassemble a world with the new memories. The parallel world within his mind is a closed circuit of tautology, like the encyclopedia wand (a puzzle whose solution explains how to engrave the entire encyclopedia onto a toothpick). The narrator’s mind is caught in one point subdividing for eternity, and this makes him immortal in the world of his mind. Dying before his mind closes off in the third circuit is the only way to avoid being stuck in the End of the World circuit forever.

The Professor says the third circuit has everything and nothing. When his granddaughter asks how long the narrator has, the Professor says about 29 hours. The narrator drinks and wants to get above ground to see the sun. The Professor tells him how to get out: He should swim to the sewer now that the lake is full and there are no tides, and he will come out on the subway tracks. They discuss where they are underground, and the Professor says he will stay behind because of his sprained foot. He will send his granddaughter with the narrator, and she can return with the INKling-repelling device. Then, the Professor reveals he creates makeshift repelling devices from paperclips when needed, and the narrator hands him some paperclips from his pocket. The girl kisses her grandfather’s forehead, and they head off.

The Caretaker invites the narrator and the Librarian into his home for tea. He explains the tea is from a plant that grows in the woods—the beasts eat its flowers. The Caretaker shares his food with the beasts, but the beasts don’t come into the Woods in the winter. The Caretaker shows the narrator some musical instruments he has collected. The narrator does not know how to play them or even what their names are. Even though they are old and broken and no one in Town cares about them, the Caretaker likes to look at the instruments. He also likes the Power Station and thinks he will never be allowed to return to the Town. The instruments are brought by the delivery man who brings his foot and supplies.

The narrator also thinks instruments are beautiful and selects an accordion (without knowing the name for it). He describes music and manages to play a few chords. The Caretaker says the narrator can have any instrument he wants and goes off to check the wind machine. The Librarian thinks the Caretaker still has part of his shadow and that is why he is exiled from the town.

The narrator gives the Caretaker a clock and cigarette lighter from the Collection Room. When the narrator explains they have to leave so he can dream-read at sunset, the Caretaker asks them to visit again and play music. As they walk away from the Power Station, the sound of the wind fades.

The narrator and the girl repel down their ropes to the surface of the lake. Once in the water, he realizes he didn’t get his wound treated. They swim bound together by rope. He balances a bundle of clothes and other items they do not want to get wet, like the INKling-repelling device, on his head. While he worries about the giant fish from the mural swimming in the water, the girl tries to justify her grandfather’s actions and argues the narrator should forgive the Professor. She convinces him that the Factory and System are run by the same person because it would allow for the most profits. The narrator ends up forgiving the Professor because he left the System, which could save the world even if it dooms the narrator. The girl confesses she knew about his brain all along but was not sure how to explain it. They reach the edge of the lake and find an opening in a stone wall above a fish relief.

When they are out of the water, they change into the dry clothes and signal the Professor they arrived. The narrator notes that it is 7:18 a.m. and wonders if anyone cares about his fate. They crawl through a narrow passage, eventually reaching a section with a high ceiling, and take the right path in the fork. The narrator considers what is above them—a bookshop and his barber. He considers getting a haircut when they get above ground. The girl and the narrator shorten the rope between them and walk past some parts where the wall is missing. When the narrator hears INKlings and stops walking, the Professor’s daughter slaps him and breaks the spell. They walk sideways, one foot at a time, and look at their feet. She says if they look at the INKlings, they will never look at anything else again. Eventually, they pass by the INKlings.

They talk about why the INKlings are angry. The girl wants to follow the narrator into the world of his consciousness because she thinks it would be better than the real world. At 8:20 a.m., they plug the INKling-repeller into a fresh battery device. He fantasizes about what to do with his remaining time, wonders if he has looked at the stars recently, and longs to be a shepherd. Then, he thinks about the bracelets worn by the girl in the car they saw earlier and creates a movie script about her. The Professor’s granddaughter shows him the exit (a side vent) to the sewer, and he wonders when he last peed. They can hear the subway cars and feel their vibrations.

As they squeeze through the sewer vent, he watches her backside. She finds a shoe in their path and thinks the owner was killed by an INKling. He looks at her thighs and thinks about panty hose and stockings. He whistles an old song and feels old because when she asks about the song he realizes it came out before she was born.

