FEAST OR FAMINE

ACT ONE: Wonderland

PART TWO: “Mad Tea Party” OR “Anthropological Field Research by Means of Getting Stabbed”

“But I don’t want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.

"Oh, you can’t help that," said the Cat: "we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad."

"How do you know I’m mad?" said Alice.

"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn’t have come here.”

Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

My eyes open and I find myself standing in the eye of a storm.

A maelstrom rages in every direction, but rather than being composed of wind and debris it whirls with sights and sounds that I recognize from my memories: flashes of moments that I’ve experienced, imagery that stuck in my mind, sounds I could never forget, all getting twisted and tangled and blurring past in endless chaotic motion.

Out in the storm all the colors are too bright and the sounds are too loud, and below the storm I see a desolate wasteland of jagged rock and deep burning chasms. The geography of the wasteland is as volatile as the maelstrom above, great stony outcroppings falling away into ravines as molten rock bubbles up from cracks in the ground and creates new twisted formations.

Red rivers run through the wasteland from distant mountains that resemble parts of the body: red water streaming between the fingers of a great hand, red tears falling from the eyes of a misshapen head, red sweat dripping from a human spine of cracked earth.

Skull-faced beasts of shadow and smoke wander the churning wastes, their forms shifting in size and dimension with every step. Creatures in the approximate shape of humans but made of torn skin and exposed fat and muscle drink from the red rivers. Where they meet, the skull-faced beasts and the flayed ones tear each other apart and gorge on the carrion.

Within the eye of the storm, surrounded by a circular wall of whirling memory, is a messy stack of open books each the size of a small house. The text is nonsense, incomprehensible scribbles and unfamiliar symbols crowding each gigantic page. The book I’m standing on is at the very top of the pile, and on the page opposite me I see a table laid out with checkerboard tablecloth, a fancy tea set, eight bowls of fruit, and two distinctly different seats: one seat is a simple stool, but the other seat is a pile of colorful pillows in the arms of a massive stuffed bunny rabbit.

The whole scene is quite surreal, and I don’t know how I should be feeling right now. The horrific imagery out beyond the safety of the book pile is fascinating, but it also reminds me of how I got here; Cheshire’s manipulations, using my fear of death to coerce me into taking her offer.

You are dying, Alice, but I can save you.

Should I hate her for that? Should I be furious with her? What do I feel? I feel vulnerable, most keenly, in the way that someone feels vulnerable when a knife is held to their throat. But most people don’t get aroused when a knife is at their throat, so the common comparison doesn’t really hold. Is that how I feel? Ugh.

The way she systematically deconstructed my hopes and fears and used them to break me down and back me into a corner was cruel, and it was disgusting, and it was the act of a truly loathsome intelligence, but it was also kind of hot. She cut me open with her words and dug through my entrails, and then she stitched me back up in a manner more pleasing to her desires. That’s as terrifying as it is alluring.

My feelings are all tangled and knotted. I feel the fear of death, and the terror of being known. I feel anger and frustration that I was made to feel so small and helpless. I feel a thrill of enticement that someone was able to push my buttons like that. I feel ashamed that any part of that horrible sequence could turn me on.

And a part of me feels hopeful, truly, desperately hopeful, that I might yet live forever.

So I guess we do what we always do: we learn the rules, and we play the game.

I don’t know for certain what this place is but I can hazard a guess that it’s some representation of my psyche–the place is certainly edgy enough–and it seems obvious what I’m meant to do next: I wander over to the big bunny and plop myself atop the throne of pillows. As I take a seat I realize that my outfit has changed: gone is the bloody schoolgirl outfit–and the stolen hairpin–replaced by a poofy black dress with a hearts-and-diamonds motif, plus black-and-white striped tights.

I frown at my new clothing and debate whether it’s an improvement or a downgrade–those horizontal stripes are quite nice, but the dress is far too bulky–until I hear the pouring of liquid and look up to see Cheshire sitting in the stool across from me. The white-haired catgirl is outfitted in a dress of her own, a lacey pastel yellow-and-pink affair that leaves decidedly more skin bared than my dress, which has me hastily averting my gaze to the creature’s visible amusement.

Cheshire pours from the teapot into first my cup and then hers. The “tea” we’re having is a dark red liquid that resembles blood by sight, though an experimental sniff gives the scent of pomegranates instead. I take a dainty sip of pomegranate juice, set the teacup back down, and level a flat expression at the ever-grinning catgirl.

“This is all a bit much, don’t you think?” I gesture at the storm and the book pile and the porcelain tea set. “You tell me you can make me an archdemon, you nearly induce a panic attack by hitting all my thanatophobia triggers, and now we’re having a tea party. It’s all just a bit absurd.”

