THE PILLAR'S CELL, RADCLIFFE ASYLUM, OXFORD
"F ourteen it is!" Pillar chirped, coughing some of the hookah smoke in the air.
"That's the right answer?" Truckle couldn't see the Pillar clearly behind the smoke.
"Indeed," the Pillar said. "Now, bring her to me."
"No. No. No!" Truckle snapped. "That'd be a serious breach of the asylum's rules."
"I've always thought insanity was about breaking the rules," the Pillar said. "Be a good mad boy with a suit and necktie, and bring me Alice Wonder. This just gets better and better."
"What's getting better?" Truckle couldn't hide his curiosity. The Pillar knew how to push his buttons.
"Be patient, Tommy. Insane things come to those who wait." The Pillar leaned back on his couch. He looked content. A bit drowsy, too. Truckle remembered a moment in the eccentric professor's trial a couple of months ago. The Pillar had informed the judge that he preferred looking at the world from behind a curtain of smoke. The smoke was like a filtering screen, he had said. It helped him to see right through people's invisible masks.
"I suppose I can make an exception and get her to meet you briefly," Truckle said. "But only if you tell me—"
"I know, I know." The Pillar waved his gloved hand in the air. "You'd like to know why four times seven is fourteen. The answer is actually buried somewhere in your own childhood, Tommy, but let's say you can find it here." He nudged a copy of Lewis Carroll's original Alice's Adventures Under Ground toward the edge of the cell. Truckle was going to reach for it through the bars but pulled his hand back.
"Oh," the Pillar said. "You're scared to even reach in. How very sane of you." He smirked. "Rest assured, Tommy. In Lewis Carroll's book, there is a part when Alice wonders if she's hallucinating. She questions her own sanity, and if she's even Alice at all."
"What?"
"In chapter two, 'The Pool of Tears,' Alice tries to perform multiplication but produces some odd results. She does it to assure herself she isn't mad," the Pillar said. "Alice finds out that while she is in Wonderland, four times five becomes twelve, and four times six is thirteen, and four times seven is…" The Pillar's eyes glittered.
"According to this nonsensical logic, fourteen." Truckle felt ashamed at having said that, but he wasn't good at caging his curiosity.
"Frabjous, isn't it?" The Pillar waved his hands like a proud magician.
"So, this is some nerdy code for those obsessed with the book?" Truckle expected more than this. The professor was a killer for God's sake. What in the world was his interest in children's books?
"Nerdy is an awfully racist and out-of-fashion word." The Pillar raised his forefinger. "We call ourselves Wonderlanders."
"Are you kidding me? You sound like you believe that Alice Wonder is the Alice in the book." Truckle chortled. "You're the optimum zenith of insanity. I don't think I can even profile you."
"It's time insanity has a role model." The Pillar dragged long enough on his hookah to make a whizzing sound. "Now, go get me Alice, before I change my mind and escape again."