The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (17 page)

And I realize that I told a lie in
Chapter 13
because I said “I cannot tell jokes,” because I do know 3 jokes that I can tell and I understand and one of them is about a cow, and Siobhan said I didn't have to go back and change what I wrote in
Chapter 13
because it doesn't matter because it is not a lie, just a
clarification.

And this is the joke.

There are three men on a train. One of them is an economist and one of them is a logician and one of them is a mathematician. And they have just crossed the border into Scotland (I don't know why they are going to Scotland) and they see a brown cow standing in a field from the window of the train (and the cow is standing parallel to the train).

And the economist says, “Look, the cows in Scotland are brown.”

And the logician says, “No. There are cows in Scotland of which one at least is brown.”

And the mathematician says, “No. There is at least one cow in Scotland, of which one side appears to be brown.”

And it is funny because economists are not real scientists, and because logicians think more clearly, but mathematicians are best.

And when I am in a new place, because I see everything, it is like when a computer is doing too many things at the same time and the central processor unit is blocked up and there isn't any space left to think about other things. And when I am in a new place and there are lots of people there it is even harder because people are not like cows and flowers and grass and they can talk to you and do things that you don't expect, so you have to notice everything that is in the place, and also you have to notice things that might happen as well. And sometimes when I am in a new place and there are lots of people there it is like a computer crashing and I have to close my eyes and put my hands over my ears and groan, which is like pressing
CTRL + ALT + DEL
and shutting down programs and turning the computer off and rebooting so that I can remember what I am doing and where I am meant to be going.

And that is why I am good at chess and maths and logic, because most people are almost blind and they don't see most things and there is lots of spare capacity in their heads and it is filled with things which aren't connected and are silly, like, “I'm worried that I might have left the gas cooker on.”

191.
My train set had a little building that was two rooms with a corridor between them, and one was the ticket office where you bought the tickets, and one was a waiting room where you waited for the train. But the train station in Swindon wasn't like that. It was a tunnel and some stairs, and a shop and café and a waiting room like this

But this is not a very accurate map of the station because I was scared so I was not noticing things very well, and this is just what I remember so it is an
approximation.

And it was like standing on a cliff in a really strong wind because it made me feel giddy and sick because there were lots of people walking into and out of the tunnel and it was really echoey and there was only one way to go and that was down the tunnel, and it smelled of toilets and cigarettes. So I stood against the wall and held on to the edge of a sign that said
Customers seeking access to car park please use assistance phone opposite, right of the ticket office
to make sure that I didn't fall over and go into a crouch on the ground. And I wanted to go home but I was frightened of going home and I tried to make a plan of what I should do in my head but there were too many things to look at and too many things to hear.

So I put my hands over my ears to block out the noise and think. And I thought that I had to stay in the station to get on a train and I had to sit down somewhere and there was nowhere to sit down near the door of the station so I had to walk down the tunnel. So I said to myself, in my head, not out loud, “I will walk down the tunnel and there might be somewhere I can sit down and then I can shut my eyes and I can think,” and I walk down the tunnel trying to concentrate on the sign at the end of the tunnel that said
WARNING CCTV in operation.
And it was like stepping off the cliff on a tightrope.

And eventually I got to the end of the tunnel and there were some stairs and I went up the stairs and there were still lots of people and I groaned and there was a shop at the top of the stairs and a room with chairs in it but there were too many people in the room with chairs in it, so I walked past it. And there were signs saying
Great Western
and
cold beers and lagers
and
CAUTION WET FLOOR
and
Your 50p will keep a premature baby alive for 1.8 seconds
and
transforming travel
and
Refreshingly Different
and
IT'S DELICIOUS IT'S CREAMY AND IT'S ONLY £1.30 HOT CHOC DELUXE
and
0870 777 7676
and
The Lemon Tree
and
No Smoking
and
FINE TEAS
and there were some little tables with chairs next to them and no one was sitting at one of the tables and it was in a corner and I sat down on one of the chairs next to it and I closed my eyes. And I put my hands in my pockets and Toby climbed into my hand and I gave him two pellets of rat food from my bag and I gripped the Swiss Army knife in the other hand, and I groaned to cover up the noise because I had taken my hands off my ears, but not so loud that other people would hear me groaning and come and talk to me.

And then I tried to think about what I had to do, but I couldn't think because there were too many other things in my head, so I did a maths problem to make my head clearer.

And the maths problem that I did was called
Conway's Soldiers.
And in
Conway's Soldiers
you have a chessboard that continues infinitely in all directions and every square below a horizontal line has a colored tile on it like this

And you can move a colored tile only if it can jump over a colored tile horizontally or vertically (but not diagonally) into an empty square 2 squares away. And when you move a colored tile in this way you have to remove the colored tile that it jumped over, like this

And you have to see how far you get the colored tiles above the starting horizontal line, and you start by doing something like this

And then you do something like this

And I know what the answer is because however you move the colored tiles you will never get a colored tile more than 4 squares above the starting horizontal line, but it is a good maths problem to do in your head when you don't want to think about something else because you can make it as complicated as you need to fill your brain by making the board as big as you want and the moves as complicated as you want.

And I had got to

and then I looked up and saw that there was a policeman standing in front of me and he was saying, “Anyone at home?” but I didn't know what that meant.

And then he said, “Are you all right, young man?”

I looked at him and I thought for a bit so that I would answer the question correctly and I said, “No.”

And he said, “You're looking a bit worse for wear.”