Cheshire takes a sip from her own cup and replies, “It is human nature to seek inherent meaning, just as it is the nature of the universe to deny humanity any such thing. There is no intrinsic value to anything humans do, and yet,” she gestures at the storm raging beyond the bounds of the book pile, “here we sit surrounded by made meaning, a lifetime of assigning weight and value to actions that were, speaking nihilistically, quite devoid of either. Absurd indeed.”

I blink a few times, as I had not been expecting the scantily-clad catgirl to start throwing musings on the nature of existence at me, but that’s really my fault for being unimaginative. I narrow my eyes at her, still wanting to pursue the “you manipulated me by exploiting my trauma” angle, but I’m a sucker for arguing about philosophy and she clearly knows that. “Where are you going with this?”

The catgirl’s yellow-and-blue eyes twinkle. “Allow me to answer your question with another: from where do we derive meaning?”

“Define ‘meaning,’ ‘cause there’s more than one definition. I can guess from that first speech but I want it made clear.”

“Of course,” she answers smoothly. “We can examine semiotic meaning in more detail later, but what I’m really asking about is significance: the meaning of life. Why do we exist? What is the purpose of our existence? What makes our lives meaningful, and from where do we derive that sense of meaningfulness?”

I raise an eyebrow. “That’s a pretty big question to ask on a first date.” I’m not sure if I intend that last part to be sarcastic or not. Do I consider this a date? Should I? Am I on a date right now?

Cheshire laughs, her voice rich and full and achingly beautiful. “Would you have it any other way, darling?”

Her terms of endearment still make me uneasy, but I admit, “I suppose not,” and consider her first question. I’ve thought about it plenty–who hasn’t?–but all my prior answers were derived from a rather different set of universal conditions.

Cheshire fills the silence, as she seems to enjoy doing. “I’ll start us off. If we accept both that there is no inherent significance to human existence and that it is human nature to seek inherent significance, we find the paradox of the Absurd. In the face of such an irresolvable contradiction, the only rational solution is to abandon the search for intrinsic meaning and instead become the maker of meaning.” She gestures once more to the storm of memory. “If significance is something that can be created, then there is value in doing so, and the creation of meaning has meaning in itself. Would you agree?”

“Sure,” I shrug. “You’re basically explaining my own beliefs to me.”

Cheshire takes two of the teacups not in use and sets them in front of her. “This presents a further question: is the creation of significance a resolution to the desire for meaning, or is the act of creation rendered meaningless by the inevitable death of all things?” Cheshire pours pomegranate juice into the first cup, and then she picks up the empty cup and squeezes until it shatters, shards of porcelain falling from her now-bloody hand. I watch the blood drip from her hand, fascinated.

I lean forward and steeple my fingers beneath my chin. Our interlocutor knows our beliefs at least as well as we do, so our best option is to reject those beliefs and go on the attack. Luckily, the point of attack here is obvious. “You’re presenting a false dichotomy. One of your premises is flawed: you said there’s no inherent significance like it’s an absolute, but that kind of thinking is a product of nihilism. Existentialism and absurdism function as philosophies because God is dead, faith in the divine murdered by the materialists and the rationalists. If there’s no higher power to give us meaning, then we have to make it ourselves, or accept that death will undo anything we try to make. But this isn’t Earth and I’m not Nietzsche, so I have to ask: is God dead?”

I know the answer, of course. I’ve seen it. The storm flickers and in it I see flashes of red liquid in a crystal flask, drank and spilled. A burning dagger, plucked from an abomination’s corpse. The weight of Azathoth’s attention pressing down on me, suffocating me with her obsessive love and detached curiosity. I have felt her touch and I find her divinity to be undeniable. My atheism died the moment I woke up in this strange new world.

Cheshire watches the storm with me, keen gaze flitting from memory to memory. “You are right, of course; the Dreamweaver and the Demiurge alike remain comfortably alive, both literally and metaphorically.”

“And they seem sufficiently opinionated,” I press. “Is this universe truly without intrinsic meaning, this world a cosmic accident? Is there no transcendental significance bestowed upon its inhabitants? Were all of you created by Azathoth and Nyarlathotep for no grand design or reason to exist? I find that incredibly unlikely.”

“Ah,” Cheshire says, “and now we turn to the philosophy of my reality. Indeed, the painter of worlds–Nyarlathotep, for Azathoth merely provides the canvas–had a reason for making mortal minds and setting them loose in the cosmic playground, and it is told to us by all those who would know: she wanted toys in the toybox.”

Her statement is punctuated by a change in the table decor: a bowl of fruit becomes a painted crate filled with fidget toys, Lego bricks, a Rubiks cube, and a doll wearing a pretty dress and a butterfly hairpin. I stare at the doll intently, but when I blink my eyes it is gone and Cheshire is speaking once more, and I idly note that her hand is now unbloodied.

