A Wonderlandish Corner/32

Alice was confused—rather like someone had pressed Copy, hovered over Paste, and misplaced her into her-e, t-her-e, and somew-her-e—a glitch so thoroughly Wonderlandish, even the letters couldn’t resist joining the chaos and scattering her everywhere.

She probably no longer held a charge after the rock concert, yet a faint disappointment still managed to cling to her soul at once.

“Ah—what a little quiet garden,” she sighed. “How exceedingly tiresome.”

Adrift in that Wonderlandish corner, her thoughts  drifted to another: one where the King still rocked, denim-clad and splendidly anomaly. So curious.

Soon she found herself among mushrooms—dozens upon dozens—some upright, some bowing politely, some lying flat, and many gossiping. The air was cool and sweetly mossy, laced with the earthy scent of petrichor.

Amid the calm, the garden blinked once, unfolding its array of compound eyes, recording her every step—live and alert, like a swarm of flying cameras.

A little mushroom popped up suddenly, shuddered, lifted its cap, and emitted a tiny test ping—immediately chased by a kinetic notification rippling across the garden.

Then—pop, pop, pop—a dozen mushrooms lifted their caps in reply, each sending out its own tiny echo-ping.

Something grand for Alice was on the way—gloriously grand, and doomed the instant the Caterpillar began with his first move.

Alice’s mind hummed along on minimal resources, calm—or perhaps merely bored—much like the garden itself.

Somewhere behind the scene, the garden pinged the flying cameras:

“Wrong recording date. Revert to today. Do not film the crochet game—though you might find it entertaining—and stop sending heart-shaped reactions.” 

So hilariously busy. 

Pop, Pop, Pop,

Echo-Ping.

Coming up next--

A Smoky Start 

Thick Hookah Smoke 

Corrupted His Face

A surreal chapter in Alice’s digital dreamscape.

Dream in Dream/31

The scene had remodelled itself, loading a legacy cultural daemon.

In front of Alice stretched a vast, secret flatland. A place the Queen of Hearts surely shouldn’t have known. It was so enormous, the land itself felt ancient, yet sang in a youthful tenor tone through its years.

Alice was a tiny star, trudging like a dinosaur through black velvet, heavy-lidded and tired. Slowly, she nearly winked out at the horizon…

Then came a cosmic resonance, and a steady, thudding rhythm—like an unseen crowd: the Mouse, the Dodo, and who-knows-who else, screaming a name—jerking her sharply back into herself.

A man stood on a stage ahead of her. He wore light-blue denim jeans and a white tank top. On it, Alice’s portrait laughed quiet double-over. This was the very spark of excitement the cosmos had bookmarked—a moment saved ever since the first cut-off microphone stand was invented.

“Ay-oh,” and a massive echo replied; the King’s silent voice swirled unexpectedly through the soundscape.

The fast vibrato and subharmonic growl erupted from beneath his fat moustache—careful not to echo in his nose—vaulting clean over his arching eyebrows and streaking straight into the high, rising sky.

The sky seemed to lean closer, drawn to the concert as though the universe itself couldn’t bear to miss the rolling surge of rock notes.

All the stars huffed with force, flashing beams of electric blue and amber that converged on the center stage, dancing in sync with the guitar riffs and drumbeats.

Stomp-stomp. Clap. Pause.

The rhythm demanded participation—so the King sent an anonymous Like.

Alice obeyed on instinct. She stomped, clapped, and sang with a time-travelled longing—a memory glitching her sense of now, as if a daemon so influential had rocked Alice back to the past— the past of the crazy little lovely champions.

Pure energy coursed through her, and goosebumps—a high-power system alert from deep within—erupted across her skin.

Beneath the stage—Wonderlandian as ever and the true origin of goosebumps—a mother goose sat upon her nest, the father standing guard. They adored the stomping and clapping, but their rhythm was perfectly out of sync, bouncing into two incompatible worlds.

Alice leaned closer to the mother’s face. Concern?

No—wrong.

Both geese hissed at her— Hiss—Hiss—Bump-bump—and a goosebump rippled across her skin again as the curiosity dragged her dangerously close; all her hairs stood on end.

Then, a scheduler process—a big-footed, rat-costumed man—sprinted across her vision.

Instantly, the world snapped back to the thunderous stage—full volume, fully Wonderland, and thoroughly otherworlded.

A messenger pigeon darted past, homing toward the palace.

Before long, a scream tore across the scene from far—the Queen, booming with outrage: “How dare you shout so loud? Off with your—”

Alice rubbed her eyes, unsure if she had dreamed, or if this was just its virtualised variant.

Before her stretched a little garden.

Quiet.

Too quiet.

