Gerald walked out the door of Tindy's Cartilogical Shop with his face in the new map and Sharon followed him
"Wrong door!" cried the salesman in a fading voice.
But they could not hear the salesman in time. No sooner were the children on the sidewalk outside of Tindy's Shop then they were blasted against the stone wall of a skyscraper by a group of trucks hurtling down the street at breakneck speed. The trucks were followed by a legion of taxis that appeared to be racing each other. Gerald clutched the map to his chest. Sharon looked behind her. Instead of Tindy's, there was now a hamburger place, filled with customers.
"Now where are we?" asked Sharon.
"I wish I knew," Gerald replied, his voice a monotone, "Everything was so much simpler before these new maps told us where to go. It appears to be the case that somebody has switched the whole world around just to put everything out of synch with the maps."
"Let's see what this street signs say at the corner," Sharon suggested.
"Might as well," Gerald replied, with little enthusiasm.
The children had to fight most of the crowd coming the other way to reach the corner, but they managed it, at the price of some angry looks from some people they jostled in the process.
"Marlborough and Lancaster," said Gerald.
"Is this intersection on the map?" asked Sharon.
"No."
"Oh look!" cried Sharon.
Gerald looked. Down Lancaster, there was a large tree that seemed to be growing in the middle of the street. Some of its branches stretched in their direction so that the tip of one branch was only a block or two away. It was a one way street, and all the cars were coming towards the children and away from the tree. Something large was flying in the sky above the tree's branch, something that Sharon thought looked suspiciously like a dragon.
"Could that be the tree on the map?" asked Sharon.
"What?"
"COULD THAT BE THE TREE ON THE MAP?" Sharon yelled, trying to make herself heard over the noisy traffic.
"COULD BE," Gerald yelled back.
"Let's go there," Sharon suggested.
"Might as well," said Gerald, still showing little enthusiasm.
As soon as Sharon and Gerald started to walk towards the tree, a large group of school children turned a corner and tore down the street from the opposite direction. A teacher yelled at the children to keep them in line but to no effect. Sharon and Gerald narrowly escaped being trampled by the group as the children went past. Just when Sharon and Gerald started to continue on their way, each felt a tug pulling them back.
"You are going the wrong way on a one way street," said a man, thin as a rail, who was wearing a safety patrol belt.
"So?" Gerald replied.
"There is no map in the World CUP System that authorizes anybody to walk up Lancaster in that direction. That means you must be violating the directions on your maps. Where do you think you're going?"
"We're trying to find 41st Avenue and Rivervary Street," Gerald answered, screaming at the top of his lungs.
"No such intersection!" the officer yelled back as cars and trucks whizzed by them in all directions.
"Never said there was!" Gerald yelled, "we're trying to get to two different places! The General Child Institute on 41st Avenue, and the Franklin W. Richard Pedagogical Association on Rivervary Street."
"You can only get to one place at a time!" the official yelled.
"Oh YEA?" Gerald retorted.
"YEA, YEA!"
"I'LL BET WE'RE IN AT LEAST TWO PLACES RIGHT NOW!"
"THAT'S AGAINST THE LAW!" the officer cried. "That is further proof that you are not following your maps properly."
"But we've tried," said Gerald, "and each time we end up in a place that doesn't exist theoretically."
"You WHAT?!"
"We keep ending up in places that appear phenomenonologically but which don't exist theoretically," Gerald repeated.
"And what's this I see?" the official asked, pointing to the map in Gerald's hands.
"There's a dragon behind you!" Sharon exclaimed.
"WHAT?"
As the official looked behind him, Gerald tightened his grip on the map and dashed across the street with Sharon at his heels. To Sharon's surprise, the official seemed not to see the dragon that was almost flying in his face. He blew a whistle that almost tore Sharon's ear off even from across the street. Horns honked and brakes squealed as the children made it to other side safely. Two men in navy uniforms came running from a block away. Not wanting to find out what was in store for them, Gerald and Sharon bolted. The man with the safety patrol belt blew his whistle again and the men in navy uniforms quickened their pace.
"STOP IN THE NAME OF THE WORLD CARTILOGICAL UNIFICATION PROJECT SYSTEM!"
The children quickly lost themselves in the crowd so thoroughly that the enforcement officers couldn't get to them. So lost were they, in fact, that they had no choice but to follow the press of the crowd down the street and then up a metal stairway. The height made Sharon a bit dizzy until she reached an enclosed platform. A monorail sped out of the station and a few seconds later, another monorail sped into the station.
"I didn't know we had a monorail system here," said Gerald.
"It wasn't on my map," said Sharon.
A few feet away was a booth marked by a sign in large red letters: MAPS.
"We can ask," said Gerald. "Maybe the monorail can take us to our schools."
"They might try to arrest us again if we ask for a map we're not supposed to have," Sharon replied.
"I'll be more careful this time," said Gerald as he approached the booth.
A small, thin woman with iron gray hair was sitting in the booth. She was smoking a smelly cigar that made Sharon cough out her lungs.
