Roger Light Bulb/48

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

The Caterpillar puffed another trailing plume of hookah.

The smoke twisted, spiralled, and corkscrewed—helixophiling absurdity, nonsense, and all of Newton’s Laws in under a second.

One exclamation mark escaped—under Wonderland’s raised eyebrows, crossed your sightline, punched through your USB port, and assumed the right to charge itself.

It popped—tchk!—and flared into a glowing little bulb 💡 above the Caterpillar, faster than your eyes could notice, and somehow blinked back as you were noticing, announcing either a warning… or an uncannily brilliant idea.

The cameras flickered and pinged: [LENS_ERROR_03: Abstract UI. SUBJECT REFUSES STREAMING.]

The garden wobbled, growing suspicious.

Alice’s eyes went wide enough to nearly pop out —not from fear, but from realization. The mystery hadn’t lessened; it had simply changed form, and in changing, intensified.

“Roger, Roger.”

The reply did not speak; it instantiated itself—mind-stamped, time-stamped, rubber-stamped, counter-stamped, over-stamped—and was immediately archived as a Close Encounter of the Third Kind, in strict compliance with Wonderland’s Narrative Integrity Authority, §1.1.1: Canonical Cinematic Disruptions.

[NOTARY SEAL—Wonderland Proof of Life]

"VIVO ERGO SUM" (I live, therefore I am archived).

The Caterpillar hunched. He rippled. He inched—each movement a wince, guided entirely by the bulb’s flash of wit.

In the Caterpillar’s slow-burning agony—two tik-toks long—it stretched into a full, unbearable century.

Across the glowing bulb blinked a progress bar:

[BATTERY LEVEL: 1%]
[SYSTEM_CRITICAL]
[LIGHT BULB — UNFALTERING]

The bulb dimmed into power-saving mode—no courtesy warning, no hesitation.

The flying cameras jumped, jolted, freaked out—then sarcastically ran a battery-level self-check, as if their circuits’ nerves had arced.

Somewhere in the middle, the Caterpillar inched forward. One slow move more, and he would remain exactly as he was: trapped in his historically absurd shape, in a glitchy MOCKUP UI.

[MOCKUP UI---META-METAPHORS UI]
[MOCKUP UI---   META-METAPHORS UI]
[MOCKUP UI   ---META-METAPHORS UI]

[TUG-OF-FORCE DETECTED]

[RESULT: VAPOURWARE??]

.

..

...

Wonderland waits. 

[STATUS: Pen down.]

░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░

The pen is down, but the brains keep mining… yours too? Filing mental tickets, indexing Wonderland anomalies, and queuing absurdities for later execution.

Coming up next--

A Half-Written Caterpillar Story

[INPUT RECEIVED]

[AMBIGUITY REMAINED]

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.

Storage Overflow/47

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

Just before the cameras could spit out [found str..._j..½_spoon], greyish smoke overtook the scene from within; spinning question marks choked, tangled, and finally scribbled themselves into a dense, unsolvable confusion-knot.

Stray exclamation marks squeezed their noses, bursting like pogo sticks—ricocheting head to tail, tail to head—shrieking, “Cool down! Cool down!”

Yet, in perfect contradiction, the questions slipped through the dot-sized needle heads—jab, stitch, sew—looping themselves tighter, weaving confusion into one layer, two layers, then whole strata of knotted drama.

The flying cameras pinged sharply:
[ERROR 01] [ERROR 02]
[ERROR OVERFLOW]
[LENSES: #PINNED]

That made the Garden sit anxiously. [Garden_Log: #PINNED error code not found. Social_Regret: Cheekbook/Howsapp pinnable moment missed.]

[#PINNED: 0 shares | 0 likes | insubsribable]

[Spelling Error: FOMO intensifies]

The haze gradually thinned.

The tangled question marks stretched, and yawned like sleepy hooks. Exclamation marks lay scattered, their needle-heads still prickling faintly, jammed with unsolvable questions.

The flying cameras pinged: [Error Erased. System Restored.]

And now, even the Caterpillar leaned back, puffing a full ribbon of hookah, as if the absurd storm had passed.