A faint murmur drifted through the leaves.

The King, somewhere behind a dense laurel shrub, muttered to himself— secretly, heartily, and raw with admiration:

“I wish I could be him.”

With a second of hesitation, he enabled the Ring Alerts.

---

⭐ Mirrored scene

Somewhere behind another thick laurel shrub, the King—crowned with a rocking star flickering in blue lasers, swinging his scepter as though to command the stage—stood poised forward.

He was dressed in denim jeans. The Queen’s shouting portrait blazed across his white tank top. Fist raised high, he whispered:

“I wish my kernel could reboot me as him.”

A soft but piercing “ding” shot into the air.

The Queen in the portrait immediately clapped her hands over her ears.

Queen, Geese.

A Mega-Byte Dream.

Coming up next--

A Wonderlandish Corner

Alice: Dreaming 

Mushrooms: Pinged,

Notification: Received

A surreal chapter in Alice’s digital dreamscape.

The Buffered Hill/30

Alice reached up—or perhaps down—and gave the frame a firm push. Behind her she left an archetypal wonder: the first-ever wonder of ancient Wonderland, a relic meant to be unearthed only in the far, skeletal centuries ahead.

Oops. An error occurred!

It was not quite like a window.

Clearing a cache of dust from her skirt, Alice leaned closer.

Inside the glass stretched a wide black scene: a reflection of an absurd space between Wonder and Land—nonsense romping loose, popping when it pleased, and bouncing with no memory of sense, as though it had been unwritten from its source code long ago.

At a far corner, a lonely cursor hopped and blinked.

As the hopping reached its ultimate point, the black screen cleared to reveal a hill—green and serenely ordinary—beneath a sky so smooth that even the Queen of Hearts would have found it uninspiring.

“Off with your head!”—a sentence decreed for a simple crime of complex boredom.

Absurdity.

The very hand that once dreamt this world must have slipped, fallen, rolled through time, and collided with his Wonderland at the nib of a fountain pen.

No Dodo’s nest. No Mouse’s burrow. Not even a hole—not a Rabbit-Hole, nor a USB port.

Just—perfection.

“Why, this isn't my Wonderland,” said Alice. “I should suspect it’s where windows initialises my dream—though I’ve no clue how it crawled through my body.”—And taking over her memory, her operating system, copying and pasting her from here, to there, and to everywhere.

And with that, she climbed through—one hand upon the frame, the other steadying her curiosity—into a new bombarded, Wonderlandsome episode.

“A new adventure update is available. Estimated duration: four days. Please do not leave your table.” A dialogue box blinked insistently.

Virtualised Alice,

Steadying Her Curiosity 

Coming up next--

Dream in Dream

Voice Soared into Sky,

Goosebumps 

A surreal chapter in Alice’s digital dreamscape.

Windows Took Over/29

Alice, much like the girl next door, possessed no innate power—this she knew all the way to her very fingertips.

With a soft metallic relief, the embarrassed identity—⊥Iᗺᗺ∀ꓤ ˙M—on the brass plate atop the door shied away into a blur.

The letters soon reconfigured into a scholarly, hopeful title: A Hundred Ways to Escape—as though Wonderland, somehow apologetic, had conjured a long wand of possibilities, so far-reaching that its final spark might have not found Alice.    (Lumos… Nox instead.)

“What a book without illustrations,” she murmured. “All I lack is speed-reading—that’s simple—anything to outrun the crawl among the bad sectors.”

In the corner, along the ridgepole, an empty, neckless bottle reclined in perfect idleness, its label having chosen to blank itself, too nervous to volunteer another DRINK ME-style chaos.

Meanwhile, the window, rousing from a lazy drowse, blinked once… then twice.

A legend—short but precise—flickered into existence:

Lumos. Solis. — EXIT WINDOW —

A soft sigh slipped from Alice’s lips. “Alright… though I never quite know what world they’ll open into next.”

Lumos...Maxima...

Lumos...Solis...

Coming up next--

The Buffered Hill

No Rabbit Hole,

No Mouse's Burrow

A surreal chapter in Alice’s digital dreamscape.

Door Introduced Itself/28

Meanwhile, the door—dangling above like a vast book, loaded with at least three inches of life-knowledge—seemed to recall its purpose. It groaned forward, “I’m here.”

Beside it, the window drowsed by a dozing mouse, half-idling, half-deciding— hesitating whether to power itself up or hibernate once more into glassy sleep.

Altogether, it would require only halffff an inch, the flick of a too-keen wrist, and the room itself would gather its poise and tip back upon its handsome collar and twirling mustache.

“Oh dear! Do mind your angle,” cried the door and window together. “We can’t all be Piza, and you aren't its master, you know — standing upright keeps our magnetic appeal, like a prince out of a story book.”