"Are any maps of the monorail system available as a supplement to the absolutely perfect maps that we received by E-Mail this morning?" Gerald asked the woman.
The woman deliberately took the cigar out of her mouth and looked at the two children, apparently not connecting Sharon's coughing with her cigar.
"If your map is perfect," said the woman, "you have no need of a supplement."
"Then what are the maps in this booth for?"
"These unified maps of the monorail system are unified with all maps in the world. Anyone who has a map authorizing him or her to fill out an application form for a map of the monorail system unified with all other world maps is welcome to ask for an application."
Sharon coughed even harder to the point that even Gerald noticed the problem.
"Don't you have a smoke-free environment here?" Gerald asked the woman rather angrily.
"We do, we do," said the woman, drawing another puff on her cigar, "smoke is most free to float where it will--and at no cost to anybody."
As Gerald and the woman argued about the smoke, Sharon saw the two men in navy uniforms and the thin man wearing the safety patrol belt run up the top of the stairs. She nudged Gerald and pointed at them. The thin man spotted the children and blew his whistle. Just then, a monorail speeded into the station.
"Quick!" Gerald whispered, "they must have maps in the cars to help us find our way."
The children melted into the crowd and poured into the monorail car just as the door slammed shut. Sharon would have dropped her books if she were not so crowded that her books were pinned to her chest. Fearing for the map's fate, Gerald slipped it in his school bag.
"Can you tell where this is going?" asked Sharon.
"Not yet," said Gerald, "but I think this is the direction where we saw that tree."
The monorail stopped and the press of the crowd getting off almost pushed Sharon out along with it. Gerald saved her at the last second by yanking her back.
"What rush hour is this?" Sharon asked.
"Any rush hour you want it to be!" a loud-mouthed man next to Sharon answered, "on this line you have early morning rush hour, morning rush hour, late morning rush hour, noon rush hour, early afternoon rush hour -- "
Gerald took Sharon by the arm and plowed through the crowd until they were more or less out of earshot of the exhaustive recital of rush hours. Above the seats, intermixed with advertisements, was an outline of the monorail's route.
"Now I know where we're going," said Gerald, pointing upwards. "Next step should be Marvin Avenue."
"Marvin Avenue," announced the electronic loudspeaker.
But when the monorail stopped, the children saw a country hillside sloping down to an Italian-looking villa.
"Doesn't look like Marvin Avenue to me," Gerald muttered.
As a few people got off the monorail, Sharon searched their faces for signs that they knew where they were going, but she couldn't see much of their faces as most of them had their noses buried in their new maps from the World CUP System. The doors closed and the monorail tore off through the countryside and then past a sprawling factory with smoke of all colors pouring out of its smokestacks.
"Tickets, please!" cried a conductor.
Only then did it occur to Gerald and Sharon that they would need a ticket to ride the monorail.
"Tickets, please!" cried the conductor, this time looking straight at Gerald and Sharon.
"Please, sir," said Sharon, "may we purchase a ticket now?"
"Too late, too late," answered the conductor, "you will have to get off at the next stop and purchase your ticket at the station."
The conductor started to push through the crowd.
"Sir!" Gerald called after him.
"Have you found your ticket after all?" the conductor asked him, not concealing his irritation.
"The last stop was supposed to be Marvin Avenue."
"That's what the map said, isn't it?"
"Yes."
"And was that the stop that was announced?"
"Y-yes."
"Then the last stop was Marvin Avenue."
"It--didn't look like Marvin Avenue to me."
"Young man! All government agencies and business leaders and labor leaders worked hard to unify the world maps. As of today, I will not have you tell me that the monorail did not stop at the appropriate place on the map."
"Does that mean that Marvin Avenue is anything the World CUP System wants it to be?"
Several people who heard Gerald gave him angry looks, and a couple of young men started to push through the crowd with enough sense of purpose to make both Gerald and Sharon fear for their well being. The monorail came to a sudden halt, almost knocking the conductor off his feet, not to speak of the standing passengers.
"Hereford Park," announced the electronic speaker.
"You will have to get off here and buy your ticket," said the conductor. "And don't tell me it doesn't look like Hereford Park when the map is quite clear as to where we are."
"Maybe this Hereford Park isn't good enough for him," said one woman.
The door almost snipped off Sharon's heels as it slammed shut behind the children.
"If this is Hereford Park," said Gerald ruefully, "it has changed a lot in twenty-four hours, and not for the better."
The platform where the children had gotten off was little more than a precarious catwalk above what appeared to be a factory. Down below, men and women were swarming all over large pieces of machinery that neither of the children could identify. One of the large machines looked something like an electronic mastodon. Another suggested a sprawling castle where one could get lost inside forever. There was no sign of a ticket window.
"Follow the crowd?" Sharon suggested as the other people who had gotten off walked along the catwalk as if they knew where they were and why.
"I guess," said Gerald.
"Look!" cried Sharon,'There's the tree again!"
Indeed, off in the distance, the tree towered over the factory landscape down below.
"If we get back on the monorail," said Gerald, "we'll still be going in the right direction. Let's go."
