Waddling. Side to Side/9

The Dodo, puffing very grandly, kept on quacking the word ReBoOt.

“Would this change Wonderland?” Alice asked, wide-eyed with curiosity.

The Dodo, catching his breath, answered with pompous pity. “A ReBoOt is simple: one forgets the errors, clears the memory”—he puffed and wheezed—“and hopes the story will run smoother this time.”

“But what if it forgets too much?” Alice pressed.

“Then,” said the Dodo, “Wonderland crashes! Or you crash! Or both—QUAACK!”

No question followed.

The creatures waddled side to side, swaying like a metronome. Wings flapped out of time—up when they ought to be down, down when they ought to be up.

Alice, finding it all perfectly unreasonable and therefore just right for Wonderland, burst into helpless laughter.

The Mouse, usually a champion sprinter, ran oddly slow behind the Duck. Its sharp muzzle jabbed Donald again and again, sending him springing upward—quacking perfectly on cue every time. 

Its tail almost waddled side to side, its little belly sketched along the ground, leaving a faint, zigzag mouse trail behind it.

Caucus Race. ReBoOt/8

The pool of tears grew restless.

The Dodo came flapping his wings. ‘QUAACK!’ he bellowed, so loudly the Duck nearly toppled over. "Neither double-deckers nor carriages qualify as followers!" he declared, puffing out his chest with his sudden authority.

The Duck nodded again. Donald always seemed so very clever—though Alice couldn’t tell if he understood the Dodo or was merely fond of the word ‘QUAACK.’

By now, the Mouse’s tale seemed destined hopelessly to run on forever.

But excitement, in this damp and dismal place, never lasted long. A chill soon settled, and everyone was shivering.

“ReBoOt! ReBoOt!” cried the Dodo. “The only cure is a Caucus-race!”

“Does he mean English,” Alice whispered to herself, “or is that another word he's just invented?”

And so, at the Dodo’s command, the wet party began. 

The Lory, the Eaglet, the Duck, and several others whose names Alice couldn’t quite recall, ran round and round in a chaotic, patternless loop, desperate to get dry.

“Rule of Nature,” Alice concluded, “creatures dislike getting wet. That was hard-coded long before I was.” 

She very nearly applauded herself, feeling she had at last untangled one of Nature’s riddles.

Queen. Absurdist/7

At once, the bustle of a London street bloomed in Alice’s mind: a tangled queue of carriages, the impatient blare of motor-horns, and great crimson double-deckers swarming with people.

“Now listen—you really must attend!” the Mouse insisted, his voice a taut violin string of annoyance.

Snapping back into focus, Alice rested her chin upon her hands and raised her eyebrows, as though he had just said something perfectly ridiculous.

"The Queen, you see, is absurdist to the core,” the Mouse went on. “When she cries ‘Off with your head!’, it hardly means a thing—she only likes the funny noises she makes. Otherwise, my dear, you’d have to worry there’d be no cards left to play with at all.”

Alice noticed the Dodo, the Eaglet, and the Duck all leaning in, nodding as though every word were plain as daylight.

“English, please!” said Alice. She frowned, an expression which rather resembled a search bar awaiting its query—puzzled and empty.