Episode 73.1 - Stagehands / A Digital Wonderland

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

STAGEHANDS 

The Hatter’s remark knocked Alice off balance, as though the floor had been stolen beneath her feet.

A family of rats was carrying it.
They were grousing all the way home.

"Where should we keep this floor? Our garage doesn't need any extra," a younger rat asked, panting heavily. 

"Under the house," the mother replied quickly—yet a lump formed in her throat just as fast. 'House' became hoarse. 

"But we already have one there," said the elder one, wheezing while staring at the immense floor.

"Why are we taking this floor home?" the young one asked again.

"Careful. The narrative is writing us," the father said, teeth clenched.

The table's shadow darkened across their faces, then over their entire bodies. 

"What if the narrative touches the table?"

"What if it names us?"

"That's beyond rat imagination," the parent sighed.

The floor grew heavier, dragging them two inches backward.

Weight dragged, labour pulled.

The younger one's eyes boggled—there stood the narrative beside him.

No face. Scorching.

"Is that—?" he rasped.

The floor was no longer there.

Alice didn't notice. She kept speaking while two seconds went missing.

The narrative tapped. Gloved.

Tok tok sounds from a prepared piano crept in from the background. 

A snap.

No fingerprints left on music.

Schnittke's Concerto Grosso No. 1 simply stopped.

The harpsichord ticked away.

The rats reset to routine—shuffling, running oddly slow behind the Duck, jabbing him during a Caucus-race. 

Their hands hurt. They blamed the Caucus-race.

No one mentioned the grounded floor again.

Not even the floor.

Floors were not meant to remember.

Only narrative did. 

Previous Episode: Lewis's Weather Forecast

Next Episode: Alfred Schnittke's Job Done

The Caucus-race reset.

Alfred Schnittke shut his eyes.

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 73 - Lewis's Weather Forecast / A Digital Wonderland

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

LEWIS'S WEATHER FORECAST 

I didn't withhold any truth.

I even included a detailed weather forecast.

Readers ruled. That much was undeniable.

My only mistake was omitting the source:

Lewis's weather forecast, 8 p.m., Dodgson Broadcast Corporation. Formerly Charles Broadcast Corporation.

The weather at the table matched.

The skin corroborated the report; no goosebumps to betray a chill.

But none of this trivia delayed Alice's anger.

The Hatter's remark caught her off balance, as though the floor was stolen.

Right under her feet.

“I beg your pardon—and how rude of you to say such ill-mannered things!” she cried. Her cheeks reddened, but she refused to hunch an inch.

Her words missed the Hatter entirely.

He had not turned away.

Her voice simply failed to arrive.

Between them, the air circled.

Above a cup too, circling like a housefly.

The cup straightened its handle to swat the buzzing away.

The air circled above a crumb, but not enough to tip anything.

Still, the words looped back to Alice’s ears, her own voice slapping against her.

Her ears hummed. 

She cocked her head to shake it away, but the sound remained glub glub glub.

“We’ve been expecting you since yesterday,” said the March Hare at last, smiling.
He turned to the Hatter. 
The two of them shuddered. 

So did the teapot. Even the cups. Whispering scandal under the steaming web.
The tablecloth shrugged, sending tiny ripples across teapot and cups. 

Everybody was gossiping—under streetlight, under table, under mamak. Someone shouted: "One teh tarik." Another one responded, "Satu teh tarik."

Then the shouts in Premier League on live, filling the air.

A Mad Party.

"Oh, my dear! Don't make your memory short once your head was out from the Rabbit-Hole." The Hatter shook his hat; "surely you remember." His voice was calm and flat, as though flattened by the narrow, tapering walls of the Rabbit-Hole.

“Hair full of dirt and grasses…” the March Hare added, still smiling, apparently he had seen it himself.

Gossiping didn’t end; it didn’t stop sleep from warming itself under the table. 

From inside that warmth, a lullaby rehearsed itself:

“Toot … tooot … toooot …” the Dormouse snored. 

Not yet 8 p.m. Truth is timeless.

Previous Episode: A Ruler 

Next Episode: Stagehands
"Where should we keep this floor? Our garage doesn't need an extra one," a younger rat asked, panting. 

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 72.1 - A Ruler / A Digital Wonderland

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

A RULER

Every inch of a ruler marked an unspoken history.

The wall it hung from in the Hatter's tea-party house thought it knew everything.

It was nothing.

Only shadow.

In another story, it ruled for the Queen—until “Off with your head” snapped its leash.

The phrase was spelled into a spell.

Earlier still, it ruled in a story of yore, in which two weavers turned air into garments. It was a ruler in new clothes.

