Episode 69 - Everyone In The Omnibox Stayed On/ A Digital Wonderland

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

“What happens if I type pishposh?” Alice asked.

She didn’t look pinched—
only the letters did. Pizzicato—plucked! 

All the way to their toe-tips.

“Back to normal and Pishposh are two different suggestions. They hammer you differently… Pishposh often misses the ‘mer’ and rather hams you in the end,” purred the Cat.

“What if I type a wrong spelling?” she said aloud to the mirror. “Or...what if I backspace the sentence?”

The Cheshire Cat tilted his head, catching a few glup-glups trailing behind the sentence.

“Type carefully. Or type recklessly. Either way, the omnibox is there.”

Alice sighed. “I… I think I prefer primary school. Much safer than typing and guessing with the mirror.”

The code on the mirror flashed, stuttered: 01010011 01100011 01101000 01101111 01101111 01101100 00111111

“You see,” the Cat said, “the mirror questions you back."

“If not school… supposedly I’m to write something silly,” Alice said, cringing at her own words.

“Like… nonsense started when Alice met a Cheshire Cat.”

The Cat shrugged, his tail curling up toward his ear. “Be careful—that’s not an ideal idea. When the mirror chuckles, you heh-heh too.”

Alice hesitated, then stared at the omnibox. “And what happens if I don’t write anything?”

The mirror was silent. 

The silence transmitted through the glass to its far side, spreading and settling around everyone.

With each passing second, Alice noticed something happening to the second Alice.

“What,” she said, her breath uneasy, “if I don’t write… you fade?”

“Precisely.” 

“Well,” Alice said at last, “instead of fading, I should write something good… like 'The Return of Everyday Adventure', perhaps?” she murmured.

The second Alice nodded just a heartbeat ahead of the Cat—yet perfectly in step with Alice’s thought.

Alice felt the tickle.

“Do readers prefer adventure… or nonsense?” she asked.

The two preferences circled above her head, each trying to perch like a halo above the other.

A voice answered through the omnibox—from deeper within it, from across the oceans. It italicised itself.

“Readers are already discussing it.”

Alice sighed. “Everybody is so into the story.”

“That’s how stories keep from falling off the page,” purred the Cat. 

The stories hopped, danced, and pranked—their tails drooping, the letter s stretching downward, as if slipping off the line… or pulling the line with it.

“Stories are falling.”

Alice’s hands reached out—and other hands reached too.

Hands from inside the omnibox.
Hands from the other side of the veil.
Hands reaching from where the story had already turned in on itself.

“No,” the Cat said, flicking his tail, “stories are often nonsensical, a copy-exact of their creator.”

And at the same time, with one final flick of his tail, he slipped sideways—and vanished.

Everyone inside the omnibox stayed on.

Alice did not know which side she was on.

Previous Episode: I Am What Continues

Next Episode: Yesterday Blooms
As if someone had tapped her tongue with a little hammer.

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.

Episode 68 - I Am What Continues / A Digital Wonderland

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.

Episode 67 - Passing Through / A Digital Wonderland

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

The eyes shifted to and fro, sweeping whatever they could find.

By no means did they spare anything—not even Alice’s pimples. Were the eyes high-fidelity, or simply drawn to what they did not yet understand?

They paused at one point; they needed the point of thinking, a way to brush away all their irrelevance. Or perhaps our relevance.

Not yet into the story.

Not yet.

The throbber was caught shadowing your machine’s speed. It jagged like unsuccessful hula hooping, falling and resuming.

The eyes waited. 

The Cat’s grin glitched.

It was your machine at fault—I heard it dry-coughing beside you.

Koff, koff. 

Didn't you hear it too?

It was the first time that the Cheshire Cat had done more than merely widen his grin.

Alice’s mouth corners were pulled, lips plumping; her smile stretched further until it was as wide as the Cat’s. For the first time, she matched it.

The Cat tilted his head—by some minor tuning, a mathematician might suggest two degrees—and pondered the magic in the pivot of her smile.

His whiskers fanned wide, his ears snapping upright.

All his efforts paid off. Momentum recovered—two knots:

“When eyes are watching,” he purred, “a single breath will awaken a morphing app.”

Alice was left stranded between laughter and tears, spectator and spectacle. When these four nouns converged, not a single one could name Alice; Alice was inside them.

The morphing continued. 

“I am now a low-poly ghost. Oh no! Not the ghost I played at home! I’m not in costume. I’ve been morphed!” Alice shouted.

“Now,” said the Cat, with a normal grin, “the omnibox doesn't just watch. When it executes, even nonsense stands upright and declares: this is not my initiative."

Alice stood on tiptoe, raising her hand toward the omnibox.

“Can I… can I write?”

"Never assume," said the Cat. "The moment you think you can make changes, the eyes will always influence you back.”

Alice typed—single-fingered—a line into the omnibox.

She hesitated, trying to make the font bigger, then gave up and bolded it.

"Back to normal."

And the moment the line completed—the eyes laughed.

They laughed, choked. Tears fell.

What a reflex. You laughed too. 

I could hear coffee swirling in your mouth: glug, glup, glup… hesitating at the throat, careful not to choke you.

The reflex was huge; a lady slipped behind the omnibox. She did not enter as a protagonist, but merely passed through.

“You see…” the Cheshire Cat murmured… “when the eyes and the story meet, they wick.”

Alice touched the omnibox again. This triggered a line:

“Search Google or type a URL.”

The story has not yet ended. It lures.

The line remained—searching, or simply waiting for the lady to return. From a URL, perhaps.

