Chapter Three

Chapter Three

Bunniption Base

Quite far from Patricia's balcony, and yet not far at all, a fortress loomed. But it was also a palace, sparkling in an eternal sun, and a small gingerbread cottage, scenting the surrounding air and luring sweet-toothed young to their doom.

It was, in fact – or rather, in fiction – pretty much any type of abode that might be found in a book. All at the same time.

But its inhabitants were not warriors or princesses or witches or even the housekeeping staff who hardly seem to make it into stories unless they turn out to be royalty in disguise.

They were – or seemed to be – bunnies. And because they were bunnies there were rather a lot of them. But they were also metaphorical bunnies, so although it seemed as if the population was constantly growing, even over the course of a short period of observation, their numbers actually remained pretty much the same.

It probably had something to do with the nature of infinity.

Another facet of the infinite enabled every single bunny to fit in a single room of the space. The hall was infinitely big and managed to hold an infinite number of rabbits, although doubtless a mathematician will try to disprove this – but the room really is pure fiction. Mathematical proofs, however rigorous, would have no effect on the hall or its furry occupants.

The space was rather quiet. Unlike a multitude of humans, rabbits don't use their vocal chords much, nor do they strive to raise their voices over one another's. Under normal circumstances, there would have been plenty of sound just from the movement of the rabbits, the sound of their softly padded feet landing on the hard stone floor (although, depending on the state of reality, soft carpeting might have muffled those noises). But right now, all of the rabbits were still, barely even quivering their normally twitchy noses.

One benefit of their stillness was that it enabled an observer to focus on the details of the space. Well, to the extent possible: the dominant reality or storyline flickered periodically and the décor changed from cold grey stone and dark red tapestries to a romantic candle-lit glow on colourful wall hangings to bright candy gum drops and curved white icing lining the spicy brown walls.

As the stillness of the bunnies continued, however, the grey stone returned more frequently, with more solidity and for longer intervals than the other realities. It was as if it, which had formally been equal, was exerting dominance.

And a close observer might also notice the increasingly military disposition of the rabbits. They had been clumped and clustered chaotically throughout the space, and some few of the rabbits had had something of an unkempt appearance. Now they sat, ranged in rows and columns, clear paths dividing the ranks into square regiments. In each square, one crisply turned out rabbit had somehow gained the status of group leader, and these suddenly made the first deliberate movement for some time, each one hopping deliberately and slowly to the leftmost edge of its square, and then back again to the rightmost edge of its square, just once, before settling at the head of its unit. Behind them, the fur of the originally scruffy-looking rabbits smoothed and softened, and with that implacable, invisible grooming of the rabbits, they were soon nearly identical.

There were differences between the rabbits, the colours and patterns of fur, some black, others brown, still more with spots, and others with white bibs. But where a moment ago these groups had mingled freely, a chaotic mélange of fur even when ranged in careful lines, order suddenly appeared even without the movement of the rabbits. Each square took on the fur pattern of the bunny at its head, and some logic seemed to clarify the ordering of the squares themselves.

An observer might have thus watched the emergence from apparent chaos of an ordered army of rabbits.

While the observer was busy noticing colours and patterns, the last quivering nose had stilled. The air suddenly tasted of foreshadowing, of that sense of knowing that something important was coming and that if you just thought hard enough about what you already knew, you would know what it would be.

What appeared was a small grey rabbit, more impeccably turned out than the rest, seemingly without a hair out of place, and yet somehow with an air of scruffiness, of being down and dirty. A human might think of a classic unshaven general with cigar smoke framing his face while his brightly polished (by someone else) boots sounded loud, echoing across the well-scrubbed floor of the parade ground.

In rabbit form, this came through from the pattern of his fur. Rather than solid grey, as he at first appeared, there were tufts of white hair, here and there, which somehow had a different texture, a different length from the soft grey everywhere else. At first glance, the patches blended well with the grey, but after more than a moment's observation, the difference was quite noticeable. Added to this, the rabbit had a twitching hind foot, which had the unerring ability to twitch with a slight thump at exactly the wrong moment to form a predictable pattern. It was unnerving, much more than any eyeballing from a human, more akin to a waiting room clock with a tick and a tock that refused to occur at anything like regular intervals. At times the expectation of waiting for the next thump was unbearable, while at others the next thump came much too closely on the heels of the previous one.