And yet Alice endeavored to make sense of it all. “The one I stepped on, it must be the floor,” she reasoned. “What a muddle to walk about, like a lopsided wander-wand —ah, I daresay I’ve gone and broken it altogether.”

Alice nearly cast a die to decide the size of her flick. It quivered so eagerly, itching to etch its name into history. And now, one small flick from her; one tremendous flip for the world.

The tipping room, uneasy furniture, and dozing mouse all held their breath—balancing, barely, on a single trembling pin.

 Alice Nearly—

Smothered Eveyone

Coming up next--

Window Took Over

⊥Iᗺᗺ∀ꓤ ˙M.

Exit Windows...

A surreal chapter in Alice’s digital dreamscape.

A Tilted Service/27

A quiet calm had settled in, Alice thought—until a faint clatter above confirmed differently.

High above her, a steaming teapot stood upon a three-legged table, sending milky, lavender-scented embraces through the air, quite undecided whether up was still up—or had absurdly become down.

Beside it, a plate of warm buttery biscuits perched—rounds of tempting round smiles tumbling downward, yet insisting they were rising to greet Alice instead.

All of it hovered above her—on the floor, as though a service had been set, promptly neglected by Wonderland itself, and only remembered a second too late after the sip of “DRINK ME” Red Magic.

“The ceiling… or is it the floor?” Alice asked the air, forcing her thoughts into a C-for-Ceiling, E-for-Floor knot. She was so flustered that the proper F had slipped out of her mind entirely, leaving poor E to do the job—while the aroma rose like a mischievous siren she very much wished to ignore.

“Perhaps I ought to give the room a little tilt—just a small one—and rotate the whole thing round,” she mused, tilting her body. “I do hope I can.”

What a wonderfully silly thought that was—forever silly, forever evolving, and somehow... forever.

Forever Brilliant, 

Wonderlandsome

Coming up next--

Door Introduced Itself

One Small Flick by Her,

One Giant Flip For The World

A surreal chapter in Alice’s digital dreamscape.

How Many Alices Make an Ending/26

Every cinematic and acoustic beat — a minute in time, a forever in feeling — yet I captured them all before they thinned away, unwitnessed by the future Alice.

The forever feeling, however, settled in — heavy, like a rock too loyal to its gravity.

Alice was unsure whether she felt lighter or emptier for having played one of the most vigorous and exhausting movements she had ever stumbled into.

"Oh, not truly!” exclaimed Alice. Something most peculiar had occurred — enough to make the Mouse, tail a meter long, stand goggled and mouth wide open.

The tiny room had turned upside down — like a somersault caught mid-air; like a chrysalis dreaming itself half-caterpillar, half-butterfly.

Three upside-down mirrors shimmered, replicating into a thousand more — Alices upon Alices, each blinking back, unsure which was real — or if any of them were — or perhaps thinking all at once. The more they reflected, the less they knew.

Somehow, it felt like a compromised finale — Wonderland’s own peculiar sort of resolution: mischievous, unsettled, entirely its own.

And Alices kept breathing.

All Alices had converged into one—complex, quiet, and still running somewhere beneath the silence.

Coming up next--

A Tilted Service

Gravity? 

Furniture had opinions.

A surreal chapter in Alice’s digital dreamscape.

The Laughter Concerto/25

The sensation grew—and grew further—until Alice, curled tight into a big, stiff question, could not answer herself anymore; her thoughts slipped out of key, her soul revolving into resonance.

Her body trembled at high frequency, each tremor small but relentless, vibrating the walls, her face flushing crimson.

She burst into wild, uncontrollable laughter—louder than thunder before a storm, louder than applause after a finale.

The laughter came in waves—each swelling fuller, sharper, more radiant than the last—reverberating through the narrow space, focused at first, then multiplying, until the concerto and her laughter, first mingling, then fusing, became a single compound propagating like viral code, reprogramming the space thou by thou.

The wafloings quivered beneath it; the chemistry remixed itself into a self-generating echo, bouncing and twisting, too fierce for so small a room to bear.

The echo struck a perfect sforzando; the tiny room shook, released its strain, and snapped back into order. 

For a moment, everything hung suspended—the breath, the soul, the very atoms of her being. Then, Alice exhaled — — — a long afternoon of breath letting go.

A great silence followed—the echo neatly cached by the Wonderlandian system, which sensibly went into sleep mode.

A Concerto Entered Sleep Mode 😴

Coming up next--

A Compromised Finale

Lighter or Emptier?

Which Alice Was Real?

A surreal chapter in Alice’s digital dreamscape.

