White Rabbit

Chapter One

Mary
Ann’s behavior was becoming more and more erratic lately.  She
would shrink one second to the size of a house cat, the next she
would grow so tall she would bang her head on the ceiling; all while
flickering wildly like a candle in a wind.  She had never been a
stable person but this was ridiculous!  W.R. blamed himself.  If he
had not been so eager to try out the Device, he could have taken the
time to learn its strengths and weaknesses.  With that last word
hanging in his thoughts, he glanced across at Mary Ann flickering
away like a dying light bulb.  Definitely a weakness there!  She was
attempting to dust the room but because of her lack of substance, the
feather duster constantly slipped through -- literally through--
her
fingers.  When she went to dust something high on the wall, she would
suddenly shrink to half her usual height and when she bent down to
dust the wainscoting, she would grow so tall that her head would
smack against the ceiling.  Each time, she would glance up in total
surprise as if it this was the first time it had happened.

Mary Ann
had always been slow.  Slow of speech, slow of thought and slow in
motion.  Getting her to do mundane tasks around the house had
required hours of patient training, something W.R. was ill equipped
to handle.  He was not, by nature, a patient being.  Training her to
wash the dishes after a meal had entailed verbal direction while Bill
stood at the sink, his long green tail swishing from side to side in
agitation, physically performing the motions his master was
describing.  Mary Ann had stood sullenly by, watching until her mind
wandered.  Sometimes, something as trivial as a few flecks of dust
caught in a beam of sunlight through the curtains would distract her,
the way a comet hurtling through the night sky would distract most
ordinary folk.  If W.R. had not snapped her back to the task in hand
with a crisp reprimand, she would have followed the voyage of those
flecks until they disappeared from view.  This process was repeated a
dozen times without success.  Bill had to stand beside her in the
end, guiding her hands, hoping she would understand that the motions
of the cloth in one hand had to synchronize with the dish in the
other.  The whole process was long and tedious and proved necessary
for every task she was assigned.

Everything
else W.R. had produced in Wonderland had come from the pages of
books, posters or pamphlets.
The
Gryphon, the Walrus, the Carpenter and the Mad Hatter had sprung from
the pages of a small book.  The King and Queen of hearts and their
servants had all come from a pack of cards W.R. had purloined on one
of his trips Topside, and the Lion and the Unicorn (two of
Wonderland’s most irritating creatures) had been transformed
from bone china figurines.
Mary
Ann, however, was the result of his fascination with the Device and
his impatience to see what it could do.  It was a mistake, but then,
he reasoned, everything in Wonderland was a mistake.  Was Mary Ann so
different from the Queen of Hearts or the Hatter or the Lory?  They
were all imbeciles.  The only other creature in Wonderland who had an
ounce of sense in his head, beside himself, was the Caterpillar, and
he was a borderline psychotic!  The Device held the promise of a
better class of creature.  Something more perfectly formed, more
intelligent, more…like himself.

“Mary
Ann,” he snapped in exasperation when she banged her head on
the ceiling for the sixth time.  She stared at it in complete
bewilderment as if it had suddenly materialized above her.  “Mary
Ann, go outside and play.  I need to eat my breakfast in peace.”

She
smiled like a small child, unaware that the treat being offered her
was in fact a reprimand.

Bill
always fixed W.R.’s breakfast.  The task of cleaning and
tidying stretched Mary Ann’s capabilities.  He couldn’t
imagine the havoc she could unleash if set free upon an open flame,
hot food and boiling liquids.  She could burn the house down with
everyone in it and not even realize what she had done.  After
breakfast he would fix her.  She had been created from electricity
so, he reasoned, it would be electricity that would stabilize her.

He could
hear Bill clanging around in the kitchen putting the final touches to
his breakfast--his long, lanky body gliding from workstation to
workstation.  Only his tail spoiled the smoothness of his movements,
striking cabinet doors and kitchen chairs as if it were a separate
entity imbued with a life of its own.  Standing on his hind legs, as
was the preferred way of most of Wonderland’s citizens, Bill
towered above most of his contemporaries and had to duck his head
every time he passed through a doorway.  W.R. considered himself to
be of the perfect height – neither too tall nor too short for
such a distinguished personage of his rank.  He cut a striking figure
in his tailor-made suits, and his pure white fur was always
impeccably groomed.  A pair of pince- nez spectacles, balanced with
precision on the tip of his nose, gave him an air of scholarly
dignity while framing his most striking feature: his lively, bright
pink eyes.

