Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

The narrator sees his shadow, who seems angry, working with the Gatekeeper. While the narrator is waiting in the Gatehouse for them to finish working, his shadow sneaks in and asks for a map of everything inside the Wall before autumn ends. The narrator agrees, and the shadow leaves with nails (completing the errand that got him away from the Gatekeeper).

When the Gatekeeper returns to the Gatehouse, the narrator asks to see his shadow. The Gatekeeper refuses and asks about the narrator’s dreamreading. The narrator says it is slowly progressing. The Gatekeeper suggests they take a walk, and they head toward the Watchtower at the Wall’s West Gate. There, the Gatekeeper proclaims the Wall is perfect and inescapable and calls the Town the End of the World.

After leaving the Gatekeeper, the narrator walks to the Old Bridge and wonders if he actually was summoned to the end of the world. While gazing at the River, he thinks about how he feeds the beasts on a sandbar and how the beasts are becoming sadder as autumn continues.

After 9 p.m., the librarian gets dressed, smokes a cigarette, gives the narrator her phone number, and leaves. Then, the narrator compares the unicorn skull to the pictures in the book and hits the skull with the tongs. He cleans up and prepares for shuffling by turning off his phone and lights (except for the kitchen light) and locking his door. His shuffling password is the “End of the World.” Scientists at the System input the shuffling patterns into his brain with the password as well as the chaos it creates in his mind, which they never fully explained. The unconscious mind is described as more changeable than the conscious mind, and the narrator offers some context about the separation between the drama his core consciousness experiences after hearing the password and his outer consciousness, which doesn’t know what happens inside the core. His mind’s structure is an experiment, and this idea is later developed by the Professor’s full explanation of the shuffling surgery and its effects on the mind.

The narrator explains how he was taught to shuffle. He hears three repetitions of a recorded sound-cue pattern, then he unconsciously shuffles while his consciousness is in chaos. When shuffling is completed, his consciousness leaves the chaos with no memory of what happened while the shuffling occurred. This process is contrasted with the data-laundering process, which the narrator has complete conscious control over. The pay is very good, so he has tolerated the shuffling, even though he prefers data-laundering because he feels he actually has control of that work and can be proud of it while the shuffling occurs on its own. At this point, he is especially wary because the System has put a freeze on shuffling.

The narrator takes a shower, does calisthenics, and drinks coffee before opening his safe and retrieving the tape recorder with the sound-cue for shuffling and the paper with the laundered data. He also sets out a notepad and pencils for the shuffled data. Then, he follows the standard procedure with the tape recorder counter that prepares the signal tone to play and turns on the security system for his apartment. When he plays the tone, he is absorbed by chaos, represented by upside-down text at the end of the chapter.

At the request of his shadow, the narrator begins mapping the Town. He starts with surveying the area from the top of the Western Hill, but it is not high enough to see everything. His eyesight limits the times he can walk along the Wall (only cloudy days), so he asks the Colonel for weather predictions. Vegetation in the Woods limits some of his access to the Wall. The housing in the Town is centrally located around the River. The narrator starts walking along the edges of the Town at the western Gatehouse and circles clockwise through fields of grain and abandoned army barracks before reaching the Woods where his view of the Wall is blocked. His map is incomplete as autumn continues. In general, he maps out two forests in the east and north, the eastern gate (which is filled in), and traces the River’s trajectory from the east, under three bridges, and finally where it becomes a Pool, which goes under the Wall in the south.

The narrator also continues dreamreading and having dinner with the Librarian. He is improving and is able to read four or five dreams a night. The Librarian takes him into the stacks where there are shelves of skulls. She explains she will leave the Library when he stops being the Dreamreader. They talk about the Pool in the south, and she eventually agrees to lead him there. She warns him that most people are afraid of the Pool and say it’s cursed.

In November they visit the Pool, and the water’s tides sound like snarls. She says people used to throw criminals in the whirlpool and that there are caverns beneath the Pool. He tosses in a piece of wood, which is sucked down. As they have lunch in the meadow near the Pool, she asks about his map project. He claims he wants to know everything about the Town, and she doesn’t believe there is anything beyond the Wall. The season is changing to winter.

