Automated Alice

Dorothy, Dorothy and Dorothy

The third door shivered and vanished as soon as Alice stepped through it; now she was standing on a small hill which overlooked a most pleasant landscape. The sun was greeting her with a cheery smile on its bright face. There was a winding country lane that stretched lazily into the haze of summer. A bluebird softly whistled a lovely melody from a nearby willowing tree, and a pair of rabbits in courtship gambolled happily through a field of buttercups. "I must surely have chosen the correct door," Alice congratulated herself, "for this is a very pretty land indeed! If only Celia were here to enjoy this particular part of Manchester with me!"

This was a world where it never could rain, and in the warm and shimmering distance a languid curl of smoke was rising from the chimney of a little wooden cottage. Alice set off down the hill and along the lane towards the cottage, and as she went along the bluebirds and the rabbits called out to her from the hedgerows. "Dear little Alice," they twittered, "how nice of you to visit us!" Alice was quite taken aback by this tenderness, so much so that she completely forgot all about the time and the jigsaw and the murders and even the writing lesson! Her worries were like mists dispersing. Alice walked along without a single care in the whole world, until she came eventually to the small rose-enshrouded cottage. There was a beautifully engraved name-plate on the door, which read DONE WONDERING. Alice gently tapped her knuckles upon the door and from within, in answer, came a kindly voice saying, "Come in. It's open."

Alice pushed open the cottage door and stepped inside.

An old, old man was sitting at a dining table, on which two plates of hot roast beef, carrots and potatoes were gently steaming. The smell of food reminded Alice that she hadn't eaten in a long, long time (except for a little wurm, that is!). "You must be hungry, Alice," the man said, gesturing to the second plate, "won't you join me?"

"Thank you, kind sir," said Alice as she sat down.

The old man looked at Alice then. He explored her keenly, as though to remember her forever, but the young girl was so busily feeding her face with the roast beef that she never noticed his eager study. "Have you forgotten me so easily, Alice?" the old man finally found the courage to enquire.

This question caused Alice to pause for a second (with a forkful of boiled carrot halfway to her lips), and to look across the table at the old man. What she saw then made her lower her knife and fork to the plate. "Mister Dodgson!" she cried, and she excused herself from the table and ran all the way around it until she was hugging and snuggling the old man. "You look dreadfully old, kind sir," she whispered to him, "and are those tears in your eyes?"

"And is this beef gravy dribbling from your mouth?" the old man answered.

"But what are you doing in Manchester, Mister Dodgson?"

"This isn't Manchester, Alice; you chose the third door, which was the wrong door."

"But I solved the problem so logically! How could I be wrong?"

"You forgot to remember that the second door was really the first door, and therefore the third door was really the second door."

"So it was the second door I should have taken?"

"That is correct, dear Alice," answered the old man, with a further tear. "The second door would have led you to safely, whereas the third door has led you only to Unchester. This world is where the living come to live after they have finished off living. This is where I live now, having finished my living in the year 1898."

"Oh Mister Dodgson!" cried Alice, "does this mean that I have also died?"

"You were swallowed by the Supreme Serpent, Alice, in the third of my books about you. I tried my best to save you, but I was too old and too tired to rescue you. I'm afraid that this does mean that you have died."

"And has dear Celia also been swallowed?" asked Alice.

"Luckily, I managed to allow Celia an escape. I found that her superior automated powers enabled her to resist the Serpent's maw."

"But where is Celia now?"

"Would you like some treacle pudding, Alice?" asked the old man.

"I haven't got time for your trequel pudding!" cried Alice (rather too rudely, I think). "I want my twin twister back! And I want to go home!"

"But that's vurtually impossible, Alice. What's gone is gone..."

"But if a thing is only virtually impossible, doesn't that mean that it just might be possible?"

"I didn't say virtually: I said vurtually, with a U in the word, instead of an I."

"But I want to escape, unlike you, Mister Dodgson."

