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This weeks most POPULAR PROSE
1	Joey
2	Sally Munkton
3	Terry the Tiger and Young Maggie McIver
4	The Need of Consciousness
5	Bedlam
6	The risky Jellibabies
7	There for the grace of God go I
8	Pepperoni Marconi
9	Sure Bill
10	Hans Solo Fatherland and the Political Device

Article Super Critque Form

The Incredible Adventures of Terry the Tiger and Young Maggie McIver--Chapter 8
‘Okay. As I was saying before I so badly interrupted myself: I won’t be on my own because Terry will be with me, you silly furless bumble-bee wearing a badly-worn green plastic-coated woollen skirt and bright orange Wellington boots on its way to see the Queen of Siberia (whom Terry was bought off).

by Tom Campbell
posted on	2005-01-16 04:01:15
views	7 : last 2005-01-16 04:01:41
comments	4 : last 2005-01-18 03:19:44
category	Fiction » Science Fiction
rating	Universal

SUPER REVIEW AND CRITICAL ANALYSIS

Original Prose

Critique of Prose

Chapter 8. The Blue Place Grows Ever Mysterious

‘Deuce me, if I don’t understand this. You mean there were boys and girls, and of course, their father—who used to train them at home (as Learning Centres were not homes to children in those ancient days)—and are you saying some of the girl children had a special role in the family and they were called a mother?’

At this revelation, Maggie held up the thumbnail of her right hand and chewed on it, and she wasn’t the sort of girl who chewed her nails, but it was just something that she did in this situation. She was twisting slightly from right to left trying to comprehend what the man was saying. Then it dawned on her that he thought that mother was a word for one of the children. Well it was her turn to shriek with laughter. She collapsed into a fit of giggles. Terry seemed to be hiding his head under his paws: he had a feeling this was not a good idea—it was just his tiger’s instinct.

The man grew even darker in his cheeks, but more with anger and frustration now, than with embarrassment and awkwardness.

‘Deuce! Why are you laughing, red-clothed girl?’ insisted the blue-clothed man. ‘Come on; what is this mother word? What does it mean?’

Maggie calmed down in much the same way as the man had done earlier. She did not mean to offend him. It was just that she found what he said so funny. She said, ‘Well in those days, believe you me, families—that’s full families—had a mother and a father and children (and pets sometimes). The mother and father were called the parents. The children—the boys and girls—were usually the natural children of the parents, but could be adopted. And, you could have single-parent families, of course. These could be either the mother or the father, but usually it was the mother.’ Then Maggie looked carefully at the man to see if he understood, but he still looked confused, although he was not looking so flustered now.

‘But you still haven’t explained what a mother is? I mean it must be another father. However, you said it was a lady of the family? So I cannot really understand you? It’s almost as if you are saying that the mother is a female that is in some way not a child. But since there is no such thing as an adult female, I am confused?’

‘Well of course there is such thing as an adult female!’ exclaimed Maggie, she could hardly believe the man’s belief. There was something not quite right in this future. She continued to explain, 'That’s just it: the mother is the female adult of the family. It is her that gives birth to the children of the family—unless of course the children are adopted, which is when they are just looked after as if they are the natural-born children.’

‘Female adults!’ barked the man, getting a little agitated. ‘Preposterous! Deuce me backwards with an army of petties. Sorry, but that is where your illusion falls to the ground. No such a thing!’ said the man, and then he started smiling. ‘I suppose you are just being creative again. Imagining something that is in theory possible but not in practice. Deuce! Once again, I suppose I should congratulate you. But I must say that this idea of a female adult is not really one a child like yourself should have; and certainly not be mentioning.’

Then the man sighed, and said, ‘Oh well, what is the world coming too? Children of my day would never think of such obtuse things—and we certainly wouldn’t have said it to an adult.’

‘Excuse me Sir…but are you saying you don’t have any mothers today? Where would we children come from?’

‘Deuce me! What game are you up to now? Children come from the children.’

Maggie’s eyes widened. She couldn’t quite comprehend what the man meant by the last remark but there something strange going on, and she was determined to get to the bottom of it. For some reason she blurted out: ‘Children coming from children—deuce!’

Sadly, this had an unfortunate negative effect on the man, and there was no mistaking his anger!

‘HOW DARE YOU!’

‘What’s the matter Sir? What’s wrong?’ said Maggie nervously, wondering what she had done that had angered him all of a sudden.

‘I could put up with your rudeness when you started suggesting that there were adult females, but using adult words—I WILL NOT STAND FOR IT!’

