The Buffered Hill/30

Alice reached up—or perhaps down—and gave the frame a firm push. Behind her she left an archetypal wonder: the first-ever wonder of ancient Wonderland, a relic meant to be unearthed only in the far, skeletal centuries ahead.

Oops. An error occurred!

It was not quite like a window.

Clearing a cache of dust from her skirt, Alice leaned closer.

Inside the glass stretched a wide black scene: a reflection of an absurd space between Wonder and Land—nonsense romping loose, popping when it pleased, and bouncing with no memory of sense, as though it had been unwritten from its source code long ago.

At a far corner, a lonely cursor hopped and blinked.

As the hopping reached its ultimate point, the black screen cleared to reveal a hill—green and serenely ordinary—beneath a sky so smooth that even the Queen of Hearts would have found it uninspiring.

“Off with your head!”—a sentence decreed for a simple crime of complex boredom.

Absurdity.

The very hand that once dreamt this world must have slipped, fallen, rolled through time, and collided with his Wonderland at the nib of a fountain pen.

No Dodo’s nest. No Mouse’s burrow. Not even a hole—not a Rabbit-Hole, nor a USB port.

Just—perfection.

“Why, this isn't my Wonderland,” said Alice. “I should suspect it’s where windows initialises my dream—though I’ve no clue how it crawled through my body.”—And taking over her memory, her operating system, copying and pasting her from here, to there, and to everywhere.

And with that, she climbed through—one hand upon the frame, the other steadying her curiosity—into a new bombarded, Wonderlandsome episode.

“A new adventure update is available. Estimated duration: four days. Please do not leave your table.” A dialogue box blinked insistently.

Virtualised Alice,

Steadying Her Curiosity 

Coming up next--

Dream in Dream

Voice Soared into Sky,

Goosebumps 

A surreal chapter in Alice’s digital dreamscape.