The catwalk took the children over the factory and then into a hallway much longer than seemed possible from the size of the building outside.
"Nothing labeled ticket window here," said Sharon.
"So I see," said Gerald. "I wonder how they got all these offices crammed into this place."
Gerald took the map out of his book pack and studied it.
"Nothing of this station here," he said as he stuffed the map back in his book pack.
"I suppose we could go back outside and try talking to the tree," Sharon suggested.
"That tree is a long walk from here," Gerald replied. "Let's see if we can find the ticket window and take the monorail to it."
Gerald and Sharon peered into the first office they came to. A man, wearing a vested suit was standing in front of a desk, scribbling away with a quill pen. Sharon blinked when she thought she saw kerosene lamps lighting the rooms Reopening her eyes only confirmed what she had seen the first time. Sharon looked at Gerald, who in turn looked at Sharon.
"Sir?" said Sharon.
"Eeeow!" The quill flew out of the man's hand and landed on the paper. Even from a distance, the children could see that the paper was badly blotted by the ink.
"We're sorry, sir," said Sharon, wishing she had tried somebody else first.
"Well so am I," said the man, but without sounding too exasperated. "But I would have been much sorrier if you had been my boss or my boss's boss, or his boss, or the boss who bosses his boss, or her boss, or -"
"Sir?"
"Or the boss who--oh never mind--some things never end except when you don't want them to--so what are you asking of me?"
"Can you tell us where the ticket window is?" Sharon asked.
"Oh dear me! The ticket window? You have quite a journey ahead of you!" The man lowered his eyes into a suspicious look at the children. "And why would you be looking for the ticket window? If you had been following your maps properly, you would have your tickets already?"
Sharon and Gerald looked at each other.
"It's a long story," said Gerald.
"Is there an end to the story?"
"Not yet."
"Well, I don't have time for a story that doesn't have an end as yet. Surely you aren't the children who have been trying to follow an illegal map are you? I've heard reports to that effect."
"We're just trying to find the way to our schools," said Sharon, making her face look as innocent as possible, "and an illegal map would neverguide us to a real school."
"And most certainly an illegal map would not guide us to an illegitimate school, "Gerald added. "Therefore, our maps are legitimate and our schools are legitimate and it is only a matter of comprehending them in a coherent and cogent manner, in which case--"
"I get the picture," said the man, interrupting Gerald. "In that case, I can sell you a ticket to the ticket window. That should get you back on track."
"A ticket to the ticket window?" Gerald asked wearily.
"That's what I said."
"But we thought this was the monorail station," said Sharon.
"Oh, it is," said the man, "since the map says it is. But the map doesn't say the ticket window is at the station."
"Does this mean we then have to buy another ticket to the next ticket window," Gerald asked, "and then buy a ticket to the window after that and then-"
"How many tickets to ticket windows do we have to buy before we can buy a ticket for the monorail?" Sharon asked, interrupting Gerald.
"Why, I don't know," said the man. "I am only authorized to sell a ticket to the next ticket window, which price includes a map to that window. After that, it is up to the boss of the vendor at that ticket window and thenherboss and his boss and then-"
"Do people really know where they're going?" Gerald asked the man.
"--that depends on how his boss wants to handle--oh, you asked another question. It seems to me that now that everybody has a personalized map, everybody knows where he or she is going."
"Glad to hear it," said Gerald sarcastically.
"Can you please sell us the ticket?" Sharon asked hastily, fearing that Gerald might get handed over to the authorities for the way he was talking.
The man turned to another standup desk, leafed through a wad of coupons, pulled out two coupons that read "Ticket Window--admit one" and handed one to each of the children.
"And where is the ticket window?" asked Sharon.
"Just a moment, please -- " the man picked up a pile of loose papers, licked a finger, then thumbed through them until he found what he was looking for -- "here it is. Just follow this map, and you'll find it. That will be four cents each for the tickets."
Gerald and Sharon looked at each other.
"Oh, I see from the looks on your faces that you spent all your money on candy or whatever suits your childish fancies. I suppose I should teach you a lesson, but I will be nice about it just this once. Take the tickets, and I will tell my boss that the blot you caused me to make covered the transaction, and then he can tell his boss who can tell-"
"Sir?" asked Gerald.
"--his boss's boss who can explain to-"
"Sir?"
"-his boss--uh--what do you want of me now?"
"What do they make in this factory?"
"Why factories, of course."
"Factories?" Sharon questioned. "In a factory?"
"Yes, of course. It takes one to make one."
"Does that mean that this factory was made in a factory?" Gerald asked.
"Of course."
"Then--where did the first factory get made?"
"I suggest you hurry before the ticket window closes," said the man, his patience growing thin.
Taking only a second to exchange questioning looks, Sharon and Gerald opened up the map they had been given. Neither of them had seen smelly purple print like that on paper before and they didn't know what it was.
"Looks like we keep on going until we come to a stairway and take that downstairs and then--"
"I said HURRY!" the man called after them.
"We are hurrying!" Gerald yelled back.