‘Sorry Sir. Honestly, I meant no offence. What do you mean Sir? What adult words?’

‘You said, deuce!’

Maggie was about to say she never meant any harm by it when Terry, who had not said a word all this time, decided to come alive—in the talking sense. He joined the conversation: ‘She does not swear Sir, I assure you. She said juice, as in a drink—that’s juice spelt: j-u-i-c-e. She always says it when she is thirsty. Isn’t that right red-clothed child?’

Maggie thinking like a tiger knew it was right and important, that it might even be a matter of survival to agree with Terry. ‘Yes, I’m so thirsty. Juice. Juice. Is there any juice?’

The man changed his demeanour once again and reverted to his usual merry self. It was amazing how fast his emotions could change.

‘A petty cannot lie. Deep in its workings, you know. I’m sorry little girl, I didn’t mean to accuse you. It was just your illusion. It was so tremendously brilliant it must have up-hinged me. Then when you spoke of female adults…well, it was too much for me. I must be getting old. It was only a creative concept, after all. Quite obtuse though? A female adult? What a ridiculous idea—or is it? Anyway, I don’t like thinking of such things. Must say though—I didn’t realize your petty could talk. You must be a very special little girl to be given a talker.’

‘Yes she is a very special girl,’ said Terry.

The man did not even look at Terry, and he said to her, ‘I think you should come back to the city now. You should not be unattended at your age in a Park. You might have an accident. You wouldn’t want to have an accident now would you.’

‘Well having had a rather big accident already in my short life; I’d have to agree with you on that score. But Terry can look after me, don’t you think?’ said Maggie, and she motioned for Terry to come closer to her side. He nuzzled close to her side, and she stroked the top of his head with affection.

‘That is just a toy. No matter how clever the workings of it are, it can’t really stop you having an accident. It can’t think, can it. If you weren’t looking where you were going, your petty wouldn’t be able to stop you. Remarkable as the technology is today of our children’s petties, I’m afraid thinking is something they cannot do. And thinking means knowing you exist, and keeping things that way as long as possible…if you understand me.’ Lectured the man.

‘Terry can think. He’s very clever too. He has far more knowledge than me, that’s for sure,’ protested Maggie, a bit upset at the man talking so lowly of her companion.

‘Deuce me sideways with a hairless caterpillar,’ started the man, and at these words Maggie couldn’t help but squeak out a little giggle. He went on, ‘Now she’s trying an illusion that really is impossible—a thinking petty with a name that’s a word! What will she dream up next, I wonder?’

‘Terry can think, no matter what you say,’ said Maggie beginning to find the situation a bit more amusing now.

‘Now don’t be a silly slug dressed up as a baby pleading insanity on a charge of stealing a pink-coloured-meteorite from the orbit of Jupiter,’ said the man lifting his arm and looking at, what looked like, a watch of some kind on his left wrist.

‘Hoo. Hoo. Hoo,’ hooted Maggie with delight, thinking the man was a quite comedian himself now.

‘It’s now par sectors to four quads,’ said the man, looking at the silvery glass-covered metallic object that was strapped around his wrist, confirming that the object was indeed a sort of watch. The watch glinted in the sunshine as he swivelled his wrist around and hung his arm back down to his side, ‘Now come on, I’ll take you back to the city—you’ll be safe from harm there—even on your own.’

‘But, I won’t be on my own, you—erm, by the way, is it alright to say funny things like about bald caterpillars and slugs dressed as babies?’ asked Maggie, interrupting her own sentence.

‘Of course it is. As you very well know!’ confirmed the man.

‘Okay. As I was saying before I so badly interrupted myself: I won’t be on my own because Terry will be with me, you silly furless bumble-bee wearing a badly-worn green plastic-coated woollen skirt and bright orange Wellington boots on its way to see the opening of a film entitled, The Return of the Talking, Thinking Tigers.’

Maggie thought she had excelled herself and the man was bound to be shocked, but he showed no sign at all of this and just repeated his intention: ‘Come on let’s go. And don’t forget your petty…’ and then he added, unexpectedly, to please the little girl, ‘Terry!’

Terry said, ‘Oh thank you, Mr Man, for that courteous act of concession. I was beginning to conclude that you didn’t care. But now, my dear honoured fellow of blue (ever awake to a furious sea of childish wimps and complexities, paradoxes of oxymoronic verse), I can see you’re a man of some distinction, despite your wrong belief in my untimely despicable naughty extinction. You are most certainly not a two-legged spider wearing a purple wig (with green stripes) and back-to-front football boots on the wrong feet with half the studs missing, walking backwards, like a sun-burned moth that’s been under-exposed to the Moon, that’s forgotten that its mother is its father’s daughter’s mum, crying: “Oh dear, what can the matter be? I can’t step forwards for the lack of good geography.”’ And Terry said all of this waving his paws elegantly and walking backwards whilst managing to pull the most funniest of faces you ever did see.

