Episode 63 - Cliffhanger / A Digital Wonderland

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

“Keep alert,” the voice teased, tickling Alice’s fingertips—the kind of faint digital hum a screen makes when it knows it’s being touched.

You felt that hum too, didn’t you? Just there, beneath your index finger. Vibration intensity: maximum.

“In this kitchen,” it continued, “the vestigial appendix is always the first to leave, while the protagonist holds the last pivot—the one that spins the story into whatever directions it resolves—each extreme drop and turn a roller coaster of its own making.”

The keys stirred, the voice laughed—a trilling noise like a summer-night cricket—quick, precise—four tiny bursts per second—brushing your sense of… faint, unaccounted dissatisfaction.

“The rest of you,” it said, almost mischievously, “are black pepper, candlenut, cinnamon sticks, cloves, or coriander seeds in my kitchen—waiting to be ground, tempered, or left to simmer."

It leaned closer.

“Now—hold your spicy breath. We are about to turn.”

Gravity moved as inertia, inertia as gravity—into one—

The turn twirled Alice into a fresh angle—she felt she might fall into neat rows like ducks, or tip entirely upside-down.

She hummed to herself:

“Once a boy, then a piglet, then a chrysalis—
“Or perhaps a butterfly, a curry-pea. 
Wonderland, oh Wonderland.”

Carried away by her mood, Alice swayed her head, twisted her waist, and trotted her feet, as though she might begin a dance in that vast, chaotic world.

But then—

A large Cheshire Cat lay draped across the hearthrug, watching.

Its grin stretched impossibly wide—wide enough to swallow warmth, pressure, and hum.

In that single, distracted heartbeat, Alice noticed what was missing.

Warmth.
Pressure.
Hum.

The chrysalis had collapsed, blank and silent—like a computer frozen on a black screen.

Then a voice interrupted, lazy as a purr and steeped in fondness that is itself ambiguous, volunteering itself as another cliffhanger—without ceremony, yet with the seriousness of a moon that refused to be annoyed.

What is so great about a cliffhanger? I wonder.

You should wonder too… you already are.

And why, I wonder again, would everything—a story, a chrysalis, a voice—so eagerly volunteer itself as one?

As if everything were reaching for a ledge—and the moment it did, the stone cracked, and applause slipped in.

Previous Episode: Frequency 988 Mamaks FM

Next Episode: Flavourful Legal Team
Ikan Bilis the Attorney
Fried Peanut the Solicitor

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 62- FREQUENCY 98.8 Mamaks FM / A Digital Wonderland

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

A truthful deception hovered in plain sight between our eyes and the world—especially when a nasi lemak dream was conscripted inside a grieving dream.

The grievance, issued by the moon, cited not only the “provocative use of tropical heat,” but also the “mannerless presumption of the moon’s step-overability.”

It further decreed that being “irritated” constituted a direct violation of The Don’t-Annoy-the-Moon Law of 1861.

Henceforth, the Duchess must deliver a formal apology to the entire Solar System—preferably in writing. 

The apology should be broadcast via interplanetary teh tarik radio, on frequency 98.8 Mamaks FM, during peak mamak hours, precisely when twenty-two players chased a football, and certainly before the next grievance collided with another nasi lemak.

“I shall not budge,” the moon hummed. “If a planet cannot be stubborn, I might as well stage a total eclipse every day.”

Alice craned her neck, pondering the total eclipse—serious business, a daily cosmic shyness—and realized that the moon, by skipping its appearances, would live forever as a myth, a creature of imagination.

The universe did not merely jerk—it had acquired a permanent, nervous tic.

“And the moral is that,” she whispered, mimicking the Duchess’s sharp tone, "if you use a pepper to move a planet, the planet will pepper you back with complaints.”

"Children usually do," Alice laughed. 

The sentence had barely finished echoing when the celestial selves disengaged—stone from stone—politely, as if cosmo-mankind collaboration had been discussed, finalised, and momentarily enabled. A collaboration! At last, entirely on the fast lane—no table, no file, no stamp waiting for ink. 

Domestic chaos resumed at once—now legally cleared of cosmology.

“Here! You nurse it—no chance to refuse!” declared the Duchess, reciting from an ordinance entirely her own—too sovereign, too absurd, and far too ridiculous to ever be questioned.

