Series: Digital Wonderland | Meta-Logs | Ongoing Absurdity Chronicles
The Cat’s tail flicked as the throbber spun one more round on the omnibox screen.
He mimicked the machine. His tail swayed off-rhythm, penduluming like an ant on glass, crawling, falling, climbing up again. The tail would cough, if it could.
"This answers your doubt," he said, grinning slowly after the performance. "Once someone sets eyes on the story, the omnibox seizes them."
"I didn't ask! Not even one!" Alice exclaimed, waving her open palm.
The surrounding air bit its lip, trying to hold back laughter. It trembled so hard it bounced off the glass, like a squash ball— pock, pock, pock.
Alice stepped closer to the omnibox.
"An empty, single-lined notebook," she whispered.
"The Fourth Wall, which is older than me," the Cat murmured with a sudden flicker of feeling, "is no longer a wall, but an omnibox-mirror."
"How could a notebook, or an exercise book I use to write, become a mirror?" Alice asked.
“It interrupts whenever it wishes, even while you’re immersed in a Wonderland story… and now it leaks,” the Cat simply continued.
“Old words are dripping. The story is etching itself across the mirror.”
A faint ahem came from within the Wall. The Cat and Alice paused.
The voice continued: “I was never meant to imagine this—digitized, yet still carrying 268 years of sweat, perfume, even isoprene from the audience… and my moustaches.”
“I spoke as the Wall. Now I speak as the Mirror.”
"What's happening?" Alice gasped.
She suddenly felt very small beneath the weight of the unknown, though she had to admit that she was already small.
"Look at the mirror," the Cat purred. "It is already happening."
"I… I don't understand," Alice stammered. "What’s happening?"
Alice stretched her neck forward.
Inside the mirror, something moved.
Code surged rightward like a digital scanner—sweeping across the page and jumping from line to line.
She wasn't dizzy.
She was being duplicated.
"Everyone breathes," the Cat said softly. "Once a breath is heard, it cites itself, and just now… you summoned yourself."
Inside the mirror, a second Alice was calmly scribbling in a notebook.
"Who… who are you?" Alice asked, stepping back, pulling her nose away from the cold glass.
The second Alice kept writing.
With every line she scribbled, Alice felt a faint tickle at the edge of her nerves—like the scratch of a nib brushing against her eardrum.
“I am what continues,” she said.
The pen continued.
Alice threw up her hands, humiliated.
"Do I get a say in this, or is this just… story bullying? I never even spoke like some jagoan—nicknamed people just 'a clown' in public."
The second Alice shrugged. "I am not a jagoan. I am neither arrogant nor power-hungry," she said, her pen never pausing.
"You sound like a jagoan!" Alice exclaimed.
"A jagoan wins battles. I am simply the result of your input. You don’t win card games in a mirror. I don't have any cards." She remained utterly calm.
Her hand moved in perfect rhythm with Alice's heartbeat.
"I… oh, this is ridiculous!" Alice rambled—she did not notice that she was rambling. "I haven’t yet finished primary school!"
The second Alice's pen hovered over the omnibox. A single letter trembled at the tip of the pen.
"A… p?" Alice whispered.
"Excellent," the Cat said, his grin widening.
"For primary school?"
"For possibility."
"No. Primary school. We play Scrabble. Me and Sandra."
A deep, ragged inhale filled the air, followed by a voice drifting through the mirror—languid and belonging to neither Alice nor the Cat.
It belonged to a lady. Each word yawned before it was released:
"Perhaps...
Peculiar…
Pizzicato…
Pishposh..."
The letters belonged to nobody now.
They felt odd in their intention—a sharp pinch—and then they laughed at themselves, clutching their ribcages and cranking their throats.
As one grasps each word, trying to digest its meaning, one becomes a loop of words chasing one another, like a cat after a mouse—yet still, after all, within a nonsensical loop.
Previous Episode: Passing Through
Next Episode: Everyone Inside the Omnibox Stayed On
The code on the mirror flashed, stuttered: school?
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.
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.
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