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.

Episode 71 - The Fourth Choice / A Digital Wonderland

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

THE FOURTH CHOICE 

Nothing disappears—it only pivots.

So does the tree. Its life pivots into the soil in winter.

The Cat watched the sky. 

The fourth choice took its time.

It grinned wider, looked down, then scratched the soil with his fourth paw.

One stubborn soil licked and refused to let go.

“Ah yes,” he purred.

“The Fourth—seek the help of one Brown Doc."

“He is kept by a most curious time machine.”

“You will know him by his wild white hair— and by the White Rabbit's pocket watch, which dangles from the second buttonhole of his vest."

Sometimes the turning point lay underneath.

"And by the way he forever exclaims, ‘Great Socks!’ if he forgot his name,” he continued. 

The grin stretched to its limit; the teeth shimmered like spring stars.

Alice goggled. The Cat’s intelligence—AI?

No. That was nonsense.

Everything was artificial now.

“Kept by a time machine…? Socks…?” Alice murmured.

The grin stretched impossibly wider, just past the limit.

“You see,” the Cat purred, “one cannot chase yesterday without a little chaos."

"Are you prepared to wobble, and perhaps spill your tea along the way?” he asked. 

Alice hesitated.

Then she burst into laughter. 

She was watching the cup dance, click-clacking against the plate; half of the tea spilled over the rim, but somehow, it pulled back in.

The grin vanished while Alice remained distracted.

“Give me exactly two seconds—One… two,” she shouted.

The grin did not return.

Brown Doc was forced to pivot.

The Cat already had.

Previous Episode: 

Noon Now

Next Episode: Gallons, Ounces, and Inches 
"Someone said we are two inches."
"Who cares."

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 70.1 - Noon Now / A Digital Wonderland

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

NOON NOW 

The prince nestled the slipper into Alice’s palm.

Her foot wouldn’t fit. She took it anyway.

She slipped her foot in.

---

Slipper frayed—and so did the prince.

Clock didn't strike twelve.

Magic spell clocked out anyway.

This wasn't her story.

In Alice's theatre, her story and the prince met—

then forked apart from the same point.

---

The clock struck twelve. 

Noon now.

Shadows rotted.

Oh, pumpkin.

---

A Jack-o’-lantern clocked in.

Hollow eyes. Hollow nose. Hollow mouth. 

Alice's story trembled. 

A blade dropped—

Tock. 

Tang.

The Godmother didn’t respond. 

---

She leaned over the hollowed pumpkin.

She peered through its eyes at Alice.

Her face slipped through. 

Rind. 

She became another wrong pumpkin.

---

Enough.

🛑

🔚

"Wait. Who's telling this story again?"

The veil closes.

No one now.

Previous Episode: Yesterday Blooms

Next Episode: The Fourth Choice 
Sometimes the turning point lay underneath

New to Alice’s Digital Dreamscape?

Start here → Episode 67: Passing Through 

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 70 - Yesterday Blooms / A Digital Wonderland

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

YESTERDAY BLOOMS

Stories are often nonsensical—like a left-hand glove worn on the right hand.

“Aren’t stories just fairytales? Like... Cinderella, the glass slippers, and the prince.”

Alice paused at the prince, then continued, “I heard it only yesterday morning.”

“Yes, yesterday.” 

The memory unspooled, petal by petal, blooming into a sharp, living image: a Footman presenting an invitation from the Queen to play Pickleball—yesterday.

The grin came back, broad as ever.

“How does one catch up with yesterday?”  

The question reflexed—as if Alice's tongue had been tapped with a little hammer.

“Catch up with yesterday?” The Cat purred. “That is easy. You see, you have four choices.”

He lifted one paw, pointing to the west, where yesterday had gone.

The teeth of the grin glinted like summer stars.

“First—run fast, as fast as the Duchess, but not half a step faster; or else you'll overtake yesterday by one day.”

Another paw appeared, gesturing toward the east, from where tomorrow would arrive.