"Well let me see," considered the old man; "I was a real person who once upon a time naturally died: but you, Alice, are both a real and an imaginary character, and how can imagination be killed? Maybe there is a little way yet for your story to continue... although it would mean going against all the rules of life, death and narrative." The Reverend's tears fell like puddles onto his unfinished roast beef. "I was rather hoping we could spend some time together, Alice," he choked, "but perhaps you must really leave me now..." And then the Reverend Dodgson leaned close to Alice's face and said these final words, "Will this young Alice kiss me goodbye?"

Alice kissed him, and the old man's lips were salty with life.

"Flummoxy Wummoxy!"

"I beg your pardon?" said Alice.

"Wibbily Wobbily!"

"I'm afraid I don't understand."

"Lubberlyjubberly!"

"Who are you?" asked Alice.

"Flippety Floppety!"

"Oh, where am I now?" cried Alice.

"Chimeree Shimmeree!"

"This is the Chimera?"

"Flutterly Utterly!"

"Oh dear!" said Alice. "I seem to have landed inside a Chimera show. Mister Dodgson must have kissed me here, somehow or other."

"Misterly Dodgily!"

"So you're Flippety Floppety?" Alice asked the orange and blue rabbit that galumphed all around her. "I saw your name on a Chimera poster, isn't that right, Mister Rabbit?"

"Posterly Mosterly!" guffawed the animated rabbit as he jumped, and clung onto Alice's leg!

"What am I doing here?" cried Alice, as she looked all around for an escape. A soft white light covered the whole emptiness she was trapped inside, and within and around the emptiness danced and laughed a group of teasing children. These children were all laughing gleefully at Alice's attempts to shake off the clinging Flippety Floppety rabbit.

"Alice, you've made it at last!" cried another voice. I've been waiting simply ages! It was Captain Ramshackle's voice calling to Alice from nowhere at all, until she noticed that amidst the children lurked the adult badger-face that belonged to Captain Ramshackle!

"Captain Ramshackle!" Alice cried. "What are you doing here?!"

"A little birdy told me where to find you," answered the Badgerman.

"Could that birdy be Whippoorwill the parrot?" asked Alice.

"The very same," replied Ramshackle. "He told me you were currently playing the flutters at the Palace of Chimera in Rusholme. This matinee show is called Flippety Floppety Comes Unstuck; it's a children's projection, and you, Alice, are this week's guest artiste."

"Questingly Guestingly!" squeaked the rabbit as he climbed further up Alice's body.

"But what is Chimera?" asked Alice of the Captain. "And how can I escape this rather rampant rabbit?"

And the children laughed to see such fun!

"Chimera is like the theatre or a lantern show," Ramshackle replied, "except that it's more real. You have to tickle your nose with a tickling feather, and then you actually become a part of the story. You get turned on to it. It's called a collected vurtual experience."

"But how can I escape being vurtually collected?" asked Alice with a U.

"It's quite easy," said the Badgerman, "you must turn yourself off."

"But how do I turn myself off?"

"Just say the words DONE WONDERING out loud."

And as Ramshackle said the words DONE WONDERING out loud he dissolved into the light and disappeared from the Chimera. So Alice immediately followed suit. "DONE WONDERING!" she cried out loud.

Alice then found herself sitting in a cold, damp seat in the dark beside Captain Ramshackle. In front of them on the vast wall fluttered the images of Flippety Floppety and the children, and all around her in the rows of seats sat the children themselves, tickling their pert little noses with a collection of tickling feathers. The children's eyes were all glazed over like cup-cakes and filled with wonder-dust. Captain Ramshackle untickled his own nose and then took Alice's hand, to lead her towards an illuminated REALITY THIS WAY sign.

Outside, in the grounds of the Rusholme Palace of Chimera, Pablo Ogden's garden shed was sitting patiently upon the concrete. Captain Ramshackle led Alice to the shed door, relating upon the way, "After hearing Professor Chrowdingler's tale of woe, I decided it best to gather together all the remaining-alive witnesses to the Civil Serpents' murderously jigsawing plan, in order to best protect them. And here they all are!" At which he opened up the shed door and pushed Alice inside.

