The eyes shifted to and fro, sweeping across whatever they could find.
Somehow, even Alice’s pimples were included. Were the eyes high-fidelity, or were they drawn to what they did not yet possess?
They paused at one point and began to think, brushing 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 commissures 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, and with some minor tuning, he pondered the magic in her smile's pivot.
His whiskers fanned wide, his ears snapping upright.
All his efforts paid off. Momentum recovered:
"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.
The morphing continued.
“I am now a low-poly ghost. Oh no! Not the ghost I played at home!” 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-finger typing—a line into the omnibox:
"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. 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.
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