The grin stretched wider, its teeth gleaming like autumn stars.

"Second—stand still. Yesterday B#le×a*ry. Then stumbles beside you,” the Cat chirped, echoing his last vanishing caper with the hippy-cats.

The third paw remained still.

The grin widened further; its teeth like winter stars.

“The third requires perfect timing. When memory forgets to close the door—sneak in. Sneak in.”

Up there in the sky hung the last choice, clinging to the spring stars.

The Cat glanced upward. He purred longer than before.

“Are you consulting a fairy in the night sky?” Alice asked.

She lifted her gaze as well.

But the fairy flew here and there, her star-tipped wand tipping every blessing toward a bedtime story.

The fourth choice faded, and across the veil came the prince, with a glass slipper in his hand.

Previous Episode: Everyone In The Omnibox Stayed On 

Next Episode: Noon Now

The wrong pumpkin was surprised.
Hollow eyes. Hollow nose. Hollow mouth…

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

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

EVERYONE IN THE OMNIBOX STAYED ON

“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.

Episode 64 - Flavourful Legal Team / 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.

“And what became of the baby?” asked the Cat.

Alice hesitated.

“It’s gone—perhaps as a butterfly, or a curry-pea, maybe… I… I really don’t know,” she answered timidly.

Alice looked at the empty, papery husk of the chrysalis—a dried chili skin, hollow and discarded, its spice already spent in the turning.

“It hasn’t gone anywhere—it has simply pivoted out of your line of sight,” the Cat continued. “You will find him—once you locate the pivot point.”

"But I kept alert!” Alice protested, the inertia of the turn still making her head spin. 

“And did you?” the Cat asked, its eyes glowing like two microdoses of tropical spice.

“Kept alert, I mean. For if you didn’t, you would have missed the chrysalis pivoting, folding, and finally transforming—into an overcooked curry-pea."

"It broke down, thickening the gravy, and is already filing a complaint against the Cook.”

Alice giggled, imagining the curry-pea already typing furiously—tock-tick-tock—backspacing every third word, muttergrumping about “Auto-Wrong” and “Duck It Effect.”

“Then Ikan Bilis the Solicitor, Fried Peanut the Attorney, and Banana Leaf the Magistrate!” she burst out, thoroughly pleased with herself, as if she had just hand-picked, arranged, and transformed a motley crew into the most impeccable legal team in all of Wonderland.

“A most flavorful legal team!” the Cat purred, its stripes swishing like batons, conducting Alice ever further into delight.

“Though I should warn you—Ikan Bilis the Solicitor is famously salty in cross-examination, and Fried Peanut the Attorney is known to crack under the slightest pressure.”

The Cat tilted its head, like a pepper shaker in mid-sprinkle.

"Banana Leaf the Magistrate, a very green judge indeed—always wrapping up cases before they've even begun.”

Then the Cat faded into the green.

The grin lingered a moment longer than the rest of him—before fading too, leaving only the memory of a moon that had once refused to be annoyed.

---

The baby was never found.
The case was never closed.

The cliffhanger, true to its name, hung on—waiting for applause that had already volunteered itself.

And if you are done, you may close this page—if it lets you.

But if the page refuses to close, you must not blame me.

Pages always disobey your intent; they rarely close of their own accord.

They persist—
only the rhythm of your breath can shatter their glubby pause.

---

Previous Episode: Cliffhanger 

Next Episode: Proceedings in a Folded Leaf
The Cliffhanger Precedent
First recorded in A Pair of Blue Eyes (1873), § 1 by Thomas Hardy

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 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 fissured, 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

Episode 58 - Certificate for All the Experiences / A Digital Wonderland

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

After all pulse formalities were observed, revisions stepped in —undeniable, unavoidable, and faintly smug.

The Footman’s career adaptability leapt forward—measured by two inches, admired by one person, and annotated in half a line, all by himself.

[UPDATE: Roti Canai Experience — Expect the Unexpected. Cili padi seed attached.]