Alice looked around the crowded garden shed, and there indeed they all were! There was Miss Computermite grown to human size; and there was the Zebraman (whose name turned out to be Stripey); and there was Long Distance Davis, the Snailman, playing a lonesome note upon his trumpet! And there, oh there! was Pablo Ogden, the reverse butcher himself, weeping over a pile of rubbish that Alice recognized to be James Marshall Hentrails's jig-sawed remains. "How dare they rearrange my finest creation so?" Pablo was wailing. "Those silly Serpents will pay for this undoing!"

Celia, the Automated Alice, however, was not there: but Alice didn't even have a second to think about that, because straight away Stripey the Zebraman was shouting out (in a black-and-white voice), "Pablo, the police are approaching at a rate of knots on the starboard bow!"

"And they're in their whirlybird!" added Ramshackle.

"It's not the police," squeaked Miss Computermite, "it's Mrs Minus!" (At which news, Long Distance Davis immediately vanished into the shell of his hat; which at least made a little more room in the shed!)

"All hands on deck!" shouted Pablo, and Alice really did think she was on a ship for a moment, especially when Pablo started to pull upon the series of levers which lifted the garden shed onto its rickety-chickeny legs. "Our destination, Alice?" he called out, taking over the wheel.

"To my Great Aunt Ermintrude's home in Didsbury!" replied Alice.

"I'm not sure if I know the way," said Pablo.

"Oh dear," said Alice, "neither do I."

"If I may make a logical suggestion," said Miss Computermite, "perhaps we should follow that green-and-yellow parrot; he seems to know the way."

"Full steam ahead!" bellowed Pablo and off the shed lurched at a frightening pace, along the road.

"Whippoorwill!" cried Alice, and rushed to the shed's front window to watch the parrot's colourfully flashing flight. "What time is it, Captain Ramshackle?" she asked (whilst hardly daring to ask!).

The Badgerman consulted his wrist-clock. "It's just gone almost exactly, not quite nearly, half-past one."

"Thirty minutes left!" worked out Alice. "I do hope we get there in time!"

But they were making a tremendous pace by now; the garden shed had already carried them along Oxford Road. (You should have seen how it leapt over the houses!) Now it was transporting them down Wilmslow Road towards Didsbury, and what a marvellous transport a walking, running, hopping, skipping and jumping garden shed can make; how easily it can scamper over the driving droves of auto-horses! Miss Computermite had climbed out of the window (quite an easy task when you have six legs!); she was now perched on the shed's roof, shouting out directions from there, and keeping her eyes on stalks for the flutterings of the distant parrot. Stripey the Zebraman was stationed at the back window of the shed; his job was to keep a look out for Mrs Minus's automated whirlybird. ("She's catching up with us, Pablo!" was Stripey's incessant cry. "Faster! Faster!") Pablo was at the steering wheel, trying his best to urge the shed forwards. Long Distance Davis was still firmly curled into his shell-hat (which was rolling around the shed's floor like a corkscrewed bowling ball, and threatening at any minute to fall out!). Alice was trying her best to be useful, but Captain Ramshackle wasn't trying to be useful at all! Instead, he was dancing around excitedly whilst chanting out yet another verse of his little song:

But somehow or other the six strange travellers managed to stay on board and to work together in a rather slipshod shipshape fashion. (Or should I say a slipshod shedshape fashion?) Whatever, shipshape or shedshape, the intrepid half-a-dozen made a pretty pace. Through Rusholme they rushed home; through Fallowfield they ploughed a fallow and through Withington they (almost) withered; until, finally, Didsbury and its sprawling cemetery were in their sights. The place where Manchester buried its dead. Alice looked down from the garden shed's tottering heights, as she tried to locate her Great Aunt's house. The cemetery looked a lot sprawlier than Alice remembered it, but she supposed to herself (correctly of course) that many many more people must have died since she was last here in 1860. Now she spotted Whippoorwill landing on the broken-down roof of an old, decrepit house. "That can't be right!" said Alice. "Great Aunt Ermintrude would never let her house get into such an untidy state!" But the house certainly seemed to be in the right place, as far as Alice could remember: it was just that the cemetery had grown so much in the intervening years that it had actually grown all around the old house!