When the narrator regains consciousness, his eyes focus on an alarm clock, which he reaches for to turn off, but it was not on. His security system alarms are undisturbed, and the notepad he left out is filled with pages of shuffled data. After comparing the number of shuffled data entries with laundered data entries, he burns the laundered data list in the sink. Then he locks the notepad with the shuffled data and the tape recorder in his safe.

He has a drink, goes to the bathroom, sharpens pencils, turns the phone back on, and gets into bed. He thinks about retirement where he would learn Greek and to play the cello while living in a mountain cabin with the librarian. When he falls asleep, he dreams about his head being filled with string stuffed through a hole drilled in his skull. The phone ringing wakes him up and he tries to turn off the alarm clock again. It is 4:15 a.m. When he answers the phone, there is no sound on the other end of the line, so he hangs up. The phone rings again at 4:46. This time, the Professor’s granddaughter explains that the sound was disturbed in her previous call. She is worried about her grandfather because he has not come up from his lab, and the sound barrier is broken. She asks for the narrator’s help against the INKlings and Semiotecs. He suggests she contact the cops or the System instead of him. She begs him for help, telling him he is the key, and he eventually agrees to meet at a supermarket snack bar at 5:30 a.m.

After the sound dies on the phone, he gets dressed, cleans up, fills a sports bag with the skull and the shuffled data in a strongbox, and slips out the parking garage exit. He drives to the supermarket while thinking about Semiotecs easily killing five Calcutecs. When he gets to the supermarket, he eats in the snack bar and looks at a poster of a cathedral in Frankfurt in autumn. By 6:30 a.m., the Professor’s granddaughter has not arrived, so he leaves.

The narrator drives to Shinjuku station and checks his sports bag at the baggage-check counter there. He then buys an envelope and stamps to mail the claim ticket for the sports bag to a P.O. Box he has under a fake name. After returning home, showering, and going back to bed, people start breaking into his apartment around 11:00 a.m. The narrator gets dressed, arms himself with his knife, erases the tape recorder that has the shuffling sound-cue, and eats lunch. As he finishes a beer, the intruders finish taking down his door.

A large man enters followed by a tiny one. The latter sits and lights a cigarette and explains that they had to break the door even though they could have just opened it. He claims they just want to talk to the narrator. The large man (Big Boy, according to the narrator) crushes a drink can then tears the metal into shreds. The little guy (Junior, as the narrator calls him) says Big Boy was a wrestler who was injured. The narrator gets another beer and complains about his door. Junior talks about how beer is trashy, but his vice is sweets.

The narrator asks who they are and why they are there. Junior claims they know about the Professor, the skull, the data, and more. They claim to not be involved with the man in the gas inspector uniform being paid to steal the skull. They also claim they are working independently from the System and the Factory. When the narrator asks about the INKlings, Junior says they are kappa, who are creatures that have taken over the sewers and eat garbage. The INKlings may have taken the Professor, but there is a possibility he staged a kidnapping. Junior says the Professor used to work for System Central Research as the inventor of laundering and shuffling. However, he did not want to work with the Factory. Junior claims the data the Professor had the narrator shuffle is a program. Junior will not reveal if he knows anything about the Professor’s granddaughter. Big Boy begins to destroy everything in the apartment, starting with the narrator’s favorite items, such as his TV, videodeck, whiskeys, new suit, and jacket.

The seasons are changing from autumn to winter. The Colonel says the winter will be harsh based on the clouds, and he gives the narrator a coat. He also gives advice: Stay out of the Woods and away from the Wall in the winter. The narrator eventually learns that the people who live in the Woods—the Woodsfolk—bring coal, mushrooms, and firewood to Town in exchange for grain and clothing. However, only certain people speak to the Woodsfolk, and most of the Town thinks they are dangerous.

The narrator wants to map the Woods for his shadow before the winter. When the gloomy weather is good for his eyes, he goes to Woods. He describes the impediments he encounters, such as hollows, brambles, marshes, spiders, and roots. The interior of the Woods—the parts that are away from the Wall—seem more welcoming. There are glades with breezes and birds. The narrator uses the Wall as a guide to avoid getting lost and does not meet any Woodsfolk.

