JMJ

Chapter Twelve

Mist in our Midst

Despite his timidity and apologetic demeanor the White Rabbit did not look at all as troubled by the warning as he might have.

"Perhaps it would be easier," said the Rabbit checking his watch, "if we conduct ourselves into a place of better conversation than out here in this distracting nexus."

"Nexus?" demanded Adhikari almost as shrill as Georgi.

"A crossroads of unexpected things colliding," shuddered the Rabbit, and without further explanation than that, he turned tail and hurried back to the lab.

He did not look back until he opened the door. Then it was only briefly. He knew the others had no choice but the follow him. No one dared breathe however until Dr. Donner gave the initiative.

"There is no fire. Everyone inside the building. Dr. Marcial, conduct a search for Petra. Mr. Adhikari, Dr. Horace and myself will speak with our surprise guest."

"Do you know what's going on, Dr. Donner?" asked Adhikari.

Donner did not answer, and Adhikari liked this whole thing less than before. Adhikari had chosen his career out of scientific endeavor, and more than that, a coming future that he felt one could not be hesitant to reach out to in order to move on into it. It was a future that he once felt could not be stopped.

The irony of it all was that he now felt that everything he had worked for and everything he felt he had been working towards was a regression of the sort that could reduce the best philosophers into barbarians, the noblest educators into pukers of lies into such a pathological state that one believed one's own falsities. It was imagination ensnared from good use by exhausted ambition and denial.

#

Lise trembled. Was it the clockwork inside her beginning not to malfunction? Yet she was trembling just like a frightened girl would in a strange place with no friends to help her and wanting nothing more than to wake up.

Haddler would not have minded some waking up himself, and no amount of caffeine seemed to be doing that no matter how he slapped his own cheeks or blinked his eyes or pinched his sides. Pinching worked for Dori.

The wake-up tea, Haddler suddenly remembered.

He pulled the lever on his hat just as Lise was pushed to the edge of the platform leading out into open air.

Haddler winced. He had his cup in hand and he slugged the liquid down— that artificially caffeinated chamomile cold-brew. It was a little lukewarm and tasted bitter, but he choked it down with one last thought, I'm not taking any chances!

Then after that he threw down the cup so that it broke. How earth shattering it was.

Lise would be pushed past her limit— right off the edge. Would insanity ensnare her?

Well, they were all mad here.

Without thinking about anything more except that Lise was a real person no matter what anyone said he bolted towards her. He ran like a hero but looked a little more like a clown doing it— a farce of a stage play in which he would jump off into a pool.

He did not know what happened between the door and the end of the dock, nor did anyone else, he surmised. He might as well have rode on the chamomile steam from his cup in the otherwise steamless place. But he had quite forgotten, of course, she was not the only one at the end of the dock. He found that just as he had gotten hold of her well enough to pull her back up, he was pushed from behind.

Down they both went.

He was too busy questioning his own intelligence upon this matter to cry out. Being mad was one thing, being stupid was quite another. He had just proved that he was able to not only fail saving a damsel in distress but that he was able to distress himself in the process. Lise meanwhile was doing enough screaming for two. The air sang in symphony like a sighing flute against a wailing violin as he held true to the woman as if it would still do her any good or that he was unwilling to believe that he could do nothing more about the matter.

He should have installed a flying mechanism into his hat, but then again, perhaps it would not have worked now with everything else so faulty.

They fell for some way through empty air with not a cloud in the sky, past the blinding gleams of the great dead clockwork planetoid. Shards of spokes were almost near enough to slice the pair of them apart or into pieces, but they went straight through them all. The dock was perfectly positioned so that anything thrown from it would miss any obstacle with the help of the greatest mathematical minds in the realm and the greatest workers in clockwork— one of those being Haddler himself.

Ironic, of course.

Then once equatorial beams were past, all was remote air again. All else was silent but the requiem playing on the winds as even Lise stopped screaming.

Was Haddler dreaming? Or was this the requiem of that dream?

He was not well and most likely in the brain rather than the body. One did not call a hatter mad for nothing, and yet it felt wholly novel, this revelation that he probably was as stark mad as the sun was stark blinding. He was not sure he liked the idea of being mad. Eccentric maybe and certainly an unusual thinker. He would even accept being called questionable, but downright mad?

Was he mad to only think of it now?

He was feeling very feverish. It would have been enough to cause a person to rethink the health of the body over the health of the mind, but there was more than one explanation for the sudden sweat. The hot raging sea looked red as it reared its churning teeth in infinite rows, rising and falling. It was ragingly hungry amidst rising fumes of steam.