"Put me down here, Pablo!" Alice said to the shed's pilot.

"I don't think I've got any choice," answered Pablo.

"What do you mean?" asked Alice.

"Whirlybird gaining on the stern, Pablo!" shouted Stripey the Zebraman. "Her cannon is loaded!"

"I think we're about to be fired at!" cried Pablo. "Nobody panic!"

But of course, everybody aboard did panic, especially when they heard the cannon-ball whizzing through the air towards them! The cannon-ball hit the left leg of the shed! The leg crumpled up like a roasted chicken leg that has been kept too long in the oven, and then the whole world keeled over to one side and crashed to the ground!

Everybody tumbled out of the fallen shed into the graveyard. The garden shed was splintered into a thousand pieces and Pablo Ogden was shaking an angry fist at the hovering whirlybird. "How dare you!" he cursed at Mrs Minus, who was gazing down calmly from the safety of the whirlybird; the Snakewoman was smiling at him with her evil little fangs. "I'll get you for this destruction!" Pablo shouted.

"I don't care for you," responded Mrs Minus. "It's Alice I want."

But Alice didn"t want to be wanted by Mrs Minus; all that Alice wanted was to reach the house of her Great Aunt in time for her journey to the past. All around her were jutting gravestones and sculptured angels. The old house was lying in the midst of all these memorials and it looked as dead as a doornail. Why, even the doornails in its rotting door looked as dead as doornails!

Alice looked around quickly to see that all of her fellow shed-travellers were alive and well. Miss Computermite had reduced herself to her former size in order to scurry into the nearest crevice; Long Distance Davis had become a shiny snail slithering along a gravestone's edge; Stripey the Zebraman had turned into a mere play of shadow and light amongst the tombs; Captain Ramshackle was already burrowing a deep sett into the cemetery's soil; Pablo Ogden was still cursing at Mrs Minus on the whirlybird as it lowered itself to the ground.

All amongst the gravestones the policedogmen were gathering in their packs, but they were keeping their distance, and Alice couldn't work out why. Inspector Jack Russell stepped forwards from the pack of dogs, but he merely looked at Alice along the sights of his long snout; he didn't even try to arrest her. Alice was puzzled by this uncommon behaviour, but then she heard Whippoorwill squawking from the garden of the house, and Alice rushed forwards to greet him. It wasn't really a garden of course, it was just an extension of the cemetery. The parrot was perched upon a crumbling gravestone set directly in front of the house. Alice expected Whippoorwill to deliver yet another riddle, but no such thing happened. Alice saw that he had a little something lodged in his beak, which forbade him to make even a single squawk.

It was a jigsaw piece. Alice realized that this jigsaw piece was Whippoorwill's last and final riddle. She pulled it loose, and saw that it was a crooked picture of a blur of green-and-yellow feathers. Alice added it deftly to the others in her pinafore pocket, and it was only then that she noticed the names engraved upon the gravestone that Whippoorwill was perched upon:

Indeed, there was a rash of radishes growing all around the grave. Alice suddenly remembered Professor Chrowdingler's ruling that she had to eat some radishes backwards in order to return to the past. But how do you eat a radish backwards? Alice pulled up a knotted specimen by the leaves, and then bent double in order to thrust her face through her legs, backwards, and then she bit into the root. Naughty Whippoorwill, when offered some radish, mimicked her to do the same. Alice laughed, to see such a backwards parrot!