Alice In Concerto/24

Bill — balancing himself rather bravely upon such limited surface — gave a bow. 

Relaxed, he stood tall, grounded both legs, and began moving his mighty little hands as though tuning invisible strings with a thrilling accelerando.

Alice’s breath came quick and low. “Pray—pray don’t do that!”

The words seemed to dissolve between the strings the second they left her mouth.

Bill only tightened his hold, his fingers moving with dreadful precision — each trembling vibrato a ghostly pluck along her nerves.

Alice wanted to still herself — to not breathe, not feel — yet her whole being betrayed her, executing the emotion she had meant to close, and tuning itself, helplessly, to Bill’s tremolo key.

Bill pressed on — fingers bowing, rocking, trilling.

The rhythm spiralled into dazzling runs and tumbling scales, streaming through her ribs as if her body had become an unwilling instrument of his tune.

It was alive.

I could almost make out the piece — ah yes, Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D major, unmistakably — each phrase unfurling with fevered brilliance, a beta build of beauty that made Bill’s pride almost too exquisite to bear.

And Alice, poor girl, seemed to feel every note without ever quite hearing it.

A Concerto Only to be Felt By Alice... 

Coming up next--

The Laughter Concerto

Laughter Dares, 

In the Concerto?

A surreal chapter in Alice’s digital dreamscape.

The Wriggle/23

The background command knocked — as though the wafloings had finally received their signal, and Alice’s thought had remembered its turn.

A shadow, slender and oddly familiar, slid forward from where the Rabbit had vanished.

“A patch — from the Rabbit?” Alice queried. “Or a bug, in disguise?”

“Oh dear — Bill! You’ve escaped the pool!” cried Alice, as the little figure stopped, fixing her with that unnervingly steady look.

“How were those one-meter Mouse’s tales you once clung to?” Her mouth brushed the wafloings — breathless but bright, as though speaking through a screen to her long-lost friend.

The steady look held its silence.

Was Bill performing a system scan — convinced that no bug could hide as long as the cursor kept blinking?

He stood upright, his tail anchoring him to the floor — miniature enough to maneuver neatly in the cramped space. He offered Alice a widening grin, bright as the cursor that refused to cease its blinking.

As ever, Bill said nothing.

Even a broader grin, by all available philosophy, would scarcely have improved the situation; his silence was the only thing that wasn’t blinking.

With a sudden wriggle, Bill scrambled up Alice’s arm and slipped sideways, clinging to her ribs.

The Steady Look Held Its Silence, Yet Told Not A Tale... 

Coming up next--

Alice in Concerto

A Concerto? 

One to be felt...

A surreal chapter in Alice’s digital dreamscape.

Folded Within Her Question/22

“I wish I could be smaller,” Alice thought. “Foolish me; the room would swallow me whole again.”

The air creaked before her self-chiding was quite done — frantic rubbings, squeezings, and pressings rose through the tightening space — from not very far, to near, to closer — until it was right beside her.

That was when the White Rabbit came into the picture, breathing a thick coffee smell, as though he’d just burst from a café in someone else’s dream. The scent bounced back and forth, looping with his auto-playing idiom: “I’ll be really, really late—so really late!”

He brushed against her skirt, jerked, and wedged himself toward a tiny pinprick of light. The glow widened and brightened; with a flick and a shimmer, he was absorbed altogether—as though minimized into a secret taskbar only he could see.

The light dinged once—and was gone.

Silence hung in its place.

Alice, still folded within her own precarious loop of question, sighed—though in such tight quarters, even sighs had to be rationed.

“When I used to read fairy tales,” she murmured, “I fancied such things could never happen—and now here I am, right in the middle of one.”

The murmuring echoed, then faded—leaving only the faint hum of thought still tangled in the ends of her hair.

The Wonderland system dinged once... 

Coming up next--

The Wriggle

Whose wriggle, 

in such a tightness?

A surreal chapter in Alice’s digital dreamscape.

Walls Held Their Breath/21

But then a sour, musky odour crept upward—heavy and slow in the close air. 

Alice hadn’t an inch—no, not even half an inch—left in which to wrinkle her nose.

“Dear me! Is it roasted beef gone positively pungent?” cried Alice. “How I should catch you, Mr. Rabbit—red-pawed this time!”

The words came out squeezed—thin, crumpled, and quite out of breath.

Every murmur, every thought, and every shadow of the room shifted, twisted, and set about reconfiguring themselves into murshathodowghtmuuur.

Nothing stayed where it ought: ceilings became walls, walls became floors and ceilings and wafloings  — until no one could tell what was what.

Pugin or Barry? They’d have failed the job, I should think—and Wonderland chop-signed my narration.