Squeezing Lise like a little boy squeezing a teddy bear, he shut his eyes and set his slight overbite painfully over his salty lip already having been protruding from the thought of ending life steeped in madness like a soggy tea bag in a tea pot. At least the ocean was the color of sun tea between the piercing shards of light reflected from the sky like slivers of crystal sugar.

PLRROOOSSHHH!

#

To call the situation surreal was an understatement, but at the moment Adhikari could think of no other word to put to it. He folded his hands calmly over the table as the White Rabbit was putting the last science book onto his chair so that he might be able to converse comfortably amongst the taller humans. Once the anthropomorphic creature was settled enough, Adhikari felt the eyes of Saturn AKA Dr. Horace on him.

They exchanged glances. Then in unison, they looked at their leader seated with a cup of coffee growing cold as he stared without a pause at the rabbit.

"I come on behalf of the Queen of Hearts to say that she feels that this charade has gone on far enough and to a dangerous level," said the Rabbit folding his paws together in such a way that Adhikari stopped folding his own. "It's all good and well to pop in and out of Wonderland in the forgotten dreams from childhood, but playing on our borders is against regularities. I must ask you to cease these unauthorized activations at once."

"What are you talking about?" demanded Saturn; he was the youngest of the three men and by far the least patient with the situation.

"It's dangerous to be playing with things no one can rightly understand," said the Rabbit. "For years now, your illegal activations have been but an ugly blight in the sky. The Queen talked of executing the whole ball by slicing it in two with buttering it into putty, but we all agreed that any risk of it melting in the sun would be enough to cause unwanted contagions to grow. But now it is verging on a more literal blight anyway rather than literary— the type that if it was a tree blight, a whole forest would be in danger. All this hot air coming from your ideas can only prop up your experiments for so long."

Donner closed his eyes and sighed.

"The sinking feeling has reached its rock bottom in all the heavy hearts around, and the rockslide will follow," the Rabbit went on. "What I mean is the vision is beginning to sink with the morale, self-esteem losing steam fast for a crash."

"Must you speak that way?" demanded Adhikari suddenly.

"Excuse me, I'm just nervous," said the Rabbit looking just that. "I've never spoken with a person with the madness of an unethical scientist."

"Then that must be why you stay in Wonderland where madness is ethical," said Donner with a bitter cold smile, "and there are no scientists."

"Oh!" gasped the rabbit. "Hush, hush, things are unsteady enough without adding the unsteadiness of the sardonic! It's the sardonic nature of your allocation for this meeting that has me most unstable or all."

"And irony is lost upon you," said Donner.

"Oh, no, I understand the irony," the Rabbit assured him. "But it doesn't change the sardonic tone of this whole experiment."

"Does Nick Sardine count as a scientist?" asked Donner.

"Perhaps in a fishy sort of way," mused the Rabbit after a pause, "but you do know exactly the danger then?"

Again the two subordinates exchanged glances.

The Rabbit hesitated. "Have you seen him?"

"In my experience, you smell him, you don't see him. If you see him you've seen a boojum."

There was a long silence then, though not a still one. The Rabbit fidgeted the most. He checked his watch agitatedly and then fidgeted some more.

"I take it that you are not going to stop the procedure then," said the Rabbit.

"Isn't that sardonic?"

"No, it's a lament."

"In my experience it is the same thing," said Donner and he leaned back in his chair.

It seemed that would be the final word upon the matter and the White Rabbit sighed miserably. With excellent gracefulness he leapt off the chair. Once on the floor he checked his watch yet again.

"Do you know where your missing worker is?" he asked.

"If she's not here, my guess is that she is better off than we are," muttered Donner.

"Or she's seen the boojum," offered the Rabbit. "Or she's the only one who didn't."

"Enough of this shit," said Horace standing up now too.

"The spirits are too low to be shipped high," said the Rabbit shaking his head. "It won't be long until the whole pile of scrap metal will fall down like Humpty Dumpty, and the reverberations will be felt all through Wonderland. Wonderland cannot be prepared for the consequences. Most of it is like a child."

"Yet older than us," said Donner.

"Unlike me who has gone to and from Wonderland enough times to nearly lose my reason into a common Real World rabbit, most of it is as though time never moved upon it at all save a few little games that filter through from childhood fancy of recent ages. The rest has always been bound by the Wood of Forgetfulness in the Looking Glass Realm, which was tainted to begin with as a reflection of your world so delicately behind the eyes perceived innocence as opposed to the more rambunctiously innocent Wonderland. If that Wood is to remember it will be unfortunate and more for you than for us."

"And?" pressed Donner more sardonically than before in both tone and face.

