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--

Calibrated Calm

Alice: Dreaming 

Mushrooms: Pinged,

Notification: Received

A surreal chapter in Alice’s digital dreamscape.