Alice on the Outside-In



  Alice on the Outside-In

  by

  Dani J Caile

  (Written in celebration of 150 years of ‘Alice in Wonderland’ by Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson))

  PUBLISHED BY:

  Copyright © Dani J Caile 2015

  Blogs & Websites

  https://danijcaile.blogspot.hu/

  All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © Dani J Caile 2015

  Alice on the Outside-In

  "Pay attention, I'm here to help you," my sister Grace scowled.

  She meant well but I was falling asleep. She wanted to go and phone her boyfriend but Mum told her to help me with my Maths homework outside on the patio under the shade. The weather’s ‘just right for it’ Mum said, with the sun scorching down. The parasol was no help at all because added to that, a warm breeze came over the rose bushes, making it more unbearable. Fortunately, it also sent a lovely sweet soothing fragrance under our noses. Bunny sat next to my exercise book, his fluffy white synthetic fur was way too soft and comfortable, he made a nice pillow…

  "Alice, are you listening or not?"

  "Not?" I hated Maths. Grace had got her laptop out and tried to show me some stupid interactive exercise she'd found on the net. The thing was, my teacher at school kept writing in my report book that I needed more Maths tutoring so Mum thought it would be a good idea to get Grace involved, seeing as she had a degree and was cheap. It wasn't that the exercises were hard, it was that I couldn't be bothered to deal with them on this warm summer's day. Sleeping…

  "Oh, to hell with you, then! Damn thing is too slow, anyway."

  The screech of her chair against the patio paving slabs cut my nap short. Through my droopy eyelids I watched her leave, tapping her phone as she went. Fantastic, peace at last. Now I could sleep. No more listening to numbers and equations of x to the power of…my head hit the table with a thud. What? I caught a glimpse of something hiding behind the laptop’s screen, something white, fluffy…where was my Bunny, my lovely fluffy toy? I was sure I was resting on it earlier.

  “Late, late, I will be ever so late!”

  From around the other side of the laptop, Bunny appeared, standing on his back legs and holding a mobile phone, trying to call someone without success. How could my plush toy bunny be standing up? How could it be making a call on a mobile phone? Where did it get one from? I'd asked for one for ages…

  “Bunny?”

  “I’m late, I’m late! And they don’t pick it up! Pick up, pick up, damn you!”

  What used to be my fluffy white plush toy bunny was now standing over my sister’s laptop, swearing at its mobile phone. What was going on?

  “Bunny?”

  “Oh bother, I’ll have to go there myself!”

  With this exclamation, Bunny dived into the laptop, right into the gap between the R, E and D keys…there was a gap? I cleared my head with a shake and examined the area where I last saw Bunny, rubbing my eyes and inspecting it closer. How could that be? It looked so big, so deep…and it was getting bigger. I saw through into the darkness…my head, my body was slowly being sucked in! What was this?

  “Help! Grace? Help? Help me!”

  I was in? My head, my body, my limbs were all inside, swirling down deeper into an opening abyss between the keys of my sister’s laptop? This couldn’t be happening! Lights whizzed by, boxes with writing and symbols written across them bounced off my free-falling body, parts of mathematical equations spun past. A structure appeared below, getting more and more detailed until at last I landed on the softest cushion possible. Bunny.

  “Ouch! Watch where you're landing!”

  Before I came to my senses, Bunny stood up, checked his phone and ran off, disappearing into the shadows. Where was I? In the laptop? That wasn’t good, I knew less about computers than I did Mathematics. By the time I stood up on my two feet, I was alone. Except for some muffled voices ahead.

  “Stop pushing!”

  “If I knew what I was pushing, I wouldn’t push, now would I?”

  I walked towards the voices, curious of their sound, still wondering how I got here and more importantly, how to get out. From the darkness emerged a large closed box and I gave a little yelp when it moved due to some force from inside.

  “Hey, did you hear that?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “There was a noise.”

  The box has two distinctively different voices inside. I crept forward and put my ear to it. Perhaps whoever was in the box could tell me where I was.

  “No, there wasn’t.”

  “Yes, there was. Outside. Outside the box.”

  “There is no outside!”

  Whoever they were, they argued a lot. I decided to ask them for help.

  “Excuse me?”

  Silence. The box didn’t move for what seemed ages.

  “Hello?” I asked.

  “There! There it was again!”

  “No, it wasn’t!”

  “Yes, it was! It said ‘excuse me’ and then ‘hello’. There’s someone outside.”

  “There is no outside!”

  I decided to try once again. One of the two voices sounded like they were listening.