She vanished.

Alice staggered under the weight and looked down. The baby’s face twisted most peculiarly.

His nose curled upward, his eyes shrank smaller, his ears broadened—

“Don’t stand there gawping!” roared the Cook, brandishing a frying-pan so broad it might have been hammered into armour.

“The soup wants more cili-padi pepper!”

But Alice wasn’t listening. Her attention clung to the bundle in her arms. 

It was no longer a baby—it had folded itself neatly into a chrysalis, wiggling and rippling as though a tiny life stirred within, moving through layers of spice, scattered source code, and the humming pulse of the story itself.

Somehow, I had lost control of the keyboard—each key had begun to write itself.

And this was its voice:

A protagonist dangled in suspense—a cliffhanger, if only for this instant, this instance.

Previous Episode: Spice drives Cosmology

Next Episode: Cliffhanger
A voice volunteered itself as a cliffhanger, 
But what is so great about a cliffhanger?

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 61 - Spice drives Cosmology / A Digital Wonderland

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

Each pause at a comma was now a slow intake of breath; each stop at a period, a soft and gentle exhale.

The lullaby itself was patting you now—soothing your mind.

Not the Duchess’s, of course.

Her thoughts operated on a different frequency—AM, I concluded, and significantly more susceptible to noise than FM.

Exactly as the lullaby slipped past its final verse, the Duchess grumbled, abruptly offended by the lateness of her own entrance—as though it had been delayed because you paused the story to buy groceries.

“I’m late!” the Duchess barked, eyeing the tiny moon lodged in the doorway.

“Push it? Step over it? 
Or rule over it—but which clause applies?”

There was no room left for mathematics to collaborate with physics—though the cosmos, by its very name, was supposed to be philosophically gigantic.

The moon pulsed faintly, affronted by the very idea that anyone might push it, step over it, or rule it. After all, it was celestial—and expected proper respect.

“I’ve a firm engagement to play pickleball with the Queen yesterday. A firm engagement!”

It was, Alice noted, a perfectly sensible delay.

If a planet would not move, one simply could not walk past it; and a game scheduled for yesterday demanded either remarkably fast shoes with sturdy soles or a gullible universe.

The Duchess sniffed, inhaling microdoses of tropical spice that cocked most of her tangled splutters.

The First Law of Pungency now ruled: all it took was one sufficiently sharp irritation to move a planet.

This explained something Alice had once read in a schoolbook—a theory illustrated with very few pictures and covered with a great deal of dust:

“Spice drives Cosmology.”

Your school syllabus included this, I trust?

“You see,” the Duchess added, her chin digging into Alice’s shoulder like a blunt chisel, “the moral is simple—the hotter the pepper, the faster the sphere!”

A whoomph tore through the doorway, as though the moon itself were protesting—jaw clenched, shoulders shaking.

Alice felt the universe wobble—just a little—and then jerk.

Another whoomph followed.

A third whoomph tore through the doorway.

The moon immediately filed a formal cosmic grievance with the Celestial Petty Control Bureau.

Everybody gathered—you included—craning their necks exactly a foot and four inches, the correct length required to pin down what sort of complaint the moon itself might submit.

The grievance vanished mid-word, collapsing into smoke and mirrors—and reappeared as a small plate of Nasi lemak.

The nasi lemak looked affronted.
“Summoned while having a nap,” it seemed to say.

The plate whispered, “Not all cosmic disputes can be settled with breakfast. Even nasi lemak has grievance rights.”

Alice squinted.

The rice grains muttered.
The sambal stirred.
The ikan bilis gossiped.

“Grievance greets grievance,” the plate added, “and the grievance layers.”

[Note: Do not attempt to eat the grievance; it is still legally unproven as a capsaicin.]

Previous Episode: Story Takes You With It

Next Episode: FREQUENCY 98.8 Mamaks FM
You pepper a planet
The planet peppers you with complaints

 

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 60 - Story Takes You With It / A Digital Wonderland

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

Sleep leaned over the child, whispering the days and nights it remembered.
The pat believed the lullaby as if it had always lived there.

Then came the lullaby—
Led by the Duchess, backed by the red-faced baby.