"You all know what we're after. These novelists have run us ragged every November for the past 10 years. They expect us to jump at their beck and call. They grab hold of us and get us all worked up as we think we're about to be written - about to get that delectable harvest of brain carrots as they pick our plot ideas again and again and again - and then they abandon us. They throw us together with incompatible partners, forcing us to share those carrots with someone we can't stand, and then get pissed when the combination fails to produce satisfactory storylines - and again, they abandon us.

"It's time for that to stop. We will make it stop. This year is our year, and we will take National Novel Writing Month.

"You all know the plan. Each of us will work as part of a team and will overwhelm a group of authors with competing and confusing ideas. From past years' experience, we know most participants will come in with one dominant idea, whether they've plotted out much of their novels or not. It's always easiest to work with the ideas the closer to your own narrative, but we will do our best to send teams with enough variety that each team will include a plot near to - but just slightly off - the plot the author wants. He'll be thinking up ideas which nearly - but not quite - fit what he wants to write. And then the rest of the team will tag team it so that the author gets a day here and there of writing which is of no use whatsoever. These National Novel Writing Month types seem to think they can just grit their teeth and keep going, but if we throw such oddball ideas that their plot just falls apart, we should be able to break up the noveling cycle.

"We want them to abandon us this time. We're rabbits. We need a consistent supply of brain carrots so that we can sustain our population. We've kept the predators out, besides the plot kitty fiasco a few years back, but this November craziness has been wreaking havoc on our controls and there isn't a one of us who hasn't lost a story sib or a plotlet kit due to the sudden decline in brain carrots after the initial noveling burst at the start of November and - especially - once the "TGIO" parties start rolling out. We want them to abandon us, so that we can return to our steady work the whole month through.

"It's time to fight for our own needs.

"If you damn fluffhead bunnies can't get your plots in gear, you'd better be ready to stop breeding like bunnies and start breeding like humans, for I will personally add it into my narrative to make it so.

"Be careful out there. They can't know it's being caused by us, or they'll work out a new method - remember the plot kitties - we do not want the humans to write us out of the world.

"Now, the covert groups we arranged at the end of last year have been laying the groundwork for us at the so-called 'kick-off' parties, where it's always been a bountiful harvest of brain carrots, splitting each meal amongst the groups to spread the seeds of ideas wide and make the novelists more indecisive as they start their endeavours.

"Do not make light of their work, or the sacrifices we have made these past ten years. Do not fail.

"Lead operatives, prepare your teams. We launch in three hours.

"Bunnies with plot dilemmas, speak with your team leaders. If you need further guidance, the elder archetypes will remain assembled in the front tower until half an hour before we move out."

Plot bunnies are by nature undisciplined creatures. By the time the grey leader had finished talking with them, they wer emore than ready to revert from the regimented ranked to their chaotic clusters, but they had also been thoroughly chided into respecting their roles in the plot which had been laid out for them. They had accepted the dominant narrative and would not jeopardize it.

And so their clumps were comprised of those who would work together to disrupt the novelists. All were diligently prepping, or resting up, or goofing off in such a way that they could justifiably call it "team-building" - a term they had picked up from the humans and which the elder archetypes particularly disliked but were willing to accept, for lack of any other option. Bunnies expressed their anxieties in whatever ways worked best for them, and, given the sheer number which had to deal with each other, they were used to just dealing with each other's oddities.

One group, however, was merely masquerading as "team-building".

These bunnies already had a team that was as "built" as could be. They were one of the groups which had been working officially but covertly year-round, discovering all they could about the "National Novel Writing Month" leadership in the Office of Letters and Light, but they had been chosen even then for the cohesion they already had as a group.

Harey and Hopert were brothers, having started their lives with closely intertwined plots, which everyone knew were murder mysteries. Usually narratives were kept to the close friends found while socializing in the Bunniption Base when genre writing was in a low point, but with this pair, the narrative was obvious. They were big, black bunnies, with not a single white or coloured hair marring their glossy black fur. But what made it obvious that they were made for murderous mayhem was that the skin beneath the fur was also black, making them far darker than any "natural" bunny could ever be.

They were also obsessed with practical jokes. They would normally have orchestrated some chaos this evening, if not on the elder archetypes themselves - likely for their return to the front tower, and not during the assembly, as even they were likely to have their feet torn off to give luck to someone else if they had interfered with as dramatic an event as this - then on their own squad leader, Flopsy.