If Alice was suddenly expecting to be transported back to 1860, she was to be bitterly disappointed. "Oh Whippoorwill!" she exclaimed. "The chrownons in this radish haven't worked! I fear that we're trapped in the future forever!"

But then the door to the old house opened up with a creaking sigh, and Celia the Automated Alice stepped onto the porch. "Fear not, my little sister," stated the doll, calmly, "we are almost home." Celia was looking so much like Alice by this time, that Alice really did think she was seeing herself walk towards herself!

"Celia!" cried Alice. "So you managed to reach our Great Aunt's house before me? And you managed to escape the snakes!"

"Not quite yet," answered Celia, "for isn't that Mrs Minus creeping through the gravestones towards us, with her fangs glinting in the sun?"

Alice looked over her shoulder; there indeed was the evil Civil Serpent, and her fangs were glinting! "But why aren't Inspector Jack Russell and the other policedogmen trying to help Mrs Minus arrest me?" asked Alice.

"Professor Chrowdingler had posted her evidence of the Serpent's Newmonia crime to the police yesterday," said Celia, "and the Inspector received that evidence a mere thirty minutes ago."

"So the police are now on our side?"

"It would seem so."

"So why won't they arrest Mrs Minus?"

"The police are scared of her."

Alice looked around at the approaching shape of Mrs Minus. The Snakewoman had become even more of a snake than a woman, and she had drawn out an evil-looking pistol.

"Well I'm scared of her as well!" said Alice.

"So am I!" squawked Whippoorwill, as he fluttered into the house.

"And so am I!" copied Celia. "Alice, come into the house quickly!"

It started to rain again (and quite viciously this time, with some streaks of lightning!), as Alice ran into the antique house after her sister.

Once inside the house, they locked the front door behind them and ran towards the breakfast room from which Alice had long ago vanished. There, still, was the ancient grandfather clock and the empty birdcage, and there, still, the uncompleted jigsaw puzzle upon the breakfast table. Nothing had changed except for the thick dust which settled in waves over the decaying furniture. The rain was still lashing against the window, and the cemetery was still brooding in the downpour, and the lightning was still flashing. The clock was tick-tocking away at five minutes to two (even though it was now covered in horrible cobwebs).

Alice quickly removed the eleven jigsaw pieces from her pinafore pocket, then proceeded to slot them into place in the mouldy old jigsaw puzzle of London Zoo: the termite into the Insect House; the badger in the Badger House; the snake in the Reptile House; the chicken into the Hen House; the zebra into the Mammal House; the snail into the Gastropod House; the cat into the Feline House; the fish into the Aquarium; the crow into the Aviary; the spider into the Arachnid House; the parrot also into the Aviary. At the adding of that piece, Whippoorwill fluttered back into his cage. Eleven creatures were now feeling quite at home, but still the twelfth jigsaw piece was missing.

"Oh where can that final elusive piece be?" Alice cried whilst searching all over the room for it. "It must be here somewhere! Help me find it, Celia!"

Celia had her head stuck in the clock's case, saying, "I'm doing my best, Alice." Then she popped back out: "But all I've found up to now is this." She was clutching the very first feather that Whippoorwill had dropped in his flight to the future.

"That's no use," replied Alice. "Quickly! Keep searching."

"Four minutes to two, Alice," whispered the clock.

"Oh dear!" cried Alice. "The jigsaw piece must be somewhere! Perhaps it's fallen down the sofa cushions?" Imagine her surprise to find that three identical old and wizened women were sitting on the sofa! So covered in dust and cobwebs they were, and so ancient and withered, that Alice had thought them merely part of the furniture until then! "And who are you three"?" she demanded.

"We are the tripletted daughters of Ermintrude..." they answered all of a piece.

"My name is Dorothy..." the first woman said.

"My name also is Dorothy..." the second added.

"My name also and also is Dorothy..." completed the third.

"So you're the answer to my two o'clock writing lesson!" said Alice. "You three are the Dot and the Dot and the Dot of an ellipsis!"

