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.
2 comments:
Just remember the night has a thousand eyes.
It has been awhile since I have laughed and cried at the same time. Something has to be very funny for that happen. Take care, have a great weekend.
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