"As long as one child is innocent enough to fall down a rabbit hole and come back out again better than not, we will survive anything that comes however it may inconvenient us, but you will not nor any of your victims. You're already beyond the realm of reason. Though I sense in you a dark imagination that would like nothing better than to see everyone involved suffer for your loss, nor are you the first to try to wring Wonderland only to wring yourselves."

Here the Rabbit regained some confidence. There was no timidity in what he said.

"I may be here by order of her Majesty Queen of Hearts of Wonderland, but I am also here on behalf of myself as I do have a soft spot for humanity if only for a little child's sake that warmed the heart in a way that wonder alone cannot give."

"Alice?" derided Donner like he was hissing a language of adder poison.

The White Rabbit made a horrible expression between disgust, pity, and hurt. It was such a deep and almost elfish look on such a soft and silly-looking face like a child who has just understood a parent's addiction, but it was still far wiser and older— a true immortal pixie suddenly not playing a fairy ring dance now stood before them. The true maturity of agelessness seeped through showing that man could never be immortal and live in his present state upon the Earth and yet hinting at an infiniteness of a spirit that lived within a man just as eternally.

Without another word he turned away towards the door.

"Wait! You haven't explained where we are," snapped Horace.

"He did," said Donner calmly. "Several times."

Quietly, the White Rabbit shut the door behind him.

"Where's it going?" demanded Horace.

"Back…" breathed Adhikari mistily.

"To Wonderland?" Horace scoffed.

Horace turned desperately to Donner. "Was that a hologram?"

"It has very little to do with computers," admitted Donner. "I'm afraid, none of it does. Nor has it ever. The only holograms are those of the humans we placed in the bubble."

"What bubble?" demanded Horace the more.

Adhikari sighed. "The bubble of thought we sent into Wonderland?" he offered wearily; he was far too weary to be excited anymore. He felt that if he got any drier or colder, he would dry up right into dust. Perhaps that was what the Rabbit's warning meant.

He stood up. "Dr. Donner, do I have permission to follow that White Rabbit?"

There was short pause. Then Donner shrugged. "You can try."

#

Bubbles plumed violently as from a pot just beginning to overflow. Searing heat tore right through clothes, hair, and skin. Sucked down to the bottom, Lise and Haddler smeared into the sandy bottom like a spoon into a porridge bowl, but the bubbles were so strong that they plunged the pair right back to the surface to roll into the full-bodied stew. The sentients broke through to the open air only long enough for a breath like whales before they both sunk again. This time it was of their own accord or rather they had no will to fight the weariness in their limbs to sink back under to the seemingly sentient whims of the coppery sea.

But it was just as Haddler sunk beneath the surface that he realized that his skin was not scalding off of him. In fact, despite the initial shock, it was really rather soothing— or it would have been if he had not been wearing sopping clothes. The temperature was just right for a nice hot bath.

Despite himself he opened his eyes and though it was difficult to see much, everything that could be seen was tinted in sepia like an old faded photo rippling in memory. The refracted light from the hot golden sun shimmered like strings of molten glass on the grainy bottom that looked almost like granulated copper mixed with soggy dried-up weeds.

Then came the reddish gold figure like Midas' daughter in mid-transformation floating in slow motion past Haddler. He almost sucked in a gasp. Thankfully he kept his head with air enough to pull her up.

Just as they broke through the glassy surface as through a magic mirror, he suddenly knew that the full-bodied nature of the liquid in which he now desperately swam was not so much full-bodied because of the human bodies occupying it— even if that added it. It was the full-bodied deep amber quality of the body of liquid itself.

He blinked and almost dropped poor Lise.

"Tea!" he gasped.

"Ngph?" moaned Lise.

He licked the liquid under his chin despite himself. "Autumn flush!"

"What card game is that?" grogged the poor woman.

"Darjeeling, dear child," said Haddler in playful imitation of his friend O'Hair, whom he had forgotten all about being angry with.

At the moment he was too happy to be alive to call to mind the obvious notion that he may never see the professor ever again, or any part of his old life.

Through motions rather than words, Lise insisted that she swim on her own, which Haddler graciously allowed as he took another gentle sip of a true connoisseur, but he nearly spit it all back out and so suddenly that Lise jumped. He rubbed his eyes as the splash settled around the form before him.

It was nothing like the golden girl he had come to know. The tea itself seemed to have steeped her hair short, dark with a hint of cherry, and her face sprayed with freckles with a far less dainty nose and chin. She wore a grayish purple khaki coat over a sunflower yellow blouse over what was once a very white and still very modest camisole but now would forever be tea vintage, and a near pencil skirt, jean in make, if he could tell that correctly, covered her legs. Not at all the woman he had seen before. Except… except for her eyes.