  “Err, excuse me, inhabitants of this box, can you help me? I seem to have fallen into my..erm…this place and I was wondering if…?”

  “See? See? I was right! There’s someone out there!”

  “There is no one ‘out there’! There is no ‘out there’! There is no outside!”

  Was I winning? I continued.

  “Well, I’m telling you, whoever you are in this box, that I’m standing here, speaking to you from outside and…”

  “See? See? Now do you believe me?”

  “I refuse to believe in such twaddle. There is no outside and there is definitely no one speaking outside because…there is no outside!”

  The second voice shook the box with its last exclamation and a scuffle ensued inside. I stepped back to let it settle and after a while it did.

  “Err, hello? I’m still here.”

  “No, you are not! You are not 'here'! There is no outside…!”

  The first voice interrupted the second.

  “But you just used ‘you’, signifying that you had in fact actually confirmed that there was someone outside to address, informally too, I might add, and so destroying your own strongly held belief that there is no outside …”

  “…semantics, pure semantics!”

  This was getting to be irritating. They either helped me or not.

  “Well, I don’t really care what you believe, voices in this here box. I’d just like to know how I can get out of here and find my Bunny.”

  “She…because I assume from the feminine tone of the voice that this person has that they are female…she wants to know how to get out of here, and she’s not even in a box,” said the first voice. “And she mentioned a bunny.”

  “There is no one outside! There is no outside! I have no conceptual perception of this box that you refer to! Or a bunny!” screamed the second.

  This was hopeless.

  “If you ever do find your way out of the box, then please…”

  “What box? There is no box! There is no one speaking! There is no outside!”

  “…then please help me find my Bunny. Thank you. I’m heading off in…this direction, if you ever…”

  “There is no direction!”

  "There must be one! Outside!"

  "There is no outside!"

  I left the box to argue and leap around to its own devices and followed a strange melodic humming which had started a few moments ago. It somehow pleased me and drew me closer. Deeper into the darkness, I came across another box, smaller, one which had a…worm on top?

  “Urgh! A worm!”

  “Yuck, a human!”

  We both cringed from disgust and slowly accepted what lay before our eyes, moving back into each others' sight.

  “Are you a worm?”

  “I am the Winchester worm, little girl, if you are in fact a girl. It is so hard to tell nowadays, the way they speak and dress."

  "I'm a girl."

  "Boy or girl, you must be mad to come here.”

  “Mad? Where am I?” There were no distinguishing features throughout the place, an empty dark cave of nothingness, except for boxes, some with voices inside.

  “Where do you think you are?” asked the worm.

  “In my sister’s laptop?”

  “Yes, you are mad.”

  “Who are you to call me mad? You're a…a worm!”

  “Exactly. See, you're quite mad. And by the way, who might you be, you repulsive little girl?”

  “Alice.”

  “A lice? Wonderful. I saw a few scurrying by some time ago.”

  “No, Alice. Alice.”

  “I know, I know. Are you looking for something?”

  “My Bunny. He ran off somewhere holding his mobile phone.”

  “A bunny with a mobile phone? You are so very mad.”

  “Stop it! I am not mad!” br />
  “Now you are. Look, there’s only one place your ‘bunny’ would go, and that’s the main processor. That’s where we all go, you know. Eventually.”

  “And where’s that?”

  “Does it matter? Choose, there are many ways to get there. In that direction you’ll find an obsolete checker. In that direction there is a discarded cleaner. They’re both completely mad, you’ll get on well together.”

  “But where is my Bunny?”

  “Where he wants to be.”

  The worm smiled and vanished before my eyes, with its lipless smile disappearing last. Seeing as it didn’t matter which way I went, I decided to close my eyes, spin, and stop after the count of three.

  “One…two…”

  Something prodded my arm. I opened one eye to see a strange-looking creature sitting on a cushion of shrink wrap. Its head was a cube and eight limbs protruded from its main body. Using the first pair as arms, it wrote on a notepad with a pencil.

  “Oh, you surprised me. Hello. Did you happen to see my Bunny? Did he run this way? I seem to be lost…”

  The creature smiled and shuffled its legs to turn to me, still sitting and scribbling. It ripped off the top sheet of its notepad and passed it to me. I read it.

  “'Hell low'. What?” The creature waved at me. “What?” It scribbled again frantically and passed me another sheet.

  “Hell low. Hat dish mow meant, eye yam un ehh bell two speak…Hat? What hat? You're not wearing a hat.”

  This place was beginning to get on my nerves. First the voices in the box, that horrible worm and now a strange thing that scribbled nonsense. It passed me yet another piece of paper with the same words.