The room grew quieter; even the very wafloings seemed to hold their crooked breath—waiting, perhaps, only for Alice’s next thought to execute, like a line of code idling in the background, unhurried but inevitable.

It had proven itself—so long as the Wonderlandian system chose not to crash.

The Wonderland system hummed beneath the walls.

Coming up next: Folded Within Her Question

A trauma—or a despair?

A surreal chapter in Alice’s digital dreamscape.

The State Of Limbo/20

Before long, the distinct, four-note humming stopped.

“Red magic,” breathed Alice, exhaling with a grand relief. “You’ve ended just where you should.”

Kneeling in sudden surrender to the shifting room, she curved herself into a loop of her own question—neck pressed to the wall, nose relearning how to sniff.

A soft groaning filled the air, rather like a biscuit attempting to recall a crisp tune.

The mirrors—bent awkwardly like warm toffee, still brimming with dizzling bottles—shimmered faintly, actively composing the next line of the story together.

Their light flickered—brightening, dimming, brightening again—as if modelling with one hand and bargaining with someone on the far side of Wonderland, eager to have a well-reflected story.

Even the bottles quivered within them, their glass caught between cracking and vanishing, as though the words DRINK ME were desperately trying to erase themselves from the code.

Alice, her neck still stiff, cast a sidelong glance at them.

“Hopefully,” she murmured, “the system won’t hang before the next bit loads”—a phrase she’d only learned earlier that morning, and still half believed was a charm.

Coming up next: Walls Held Their Breath 

Nullity and Hum/19

Alice lifted the obliged bottle with extreme care, as though it might uninstall itself at a careless touch. Then, quite without consulting the rest of herself, she took a sip.

The taste was impossible to describe, which of course made it terribly interesting—part strawberry, part apothecary, and part… something that did not quite belong to syllable at all.

For one infinitesimal moment, she felt the room hesitate—as if waiting for her to save her progress.

Then Alice was caught in it.

The walls bent inward like soft clay, the ceiling drooped like a heavy curtain, and the floor curled at the edges. The effect was not gradual but total: her surroundings were reformatting themselves, wrapping up her as they went.

Her thoughts, too, began to fragment—one whispering behind her ear, another straying somewhere about her toe.

What was once a room resolved into a nullity.

And amid that nullity rose a long, sinking hum—the unmistakable drone of a Windows shutdown.

Alas, Alice had no room to hum along—a most regrettable error both in design and in situation, for she was always so fond of a good one.

The Default Bottle/18

Alice paused in the middle, wondering if she’d reached the edge of its story.

But there, after another two steps round the corners, before three mirrors that made a thousand bottles out of one, waited a single bottle—as if that were its default setting; its neck drawn out—perhaps in mild impatience at Alice’s tardiness.

It was filled with a liquid, as red as any garden rose. Its label read, quite clearly, “DRINK ME.” The letters trembled ever so slightly.

“They could hardly sit still to be read,” she giggled. “How very Alice of them!”

“Well now,” said Alice to herself, “it is remarkably obliging for a bottle to ask so nicely.” 

She looked all around, half-expecting a second label to appear with a “PLEASE DON’T.”

She was—as I could have told you—quite as cautious as a download, pausing at ninety-nine percent—and she could never quite master the Hot-and-Cold game—shivering when she should be seeking, flushing when she ought to be freezing, and generally confusing herself, most delightfully, all the while.

When no such warning appeared, something triggered—like an invisible program buried deep inside her curiosity.

The Thirteenth Step/17

Alice might have shouted or cast a bit of magic—nothing could pierce the Rabbit’s perfect ignorance. He whisked himself into a neat little room just round the corner.

"You have arrived at your destination. Welcome home!” chirruped a voice.

No one was to be seen—except, perhaps, a doormat stitched in the pattern of tiny musical notes, lying there and looking suspiciously pleased with itself.

Upon the door shone a bright brass plate engraved with the name W. RABBIT.

Alice nipped inside, as adventurous as ever and twice as curious.

There was no greeting of a cup of tea or some warm, buttery biscuits, which was not at all what she had expected. It was, Alice supposed, nearly tea-time.

“How small!” thought Alice, immediately realizing it was hardly polite to think such a thing, even for half a second. 

But it was true—never deny the truth. She had walked from the front to the back—the full extent of the little house—in no more than ten steps.

“Oh dear, that will never do! I ought to have at least two more. I always find the thimble on the thirteenth step,” declared Alice.

A Most Particular Magic/16

It was the White Rabbit, trotting back again and peering about most anxiously—as if he were hunting for something he had lost. Or so Alice supposed.

“I didn’t take it! Not the watch—goodness, no! I shouldn’t even know how to make it tick properly!” cried Alice, though no one had said a word to her at all.

