Mindswap

The circle glowed with fire!

Kraggash put one leg over the circle. His leg disappeared. 'If you want me,' he said mockingly, 'you'll know where to find me.'

As the policemen rushed him, he stepped into the circle, and all of him vanished except his head. He winked at Marvin. Then his head was gone, and nothing was left except the circle of fire.

'Come on!' Marvin shouted. 'Let's get him!'

He turned to Urdorf, and was amazed to see that the detective's shoulders had slumped, and that his face was grey with defeat.

'Hurry!' Marvin cried.

'It is useless,' Urdorf said. 'I thought I was prepared for any ruse … but not for this. The man is obviously insane.'

'What can we do?' Marvin shouted.

'We can do nothing,' Urdorf said. 'He has gone into the Twisted World, and I have failed in my 159th case.'

'But we can still follow him!' Marvin declared, moving up to the fiery circle.

'No! You must not!' Urdorf declared. 'You do not understand – the Twisted World means death, or madness … or both! Your chances of coming through it are so small-'

'I have just as good a chance as Kraggash!' Marvin shouted, and stepped into the circle.

'Wait, you still do not understand!' Urdorf shouted. 'Kraggash has no chance!'

But Marvin did not hear those final words, for he had already vanished through the flaming circle, moving inexorably into the strange and unexplored reaches of the Twisted World.

Chapter 31

… thus, through the Riema

… therefore the term mirror-deformation carries the sense (if not the substance), of our thought. For indeed, as we have seen, the Twisted World [sic] performs the work, both necessary and hateful, of rendering indeterminate all entities and processes, and thereby making the universe theoretically as well as practically ineluctable.

… but despite this, a few tentative rules might be adduced for the suicidal traveller to the Twisted World:

Remember that all rules may lie, in the Twisted World, including this rule which points out the exception, and including this modifying clause which invalidates the exception … ad infinitum.

But also remember that no rule necessarily lies; that any rule may be true, including this rule and its exceptions.

In the Twisted World, time need not follow your preconceptions. Events may change rapidly (which seems proper), or slowly (which feels better), or not at all (which is hateful).

It is conceivable that nothing whatsoever will happen to you in the Twisted World. It would be unwise to expect this, and equally unwise to be unprepared for it.

Among the kingdoms of probability that the Twisted World sets forth, one must be exactly like our world; and another must be exactly like our world except for one detail; and another exactly like ours except for two details; and so forth. And also – one must be completely unlike our world except for one detail; and so forth.

The problem is always prediction: how to tell what world you are in before the Twisted World reveals it disastrously to you.

In the Twisted World, as in any other, you are apt to discover yourself. But only in the Twisted World is that meeting usually fatal.

Familiarity breeds shock – in the Twisted World.

The Twisted World may conveniently, (but incorrectly) be thought of as a reversed world of Maya, of illusion. You may find that the shapes around you are real, while You, the examining consciousness, are illusion. Such a discovery is enlightening, albeit mortifying.

A wise man once asked, 'What would happen if I could enter the Twisted World without preconceptions?' A final answer to his question is impossible; but we would hazard that he would have some preconceptions by the time he came out. Lack of opinion is not armour.

Some men feel that the height of intelligence is the discovery that all things may be reversed, and thereby become their opposites. Many clever games can be played with this proposition, but we do not advocate its use in the Twisted World. There all doctrines are equally arbitrary, including the doctrine of the arbitrariness of doctrines.

Do not expect to outwit the Twisted World. It is bigger, smaller, longer and shorter than you; it does not prove; it is.

Something that is never has to prove anything. All proofs are attempts at becoming. A proof is true only to itself, and it implies nothing except the existence of proofs, which prove nothing.

Anything that is, is improbable, since everything is extraneous, u

Three comments concerning the Twisted World may have nothing to do with the Twisted World. The traveller is warned.

Chapter 32

The transition was abrupt, and not at all what Marvin thought it would be. He had heard stories about the Twisted World, and had hazily expected to find a place of melting shapes and shifting colours, of grotesques and marvels. But he saw at once that his viewpoint had been romantic and limited.

He was in a small waiting-room. The air was stuffy with sweat and steam heat, and he sat on a long wooden bench with several dozen other people. Bored-looking clerks strolled up and down, consulting papers, and occasionally calling for one of the waiting people. Then there would be a whispered conference. Sometimes a man would lose patience and leave. Sometimes a new applicant would arrive.

Marvin waited, watched, daydreamed. Time passed slowly, the room grew shadowy, someone switched on overhead lights. Still no one called his name. Marvin glanced at the men on either side of him, bored rather than curious.

The man on his left was very tall and cadaverous, with an inflamed boil on his neck where the collar rubbed. The man on his right was short and fat and red-faced, and he wheezed with every breath.

'How much longer do you think it should take?' Marvin asked the fat man, more to pass the time than in a serious attempt to gain knowledge.

'Long? How long?' the fat man said. 'Damned long, that's how long it'll take. You can't hurry their goddamned majesties here in the Automobile Bureau, not even when all you want is to have a perfectly ordinary driver's licence renewed, which is what I'm here for.'

The cadaverous man laughed: a sound like a stick of wood rapping against an empty gasoline can.

'You'll wait a goddamned long time, baby,' he said, 'since you happen to be sitting in the Department of Welfare, Small Accounts Division.'

Marvin spat thoughtfully on the dusty floor and said, 'It happens that both of you gentlemen are wrong. We are seated in the Department, in the anteroom of the Department, to be precise, of the Department of Fisheries, I was trying to say. And in my opinion it is a pretty state of affairs when a citizen and taxpayer ca