"That is correct..." answered the three Dots all together. "We are the Ellipsisters... and you must be Alice..." But they were talking to Celia!

"I'm Alice!" corrected Alice. "That is Celia."

"We didn't realize you had a twin sister, Alice..." the three women said.

"And I didn't realize that you three Dorothys would still be here," replied Alice. "Why have you let this house get into such a state?"

"Time slowed to a standstill for us since you vanished, Alice... We never married, you know..."

"Three minutes to two, Alice," whispered the clock, and then there was a sudden, furious banging on the front door!

"Oh no!" screamed Alice. "It's Mrs Minus trying to get in!" added Celia.

It was all too much for Alice. "I'll never find the final jigsaw piece now!" she snuffled.

"But dear Alice," the three Dorothys tripletted in tandem, "you are the final jigsaw piece..."

"But that's impossible!" Alice sobbed. "I'm a girl, not a piece in a puzzle!"

"I think they might be right, Alice," said Celia.

Alice ran to the breakfast table. There was the dusty old jigsaw picture with its little crooked hole where the last piece was missing. Alice saw that the hole wasn't actually inside one of the various animal cages; it was actually a hole in the pathways between the cages; the pathways where the visitors could wander. In fact the hole was missing from a young girl's head! And the girl had on a red pinafore! "Well I suppose that might be me," said Alice, "but I would never fit in such a tiny opening! Especially with Celia!"

"I'm not coming with you, Alice," said Celia.

"Of course you're coming with me!" said Alice.

"I'm afraid I didn't eat the radishes, Alice. But the truth is... I rather like living in the future." Celia stuck Whippoorwill's lost feather in her hair, as she said this. "The future is my proper home."

"Celia!" cried Alice, as the clock whispered, "Two minutes to two, Alice!"

"Alice!" shouted Mrs Minus as she whipped her scaly tail at the front door of the house. Everything was happening all at once!

Celia suddenly said to Alice, "Shall we open the cupboard in my left-hand-side thigh?"

"The one TO BE OPENED IN AN EXTREME EMERGENCY ONLY?"

"That's the one, Alice."

So Alice opened up the tiny door in Celia's thigh: inside, she found only a small lead ball labelled with the words SHOOT ME. "Shoot me from what?" asked Alice. At which question, Celia unbuttoned her pinafore.

"One minute to two, Alice!" tick-tocked the clock, gaining a frightful pace!

The front door was being smashed down into firewood! "Mrs Minus has broken through!" cried Alice.

"Stay calm, my sister. Open me up, please." Celia had revealed her bare, porcelain stomach, in the middle of which nestled another small door. Alice opened this cupboard; a flintlock pistol was lodged within Celia's inner workings. FIRE ME said its label.

"I can't use that," said Alice.

"Pablo Ogden has built this gun into my body for a purpose," answered Celia. "Hand me the shot."

Alice gave the lead ball to Celia. Just then, Mrs Minus burst into the breakfast room! She had by now turned more or less fully into a giant snake! Only a single human hand extended from her reptilian body, and within its grip rested her own pistol. Mrs Minus aimed the pistol directly at Alice's heart. "You will pay for your treachery, my young girl!" she hissed, whilst beginning to squeeze on the trigger.

Time became stilled for a single second.

And then, how the Snakewoman screamed! Alice saw that a certain invisible but sharply clawed cat had pounced upon Mrs Minus.

"My sweet Quark!" Alice whispered. "You have come to save me!" But Mrs Minus threw off the invisible cat, and raised her gun once again.

"It's two o'clock, Alice!" whispered the grandfather clock. "Time to go home!" And then it donged a first ding!

And by that first ding, Celia had managed to load her own pistol.

Mrs Minus squeezed her trigger, but --

Celia squeezed hers first!

Mrs Minus was splatter-snaked all over the walls!

Alice climbed onto the dining table, and jumped down into the remaining jigsaw hole...

