by Cameron Jace
“But from what I know, it’s impossible to evade death after time-traveling,” Mr. Tick said. “I mean, even if she returns, she will die within a few hours in our time.”
“That’s true, Mr. Tick. That’s why there is only one way to save her life if she manages to make it to the past.”
“What is it, Mrs. Tock?” He put the tea aside. “I’m most punctually, accurately, and timingly curious.”
“Alice can only live if she finds her Wonder.”
Mr. Tick’s eyes shone brightly. The three hairies on his head bent like a banana peel. “You don’t say.”
“It’s true. The only way she can see another day is if she finds her Wonder.”
“Which we both know is almost impossible.”
“Yes, I know.” Mrs. Tock snickered, shrugging her broad shoulders. “But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let’s first watch her come back from the future.”
“If she ever manages to pull it off.” Mr. Tick scanned Alice’s spasming body, now slightly bleeding from her nose.
“Before we continue watching, Mr. Tick,” Mrs. Tock said, “what about her?” She pointed at Fabiola, standing frozen like a statue beside them. Mr. Tick had stopped time in the Inklings a few minutes ago, so Fabiola wouldn’t bust them when she saw Alice dying. It actually added a lovely sense of quietness to the place. Mr. Tick and Mrs. Tock loved it when humans were quiet.
“I will unfreeze her later, Mrs. Tock.” Mr. Tick began sipping his tea again. “After I drink my six o’clock tea. Oh, I feel like we have all the time in the world.”
34
THE FUTURE: OXFORD STREETS
“Did you just say Mr. Tick and Mrs. Tock?” Tom drives the truck now. “Are you saying you’re not the current Alice and the Pillar?”
“It depends on how you look at it,” the Pillar says. “But if you’re asking if we were sent from the past, then the answer is yes.”
“Oh, my.” Tom panics, turning the wheel. “This isn’t right.”
I can understand that as a Wonderlander, Tom knows about the Tick and Tock couple. But why is he panicking? “What’s wrong, Turtle?”
“Nothing.” He shakes his head. “Not now. Let’s see if there is a way to save your life first.”
“I want to know what’s going on!” I demand, but then my head aches again.
“Calm down.” The Pillar wipes a trail of blood from my nose. “Or this is going to get worse.”
I stare at the blood, my heart weakening. I think I can’t hear it beat properly.
“There is only one way out of this,” the Pillar says. “A Lullaby pill.” He shifts his stare toward Tom.
“Why are you looking at me?”
“You’re the director of the Radcliffe Asylum,” I say, catching on. “You must know how to get a Lullaby pill.”
“Was the director, about fourteen years ago,” Tom says. “I’ve been trapped in the Oxford Asylum for the last five years for trying to lead the revolution.”
As he mentions it, I glimpse the graffiti on the walls. All hail the Mock Turtle. All hail the revolution.
“This really bothers me,” I mumble. “How is it that Tom Truckle leads the revolution in the future?” Now I am talking to the Pillar. “Why not me?”
“Calm down, Alice,” the Pillar says. “Or I can’t think of a way to get you the pill.”
“Why not me?” I insist. “Aren’t I the Real Alice?”
“I can explain…” Tom begins.
“Shut up!” the Pillar says. “First we have to save your life, then we look for answers, Alice. Look in my eyes and tell me you understand what I just said.”
The Pillar is assertive, wanting to help me. I find myself nodding. Even the nodding hurts when I do it. What’s going to happen to me?
“That’s a start.” The Pillar sighs and stares back at Tom. “Do you happen to know how long she has before she dies?”
“Once the bleeding begins, it takes a time traveler the same time he needs to eat a thousand marshmallows to die completely,” Tom says.
“What does that even mean?” I retort.
“It’s what the Hitchhiker’s Guide to Wonderlastic Time Travels says,” Tom explains. “I myself can eat ten marshmallows in a minute. Given that, I suppose it takes about — ”
“Zip it, Turtle,” the Pillar interjects. “Here is what’s going to happen. See that motorcycle at the curb?”
“Yes?”
“Pull over there. I’ll take it and find the pill.”
“You’re not going to leave me here, Pillar?” I ask him as Tom pulls over.
“I’ll be back,” he says.
“Schwarzenegger used to say that. Now he is dead,” Tom comments.
Neither of us even pay attention to him. The Pillar lowers his head and whispers in my ear, “Stay alive. You can do it.”
He descends the truck and starts the motorcycle, disappearing into the streets.
Gathering what’s left of my energy, I turn back to Tom. “I think now it’s time to tell me more.”
35
“It was the flamingo that converted me into working for Black Chess,” Tom begins, still driving through the streets. He has to keep driving in case the Reds are still on our tail.
“The flamingo?”
“The one the Queen of Hearts sent to the asylum,” he says. I didn’t even know about it. “One day, I received an order from Her Majesty to cure a flamingo of hers.”
“Cure it? In an asylum?”
“The poor animal didn’t succumb to her orders, and wouldn’t let her use it as a mallet in a croquet game. She thought the flamingo had psychological issues and wanted it healed into submission.”