  “Hell low?” The creature waved. “Hello…oh…!” It dawned on me. This ‘thing’ was writing down what it wanted to say but with bad spelling.

  “I see now! Wait, what was the rest…’Hat dish mow meant…hat…mow meant? Moment? Oh, ‘at this moment’! Wait, wait…”

  It sighed and slumped its limbs together.

  “…At this moment, eye yam…I am, well, you are…un ehh bell…unable...to speak! Right! Yes! I can see that, you’re writing notes on paper.”

  It handed over another piece.

  “Ewe see?....Yes, I see! You’re also unable to spell but now I understand…”

  It smiled and scribbled a longer note. I waited as there was nothing else to do in this place. It finally finished and looked quite happy with itself.

  “Ewe may knor bee ahh wear of dish fact…you may not be aware of this fact…what fact? No, I guess I’m not…butt ewe argh act chew all Lee cleave fir….but you are, sorry, I am actually…cleave fir? Sorry, you lost me there. I’m some kind of tree?”

  It scrunched up its face and wrote a short note.

  “Know!...no.”

  And another longer note. Reading them hurt my head.

  “Eye yam sore rei dat eye can knot speak prop err Lee butt ewe argh cleave fir, real Lee…oh…clever! Now I’ve got it!”

  It nodded and smiled.

  “Good. Thanks. I always thought I was. So, I was wondering, maybe you can tell me where my Bunny went?”

  It thought for a moment and gave me one more note.

  “Know. Eye yam sore rei.”

  And yet another note. I hoped it was the last.

  “Well, Two bee maw presize….to be more precise…know….no. How is that more precise?”

  And another. When would this end? Perhaps if I walked away…

  “Butt pea lease bee shore two say Hell Oh when ewe see bun knee…of course. Thank you for your help…or hinderance, whichever.”

  I scurried away, in the direction furthest from the creature, only to be hit in the back of the head by a paper ball. I opened it up and read.

  “Yaw well come. Buy!”

  I was lost. In the pitch black I ran around, looking for anything, a light, an object, listening for a sound, but there was nothing.

  In the corner of my eye, a box appeared. It hurt so I flicked it out onto the ground and it grew larger to the size of a cereal box, popping open and making me jump. Hesitating, I reached in and grabbed…an apple. Someone had already taken a large bite out of it. I picked up the box and this cereal was called ‘Little Bytes’. What was there to lose? I felt a little peckish, so I turned the apple around and ate some. I couldn’t tell whether I was shrinking or the world around me was growing.

  Whichever it was, there were lights everywhere, small blinkers linked together in paths of silver and gold. I saw one area illuminated more than the rest, so I headed over in that direction. What I found were two colourful rectangular fellows with their feet up, eating what seemed to be a rather large and slow blue browser program.

  "What did you do with the add-on?" asked the larger of the two, dressed in a red and yellow striped suit.

  "I left it," replied the smaller though almost as smart other in a black and red spotted overall.

  "You left it? That's not right."

  "No, it isn't. It's left."

  They munched on, ignoring the whimpers and cries of their victim. The black and red spotted overall dressed individual noticed my arrival and nudged his larger counterpart.

  "We have a guest."

  "What day is it?" the large one asked.

  "The next one."

  "That would explain it, then. Good day…" it scrutinised me. "…madam! Please, take a link, sorry, a seat."

  Relieved I had finally met someone here with manners, I sat down on a small box nearby. It gave a scream. I wasn't surprised, anything could happen here. The large suited individual wiped its mouth clean and stood up.

  "I think introductions are in order…"

  "Oh yes," the other chomped on.

  "Our dear guest, my learned and famished friend here is Councillor Morpheus Mel, Malware extraordinaire and tormentor of many, and I am Chief Tiberius Troy, master of all, slave to none, a virus to be feared." It bowed and curtsied all at the same time. The other, the Councillor, twirled a free hand and offered a morsel.

  "Would you like a byte, my dear?"

  "Erm, no thank you. I’ve tried one, it didn’t agree with me. It made me feel quite small." The apple repeated on me. “Beg your pardon.”

  "Yes, so I see."

  Chief Tiberius Troy, 'virus to be feared', finished its bow or curtsey, showing off a rather large stomach.

  "You seemed to have eaten quite a bit, yourself," I remarked.

  "Yes, our appetite is quite ravenous. We like to take a byte or two."

  "Or three or four."

  "Or more. In fact, all of them." They laughed together.

  "And what happens when you’ve eaten every byte? What then?" I asked. They stared at me, munching their bytes.