The flying cameras pinged anxiously this time:

[STORAGE_WARNING: 4.6GB / 4.7GB. Clearing Cache and Deleting Old Glitches.]

The Garden shuddered.

“Stop clearing too much.” It demanded.

But the cameras only blinked, like a sly eye hinting something through a curtain of chaos.

[Blinking…🟢…blinking...🟢...Cleared 4.0GB]

The Garden glubbed 💧 …glubbed 💧 — roots and all, pinned down by their efficiency. 

The flying cameras were not merely cameras. They were the Systemligence now.

They could delete anything—without knowing that they, too, were deletable.

Coming up next--

Roger Light Bulb

[Battery Level: 1%]

[Light Bulb — APOPLETIC] [SYSTEM_CRITICAL]

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.

Emotional Packets Misaligned/46

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

“Even the lenses—and everyone else—are learning to glub-babble,” the Caterpillar muttered. “Blaming all the chaos on smoke.”

He puffed a strong ribbon of hookah smoke, and physics—contaminated, coughing, indignantly awake—sent him wobbling so violently that his center of mass nearly resigned, citing the Non-Hookahing Act 🚭.

[STATUS: Newton interrogated. Internal rebellion force burst. File closed.]

Still puzzled by the wobbling Caterpillar, Alice clutched the mushroom nervously. “Perhaps the left side will fix it?” The urge pulsed—instinctive, attentive, insistent.

The Caterpillar tried to shout down the cameras. “Go away, you annoying flying wiza...” 

At that exact moment, Alice drew in a long breath, pinched her nose, and nibbled the other edge.

The flying cameras scattered, activating high-alert glub-mode.

His upper half swelled, then stretched—without sound, without reason, without the participation of inertia—normalizing in a way that felt deeply, unsettlingly wrong.

His mouth continued to morph, transcoding the balance sentence into olfactory output: fermented, mushy, malodor.c0ded.

The cameras hovered in a ring.

The Garden goggled.

Alice’s mouth dropped again.

And the Caterpillar, somehow, instantiated every one of these reactions at once.

Quickly, he was slender again—stretched to the size of Alice’s arm.

[Newton: ΔCaterpillar = f(UnknownForce). Law non-applicable. Cause unresolved.]

Alice’s adjectives were lost, were kidnapped—by cameras, glubs, or invisible aliens. Her feelings tangled like spiderwebs. Sidestepping the Caterpillar’s gaze, she spotted a single word lying on the ground:

 "sorry."

His body stretched further, turning glossy, almost translucent.

Alice could see straight through him: a pint of adjectives, two ounces of why‑am‑I‑like‑this, three pounds of gossip—all churning in a glitchy broth of punctuation marks, yesterday’s over‑diet, and today’s smoke.

Some cameras, abandoning their video duties, shifted to X‑ray mode. They pinged sharply:

[Biology.exe not responding. Emotion.exe override. 🥶🥶]

The Garden ignored the alerts and executed: [Search: Strawberry_jam—½_spoon.]

Then—out of nowhere—an apple glubbed.

Its silhouette was imperfectly bitten but pixel-perfect. “My missing byte too…?”

[Newton frowned. Law failed to parse.]

The Caterpillar felt the glubs prickling:

Scoville-scale—from “eh, barely there” to “ouch, that’s sentient”—all dissolved, mingled, and distilled into the secret mushy sauce seasoning his body chemistry.

Coming up next--

Storage Overflow

They could delete anything—without knowing that they, too, were deletable 

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.

Roller-Coastering in Haze/45

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

An explosive problem always found its way back to its origin; it was only a matter of time—be it the slow-motion Caterpillar’s or fast-forward Alice’s clock. Tiny seatbelts 🪢—Wonderland-approved—were now attached.

“Why can’t you follow the right way?” the Caterpillar barked—at her—then, almost in the same breath, spun his fury onto his own ballooned lower half.

He glared at it with total disappointment. “Is that so damn complicated?” he snapped. “And don’t you dare quote me some stupid [WBL-SELF-CHECK: 89° | DON'T ARGUE]. You’re smart. You walk!”