“Healed into submission? What kind of healing is that?”
“The Wonderland style. Anyways, I found nothing wrong with it, and began to befriend it,” Tom says. “In my darkest hour, when I had no one to talk to, it became my best friend.”
“What does all this nonsense have to do with losing the war?”
“The flamingo was the Queen’s bait.” Tom averts his eyes from mine and keeps them on the road. It’s easy to see he truly regrets his past and wishes to become someone better. Every passing moment, I am more able to believe he did actually lead the revolution.
“Bait?”
“The preposterous Queen fooled me,” he says. “She knew who I was. She knew of Lewis’ mission. And she was the one who put the pills into my coffee and mock turtle soups until I became an addict.”
I am speechless. The Queen of Hearts has always struck me as stupid, impulsive, and borderline naive, like an angry child farting its way through life. I never thought of her as a planner with hidden agendas. I thought she was just mad at the world because of the circus. “I still don’t understand the flamingo’s role in having you work for Black Chess.”
“I guess your IQ just dropped because you’re dying, Alice,” he says. “The flamingo became my best friend, the one I trusted, talked to all the time. I told it about the things I remembered, the exact details of Lewis’ plan. More shattering than anything else is that at some point, the flamingo talked telepathically to me, poisoning my thoughts until I weakened and joined Black Chess in exchange for a reputable position in Parliament. A position where I could be respected, feared, pay my children’s tuition, and get back my wife.”
“And the flamingo, what happened to it?”
“Don’t you know?” He glances at me. “The Queen chopped off its head after that. There are signposts everywhere about the incident.”
“I saw it.”
Suddenly, Tom’s glance turns into a glare, as if seeing a ghost.
“What is it?”
“The Reds.” He speeds up. “They’re after us again.”
36
THE FUTURE: MOUNT CEMETERY, GUILDFORD
The Pillar felt the rush of wind slapping him in the face while he drove. The cemetery was only a mile or two away now. He was risking Alice’s life by driving this fast to come her
e. After all, Mount Cemetery was about two hours away from where he had left Alice. But he had bet on the illogical Wonderlastic rules of time traveling. According to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to Wonderlastic Time Travels, distance sometimes meant nothing when time travelers were in different times than where they actually lived. It was the same reason why Alice managed to get from London to Oxford by walking a few streets. According to the book, a traveler could get anywhere he or she wished with good intentions and determination.
Whatever that meant, the Pillar thought. He didn’t care how nonsense worked. What mattered was that it worked. It only took him twenty minutes to arrive.
He didn’t want to give in to thinking about time, and its complications, for too long. After all, time was a loop. A wheel rebirthing and reinventing itself all the time. Which meant he and Alice must have been here before.
But he was thankful he couldn’t remember it, or he would have gone really mad. He thought how the perception of time and life was nothing but a point of view. It wasn’t real, but there was nothing anyone could do about it. All one could do was live the moment they believed — probably deceivingly — was the present.
He parked the motorcycle and took off his goggles.
Then he jogged toward the gates of Mount Cemetery, not surprised at its decaying form. It was almost buried in vines and crawling insects. No one paid attention or respect to Lewis Carroll’s burial place in the future — and not much in the present, either.
Why would they, when Black Chess’ winning of the war was all about bringing the man’s legacy down?
The Pillar stepped through the shrubs and the mud until he found a crack in the walls. The sky greyed and boomed with rain as he entered the cemetery.
Inside, it wasn’t easy locating Carroll’s burial plot. The cemetery looked like it had been a battlefield at some point in the Wonderland Wars.
The Pillar took off his blue coat, folded it carefully, and placed it at the cleanest place he came across. He pulled back his sleeves, showing his aging skin, peeling off day by day. Something he didn’t want anyone else to see. He didn’t see the point of anyone knowing about his sickness.
After all, why would anyone care?
He located a shovel and walked to the spot where he believed Lewis was buried.
“Sorry for digging you up, mate,” he whispered to the grave. “I need the one thing you took with you to the grave. The Lullaby pills.”
37
THE FUTURE: OXFORD STREETS
Tom is a terrible driver. If he keeps driving this way, we’re either going to crash into something or get caught by the Reds who are chasing us on motorcycles now.
“Give me the wheel.” I push him over.
“But, you’re bleeding.”
“I can’t None Fu while I’m dying, but I think I can still drive. Look for a gun or something in the back. Do something useful.”
“There is a sleeping dog in the back,” Tom says.
I smile when he says that. That dog was so hungry that when he was fed he felt good enough to sleep through such a chase. “Don’t wake him up,” I say. “Just find a gun and start shooting at the Reds.”
“There is nothing back there, only water hoses.”
I use a lot of what’s left of my power to stare back at him, hoping he will get the message.
Tom smirks and tilts his head. He knuckles his fingers and pops a few pills. “You’re thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Glad to know you’re smart enough to think what I am thinking.” I veer the truck against a couple of motorcycles and squeeze them against a wall.
“Water hose wars it is,” Tom chirps like a child. What can I say? He’s a Wonderlander, after all.