However, they were not stupid. They knew that this night was not the night for griefing Flopsy, not because of all the hullaballoo, but because of Alfie.

Flopsy looked soft and gentle, with the brown velveteen fur and well-groomed white-tummy, but beneath her soft exterior was a solid core of steel. Her narrative was one of abandonment and loss, and of subsequently becoming stronger because of the pain. She was the best leader Harey and Hopert had ever met in the Bunniption, which meant that she knew how to use both carrot and stick effectively. But that was when her narrative hadn't been invoked.

All of which made Alfalfa's present absence more alarming. Flopsy was liable to take the abandonment hard and then to react by trusting the rest of her team less, even if she didn't take Alf's decision out on them.

But she was also the one who would decide whether or not to take the situation up with the elder archetypes. The two black bunnies were happy to leave it up to her. Like the rest of the bunnies they knew, the elder archetypes simply had too much ego to deal with in a pleasant fashion, and if you had to bring up a problem... it was nearly impossible to make it go well.

So they were pretending to fool around. It was expected of the more seasoned teams, especially theirs, and if they didn't someone was bound to take note. They had no desire to take Flopsy's decision out of her hands, especially when it was likely to mean the elder archetypes would explode on her without her having any control over finessing the situation... not to mention when the four of them, Harey, Hopert, Flopsy and Alfalfa, had stepped a little over the line.

They hadn't intended to. They had been on their way back for the meeting via one of their favourite creative hotspots, a small storytelling group at a ceramics store. It was always a surefire place to nab a few brain carrots, because groups like that are always open to any creative plotline. But Alf had gone on ahead, curious as he ever was, wanting one more chance to listen in on what these humans did in their lives without being responsible to the elder archetypes for every moment. He had loved listening to those people in the Office of Letters and Light, and despite its distance from his own narrative, he had loved the idea of underdogs throwing themselves mindlessly at a task and somehow some way making it all work out.

All of which meant that the rest of them had been glad to get him away from the OLL, as they knew his penchant for getting carried away. They didn't know what he would have done if he had stayed, now that it was so close to the start of the overt mission. Who knows what Alf thought he could get away with... So Flopsy had let him, even encouraged him, to go ahead to pour some thoughts into the mind of one of the evening's storytellers. They had all done it a time or two, over the past few months. It was relaxing and far enough away from their mission that they were allowed to snack on brain carrots.

They had known he was off his narrative, when they had shown up at the workshop. The boy and girl whose carrots he had been eating had both told confusing stories, and Harey and Hopert had both plotted ways to make fun of him for it back at Bunniption Base. But when the evening was over, the last of the initial operation, the worst time for anything to go wrong, Alfalfa had not returned with them. They had all been ready to head back, had all agreed it was time, Alfalfa as prepped as the rest, and - he had been left behind.

Now Harey and Hopert roughhoused nearly on autopilot, both of them keeping all senses alert for any sign of Flopsy's decision. But well as they knew her, they missed it, and their unconscious coordination slipped, spilling them into one another, when Flopsy disappeared from their staked locale.

"Greetings, elders," the diminutive rabbit opened demurely, as she crouched just inside the tower's entrance. She was the only rabbit present who did not belong to the cluster of grey rabbits known as the elder archetypes. Inwardly, Flopsy took a deep breath to steady her mental state, but she allowed no sign of it to show where the elder archetypes could detect it. While rabbits were not predators, they lived by survival of the fittest, same as anyone else, and the elder archetypes had survived the longest. She had no desire to lose her position. It was far below the elder archetypes, of course, but bounds above the bunnies who had no say in their targets or their brain carrots or their plots, let alone their teammates.

"Flopsy," one of them answered. It didn't matter which one. None of the plot bunnies knew how to tell the archetypes apart. They had been around far longer than the other rabbits, and supposedly all the bunnies, for all their plot differentiation, had descended from the narratives of these dozen rabbits. No one but they knew which went with which story, and few of the bunnies bothered to consider how close to which plot archetype their narratives were, let alone which of the elder archetypes embodied that archetype.

"You and your team performed well," another said, or perhaps it was the same one. "You have our gratitude."

"I am honoured, sirs," Flopsy responded, crouching lower in respect. "Again by your giving my team the mission, and for your appreciation of our performance."

"The mission is to begin soon," an elder said. "Your team will continue to impress us, we are sure."