Three or four days later, he discovers a glade near the Wall that is peaceful and contains an abandoned house. He rests by the house’s well and looks at the Wall. After thinking about what is missing on his map and in his relationship with the Librarian, he falls asleep, and it starts to snow. When he wakes up, the Wall makes him feel like he is being watched. He heads to the Library. He caught a fever sleeping out in the cold, and the Librarian helps him to lay down by the stove. He describes feeling like he is coming apart and has a dual identity. She calms him down and he goes back to sleep.

Big Boy thoroughly destroys the narrator’s apartment, but no one in the building comes to investigate the noise. Junior says they are at war and when the System interrogates the narrator he should tell them about Junior and Big Boy but not say anything about the skull, even under torture. Junior says the System will assume he and Big Boy are from the Factory (which ends up being true, but the System and the Factory also end up being run by the same people).

When the narrator threatens to talk about the Professor, Junior says the System will not let him live if he does. Big Boy makes the narrator take off his pants and holds him down. Junior takes out a knife, sterilizes it with his lighter, and holds the narrator’s penis while slicing his stomach. Afterward, Big Boy gives the narrator a towel for the wound. The narrator realizes they told the guy in the gas company uniform to intentionally fail so he would hide the skull.

After Junior and Big Boy leave, the narrator throws out his bloody clothes and cleans his wound. Thirty minutes later, men from System Headquarters arrive. The narrator tells them that Junior and Big Boy asked about a skull, but he didn’t know what they were talking about. A System employee accuses the narrator of hiding something, and he denies it. They think Junior and Big Boy are Semiotecs and tell the narrator to call them if anything happens. A System employee asks if the Factory tried to recruit the narrator, and he says no. The System employee threatens violence against the narrator if he works with them.

After the System employees leave, the narrator thinks about the Professor and how his employers will find out he betrayed them. He calls a cab to go to the hospital and watches housewives, the mailman, and the rubber plant by the mailbox as he waits for his cab. At the hospital, his doctor suggests contacting the police, but the narrator refuses. The doctor stitches him up and prescribes bed rest.

Back at home, the narrator props up his broken door and reads Turgenev in bed. He searches through his broken bottles for small amounts of whiskey to drink. He sympathizes with the protagonist of the book—Rudin—and compares Turgenev to other Russian authors. When he finishes the book, he reads Stendhal’s The Red and the Black. It leads him to think about walls and a world within a wall, and he compares the wreckage of his apartment to a sci-fi novel. He eventually gathers and drinks enough alcohol from broken bottles to fall asleep. A few hours later, the Professor’s granddaughter comes by saying the world is going to end.

When the narrator wakes up in his bed, it seems like everything is off. It is raining, and the Colonel sits at the window. The Colonel tells him how the Librarian and Gatekeeper brought him home with a fever, and he has slept for two days. After drinking some soup that the Colonel feeds him, the narrator falls back to sleep.

When he wakes up again, he feels better and wants to go to work, but the Colonel says he’s still too sick. The narrator had called out for the Librarian when he was dreaming. The Colonel explains she cannot love the narrator back because she does not have a mind. While the people in the Town have manners or customs, their minds die when their shadows die. While the Librarian’s mother had a mind, the Librarian was too young to have a mind when her shadow was taken. The Colonel says that peaceful living is the only thing that remains after losing the mind. The narrator believes his mind will return.

He slowly regains health and is able to walk around his building by the third day. However, he is late for his appointment to give the map to his shadow. The narrator asks the Colonel to give his shadow some boots (that he has hidden the map in). The Colonel, ignorant of the map, takes the boots to the shadow.

Ten days after his fever, the narrator goes back to the Library, but the Librarian is not there. As he waits for her, he lights the stove and naps. When she appears, she makes coffee. They talk about her shadow, who was taken when she was four. It lived outside the Wall until she turned 17. Then, her shadow returned to the Town to die. She did not see her shadow when it came back into Town because the shadow was someone separate at that point.