Yes, the eyes were the same.

"What?" gasped Lise, if she could even be called Lise anymore. Even if she was the same person, at the same time he felt now for sure that "Lise" had been a cover for whatever name she had beneath.

Had she not given him another name?

Haddler blinked suddenly back to the question. "Your hair really did want cutting, after all."

Admittedly, he would have liked it longer than a shaggy bob. It just sort of came out of his mouth, but it certainly gave Lise another start so violent that as she touched her hair herself she almost collapsed into the tea again. Just before Haddler reached out a hand, she steadied herself and pushed away with a cry.

"Lise!" called Haddler.

He looked around and they were far away from anything that could be called land. The russet liquid was warm and bright but the most remote shore through the wavering steam or perhaps even a mirage in the heat looked like nothing but a white porcelain edge rather than soft white sandy beaches. Not a boat could be seen, though with all the steam and glinting shimmers, it was really not much more visible up here than it was beneath the waves. Just more color was all that differentiated it.

"Lise!" he called out a second time as he swam after her.

She splashed frantically as he pulled her by the arm.

"This isn't the time to panic! The water's already so warm you'll get heat stroke swimming like that!"

She was trembling and breathing heavily, staring at him just as a frightened cat might, drenched with no land to get up upon to clean itself. Tears pierced her eyes distinctly jewel-like in comparison to the crimson droplets of tea. Then she looked up.

Haddler blinked and withdrew slowly, and suddenly felt what she felt— less blinded.

He too looked up to see that they were now just under the shadow of the great monstrous ball of metal hidden in the layer of gentle steam rising only with care from the liquid they were in, no higher than in a bath, but it veiled the ball. Whether under the veil or not, the great blight looked like a spherical nest from down here. It was an ugly ominous from which nothing better than giant metal hornets might spring. In its silence it looked quite surreal, but perhaps with ticking and tocking it would be more surreal still. And yet… he thought he could hear something behind the sound of panting and lapping close at hand.

"Matthias," Lise breathed.

Silently he turned back.

Though struggling with fatigue, the woman meant to be firm and more waiting than wading. Her eyes were on his. They blinked slowly, wearily in the steam rising about them as though she was tempted to give into a spell of fainting by a whispering voice.

Whispering?

That was what he thought he heard, or rather a very muffled and faraway uttering just above a whisper. It sounded so voice-like, but not a word could be made out. Like the ball above them was to the sense of sight, it was a most ominous sound to the ear. Perhaps it was coming from the ball. Perhaps the ball was really a head. Perhaps the heart itself was trying to chug back to life and only sounded like speaking. Heart murmuring could be a bad, bad sign.

He clamped his mouth shut. Then he said once more, "Lise."

"You really are here and have been all this time," she said.

Matthias laughed. "Down here? In this ocean of tea? If I'd know this was down here I might have fallen down a long time ago, but I would have regretted it no matter what. Drowning in tea is not exactly the way I want to go. At least not at this age."

Lise laughed despite herself, but only a little, and it was quickly replaced with further sobriety. "No, I mean... I'm really here. How did they do this?"

She turned away.

"Who?" demanded Matthias, suddenly not in a mood for games himself.

"We should try to get out of this mess we're in first."

"Right," Matthias agreed without hesitance, but as he looked around again he was not so sure how he was going to do that.

This was Wonderland. There had to be a trick to it. If this was tea, could they not hope for a sugar cube such as the ones he thought of before? Or blow bubbles to catch themselves into in order to float away to land. He stared through the steam and saw that the waves further under the shadow of the ball were not waving in a certain spot like in a sort of curse or an inversion of a fairy ring.

"What?" asked Lise.

He pointed.

Almost in panic again she looked and at first could obviously not see it.

"Right there," he pointed again.

Then she sighed in relief and nodded in agreement.

Quickly they swam for it both afraid it was a mirage or a trick of some kind, but as they approached it, there was a solid brim-like quality. It was sleek in shape, rounded beautifully, and it was as white as fresh snow where it protruded out of the Darjeeling.

"It's a giant saucer!" cried Lise putting her hand to its smooth glossy side just to make sure it was real.

Matthias laughed. "If only it was a flying saucer, eh?"

Lise looked at him again and smiled back— sadly, strangely, with sympathy, but with something far more kindly as though she was seeing him differently than before too. But Haddler did not look down at himself to see if he changed as much as she had. He did not care at the moment. Right now, he simply decided to be the gentleman and finish his rescue by helping her up onto the china lily pad.