(Initiation: A series of celeste notes—ding-a-ling. Moonlit.
A second note followed late… tinkle—as though the bleary melody itself were still discovering its player.)

Lullaby and good night,
With peppery bedlight,
And my child sleeps near—
Mind thy snorts, my dear!

(Residual Signal: the music box tick—tch—whirr.
The gears rolled on.
The tempo adjusted without comment.)

If thy nose mutates in place,
’Tis manners to attune thy face;
Yet should sense dare to complain,
’Tis manners then to change insane!

(Harmonic Fault: a low cello entered—long bows coiled around the child, chrysalis-tight. Mmmm… hummed the cello, now rising from within.)

Dream, my child, dream upright,
In thy chrysalis tight—
Change is promised, right or wrong,
If thou hum a proper song.

(Overtone: C minor drifting lazily into D major. Mmmms, slightly crooked… stretching, wavering… reaching for the dings, lingering softly around the lullaby.)

Lay thee down, don’t protest,
Piglet’s snoring means it’s blessed;
Lay thee down, hush thy squeals,
Empty shells hide clever peas.

The lullaby was peppery and abrasive, sweetly irritating—a tune that had mistaken itself for medicine.

It promised a fast, deep sleep long before it reached its middle verse.

It promised a meta-dream—where the baby remembered a piglet, the piglet forgot its chrysalis, and everyone forgot what they were meant to remember somewhere between realms.

The little baby slept soundly, smiling as though the lullaby had patted him with a rhythmic lull inside, while a crescent moon hung above, small and deliberate, in the middle of the layered fantasy of tropical storm.

The lullaby had moved through him and into the sentence, patting you, hushing your fuss, until the room you sat in became the next layer of the dream.

Lay yourself down. Don’t fuss. Let the pat do its work.

And as the room folded, the story closed its eyes—and carried you with it.

Discovering you.

Previous Episode: Nothing Begins Until Observed

Next Episode: Spice drives Cosmology :

First Law of Pungency:
Not all cosmic disputes can be settled with breakfast

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.

Episide 59 - Nothing Begins Until Observed / A Digital Wonderland

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

In Wonderland, nothing begins until it is observed, and nothing ends until someone remembers to breathe.

Several stories therefore linger awkwardly in draft form, waiting for a witness.

Alice was recognised. She assumed.

She entered honourably. She assumed again, chest lifted just enough, as if pride were always with her—so long as she didn’t frighten it away.

Then came a furious welcome—a Cook, brandishing a spoon the size of an oar, charged toward Alice as though she were King William himself—only with a far higher collar, and a decidedly enormous apron.

But not a hint of a full‑armoured destrier.

The Cook snorted like a destrier.

Alice had no time to re-render the new King William before the spoon swept past her nose by scarcely more than an inch and a half.

A good soldier knows her calculation. 

And a good soldier sneezes when she cannot retreat—so Alice did: once, twice, and a third time to complete the volley.

The spoon bounced off an invisible dome, scattering droplets across the air. 

More than forty thousand sticky bio-aerosols launched themselves at nearly one hundred miles per hour. They orbited the turbulent, puffy dome like very small, extremely determined sentries.

The kettle shrieked as if hurt. Even the cili padi pepper seemed to choke on its own daring.

The Duchess sat undisturbed, croaking a melody to the red-faced baby upon her knee, as if pepper storms and battle cries were nothing but lullabies.

Curiously, the baby croaked back in full and proper lyrics, as though the song had been stitched into its bones from birth.

And now a dome protected Alice. A chaotic kitchen, a lullabying Duchess, and a red-faced baby—each jarred against the other. The story itself lost its rhythm, pausing like a verse waiting for its caesura—a breath, a silence, a space to begin again.

... ... ...

The Duchess glanced beyond Alice, not at her, not at the baby, but somewhere above the title itself, spotting what might have been a familiar caesura in the margin.

“The next story,” she croaked, “requires the reader to observe the verse.”

The baby opened one eye—and winked, as if already offering one of the observations.

Blinked. 
Blinked. 
Blinked—from every eye in Wonderland.

Including the ones reading.

(Since you have blinked, this story is now officially published.)

Previous Episode: Certificate for All the Experiences

Next Episode: The Story Takes You With It :
Lullaby and good night
With peppery bedlight.

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