Breakfast
was an exhausting affair for Bill.  Mr. Rabbit’s favorite food
was runner beans and no beans tasted better than those from the
Sprinter family; principally Jack and Tom Sprinter, the younger boys
from that fine brood.  They were the fastest, sleekest beans of all,
and they led Bill a merry chase around the garden each morning until
they had quite worn him out.  Only then would they jump into his
basket with a cheeky quip and settle down beside their less
troublesome family and cousins.  Perhaps it was because they were so
active that they tasted so spectacularly good.  W.R. never grew tired
of the taste and always left Tom and Jack until last so he could
savor the experience. 

Whenever
he was in the garden he would compliment Mr. and Mrs. Sprinter on
their excellent taste, and assure them that no other family of bean
rivaled their reputation.  He seldom spoke to Tom and Jack, for on
the one occasion he had taken the time to praise them for their
flavor and fine running abilities, they had blown raspberries, and
hurled insults as they raced around him laughing hysterically.
Though W.R. had taken umbrage, he accepted that the finest tasting
foods were, by nature, impertinent.

Bill
bustled in from the kitchen looking hot and flustered.  He had
swapped his brown gardening jacket for his black, indoors one, but
had forgotten to remove his cloth cap.  This irritated W.R. beyond
reason.  With a titanic display of self-control, he resisted the urge
to tell Bill to remove it.  After all, he couldn’t control
every aspect of every creature’s nature in Wonderland.  There
would be no time left for him to do the work that really mattered.

“Here
you go guv’nor.”  Bill caught the disapproving look his
master flashed him.  “I mean Sir,” he quickly corrected
himself.  There was no sense in upsetting the old gent unnecessarily,
especially now.

W.R.’s
frown instantly disappeared with the appearance of his food, only to
reappear seconds later.

“What’s
this Bill?  Where are Tom and Jack?”  He moved aside the top
two beans and peered critically at the ones beneath.  “And
where are the rest of the Sprinter family?”  He set down his
fork.  “Why are my favorite runner beans not on my plate this
morning?”

Bill,
being a lizard, was born with a perpetual smile upon his face.  Even
under the most distressing circumstances his grin remained in place,
though every gesture, and posture screamed his discomfort.  His
discomfort on this morning was so acute that, for once, his smile
actually wavered.

“They
wasn’t to be found this morning, guv-sir,” he stammered.
“I searched everywhere.  Them rascals, Tom and Jack, are prone
to hiding in with the peas but they weren’t nowhere where they
usually is, nor Mr. Sprinter or his missus.  Not a single Sprinter to
be found anywhere sir.  These are Mr. Sprinter’s cousin’s
family twice removed.  Very tasty so they assures me.”

W.R.’s
frown deepened.  It was pointless, he knew, pressing Bill for further
details.  He was not the brightest of creature,s but he was
tenacious.  If he could not locate the Sprinter family, it would not
have been through lack of effort.  He listlessly moved his beans
around the plate with his fork.  His appetite seemed to have
evaporated in an instant.  No Tom or Jack.  What a hideous start to
the day! 

Today of
all days he had needed that buoyant feeling he got after a satisfying
meal.  Today he had to appear before the King and Queen of Hearts to
discuss plans for their garden party, positively gruesome.  They
would want him to go Topside for sure, probably to bring back some
trinket they would forget all about as soon as they sent him on his
way, and then be bitterly disappointed with his choice of gift when
he presented it to them.  It was pointless explaining to them that he
could not choose when to go Topside.  The moment was always chosen
for him.  That feeling, that irresistible force that held every atom
of his body hostage until he surrendered unconditionally to it, was
not something he could either fight or explain.

He
pulled his pocket watch from his tweed waistcoat, and absently
flicked it open.  He still had plenty of time before he had to make
an appearance at the palace.  Time enough to stabilize Mary Ann.  He
stared desolately at his untouched breakfast one more time, then
abruptly pushed his chair back and stood up.

“I
shall be in my lab Bill.  Bring me toast and marmalade in there.  And
tea Bill, fresh tea.”

“There’s
tea in the pot guv…er sir,” Bill remonstrated.

“Fresh
tea Bill.  With
my toast and marmalade.”  Why did he have to explain everything
to everyone?  Wasn’t there one single creature in this land who
could understand a simple instruction?  He stomped off to his lab,
grumpy with disappointment.