A wave of regret washed over Alice.

What if his legs grow longer… half an inch (too shy?), one inch (just right?), one and a half (overreach?)—a sequential simulation of frustration spun through her mind, only to topple, glitch, and collapse under its own corrupted physics the very next second.

She wished—and toggled her option again—that there were a PREVIOUS button floating in the air, ready to whisk her back to a moment before the chaos.

But chaos had never been optional in Wonderland—except for gesture recognition, which Wonderland strictly prohibited.

The rule stated, quite clearly and with absolutely no wiggle room:

Finger-pointing the air,
finger-pointing the moon,
finger-pointing the sun,
finger-pointing the universe,
[Outcome: Error %£#@ error %£#, Total cosmos failure.]

The flying cameras remained on high alert: some clung to the slow-going but fast-mutating Caterpillar, and some—self-appointed geniuses with manual override engaged—flailed their lenses in every direction, convinced that miracles would pop and must be grabbed—sizzling, unwrapped… undeniably spicy, al bacio.

[Gaze tracking mode: activated]. They pinged back in cheerful unison.

[Gaze FAILED: Haze prevailed.]
[AQI > 500] — the sensors blinded… lenses registering only Caterpillar-blur.

[Camera02: Eye itchy. Lenses winking.]
[Camera04: Inhaling smoke. NASTY.]
[Camera06: Dirty. Lenses stuck.][Camera08: Overheated. Reader accusation detected.]
[Camera10: Shut your ears. ERROR: Sensory module missing.]

The cameras could no longer tell whether they were reporting events or broadcasting gossip in 8K.

reportgossipLO…… | reportgossipREPORTGOSSIP! | lowrez…sharpTURN… | reportGOSSIP……glub.

[NOTE: Fasten your seatbelt. Roller‑coastering in gossips.]

[ADVICE: Reduced Exertion. Do not trust all camera reports.]

"Trust me." whispered the mushroom in Alice's hand. Alice hesitated to answer. Her fingers tingled anyway, registering a soft desynchronization between desire and urge—mirrored in the Caterpillar’s wobbling form.

Coming up next--

Emotional Packets Misaligned

The garden goggled its eyes. 

Alice’s mouth dropped again.

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.

Post‑Metamorphic Residues/44

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

The lagged system drove the garden and flying cameras into greater chaos.

Position: zoom in… zoom out… hi… lo… tilt… recalibrate… abort… turn over…

System alert: !!#%EXCESSIVE COMMANDS DETECTED%%!!

Panic levels: critical… very… panic… HIGH-LEVEL panic…

Sweat, smoke, mass, the Caterpillar rocked: upright, but not his own upright; a memory he’d never want to upload. Post-metamorphic residues he’d come to regret: a glitching butterfly dreaming—its wings wobbling like Weeble-boats, its uncontained self slipping between shapes, swollen to squeeze into its entire dream.

Stranded at the edge of the scene, Alice’s head and eyes tracked on different planes, drafting the trajectories of the flying cameras—and never losing sight of the Caterpillar for a single instant.

Somewhere along the recursion, both the garden and the cameras forgot about Alice entirely—as if she had slipped out of the script while still standing inside it.

The Caterpillar, meanwhile, was sorrowfully more stable now.

Self-remedied at last.

He let out a faint hookah sigh of relief. The smoke—ever loyal—clung to him through every wobble, far more faithful than his legs.

"Like a Caterpillar Weeble," Wonderland declared in moral media, "you will be knocked about by catastrophe, but you will always wobble upright again."

🎵 Ti… Fa… Do…

The off-sync chime struggled to recompose itself with only three odd syllables. 

The Caterpillar’s tail—visible only under a magnifying glass—manual-overrode itself, counting the page views of the moral declaration no one remembered reading. Its tip became a mathematician—formulating a spreadsheet: page_views.xlsb.

One pivot table auto-counted straight from the prehistoric age, when numbers learned to speak dinosaurly.

Yours counted as one 🦕, honourably. 

Coming up next--

Roller-Coastering in Haze

Finger-pointing the universe,

[Outcome: Total cosmos failure.]

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.