Behind me, he starts hitting the Reds with full-throttle water bullets.
“You remember I’m here for the keys, don’t you?” I shout back.
“I know.” He struggles with the pumping hose but is doing a good job at keeping the Reds at bay. “That’s what I was going to ask about. How did you find me?”
“I found the note.”
“What note?”
“The one where I kept your address with a scribbling saying that I kept the keys with you.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Alice.”
“What do you mean? We must have had a deal or something. I must have kept the keys with you after the war. Or why do I have this note?”
“True, I was in possession of the keys once.” He sounds like he is keeping something from me again. “But you couldn’t have possibly made a note to come and take them from me.”
“Why not?” I want to face him, but I am busy with the wheel, totally ignoring my bleeding nose, although my blood is staining the wheel by now, and my vision is dimming.
“Because you know I lost the Six Keys a long time ago.”
“What?” I almost hit the brakes. “You lost the keys?”
“Not that they are of any particular use anymore. We lost the war when the Queen grabbed hold of the Six Keys,” Tom says. “But you already know I lost the keys. Oh, wait. I mean, the real version of you in this world knows that. Of course, you don’t know, because you’re not really from this time.”
I am too dizzy to think about this paradoxical situation. “I just want to know how you lost the keys, and how come I found this note.”
Tom takes a moment to think it over. I trust he has figured out the puzzle. “I get it now.”
“What is it? Please tell me because nothing makes sense in this future anymore.”
“Mr. Tick and Mrs. Tock.”
“What about them?”
“They don’t really want you to die,” Tom speculates. “They wanted everything that happened to happen the way it did.”
“How so?”
“They have access to the future. They planted the note so you’d follow it because they knew I stole the keys from you.”
“You stole them.” The truck bumps against something on the road. I speed up to cross it, realizing I have so little strength in me now. “I thought I gave them to you.”
“Don’t worry about this part,” Tom says. “What matters is that Mr. Tick and Mrs. Tock, or whoever hired them, thought I have the keys and wanted to find them through you. They planted the note because they knew I wouldn’t open up to anyone, even you, about their location.”
“Even me?” I am dizzy, not sure if I am catching every word, barely able to drive ahead. “Why wouldn’t you tell me about their location?”
“Because in this future I trust no one. You could be the Cheshire disguised, for all I know — and don’t talk to me about him being unable to possess Wonderlanders,” Tom says. “I am only opening up to you because I know you’re from the past because if you find the keys and put them in the right hands, you can change the future.”
“And that’s what they want exactly,” I say. “They want me to return with the keys so they can take them from me.”
“You’re getting the picture now. Think of it—why isn’t there another Alice from the future? They must have done something to her so she wouldn’t warn you or tell you the truth.”
“It’s hard to comprehend all of this,” I say. “But I get their plan to get the keys now. I get it that they thought you’d give me the keys only when you realized I am from the past. What puzzles me is how you lost the keys.”
“Didn’t exactly lose them,” he says. “I handed them to the wrong person.”
“Who?” I enter a dark tunnel, wishing I could lose the Reds in here.
“I gave them to Jack.”
And with that, the darkness drapes its curtain of deception down on me. Because let’s face it. In the future, Jack is not Jack. He is the Cheshire, fooling Tom. Having fooled me as well, making me think that Jack affected him so much he loved me. The Cheshire never changed. A nobody, disguising in people he meets, parasitizing on their thoughts and emotions, just like the sneakiest of devils.
My hands give up on the wheel.
My strength withers. And I fall on my head.
38
THE FUTURE: MOUNT CEMETERY, GUILDFORD
The Pillar was digging with all his might as fast as he could. Sweating and panting. He’d never felt the need to save someone like he needed to save Alice now.
And there it was, finally, Carroll’s corpse, lying on its back, strangely mummified, looking as if he were still alive. The Pillar wasn’t surprised. Carroll was full of surprises. He wouldn’t discard the possibility that the famous mathematician had found an embalming method like the ancient Egyptians.
The Pillar knelt down to reach for Carroll’s pockets. The dead man’s shoulders snapped, just a little, probably an odd reflex of muscles being exposed to oxygen or light.
“Relax,” the Pillar told him. “I’m just here for the Pills. She needs them, or she will die.”
But Carroll’s dead body snapped again, as if not wanting him to reach for them.
“Look,” the Pillar said. “I know you don’t want her to take the pills, not in the future, but I can help her.”
The corpse still stiffened, its arm bent awkwardly. The Pillar needed to break it to get to the pills.
“Aren’t you the one who kept showing up in her dreams? Didn’t you meet her in the Tom Tower? Didn’t you meet her back in Wonderland through the Einstein Blackboard? And after the circus, she said she saw you with the Inklings.” The Pillar talked to Carroll’s corpse as if it were alive. “Didn’t you show up to her in the Inkling, thanking her for saving you from Carolus and telling her she is the Real Alice?”
The corpse didn’t move—and, of course, it didn’t talk back.
The Pillar wasn’t sure what was going on. He didn’t want to break Carroll’s arm to get the pill. But, looking at his watch, he knew he was losing time.