A wild new thought suddenly bloomed in her mind. “Can a thing truly vanish, so lightly, with only a thought?” she mused, in equal parts doubt and delight. “Very well, I shall think of… of biscuits! Yes—warm, buttery biscuits.”

She squeezed her eyes shut, concentrating with all her might. She opened them wide—to nothing. Not a single crumb.

“Hmph!” said Alice. “Then it works only for watches.” She concluded with a sigh, “A most particular and useless magic. It must have run up against its tiresome free plan limit”

The Pool That Fed Itself/15

Here was a sharp muzzle that jabbed a flustered Donald again and again, sending him quacking on cue. Here was a tangle of limbs, frozen in midair like a paused cartoon. 

Everywhere were faces, peering out as if asking to be liked or disliked, applauded or ignored.

It was a whole parade of nonsense, as endless as it was absurd.

“How very curious!” Alice murmured. “This must be what a feed is called—a pool that feeds itself, over and over, till there’s nothing left but bubbles!”

Alice looked around at the endless scroll of squabbles and chatter. She felt, in a queer way, proud that it had all sprung from her tears—but the pride sat uneasily. For if the nonsense was hers, then so too were the jabbing muzzle, the suspended violence, the quarrels, the boasting, and the endless noise.

And she wondered, with a small frown that did not suit her face: is it truly a good thing, to have such a pool at all?

Rippling Reflections/14

The Mouse gave a sudden, violent shudder. “C-cat… nasty, vulgar thing!” it cried, then vanished under the surface, leaving only its meter-long tail above the water like a periscope—swiveling about as though it too might catch the signal of the Cat.

Alice could not help but giggle, though she knew it was not entirely polite.

“What a silly mouse! As if my Dinah would swim all the way here. Why, she makes the most dreadful fuss over a mere puddle!”

Just then there was a splash so sudden it set the water fizzing, and up came Bill the Lizard.

He coughed so violently that Alice feared he might shake himself to pieces. 

He coughed and spluttered, until the fit erupted in such a gale of sound and fury, Alice quite expected the Queen to march out of the reeds and order somebody’s head off.

(The Queen, of course, was elsewhere at the time, ordering everybody’s head off, which kept her well occupied.)

Bill seized the Mouse’s tail with one hand, puffed up his narrow chest, and gave Alice such a commanding look that she very nearly believed he was master of the flood. 

But as Alice gazed past him at the waters—her own tears made strange—the illusion vanished. 

They did not merely reflect; they seemed to answer back, their shimmering surface prickling with the promise of comments and likes.

The Hasty Rabbit/13

“Rabbit!” cried Alice, quite suddenly.

This startled everyone. Even me—though I really ought to know better than to be startled.

Presently, the Mouse’s idea hung in despair, spinning slowly round and round, yet never beginning.

This “running” creature was everywhere at once—his entrances always mistimed.

He rushed nearer, muttering, “I’ll be late, so late!”

With a flash of his glowing pocket-watch, he was gone—toggled into Dark Mode.

“Why was he always hurrying, as if being late were the only thing he was meant—or made—to do?” Alice wondered.

Suppose, for once, he erased it all and lingered instead—to pluck mushrooms in the misty morning, or to chase butterflies like Dinah does!

So Alice, eager to be useful, conjured a grand wish of her own.

How curious it would be to see him without that glowing watch—if only she could right-click it and send it tidily to the Recycle Bin.

Dizzy race. Like/12

It was such a dizzy race—everyone whirling around a clock that refused to stop.

“Stop!” cried the Eaglet, flapping to seize control of the chaos.

And at once, the Eaglet was already thinking the other way round.

The sudden halt flung everyone forward; tumbling in surprise, they hung midair—a tangle of limbs, frozen like a paused cartoon.

Silent. 

A muddled silence. 

But silence never lasts.

The Mouse scrolled and called out, “Sit down, close together!”

“Oh, at least I’m allowed to sit.” thought Alice, much relieved—almost as if a daisy had leaned over and whispered, Sit, it’s what I do best.

The Mouse’s eyes twinkled. An idea—splendid, at least to himself—positively itching to be shared, whether the others clicked like or not.

Alice, Tra-la-la-la-ing/11

A small paw tugged at Alice’s skirt. It was the Mouse, his whiskers twitching in time with the music.

“You’re not running,” he squeaked.

“Am I meant to?” Alice asked.

“The Dodo says everyone must run,” the Mouse replied, “It’s the rule.”

“But the rules were never announced,” Alice countered.

The Mouse blinked slowly. “Precisely. That’s the only truly fair system. Now you must run, or you’ll be Still. And to be Still is to be Out.”

