Recreating A Fairy Tale Into A Sci-Fi (Alice in Wonderland)

By: AIRA JOY G. RIVERA

SALVE REGINA A. USTARIS IV-Jupiter

One afternoon, Alice is feeling bored and decided to surf the net. She logged in to her favourite social networking site, Tumblr, when she noticed an attractive Tumblr account and visited it. Suddenly a portal appeared in the screen of the computer. Much to her surprise, she was pulled towards the portal by an unknown force. She then ends up in a room painted in the same color like her Tumblr account with many locked doors of all sizes. She finds a small key to a door too small for her to fit through, but through it she sees another room designed like that of her favourite Tumblr account. She then discovers a picture of a green wine and when she touched it, the wine became real with the label DRINK ME. The contents of which cause her to shrink too small to reach the key which she has left on the table. Another picture of a piece of cake with "EAT ME" on it caught her attention again. She touched the picture, and just like wine, it became real. When she ate it, she grew to such a tremendous size her head hits the ceiling. Alice is unhappy and cries as her tears flood the room. Much to her surprise, her tears arent the usual ones. Instead, they look like the green wine she drank a while ago. After shrinking down again due to a fan she had picked up, Alice swims through her own green tears and meets a virtual mouse, who is swimming as well. The sea of green tears becomes crowded with other virtual mice that look like the one she met earlier. They have been swept away by the rising tears too. Alice and the other mice convene on the bank and the question among them is how to get dry again. A thinking machine appears and decides that the best thing to dry them off would be a Clone Race, which consists of everyone running in a circle with no clear winner. An android appears in search of the Duchess' gloves and fan. Mistaking her for his assistant robot, MA5228, he orders Alice to go into the Duchess house and retrieve them, but once she gets inside she starts growing. Alice hears the voices of mice that have gathered to gawk at her giant arm. The crowd hurls table salt at her, which turn into little cakes. Alice eats them, and they reduce her again in size. While wandering in what she considers as Tumblr World, Alice comes upon a mushroom with a Talking Cat smoking a hookah on it. It questions Alice and she admits to her current identity crisis. Before crawling away, the Talking Cat tells Alice that one side of the mushroom will make her taller and the other side will make her shorter. It is because an unknown scientist accidentally spilled a chemical which can cause either dwarfism or gigantism. She breaks off two pieces from the mushroom. One side makes her shrink, while another causes

her neck to grow high into the trees. With some effort, Alice brings herself back to her usual height. She came upon a room which is designed exactly like her favorite Science-related Tumblr account. A Robot-Footman has an invitation for the Duchess, which he delivers to a Telephone-Footman. Alice observes this transaction and, after a perplexing conversation with the telephone, lets herself into the room. The Duchess's assistant is throwing asteroids and making a soup that has too much magic salt, which causes Alice, the Duchess, and her baby to grow in size. Alice is given the baby by the Duchess and to her surprise, the baby turns into a walking doll. The Talking Cat appears through a hologram, directing her to the March Androids house. He disappears but his grin remains behind to float on its own in the air prompting Alice to remark that she has often seen a cat without a grin but never a grin without a cat. Alice becomes a guest at a "mad" science exhibit along with the March Android, the Defective Machine, and a computer in sleep mode who falls asleep frequently. The characters give Alice many codes and binaries that she needs to break. The Defective Machine reveals that they have science experiments all day because Time has punished him because of his uselessness. Alice becomes tired of being bombarded with codes and she leaves claiming that it was the stupidest science exhibit that she had ever been to. Alice leaves the science exhibit and enters a submarine where she comes upon three living algae painting the white coral reefs on the sea floor red. Alice then meets the King and Queen. The Queen introduces her trademark phrase "Off with his battery!" which she utters at the slightest dissatisfaction with a subject. Alice is invited to play an online game with the Queen and the rest of her subjects enclosed in a submarine. The game quickly descends into chaos. Keyboards that can manipulate themselves are used as control keys and living armies as players. Alice once again meets the Talking Cat. The Queen of Online Games then orders the Talking Cat to have its battery removed, which can cause its death. The Duchess is brought to the gaming ground at Alice's request. The Queen of Online Games dismisses her on the threat of execution and she introduces Alice to the Remote Control, who takes her to the Mock Television. The Mock Television is very sad, even though he has no sorrow. He tries to tell his story about how his masters used to watch sad movies before. The Mock Television and the Remote Control dance to the Cyber Code, while Alice finds out, though incorrectly. The Mock Television sings them "Beautiful Soup" during which the Remote Control drags Alice away for an impending trial. Alice attends a trial whereby the Knave of Outer Space is accused of stealing the Queen's shooting stars. The jury is composed of various cloned animals and machines, including Bill the Cloned Lizard, the android is the court's trumpeter, and the judge is the King of Online Games. During the proceedings, Alice finds that she is steadily growing larger. The thinking machine scolds Alice and tells her she has no right to grow at such a rapid pace. Alice calls the thinking machine's accusation ridiculous because everyone grows. Meanwhile, witnesses at the trial include the Defective Machine, who frustrates the King through his indirect answers to the binaries, and the Duchess's assistant. Alice is then called up as a witness. She accidentally knocks over a test tube rack with the cloned animals inside the test tubes and the King orders them be placed back into their seats before the trial continues. The King and Queen order Alice to be gone, citing Rule forty-two ("All persons more than a mile high to leave the court"), but Alice refuses to leave. She argues with the King and Queen of Online Games over the ridiculous proceedings. The Queen shouts

her familiar "Off with her battery!" but Alice is unafraid, because shes a human. She calls them out as just a pack of microchips; just as they start to swarm over her. Alice's sister wakes her up for dinner, brushing what turns out to be sandwiches and not a shower of microchips from Alice's face. Alice realized that all of those were just a dream. Alice leaves her sister on the room to imagine all the curious happenings for herself.