The lab
was a small distance away from the house, a precaution W.R. had
insisted upon while still in the design stage.  With the kind of
experiments he was conducting, the exotic and unpredictable power
sources and the chemicals used in those experiments, this was a
justifiable precaution.  Coupled with the ineptitude of his two
assistants, Bill and Pat, it was crucial.  His lab was a low, squat
structure, twice as long as it was wide.  It had a pitched roof that
swept upwards to the earthen bank behind, where it seamlessly seemed
to disappear.  Made of red brick, it was dotted with numerous windows
on the side facing the house and at each end nestled a large,
double, barn-sized door that allowed for even the largest pieces of
equipment to be moved in or out with ease.  The inside of the lab was
vast.  Benches filled with beakers and test tubes paraded in rigid
lines alongside lathes and drill presses and other heavy-geared
contraptions that looked capable of performing Herculean tasks.
Pulleys, ropes and chains dangled like tinsel from the rafters and
the thick, viscous smell of machine oil mixed with chemical vapors
excited the senses.  A low humming from the overhead lights gave the
place an aura of activity even when nothing was going on.  The lights
were widely spaced nearer the windows then grew closer together the
deeper one progressed towards the back.  Half of the lab was
enveloped by the black earth of the bank, which gave the place a
comfortable working temperature throughout the year.  It was the one
place where W.R. felt most at home.

As he
passed through the garden, the morning sun warm on his face and the
flower-scented air lethargically stirring the fur on the top of his
head, he glanced towards the runner beans.  Some were running around
but none with the same enthusiasm that the Sprinter boys always
displayed.  The spot on the vine where they usually reappeared after
breakfast was empty.  There was not a Sprinter in sight.  The whole
family had disappeared.  It was all very strange.

Inside
the lab he set to work preparing for Mary Ann’s procedure.  He
pulled a couple of levers and flicked some switches to increase the
energy flow.  His windmill on the roof of the lab provided the bulk
of the power needed for his home and his experiments but for this
occasion, he would need the extra boost that the hydro dam generators
would provide.  W.R. didn’t know why he knew all the things he
did.  No one had ever taught him; it just came naturally.  He could
remember nothing of his mother and father and had no recollection of
a childhood watching others performing similar experiments.  In fact
his whole life before Wonderland was hazy.  He remembered the rabbit
hole; bolting down it to escape some half-forgotten danger, and the
long, star-filled decent into the library.  Except back then it
hadn’t been a library, it had been the hollowed out base of an
old tree.  He recalled the joy of his first sight of Wonderland as he
crept shakily out of the tree stump.  The purity of colors left him
spellbound.  Topside was a vague medley of grays but in this new
place he found himself surrounded by colors of such dazzling
luminosity he could almost reach out and touch them.  That feeling of
awe had never left him.  It was reinforced every time he went back
through the rabbit hole.

He set
to work on the Device.  It was small and slim, nine by six inches and
less than one and a half inches thick, black and scratched from
misuse.  It looked almost like a rabbit-sized attaché case
without a handle.  It was when the lid was flipped open that it lost
all resemblance to anything as mundane as luggage.  On the bottom
part were a number of switches.  On the part that flipped open was a
dark screen framed in black, like an ebony mirror.  It was what
happened when the Play
button was pressed that was so exciting.  Suddenly the screen would
fill with light.  As if from an orchestra magically slotted into the
bowels of the Device, stirring music would play. Then images of
people, animals and vehicles would move and speak and snort and
rattle across the screen as clearly as if they were walking past his
window.  It was amazing and he never got tired of watching it.  His
paws unconsciously stroked the lettering on the side:  DVD.  He
reasoned one of the D’s stood for device but had no idea what
the other letters meant.  Bill had thrown out a hundred suggestions
but W.R. was not one to spend valuable time making idle assumptions.
He would find out one day on one of his trips Topside.  Until then he
was content to simply call it the Device.

It was
where Mary Ann had originated.  He had mastered the controls pretty
quickly, for they were very basic, and had left it paused while he
attended to something trivial.  That inconsequential task morphed, as
most things in Wonderland tended to, into something more complex that
required his full attention for most of the day.  When he returned to
his workshop, Mary Ann was born.  He had found her standing in the
middle of his workshop looking dazed and confused.  This was not
unusual.  Most newly minted creatures were momentarily nonplussed at
their strange surroundings; but whereas those created from images on
paper soon adapted and settled into their new role, Mary Ann’s
confusion only deepened.  W.R. could tell immediately that her
bewilderment was permanent.  There was something off kilter about
her.  The Hatter was as mad as…well, a hatter, but he could
converse at length on any subject under the sun and hold his own in
an argument.  What he had to say was completely banal but it was
a point of view.  So too with the Walrus and the Carpenter, two other
tiresome creatures who would bend W.R.’s prodigious ear at the
drop of a hat and tie him up in verbal knots for hours at a time.
Mary Ann showed no sign of such expansiveness.  She was not only a
dullard, she was damaged beyond repair.  Time had done little to
rectify that.  He couldn’t fix her but he could fix the more
recent fluctuations she was experiencing.