“And what does Out mean?”

The Mouse looked at her with profound pity. “Why, it means you’re not In.”

And with that impeccable logic, he vanished into the swirling, tra-la-la-la-ing mass. 

Alice paused, shrugged as if it hardly mattered, and off she ran—darting between legs, bumping the Dodo, treading on the Mouse, nearly tripping over the Duck. 

Her hair streamed wild behind her, her voice tumbling out in song.

“Tra la la la la…” she sang aloud.

Tra-la-la-la-laing like a computer caught in an endless loop---until someone finally pressed Escape.

The Madcap Caucus/10

The race rules were never announced. There was no winner, no prize—and, curiously enough, that never appeared to be a flaw. 

On the contrary, all the creatures ran as eagerly as if confusion itself had been the very point of the game.

They sang along in this Caucus-race. Alice could only catch the refrain: “Tra la la la la…”

“Is it a Caucus-race,” Alice wondered. "or a Circle-dance?"

It was all bounce and whirl, so bouncy and infectious, even the missteps seemed to power it along, each surprise adding its own peculiar energy.

Carroll himself might have regretted the confusion.

The mood flared. The tune hopped like a mite, and doubled back—“Tra la la la la…”

The scene reminded Alice of campfires with her sisters. They would sing London Bridge Is Falling Down, Humpty Dumpty and more.

Yet nothing in those songs, not even a tumbling bridge, could match the sheer craziness unraveling before her eyes. 

"Tra la la la la, Tra la la la la..."

It was as if the whole Wonderland itself flashing Error… Error… 

"Tra la la la la..."

Waddling. Side to Side/9

The Dodo, puffing very grandly, kept on quacking the word ReBoOt.

“Would this change Wonderland?” Alice asked, wide-eyed with curiosity.

The Dodo, catching his breath, answered with pompous pity. “A ReBoOt is simple: one forgets the errors, clears the memory”—he puffed and wheezed—“and hopes the story will run smoother this time.”

“But what if it forgets too much?” Alice pressed.

“Then,” said the Dodo, “Wonderland crashes! Or you crash! Or both—QUAACK!”

No question followed.

The creatures waddled side to side, swaying like a metronome. Wings flapped out of time—up when they ought to be down, down when they ought to be up.

Alice, finding it all perfectly unreasonable and therefore just right for Wonderland, burst into helpless laughter.

The Mouse, usually a champion sprinter, ran oddly slow behind the Duck. Its sharp muzzle jabbed Donald again and again, sending him springing upward—quacking perfectly on cue every time. 

Its tail almost waddled side to side, its little belly sketched along the ground, leaving a faint, zigzag mouse trail behind it.

Quacking in Chaos/8

The pool of tears grew restless.

The Dodo came flapping his wings. ‘QUAACK!’ he bellowed, so loudly the Duck nearly toppled over. "Neither double-deckers nor carriages qualify as followers!" he declared, puffing out his chest with his sudden authority.

The Duck nodded again. Donald always seemed so very clever—though Alice couldn’t tell if he understood the Dodo or was merely fond of the word ‘QUAACK.’

By now, the Mouse’s tale seemed destined hopelessly to run on forever.

But excitement, in this damp and dismal place, never lasted long. A chill soon settled, and everyone was shivering.

“ReBoOt! ReBoOt!” cried the Dodo. “The only cure is a Caucus-race!”

“Does he mean English,” Alice whispered to herself, “or is that another word he's just invented?”

And so, at the Dodo’s command, the wet party began. 

The Lory, the Eaglet, the Duck, and several others whose names Alice couldn’t quite recall, ran round and round in a chaotic, patternless loop, desperate to get dry.

“Rule of Nature,” Alice concluded, “creatures dislike getting wet. That was hard-coded long before I was.” 

She very nearly applauded herself, feeling she had at last untangled one of Nature’s riddles.

Off with the Head?/7

At once, the bustle of a London street bloomed in Alice’s mind: a tangled queue of carriages, the impatient blare of motor-horns, and great crimson double-deckers swarming with people.

“Now listen—you really must attend!” the Mouse insisted, his voice a taut violin string of annoyance.

Snapping back into focus, Alice rested her chin upon her hands and raised her eyebrows, as though he had just said something perfectly ridiculous.

"The Queen, you see, is absurdist to the core,” the Mouse went on. “When she cries ‘Off with your head!’, it hardly means a thing—she only likes the funny noises she makes. Otherwise, my dear, you’d have to worry there’d be no cards left to play with at all.”

Alice noticed the Dodo, the Eaglet, and the Duck all leaning in, nodding as though every word were plain as daylight.

“English, please!” said Alice. She frowned, an expression which rather resembled a search bar awaiting its query—puzzled and empty.