They arrive at the end of the sewer pipe where there is a hole in the iron grill, and they hear the subway trains. He thinks about normal life on trains, and she says they should pause to allow their eyes to adjust to the light. They sit and avoid looking at passing trains. The narrator has a memory of light hurting his eyes from his other consciousness circuit. He says he wants a bath and agrees to her request to take a bath at his place as well. When she asks if she can nap at his place, he reminds her that he does not have a door and people from the System or Factory might come by at any time, but this does not bother her. Their eyes adjust, and they start moving down the tracks.

The next morning, the narrator still has the musical instrument from the Caretaker. He hears a noise and eventually realizes three men are digging a hole outside his window. After eating a little breakfast in the kitchen, he goes back to bed while waiting for his stove to heat the room. Another man has joined in the digging. When the room is warm, he looks at the instrument and finds the name—accordion—written on it. While it is small for his hands, he plays notes for a couple hours until he can play some chords, but no melody appears. He thinks the loud digging might be distracting him, so he gives up on finding a melody and watches the men dig. There are now six old men, and the hole is waist deep.

At lunch, the men take a break in digging, and the Colonel asks to eat with the narrator. He explains he missed breakfast because he was busy in Town that morning. As they eat, the Colonel tells the narrator that the men dig to dig—it is a pure hole because it has no purpose. They just enjoy digging. The Colonel encourages the narrator to lose his mind to find peace. He says the narrator’s shadow is deathly ill and encourages the narrator to visit it. 

The narrator and the girl walk along the subway tracks, hiding behind columns when trains pass. They exit the tracks at the Aoyama Itchome platform, where people stare at how dirty they are. Then, they tell the gate attendant that they lost their tickets. He argues with them about where they got on at, and the narrator offers to pay the highest fare from the furthest station. The attendant refuses, but the narrator throws down the money and leaves. When they get outside, it is raining, and while the girl feels like the rain feels nice on her eyes the narrator craves the sun.

They stop at a snack bar in a supermarket and order food. Picking up a paper from a stool, they learn it is Sunday. After eating, they eventually hail a taxi. The driver plays a cassette by the Police. When he asks why they are dirty, the girl says they fought in the rain. The rest of the ride, the driver talks about music, and the narrator tips him well when they arrive at his apartment.

He moves aside the broken door so they can get in and sets it back in place once they are inside. While he can tell someone (it turns out to be his librarian friend) cleaned the apartment, there is still evidence of Big Boy’s destruction. The narrator lets her take the first bath. At 11:30 a.m., he contemplates what to do with his remaining hours and decides on a good meal. He calls the librarian and asks her to have dinner with him. She is initially resistant, but eventually she agrees. While deciding where to eat, she reveals she cleaned his apartment and says to pick her up at 6 p.m. The Professor’s granddaughter comes out of the bath wearing only earrings and hangs her clothes up to dry in the bathroom.

As he takes a bath, she reads Balzac while drying her hair on the bed. This reminds him of married life. He is exhausted but doesn’t want to sleep. The girl’s pink clothes are drying slowly in the rainy weather, so the narrator takes them to a laundromat to dry.

The narrator goes to the Gatehouse and talks to the Gatekeeper about the beasts dying as the men warm their fingers at his stove. The Gatekeeper agrees to let the narrator see his shadow and unlocks the gate to the Shadow Grounds. Inside the cold lean-to, the Gatekeeper shows the narrator a trap door with a ladder to a cellar that contains his shadow’s bed, chamber pot, and candle. Once the Gatekeeper leaves, the supposedly bed-ridden shadow tells the narrator that his sickness is an act. They talk about the terrible weather and plan for the narrator to steal the Gatekeeper’s keys while the Gatekeeper burns corpses of beasts. While the shadow has a plan for them to be together again, the narrator has doubts about his former self and admits he likes living in the Town.

The shadow explains the price of the Town’s eternal utopia: Everyone “relinquishes” their mind, and without the mind there is no joy or love or hope. The narrator admits that he does not want to leave the Librarian. The shadow’s death would mean the death of the narrator’s mind, and the narrator wants to help his shadow escape alone. The shadow explains that people with undead shadows are driven from the Town, into the Woods, and the Librarian can’t live there because she does not have a mind.

The shadow continues to explain how the Town works. The beasts carry the residual selves of the people in the Town outside the Wall—the death of a beasts is the death of the pieces of the Townfolk’s minds that remained after their shadows died. After the beasts die, the Dreamreader’s work is extracting the residue of self on the beasts’ skulls, which becomes nothing in the air. When the Dreamreader’s shadow dies, he is no longer Dreamreader. This explanation convinces the narrator to come back the next day—he says he will take part in the escape, but in the end he sticks by his original suggestion of only getting his shadow out of the Town.