Episode 66 - What Will Be, Will always Be / A Digital Wonderland

Series: Digital Wonderland | Meta-Logs | Ongoing Absurdity Chronicles

Did you close the page? Did you blame the story itself?

Or did you blame the helpless narrator?

Inevitably, I am referring to myself. 

I lose control over the narrative most of the time. 

In the end, the story takes the helm.

Did you wander too far off-screen?

Be cautious! Once a dark cliffhanger takes over, your glance at the story, even for a quarter-second, will change you.

Outside the kitchen, amid broken shards of flying plates and crumbs of roti canai, the Cheshire Cat was waiting. He grinned as ever.

“It doesn't matter. What will be, will always be,” said the Cat.

He tilted his head at a measured angle, realigning himself to Alice's world.

“Now tell me, how do you feel after paying the fine?”

“I… I am sort of having some fresh air,” Alice murmured.

The air turned into a metaphor right away. This was not the air that usually greets Alice every morning.

But do not be carried away. The air that arrives each moment is truly yours—not a metaphor.

“Terrific,” the Cat changed gears swiftly. “You got the metaphor as a receipt.”

“No… no,” Alice was disoriented, staring at her hands, searching over her body, caught between one reality and another.

“Keep the change,” said the Cat, “Metaphor, even a slight mention, will be rounded up.”

“Change?” roared the Cook from behind the scene. “I shall never change my high collar, nor my enormous apron. They. Are. My. Hallmark!”

The roar shook the kitchen, forcing it to question its purpose, ever since it was built in 1865 — if not for seeing an overcooked curry-pea.

“Moreover,” said the Cat, his grin widening; he was always a Cheshire Cat, “everything must pay before it is allowed to transform.”

“Don’t stare blankly at me. You see, Wonderland is amazing, it accepts a long breath as payment.”

Alice, being Alice, never stop from thinking as Alice does: “If transformation requires a charge,” she murmured, “then the Magistrate, or you, must be busy issuing receipts.”

“I transform every minute: from sad to happy, from tall to taller, from fat to fatter.”

“From Alice to Alices.”

“From a sigh into a gale, from a laughter into Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D major!”

“And each transform, I’m certain, owes a breath, or two, to your receipts.”

“Oh, boring. The same metaphor is repeatedly used as a receipt.”

The empty chrysalis quivered. Its emptiness pinched. It was becoming void. And this  required it to pay.

At the same time, the door behind Alice drew a long, deliberate breath and groaned while shutting itself.

“I’m a door. Forever a solid door.

I open. I close.

I decide passage.”

“My own morality, my own mind…,” it paused for two seconds, so its thought could catch up.

“They are the only jurisdiction that can issue a stop order, or levy a charge, against me.”

While everybody was busy, at the top of this page, at the omnibox, a pair of eyes appeared.

They parsed each of you, and each character.

The eyes weighed every core. They debugged.

A new story began to write itself automatically.

You are now inside.

(A new story will be posted every Saturday. 😅😅😅)

Previous Episode: Proceedings in a Folded Leaf   

Next Episode: Alice in the Omnibox
Only the hiss of the cooling fan and the warmth of the processor filled the silence.

A surreal chapter in Alice’s digital dreamscape.

This post is part of an ongoing original metafiction series exploring identity, systems, and absurdity through a digital Wonderland.