Electricity
had been one of his more revolutionary inventions and it had taken
him a little while to get it right.  A wind turbine on the roof of
his workshop generated power but it had proved unstable.  The power
fluctuated with the strength of the wind, causing his recently
installed lights to flicker in very much the same manner Mary Ann was
now demonstrating.  A backup hydroelectric generator had increased
the power and controlled the flow somewhat but it was the
installation of a bank of batteries to store the generated
electricity that finally brought stability.  Now all he needed to do
was send a steady current of electricity through Mary Ann to
stabilize the atoms in her body.  How much and for how long was a
matter of conjecture but he felt confident that a fifteen minute
burst of five milliamperes would be enough.  If not, he could up the
voltage or the time depending on results.  This was science and he
was a scientist but as with all things in Wonderland, science was a
semi-precise concept that fluctuated with the vagaries of the Kingdom
at large.

Bill
arrived with toast, marmalade and tea and for the next half hour or
so they worked in companionable silence.  W.R. chewed methodically
but without joy on his toast as he labored.  Bill whistled until
silenced by a glare from his master.  Then he kept his whistle to a
low breathy wheeze.

When
they were done, W.R. sent Bill out to retrieve Mary Ann.  He returned
moments later with the young girl in tow.  The blank canvas that was
her face registered acute nervousness the second she walked through
the door.  Apparently that addled brain still held disturbing
recollections of her place of birth.  She was of average height for a
human female, W.R. considered, though he was unsure exactly what an
average height really was.  He was better at judging the merits of
other quadrupeds than the many bipeds that made up the kingdom.  If
it wasn’t for the fact that the biped females wore dresses and
favored long hair he would be hard pressed to identify the gender.
Mary Ann was definitely female, with straw colored hair and other
identifiable markings--but of indeterminate age.  Whether she
possessed beauty or poise was beyond his powers of observation, but
he tended to doubt it.  She was helpless, hopeless and mute.

“Come
and sit over here luv,” Bill said as he gently guided her by
her elbow to a stool near the workbench.  Mary Ann followed
obediently but her fear was palpable.  “We’re just going
to put these little suction pads on you,” continued Bill in his
soothing way as she took her seat.  “See?  They don’t
hurt none.”  He placed one on his own forehead to show her.  A
small giggle escaped her lips.

W.R. was
envious of Bill’s ability to soothe Mary Ann.  His impatience
always got the better of him at moments like this.  He found it hard
to empathize with others and, with so many other pressing things on
his plate, didn’t have the luxury of time to learn.  When this
was all over, the girl could go outside and frolic in the sun, making
daisy chains or whatever it was she did in her free time.  He, on the
other hand, had to see the King and Queen--an unenviable task at the
best of times--and negotiate the tricky divide between what they
wanted and what he could realistically deliver.  A very one-sided
competition considering the Queen had the power to chop off his head
and threatened him with it at every turn.

“See,”
said Bill.  “That was easy wasn’t it?  Now just a couple
on your cheeks like this…ah pretty, and a few on your arms and
legs.”

“Don’t
play with the wires girl,” W.R. admonished as Mary Ann clumsily
traced the path of a wire from the suction pad on her arm to the big
black box on the workbench.  She stiffened.  The relaxed mood that
Bill had managed to create immediately vanished and her nervousness
returned.  Bill flashed him an aggrieved look.  W.R. instantly
regretted his words but the fact had to be faced; the girl was
clumsy.  She could have pulled the wires loose or the converter box
off the bench and then the whole procedure would be ruined.  Still,
he mused, perhaps he could have handled it better.  Or better still,
Bill could have handled it.  In the future maybe he would leave all
the talking to him and just get on with the work himself.

“Tell
her we are only going to pass five milliamperes through her for a few
moments,” W.R. instructed when the last of the suction pads was
in place.