William For Traffic/6

Alice's hand drifted out, almost from habit, as if to scroll.

“Ahem. I serve a different function." sighed the Mouse. “He clicks, I talk.”

Giggling, Alice tucked her hands into her lap. “How curious! Do you tell stories?”

“Indeed,” said the Mouse while whacking his tail.  “Short stories—shorter than this.”

“Then tell me about William the Conqueror. No longer than a meter.” Alice suggested eagerly.

“William the Conqueror,” the Mouse began—“Hrrmph!” (as solemnly as a mouse could manage)—“flanked by a swarm of grown-drones, drove his AI- guided limousine, armoured in diamonds, straight into the heart of battle...”

“That’s not the William in my lessons!” Alice broke in, a little rudely (though she did not mean it).

“Little lady, listen close!” the Mouse squeaked, puffing his whiskers, “Everyone—yes, everyone—loves absurdity!”

He twitched his tail for emphasis. “It’s the only thing that truly generates TraFFic."

Tumble-Tumble Trouble/5

Alice went tumble-tumble — splash! — into something wet.

“Oh no,” she sighed.

“What is this?”

“A pool of your own tears,” whispered a voice.

“My tears? But… I don’t recall weeping.”

She tapped at her soil-tangled hair, while pictures upon pictures skittered through her mind.

I ought to be ashamed of myself, she thought.

So busy for a little girl — yet she noticed something drifting near: fur, whiskers, a long, twitching muzzle.

“Clumsy, big-footed… Ratty,” Alice guessed.

The creature bristled.

“Mouse. Handsome. Tail a meter long. On your desk sits my cousin.”

Stamping the water, he insisted — almost desperately —

“Mouse!”

Windows For Alice/4

“Double-hung? Casement? Or Bay Window?” cried the White Rabbit.

He looked excited, as though he knew everything — which a rabbit seldom did. And, most surprising of all, he seemed to have the upper paw.

Alice blinked, puzzled.

“Double… this sounds rather big,” she whispered.

The Rabbit tapped his pocket twice; the air rippled, and a glittering windowpane shimmered into place, floating in midair.

“Step through!” urged the Rabbit.

“Quickly now — before it shuts itself down.”

404: Queen Not Found/3

“I don’t permit this,” the Queen gasped, invoking her authority.

“Where is my court?” she demanded. Only silence bowed.

Stamping her foot with magnificent indignation, she cried, “Bring me the Knave! Bring me the cards! Bring me something to command!” — and so issued order upon order, each more impatient than the last.

Alice regarded her with wide eyes. “Me?” she ventured.

The Queen’s eyes flashed. “Press the Ctrl–Alt–Del button.”

“Now?” said Alice timidly.

“This instant!” thundered the Queen. “I—”

But before the last syllable escaped her lips, she vanished — quite completely — as if erased from her own decree.

The White Rabbit — still in his waistcoat and pocket watch — pretended he understood it all.

“Well?” he squeaked. “You’re late! Unpardonably late.”

“Rabbit hole again?” murmured the bewildered Alice.

“Oh no!” she exclaimed, shaking her head. “Uh… Let’s use Windows instead.”

Offline in Wonderland/2

The moment Alice was unplugged from the Rabbit Hole, the effect was immediate and immense—even the Queen of Hearts, quite by accident, seemed to be vacuumed somewhere else entirely.

“Who is this?” the Queen demanded, sharply—before she could make sense of what had happened, or where she herself was supposed to be.

No one answered.

“Idiot! Off with your head!” she screamed, trying to hide her fluster and floundering. Her voice bounced back against nothingness—a hollow echo, almost curious about itself.

Alice’s eyes, wide and uncertain, reflected one undeniable truth: she had crossed into another space—a place that was nothing, yet everywhere, both within and beyond herself.

And Wonderland, never one for subtlety, began to wink and whistle. 

The sky hiccuped.

Letters tumbled and winked.

Y O U A R E O F F L I N E.

The Opening Episode/1

Alice had grown—just like all of us; memory had grown too, along with bits and bytes that hummed softly in the background.

The heat was intense, the breeze sluggish, and every word in the book crawled along as if on crooked legs. Alice’s eyelids grew heavy.

The Rabbit appeared again. He stopped, peered back, and muttered about being late—so very late.

Alice followed. She crouched down as quickly as she could. She would never want to be left behind. Returning to books without illustrations would certainly bore both her mind and her senses—she rather agreed.

Ah, only her nose caught the familiar scent. ChatGPT kept silent…—until a hidden tug, a subtle pull, unlatched her world.

This warm, physical touch needed no wires, no Wi-Fi, but a physical connection.