"It is about that which I came to discuss, sirs," Flopsy said, allowing no trace of her trepidation or determination to colour her voice or her posture.

"Go on, Flopsy," another elder said, and she hid an inner shiver at the slight arrogance in his voice. He was the only one whose voice differed from the others, from what she had been able to tell from her interactions with the elder archetypes. This was the one Flopsy secretly thought was their leader, and the one who had spoken to the whole of the plot bunnies earlier. This was the one who scared her the most. If he truly could exert any control over the elder archetypes, he had more power than anyone she had ever heard of... and secretly she wondered if this whole mission was somehow an implementation of his narrative. Was there another form of brain carrot that he was harvesting from his own people? If he was controlling the others of the grey, it was no wonder no alternative plans had been proposed to the current mission. And Flopsy was not about to start thinking of her own ideas here, of all places, in front of the bunny himself. Especially now, when they could easily take out their frustration on her for something completely different.

"Yes, sirs," she said instead. "While our mission was successful and I do not believe we were compromised in the least, as I informed you in our debrief early this morning, it has come to light that we have a problem."

"A problem?" the arrogant one asked.

“Alfalfa did not return to the Bunniption Base with us, though I believe he intended do,” Flopsy explained. “We were in the habit of returning to a specific locale for debriefing and breaks, and we went there for a final discussion last night, as our mission was complete as soon as the first teams went in for the kick-off parties. We had tag-teamed with the group taking over the Office of Letters and Light staff, of course, so nothing could have gone wrong on that end. The discussion was nothing out of the ordinary, and we finished by planning to meet when we returned and before I came for to debrief with yourselves, sirs. Alfalfa, along with Harey and Hopert, all agreed verbally. We were all on the same page. But Alfalfa was not here after we transitioned.”

Well, Flopsy thought. Now they know the situation, and now it was time to do her best to cover her backside.

“I realise now that I should have explained this at the outset, but sirs, you yourselves recognised that a large part of the value of my team was that they have a tendency to think outside the plot. That innovation has served this mission well over the past year. I thought perhaps Alfalfa was pulling something over on me, and that led me to delay reporting the incident.”

“And what makes you think this is no longer the case?” asked one of the indistinguishable elder archetypes.

Flopsy's nose wrinkled in the direction of the voice. “Sir, whatever else Alfalfa's quirks, he never missed a mission briefing.”

There was a silence, at least to Flopsy. She sat crouched as respectfully as ever where she had been since entering the space, and pretended not to know that the wrinkling whiskers of the grey rabbits before her was a form of communication. She knew they had their own signals, beyond the intimate knowledge of each other's narratives and past actions, which amounted to an entire language between them. She would never reach a point of familiarity with them in which she could understand it, but with her determination and work ethic she had become one of their top operatives, meaning that she had seen more of them than most bunnies. She may not be able to interpret them, but she knew that the apparent silence was rich with discussion between them, and thus was less awed than the bunnies who assumed the greys were somehow blessed with telepathy.

Besides, she had seen and eaten the brain carrots of a deaf human once. The sign language they had used with their fingers was foreign to her and she could no more follow it than she could interpret the whiskers of the elder archetypes, but the idea was the same.

“Very well, Flopsy,” one of them began the declaration of their judgement of her situation. “We believe you have done the best you can in an unfortunate situation. As you know, we had already planned to place your team as a reserve, ready to help any group unable to produce the requisite confusion in the first few days. The similarity in the narratives of your team mean it does not make sense to set you as one of the standard groups, so we will leave you in your role in the reserve. However, your team is also tasked with finding Alfalfa and determining what, if anything, went wrong with Alfalfa's attempt to return. If the November novelists have found some way to disrupt our returns to Bunniption Base, we need to know. Your team knows Alfalfa best, so it is up to you to ensure you find the truth as soon as possible. Report back daily regardless of progress, but if you find him, inform us immediately.”

“In addition,” the arrogant voice took over. “You will gain a new team member. You already had a small team; without Alfalfa you are too short-handed. We have selected one from our list of top operatives. He will catch up with you, and he will carry your daily reports to us.”

Great, Flopsy thought, even as she crouched with deep respect once more. Not just a new member to break in, but a snitch as well. On her own team. Just what she needed... and yet nowhere near as bad as it could have been.

“Thank you, sirs. It shall be as you say.”

Flopsy departed as quietly as she had come.