At present, only the hiss of cooling fans and the warmth of processors filled the silence.

The atmosphere gathered itself. No spices, no chill, no music, no dimmer—yet it thickened. The omnibox had already foreseen it.

Previous Episode: What Will Be, Will Always Be

Next Episode:  I Am What Continues 
The Fourth Wall, there since 1758, was no longer a wall.

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.

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. 

The story takes the helm the moment I let it start—that is the reality.

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.

“Looking for a change? You can keep it,” said the Cat. “A 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.

Previous Episode: Proceedings in a Folded Leaf   

Next Episode: Passing Through
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.

Episode 65 - Proceedings in a Folded Leaf / A Digital Wonderland

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

Off-screen

The courtroom was very organic—every surface, every edge; even the characters were in strict compliance with Green 14000 Standard, rev. 2.0.2.6.

It was within a massive banana leaf at a mamak.

At a raised bench sat Banana Leaf the Magistrate, he was hollow—hollow eyes, hollow voice, hollow everything. Perhaps he had arrived in too much haste, leaving both soul and flesh behind.

In front of him, a small mound of coconut rice had taken on the role of Court Clerk, releasing soft sighs of coconut milk whenever a point of order was raised.

“Under the Cliffhanger Precedent, first recorded in A Pair of Blue Eyes (1873), §1, by Thomas Hardy,” the Magistrate rustled solemnly, “the accused is charged with Unlawful Evaporation—with Intent. To. Confound!!!”

“I coined the cliffhanger,” a voice muttered, “and this is how I am cited? At a mamak? With a leaf for a judge? Surrounded by peanuts and ikan bilis?”

The Magistrate did not look up.

“File a motion,” he said hollowly.

“But your Honour,” interrupted Ikan Bilis the Solicitor, his tiny pale-yellow body glistening—briny, pungent, a walking declaration of umami—

“My client, the Baby-turned-Chrysalis, did not evaporate. He is now in another state—an interphase of new form, pending approval under Andersen v. The Emperor’s New Clothes (1837), which established that a thing’s true nature is not fixed by proclamation, but by the collective wisdom of its witnesses.”

“Most importantly—he is a victim!” he snapped, his salty tail flicking for emphasis.

“The Cook must be arrested—immediately!”

“Silence!” declared the Magistrate. “Evidence must be served boiling hot—or it shall be dismissed as frozen tea, under Mamak Ordinance 4(a): ‘Tea That Cannot Be Pulled Cannot Testify.’”

Fried Peanut the Attorney rose bravely to his feet, only to sit back down with a loud crack.

“I—I object!” he stammered, his shell splintering under the strain. “The defence claims the butterfly—yes, a butterfly—is merely a curry-pea in disguise—an unreasonable attempt to smuggle imagination into this court as reality.”

Alice, standing in the witness box—a hollowed-out slice of cucumber—cleared her throat.

“If it please the court,” she said timidly, “I saw the chrysalis with my own eyes. It looked like a dried chili skin. The crime is not evaporation—it should be preservation.”

The Magistrate leaned forward, his green surface creasing thoughtfully.

“A spicy accusation. Clerk, consult the Sambal Precedent.”

The Rice Clerk released a considerable cloud of coconut-scented steam.

“The Precedent is inconclusive, M’Lord. The evidence has been diluted by a sudden influx of teh tarik into the lower chambers.”

“It was pull-prepared by the Cook,” the Clerk added. “Its aroma is already invading the proceedings, M’Lord.”

“Very well,” declared the Magistrate, trusting his instinct and beginning to fold himself around the proceedings.

“Since the baby cannot be found, and since a pivot point cannot be located under Peripeteia (335 BCE), §1, by Aristotle, the Court finds the witness guilty of Illegal Blinking—under Cliffhanger Precedent, §1, Subsection (b)”

“But that’s not fair!” cried Alice. “You cannot sentence the witness!”

“In this court,” the Magistrate replied hollowly flat, “the witness is the only intruder, and therefore the only one subject to a fine.”

“And what is the fine?” Alice asked.

“The Court hereby imposes a fine of one (1) long, deep breath. In default of payment, the witness shall undergo a Mandatory Pivot—rotating on her own axis clockwise—for exactly three minutes.”

Alice squinted. “A… mandatory pivot?”

And this, set a precedent in Wonderland.

The Magistrate rated the ruling a perfect fifteen out of ten. No one understood it better than he did—green, and utterly immovable.

From somewhere near the hearthrug, the Cheshire Cat stretched its grin to match the Magistrate’s rating—far beyond any cat’s reach.

“You’ve seen nothing yet. He’s going to resolve more, and more, and more—until every case was left unresolved.”

Alice considered the matter very carefully.

She had not blinked.

She was quite certain of that.

So she took a long, slow breath.

The courtroom adjourned itself at once.

The banana leaf unfolded flatly under the streetlight at the mamak.

The Rice Clerk settled back into a fragrant heap.

The Solicitor grew very quiet and salty.

And the Magistrate, having delivered judgment in less than twenty-four minutes—not hours, a triumph for his KPI—started to wrap everything neatly together.

He wrapped the Attorney, the Solicitor, and the Clerk at the same time.

As for the accused—a baby? a butterfly? a legume?—hopelessly trapped in a Precedent that could not decide what he ought to be.

If it confuses, yes it confuses.

And so it continues—

confusing itself.

Confusing you as well.

I am sorry.

I just cannot control this.

Previous Episode: Flavourful Legal Team  

Next Episode: What Will Be, Will Be
Any suspense that survives long enough automatically becomes a beginning.

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.