“This
is going to tickle for a bit Mary Ann,” Bill said with a smile.
It was not exactly what W.R. had instructed but she seemed
comfortable with that idea so he let it slide.  “Don’t
worry I’m going to hold your hand and-“

W.R.
shook his head.  “Not a good idea Bill.  Remember my analogy to
water through a hose and how it is always trying to go to ground?”
He waited for the moment of realization to register in Bill’s
eyes but saw only incomprehension there.  “And how in passing
current through a wire into a body the body becomes an extension of
the wire?”  Still no full understanding but he could see Bill
struggling with the concept and slowly arriving at a conclusion.  “So
another body linked to a body through holding hands…”
There it was: that moment of enlightenment, always a triumph to
witness but seldom achieved without a laborious preamble.  What
wouldn’t he give for an assistant with half a brain in his
head?

Bill
stepped warily backwards.  W.R. fussed a little more with the
controls then flicked a switch.  Immediately Mary Ann began to
convulse.  It was somewhat more extreme than W.R. had expected but
nothing to be concerned about.  At least he didn’t feel so.
Bill on the other hand appeared most agitated.  He kept the current
steady.  Mary Ann began to settle down.  The convulsions ceased but
she started to flicker in and out of substance again.  Maybe that was
a good thing.  Perhaps it showed the treatment was correcting the
fluctuations, it just needed to be honed a little more.

He
pushed the dial up to six milliamperes.  The flickering increased in
intensity.  Mary Ann’s back arched violently.  Her limbs
flailed like a puppet on a string and she suddenly grew so large
that, despite being seated, her head was in danger of striking the
ceiling.  A split second later she returned to normal size and then
in the blink of an eye she shrank to the size of a doll.

“Something’s
Wrong,” Bill wailed.

“No,
it’s working,” W.R. insisted.  “It’s
correcting her instabilities.  Her body is working out what size it
is supposed to be.”

“She’s
in pain guv.  You need to lower the setting.”

Mary
Ann’s limbs had ceased their flailing but she was still
flickering madly and seesawing in size but the changes were less
rapid now.  She looked terrified.

“I
need to increase the amps.”

“No,”
Bill cried but it was too late.  W.R. had turned the switch another
notch.

Mary
Ann’s scream pierced the air like a siren.  She shot up to
seven feet tall, solidified and flew off the stool as if it had
bitten her.  Her sudden and violent movements wrenched the black
converter box off the workbench where it landed with a dull thwack on
the concrete floor.  W.R. rushed forward to retrieve it but Mary Ann,
misinterpreting his actions as hostile, lashed out with a huge arm
that sent him flying across the room.  Bill stepped forward to help
his master and was flung violently in the opposite direction by
another hefty blow from Mary Ann’s outsized limb.  As they lay
there stunned, they watched in horror as she swept around the room
like a blonde tornado striking out at everything her befuddled mind
perceived as a threat.  Test tubes, generators, electrical cables and
complete work stations were torn, smashed or trampled in her rampage.
W.R. took refuge under the heavy workbench and sat there cringing
like a frightened child for what seemed an eternity while pieces of
shattered equipment rained down around him.  Finally, Mary Ann ceased
her attack and yanked open the door, almost ripping it from its
hinges, and rushed outside.

For a
while, the only sounds to be heard were the intermittent sparking of
a torn electrical wire and the dripping of liquid onto the floor from
a dozen shattered vials on a bench.  Bill was the first to move.  His
tentative movements caused a tinkling of broken glass that had W.R.
scanning the door in alarm for Mary Ann’s return.

“Are
you alright sir?”  Bill cautiously pulled himself upright,
adjusting his cap as he did so.

W.R.
crawled shakily out from under the protection of his bench.  He
surveyed his lab.  It was a mess.  What hadn’t been broken had
been upturned or scattered across the floor.  A sudden panic gripped
him as he remembered the Device.  It lay on the floor, closed.  What
if it was broken?  How would he ever replace it?  He picked it up and
gingerly opened it.  The screen was undamaged.  He breathed a huge
sigh of relief.

“You
had better start cleaning this up now Bill,” W.R. said.  “Get
Pat to help you if he isn’t too busy.  I’m going to look
for Mary Ann for a little while.  Then I will have to get ready for
the palace.”  He pulled his pocket watch from his waistcoat and
flipped it open.  The glass was cracked, the hands motionless at
11:08.  He flipped it shut and turned it over.  The casing was
dented; probably when Mary Ann had struck him.  Things were going
from bad to worse.  W.R. lived his life by the hands on the clock.
What was he going to do now without a functioning timepiece?