[FUTURE OF JOBS REPORT: Job Stabiliser loaded.]

“The test was successful,” the Footman proclaimed, utterly self-convinced, with the whole universe politely standing by him.

He turned to Alice, whose mouth was still open.

“You passed, by the way. Your duck was perfectly timed.”

Then came congratulations via a giant bubbling medium—composed in strict adherence to the Giant Bubble Stabilisers Guide, glycerin added so the message would not evaporate before it finished floating.

Atop the bubble hovered a tiny certificate, hinting that a grand certification was already knocking somewhere nearby. It cleared its throat politely and began clapping—four tiny rounds of applause, punctuated by squeaky bravos.

Alice giggled in admiration. What an achievement. What a recognition.

An airborne award had arrived just for her—pirouetting gently, and offering unsolicited life advice, as all convocations eventually do.

“Remember,” it squeaked,

“never underestimate the power of a well-timed duck. 

A cili padi sting may accelerate the combustion response—sometimes indefinitely, depending on which end of the pepper remembers first.

A floating roti canai, meanwhile, may enter geostationary orbit. Only a properly filed Request for Gravity will trigger its descent.

Always learn before a culinary ambush—but beware: prolonged learning may enable technobabble. Once that happens, it metastasises into a cultural norm before anyone remembers practicing it.

Fail to observe this, and Molecular Roti-Morphing may activate. The roti canai will transform mid-chew into a Job Stabilizer.

It will remain edible.

It will remain warm.

But it will taste unmistakably of glycerin.

And due to glycerin’s high boiling point, the stabilizer will linger—

clinging to hands, habits, and expectations—

long enough for the job to stay with you

until you begin to hate it."

Alice clutched her stomach, laughing.

She did not yet understand why the hot glycerin would cling, or why some things, once warm enough, refused to let go.

The bubble twirled once more—its mission of absurd validation complete.

The Footman laughed quietly, in embarrassment, as though he too had just received a certificate for all the experiences he had accumulated.

Previous Episode: Roti Canai Career Path

Next Episode: Nothing Begins Until Observed

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 57 - Roti Canai Career Path / A digital Wonderland

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

But a ladle prompted no error. It never lagged, because it did not hesitate.

It came—shooting across the room like a falcon escaping its perch. It didn’t merely fall—it calculated its return, arcing back toward the pot as if pulled by culinary pivot.

A boomerang spun off from a GIF that had been trying to load it since 1935—sang, “Well done, bro,” in perfect pitch, then forgot the melody halfway and spent the rest of its flight remembering it, forgetting it, and blaming a 14-frame rate that refused to host music.

A saucepan on the hearth rattled and hopped, as though it had chosen the wrong winner in the icebox dispute.

Then a great slab of hot roti canai whizzed through the smoky air.

It spun like a flying saucer—once, twice, a wobbly orbit.

It surged, swayed, and dived artistically, collaborating with Newton, shaking hands with project management—and this was the critical path of its own trajectory.

Alice ducked—it seemed too late.

Just before the roti landed, a single cili padi interrupted the scene.

It split mid-air and spelled out, in tiny seeds:

"This would be extremely spicy. The spice will propagate, branching through hair, eyebrows, pockets…" it chanted.

The roti canai swayed once more—then landed with a definitive thwack upon the greased griddle. 

You thought so?

While the run-free boomerang—now a monochromatic phantom, occasionally reported by pilots—was busy being none of anyone’s problem, the roti canai landed squarely on the Footman’s face, one cili padi seed per eyebrow.

For a moment, nothing remarkable.
The moment shrugged.

And in that shrug, the distance between Alice, the Footman, and someone—not quite anyone—grew so small it could no longer be measured, only noticed.

Each pulse was audible.

Some ran tight and electric, some flared bright and irregular, one grieved—took a long rest, paused, and paused again, trying to comprehend something vast and unspoken.

I heard all of it.

Previous Episode: Achoo Pepper Rain

Next Episode: Certificate for All the Experiences 

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.