And in the time it takes to turn over the page of a book...

"What Time Do You Call This, Alice?"

... the clock dinged its second dong, and Alice landed with a soft flump! into her armchair, and then she awoke with a sudden start.

"Oh what a curious dream!" Alice said to herself. "Why, it was almost real!" She rubbed at her eyes and then looked at the grandfather clock in the corner; it was more or less, exactly two o'clock. "I must have fallen asleep in the armchair!" Alice got up and moved to the window; the rain was lashing against the glass and the lightning was flashing over the gravestones in the cemetery.

"Squawk, squawk!" screeched Whippoorwill from his cage.

Suddenly, the dining-room door was flung open. "What time do you call this, Alice?" bellowed Great Aunt Ermintrude from the doorway.

"I call it the past time," answered Alice (without really knowing why).

"A pastime!" screamed her Great Aunt. "Do you really think that life is a game, Alice? Well, let me tell you: life is a lesson to be hard-earned! I don't suppose you've finished your latest lesson, about the correct usage of an ellipsis?"

"An ellipsis, Great Aunt Ermintrude," began Alice quite confidently, "is a series of three dots at the end of an unfinished sentence, which implies a certain omittance of words, a certain lingering doubt..."

"Very good, Alice!" responded Great Aunt Ermintrude (with surprise). "But I'm afraid there's no such word as omittance. There's an admittance, or else there's an omission, but there's no such word between the two! We have a great deal of work yet to do on your grammar!" Ermintrude then walked over to the breakfast table. "I see that you've finished your jigsaw of London Zoo. So you managed to find the missing pieces...?"

"Yes, I managed it," answered Alice, quietly. "Oh my goodness! There's a hideous white ant crawling over the jigsaw..."

"It's not an ant, Great Aunt," Alice tried to say, "it's a termite."

"I don't care if it's a prize peacock! I won't allow such vermin in my house!" And before Alice could do anything at all, her Great Aunt had cruelly squashed the creature under her fingers! "And where is the new doll that I bought you?" her Great Aunt then asked.

"She is lost, Great Aunt."

"You mean to say that you don't know where the doll is?"

"Oh, I know where she is, Great Aunt."

"May I suggest then, Alice, that you retrieve her?"

"Oh I will, Great Aunt," said Alice in a mutter, "one of these days..."

"Stop muttering, you naughty little girl!" screeched Ermintrude. "It's very rude! Now it's time for today's writing lesson. Pencils out! Books open! Today we shall learn all about the differences between the past and the present tenses."

"I know all about those differences!" Alice said (strictly to herself, of course!).

And thus began the next lesson, and the next one after that, and then the next one after that: all the lessons of life that Alice had to learn, both in Manchester and then in the south of England upon her return, and then throughout the rest of her long life. Alice came to realize that the whole of life could be one long continuous hard lesson. (If you weren't careful, that is!) But Alice had also come to realize that life could be a continuous dream, and as Alice got older and older and older, she never forgot to let a little soft dream into her hard lessons. During the more miserable of her moods, she would find herself revisiting the memories of her three journeys into dreamland: the wonder of life, the mirror of life, the future of life.

This story should rightfully end upon this very moment.

But I must add that (just occasionally) Alice would feel a terrible itching feeling inside her skull. Why, it was as though a thousand termites were running hither and thither with tickling messages! And sometimes (just sometimes) Alice would feel a certain stiffness in her limbs, as though her legs and arms were not quite fleshy enough. Often she would find her limbs doing things that she had not quite willed them to do! At those moments Alice really did think that her limbs had a life of their own, as though her limbs were automated appendages.

"Perhaps, in the turmoil of those last moments in the future," Alice would sometimes whisper to herself, "I was confused with Celia? Perhaps it was the Automated Alice that really came back to the past?"

And until the very end of her God-given days, my dear, sweet Alice was unable to decide for certain if she was really real, or else really imaginary...

Which do you think she was?