Maggie was very impressed with Terry, but the man simply said, ‘I really think your toy needs to be sent for repair—it’s not making any sense in its recorded sound-wave responses.’

‘You didn’t see the hidden sense in that response then?’ said Terry to the man.

‘No,’ answered the man, as they started to walk along a winding brown coloured, glassy, smoothed path, through the park, presumably towards the city.

‘Not even the bit about the mother?’ persisted Terry.

‘No. That did not make any proper sense at all,’ insisted the man, kicking a grey rough-looking stone off the path that he felt looked well out of place on the smooth brown marble surface of the path.

‘Yes it did make proper sense,’ persisted Terry.

‘No it didn’t!’ insisted the man looking for another stone and still avoiding terry’s eye’s, which he nevertheless thought were extremely well constructed. He wouldn’t have admitted it to Maggie, but he thought her petty was the most realistic-looking toy he had ever seen—or touched for that matter. The thing seemed almost alive.

‘It did make sense, you know,’ said a determined Terry.

‘It—did—not!’ said the man, emphasizing every word, and trying to make it sound like he meant it to be the final say on the matter.

‘It did!’

‘It didn’t!’

‘Did!’

‘Didn’t!’

‘Did! Did! Did! Did!’ cried Terry, marching on his hind legs, and sticking up his head arrogantly high in the air as if he was searching for a long lost cloud in the blue summery sky above. He had never looked so human as he did now, thought Maggie.

The man stopped abruptly, and faced Terry, looking very angry, and shouted at him, ‘Look it did not make sense!’ Then as had happened so many times before, his face crumbled from anger and turned into a happy one: ‘Deuce me! If I didn’t start talking to a toy as if it were a real thinking thing. Imagine that! Deuce and double deuce.’ Then he said in a calm measured and very bright voice to Maggie, ‘Remarkable illusion that petty is. Magnificent really.’

‘Oh, tommyrot,’ added Terry, in a condescending way.

‘Remarkable. Great illusion all round. Must find out more about these new petties—much more advanced then the ones I had when I was a child. Can’t remember reading about these new models. What an interesting pair these two make,’ said the man, more to himself than to Maggie, even though he was looking at her as he said it.

‘Absolute twaddle,’ added Terry, with the greatest of ridicule.

And so, off the three of them marched, their voices trailing to the distance as they made their way at a fair pace along the brown marble winding path.

They passed some children playing on some swings, and one of them rushed over to pet Terry, then rushed back to his swing. They saw a man telling a group of very young children a story, as they sat enthralled; all of them were perched on a large square of thick comfortable looking blue grass. And they passed a few weather-beaten thick-wooden benches, to the side of the path where some men were reading what Maggie and Terry were certain were newspapers of the future—some things never change. Then the path headed around some neatly cut bushes, and it pointed them in more or less a straight line, to what could only be the city, about one hundred yards ahead. The buildings were not that high, the tallest being about three floors in height.

‘Is that the city ahead?’ said Terry.

‘Of course it is Terry,’ replied the man.

‘Can’t see any skyscrapers?’ said Maggie.

‘Still up to your illusion games. Skyscrapers disappeared before the end of the Mid Pre-Civilized Period. Which I am sure you knew?’

‘Well, shiver me timbers, and pluck out me whiskers: blowed if I knew that,’ remarked Terry, sticking his chest out in an exaggerated fashion as he marched along in a mechanical fashion.

‘You don’t know anything—you are a toy. You have to be able to think to be able to know. What was it that Seribus the philosopher once said, in par-two-par-three sect one-zero-six? Ah yes, he said: I think therefore I am.’

‘Well it was actually Descartes who first said that, and he was born in a place called Tours, which was a village in a land called France, in a year that he, and everyone else at the time, called, 1596 A.D.. Any Frenchman, of which I think I am part, will tell you that. You mentally challenged butterfly that spends its evenings drawing over-weight tadpoles in search of a frogless ponds inhabited by microscopic toads dancing in tartan kilts upon the iced-covered water beneath the light of a candy-striped Moon.’

‘Now look here,’ said the man angrily to Terry, ‘I know my hist…’ then he stopped abruptly before completing the sentence and smiled and shook his head with beaming eyes, and he looked over to Maggie and said, ‘Deuce! If I haven’t been talking to the toy as if it were real. Really real! That’s the second time I’ve fallen for the illusion. Amazing toy! What a clever thing! What an illusion supreme!’

