The Chickens of Atlantis and Other Foul and Filthy Fiends by Robert Rankin FVSS Page A

said that they should not be there because they received no mention in the history books of our time?’
    ‘Certainly I do,’ said I.
    Mr Bell sighed. ‘I engaged in a little research at the Atlantis Bookshop,’ said he, ‘and I purchased this for you.’
    ‘A present? How kind.’ I accepted the brown paper bag that Mr Bell offered to me and withdrew from it a colourful picture book. On the cover was an illustration of a portly monkey and an even portlier gentleman. The title of this book was The Adventures of Darwin the Monkey Butler and Mr Ball the Dangerous Detective .
    ‘Posterity,’ I said, with delight. ‘At least they spelled my name correctly.’
    ‘Have a little flick through,’ said Mr Bell. As I did so, he added, ‘Then see how pleased you are.’
    Presently I closed the book and let it fall from my fingers.
    ‘What does all this mean?’ I asked my friend.
    ‘What do you think it means?’
    I glanced down at the book. ‘It is a children's book,’ I said. ‘A work of fiction. It is about us, but we are foolish.’
    ‘Foolish and fictional,’ said Mr Bell.
    ‘I do not understand.’
    ‘I only had time for a quick perusal of the history books the Atlantis held upon its shelves. What I found within them was nothing less than alarming. You and I, my little friend, came to this benighted time from one of Victorian wonder, where the British Empire owned spaceships, where electric vehicles moved through the streets of London, their power drawn from the Tesla towers which offered the wireless transmission of electrical energy to an age of Babbage computers and great things yet to be.’
    ‘I recall it all,’ said I. ‘In fact, it would appear that we were more advanced in the sciences back then than those folk here and now.’
    ‘So it might appear ,’ said Mr Bell. ‘But you see, Darwin, in this here and now, none of those things ever happened. Mr Babbage did not exhibit his difference engine at the Great Exhibition and find royal patronage. Mr Tesla did not effect the wireless transmission of electricity. And in eighteen eighty-five, the Martians did not attack England.’
    ‘They did not ?’ I said. ‘So where did they attack? Surely not America?’
    ‘Not anywhere,’ said Mr Bell, ‘because there never were any Martians. Martians do not exist. They never did.’
    ‘Of course they existed,’ I said in protest. ‘If they never existed, how could we have travelled through time in a Martian spaceship?’
    ‘Mr Ernest Rutherford did win a Nobel Prize,’ saidCameron Bell, ‘but not for mastering time travel. There never ever was any such thing as a time machine, except in the fictional work of H. G. Wells.’
    ‘But we are here,’ I said. ‘ We are alive and real. You are Mr Bell, the greatest detective of our age, and I am Darwin, the educated ape.’
    ‘Characters in a children's book and nothing more, it so appears.’
    ‘No,’ I said. ‘No. We are real, I know we are real.’
    ‘Are we?’ asked Mr Bell.
    ‘Yes, we are. Of course we are.’
    Mr Bell sighed terribly and I felt the hair stand up on the back of my neck.
    We sat in silence and gazed into the distance.
    An aeroplane passed overhead, its engine coughing fearfully. A steam train poop-pooped in the distance.
    The smell of smoke was on the wind.
    And all, it appeared, was lost.
    My friend sat and thoughtfully nodded his head. His face expressed great inner turmoil, as might reasonably have been expected. I offered him my opinion that all was well and truly lost.
    Mr Bell cocked his head on one side. ‘Not all ,’ he said to me.
    ‘You have arrived at a plan that will lead to a satisfactory conclusion?’
    ‘Not as such .’
    ‘But you remain quietly confident?’
    Mr Bell bobbed his head from side to side.
    ‘We are doomed,’ I said in a voice of gloom. ‘We are done for, are we not ?’
    ‘We are not !’ said Mr Bell, and with that he jumped to his feet. ‘Do you fancy a day at the seaside, Darwin?’ he