When Gallons, Ounces and Inches prevailed, the ruler notched the tea party—
Still in new clothes.
Still ruling everyone.
Measuring the two-inch swelling of the tea-party house.

Once, a child measured the Ruler with a naked sentence.

Now, Alice ruined her way into a wrong tea party, walking a trap of milky-trick narrative air. 

Eyes parsed Alice—inch by inch.
The ruler followed.

The six-inch ruler on everyone's desks, on yours, too.
Measuring every line in two-inch couplets.

The weavers spun air. Stories grew tall. 

The ruler measured older ruler's pride. 

It measured the shout of the Queen. 

The Seconds' story came out two inches shorter.

It declared those measurements canon.

Its cold thickness sealed the gap between stories—

"Skritch. 

Skritch. 

THUCK."

This distorted voice morphed into a song:

"Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, come into my notch?"

Everything hesitated. 
Narrative too.

Carroll decreed:
Two turned official in the first line of the preface.
Readers deliberately skipped it.

R  E  A  D  E  R  S    R  U  L  E  D.

U  N  S  P  O  K  E  N  L  Y.

Previous Episode: Perfect Weather 

Next Episode: Lewis's Weather Forecast 

Lewis's weather forecast at 8pm on Dodgson Broadcast Corporation.

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 72 - Perfect Weather/ A Digital Wonderland

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

PERFECT WEATHER 

Alice wandered on after the counting. 

Story reoriented.

Nothing had disappeared, and neither had her loneliness—it clung to her lower hem like a child holding to the mother.

Presently, a house appeared, a good deal larger than the Rabbit’s; counting precisely twelve steps, Alice found herself before it. 

Her curiosity piqued, stretching to fit the size of the house.

The Cat had already pivoted out of her attention.

The house seemed to swell ever so slightly—two inches.

“How very egotistical it can be!” Alice tipped her head. 

The house grew precisely bigger than Alice’s curiosity. It had a ruler—one the Queen used to rule with.

A faint, sweet smell of milk drifted by from a long table. 

At one end sat the Hatter; at the other, the March Hare.

Between them lay the Dormouse, snoring like a tiny toot-toot train chugging from one dream to another. 

“You’ve a foolishly funny look…” began the Hatter, his words catching for a long time in his throat—dry, uneven, and then suddenly fluent, like a voice regaining its signal after a brief delay.

The Mad Party would begin with his own signature flair—turning Alice's right thoughts upside down, while her wrong thoughts simply underside up.

Everybody would drift along, though a crumb preferred to cling to the rim of the cup.

Nobody weathered.

In the weather forecast, it would be 18°C to 21°C, a light breeze, humidity around 60%, partly cloudy. There would be neither thunder nor lightning.

Perfect weather. 

The crumb still clung to the rim. No great drama—otherwise, a wet madness.

The crumb stayed where it was, long enough to multiply nothing except its own insistence.

Previous Episode: 

Gallons, Ounces, And Inches 

Next Episode: A Ruler
Still ruling everyone—measuring a two-inch swelling in the tea-party house.

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 71.1 - Gallons, Ounces, and Inches/ A Digital Wonderland

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

GALLONS, OUNCES, AND INCHES 

After Alice’s count of two, Wonderland echoed.

Buffering...

One Dodo arrived.

Delayed.

Then another.
Then came two Ducks.
Then two Eaglets.
Two Rats.

At the end of the line, two Seconds duck-walked.

Their footsteps stepped on one another. Neither felt. 

“Why are we summoned?” asked a Second, rubbing its eyes—

Still a second.

“She did nothing but count,” another Second added.

“She counted for nothing, but something lost two seconds,” they sighed.

Beneath the soil the Cat had scratched, a voice rose. 

So faint that Alice had missed it.

“Can a gallon hold a second?”

The first Second folded its ears shut.

“Don’t be stupid,” another voice replied. “It’s one ounce.”

“One ounce is broader than a gallon,” the second voice continued.

“You are right,” said the first voice. “It was ruled so.”

The Seconds checked each other.

“We should go,” whispered the first Second.

“Why?" said the other. “Once wasted, we are nobody's.”

The first Second stopped duck-walking on the spot.

“We're the Water,” it said. “No—we're the Wind now.”

The Rats’ tails lifted and swirled, touching nothing.

“Yes,” said the other. “Wind that does not need winding.”

The Dodos swayed. The Ducks waddled. The Eaglets poked. The Rats shuffled. 

Something was blowing through. 

The line shrank.

This story became two inches shorter.

Someone said we are two inches.

Who cares.

Previous Episode: The Fourth Choice 

Next Episode: Perfect Weather 
The house seemed to swell ever so slightly—two inches

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.