‘Whatever,’ said Terry, as he let off a huge yawn, flippantly, knowing that the man would ignore him, but that Maggie would not.

In good time they reached the end of the path ending as it did at a grey wooden tattered gate that appeared to be made of oak—but was actually made of non-living materials using a process that was known as larbosis.

‘Well here we are. I’ll say goodbye to you now, Maggie,’ he said, and he patted her affectionately on her head. ‘I’m sure you know how to get to your Learning Centre from here.’

Maggie said before parting, ‘Aren’t you going to check that fact about Dustcarts…’

‘Descartes,’ corrected Terry, ‘A French philosopher amongst other things, born 1596 A.D. Tours, France.’

‘What’s the point? I mean how can a toy know such a thing? It’s impossible!’ said the man adamantly.

‘Go on,’ said Maggie, ‘Check on your thingamabob? That telly-thing, computer-thing, or whatever it is, in your tunic.’

‘Ah. This!’ said the man popping out the viewing pad object. ‘And my thought translator cap,’ he added, grabbing the green cap from apparently the same place. ‘My Memory Combo. This particular slab and cap is a Four-Par-SU Robalt Professional. They’re very expensive. Cost me a lot of exchanging to acquire it. It’ll be at least nine times [which remember translates to ten times to Terry and Maggie] more powerful than yours.’

‘Never mind all that clap-trap, and check out the fact,’ demanded Terry. ‘I wanna see your face when you realise a petty can be so splendiferous.’ And Terry pulled his favourite humanlike face.

‘Oh well…if it will make you happy,’ sighed the man. He donned his cap, and played his fingers quickly over the side-buttons.

After a few minutes, he found that Terry had been right! ‘Well I never!’ he exclaimed and then looked up and realized to his surprise that Terry and Maggie had gone! He walked dreamily away looking quickly at his watch murmuring, ‘Well deuce me well and proper. I’ll be the mother of a brother’s daughter’s son. No that’s not it? What did that Terry the Tiger say again? Oh Deuce. Can’t remember? Clever petty that Terry. Remarkable illusion those two created. Absolutely brilliant, that little Maggie was. Look at me—I’m even using the names they made up about themselves. I’m even thinking of the petty as a person. Deuce! Double deuce! And Triple deuce! That’s the third time they’ve got me—and they’re not even here! Incredible illusion. Full marks. Full marks.’

The man then plunged into a busy street walking quite quickly as he shook his head thinking of his recent experience. Eventually, as he got further and further away, he became a small blue dot bobbing up and down, and indistinguishable from those around him, as they were blue dots too. He was now just one of the millions of hordes of city inhabitants that looked from a distance like little regimented armies of blue coloured insects as they went to-and-fro about their daily business in the large sprawling city.

* * *

Comments
Please remember that Authors are looking for constructive feedback (both positive and negative). If leaving praise, or a critique, please try to qualify your comments .

On 2005-01-16 04:17:22, Tom Campbell wrote...	[Delete Comment]
This is hopefully something of interest for people who liked Enid Blyton and wanted her combined with Lewis Caroll and Ray Bradbury

On 2005-01-16 04:19:02, Rose Linden wrote...	[Delete Comment]
I often wonder what the students get up to in their spare time--now I know! Especially, when, in your case, it's doing our course!!!!

On 2005-01-16 04:19:02, Ormerod Toms wrote... [Open Comment]		[Delete Comment]
An interesting piece. I have left a full critique.

On 2005-01-16 04:19:02, Tom Campbell wrote...	[Delete Comment]
I thought it was very funny. I've never heard anyone being called a furless bumble-bee before

On 2005-01-16 04:19:02, Tom Campbell wrote...	[Delete Comment]
I dunno really

On 2005-01-16 04:19:02, Tom Campbell wrote... [Open Comment]		[Delete Comment]
An interesting story. Please read my comments.

On 2005-01-16 04:19:02, Tom Campbell wrote...	[Delete Comment]
I want to know where all the women are gone? Or do them simply not exist?

On 2005-01-16 04:19:02, Tom Campbell wrote...	[Delete Comment]
Have you worked on a circus yourself?

On 2005-01-16 04:19:02, Tom Campbell wrote... [Open Comment]		[Delete Comment]
Dooplelanger. See comments.

On 2005-01-16 04:19:02, Tom Campbell wrote... [Open Comment]		[Delete Comment]
Open the pairing here to read again.

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