“If the toymaker decides the purpose of each toy she makes, then we are toys and nothing more, and the meaning of our lives is to be found in how well we entertain our generous and benevolent Demiurge.” Cheshire’s voice drips with obvious sarcasm and she actually rolls her eyes.

I note her actions with interest. I have to wonder: is this part of the performance, or does she genuinely have some personal dislike for Nyarlathotep? Cheshire said that she was “created,” so was the Demiurge the one to create her? If she was telling the truth about that part, who else would have the means and motive to respond to the Nightmare Queen pulling me from Earth?

Cheshire continues, “That notion is, as you may imagine, unacceptable to many. There are some who lead their lives seeking to satisfy their creator, certainly, but there are others in Pandaemonium who rebel against the Demiurge as someone from your Earth might rebel against the Absurd.”

I pick up a spiky ball fidget toy and roll it around my fingers aimlessly. So rebellion against the divine is cross-cultural. I suppose that leads to the obvious question. “So how does the Demiurge feel about that?” I muse aloud.

“That,” says Cheshire with great relish, “depends on who you ask.”

Cheshire cracks her knuckles and another bowl of fruit transmutes, this time becoming a pair of statuettes: an angel of solid gold and a horned devil of black iron, both female in shape. The angel carries a book in one hand and a trumpet in the other, while the devil carries a sword in one hand and a serpent in the other.

“Hear now the story of the archons: the Intercessor and the Adversary, two beings of incredible power–power beyond any god or archdemon–brought about by the will of the Demiurge. The Intercessor serves the Demiurge as a messenger and herald, and she sets schemes in motion to satisfy the Demiurge’s designs. The Adversary was once like the Intercessor, but rebelled against the Demiurge and now snuffs out the plots and plans of the Intercessor wherever she can find them. The Adversary dedicates her existence to undoing the works of the Demiurge just as the Intercessor dedicates her existence to pursuing those works.”

I frown and set down my fidget toy, leaning my chin on my hands once more. “But if the Demiurge made the Adversary, or at least empowered her, then why hasn’t she just taken the Adversary’s power away? Is there some reason she can’t depower the Adversary?”

Cheshire shakes her head. “None whatsoever. And thus we come to the great question: is the Adversary–who by all accounts despises the Demiurge and Intercessor both–doing exactly what Nyarlathotep wants her to do? Or to return to more Earthly matters: if God made the Devil to fall, is the Devil not serving God’s will in every act of sin?”

“You’re asking someone who was an atheist until, like, a day ago,” I point out.

Cheshire waves a hand dismissively. “Don’t pretend you haven’t thought about it. I know you, Alice. I know everything about you, you little edgelord, including your interpretation of certain Biblical tales. I’ve read your framing of the Garden of Eden as ‘a heroic serpent gifting humanity with free will, only to be punished by a cruel and controlling God.’ You clearly have a stake, and a side, in this line of questioning.” The snake in the statuette’s hand flicks its tongue, once, and then returns to stillness.

I resist the urge to wince at my cringe-inducing younger self. “Okay, fine, I have opinions on religion, and on free will in particular.” I shift in my seat and let one hand fall away from my chin to start tapping the table as I think.

The Christianity comparison here would be the problem of evil, but that feels too imprecise; Nyarlathotep may be powerful but nothing of what I’ve heard suggests she’s benevolent. Then again, maybe we just need to reframe “goods” and “evils” as “desired outcomes” and “undesired outcomes.”

“Okay, so, in religious philosophy,” I start, “there’s this question about the problem of evil, which basically goes like this: if God is both omnipotent and omnibenevolent, why does evil exist? A common refrain in responses is this idea that sometimes lesser evils are necessary for greater goods, one of the best examples of that being free will: if you allow people free will, you must allow them to do evil, or else they aren’t really free.”

Cheshire plucks an apple and takes a bite. “It has to be a choice.”

I nod. “If we take that and apply it to the Demiurge, we can ask: if the Demiurge is omnipotent and has desired outcomes, why does she allow undesired outcomes to happen? Maybe the Demiurge allows the Adversary’s rebellion as a necessary sacrifice to achieve desired outcomes elsewhere. It serves a purpose.”

Cheshire sets the apple down, turning it so the bite mark faces me. “And what if the act of rebellion was the purpose?”

Toys in the toybox. You can line them up in a row, you can have them play house… or you can make them fight. “You’re saying Nyarlathotep wants the Adversary to oppose her, or to oppose the Intercessor, because it makes the playground a more interesting space. Like how any game of chess needs two players.”

Cheshire smiles and takes another sip of her pomegranate juice. “At least, that’s what some believe.”

I eye the strange monster sitting across from me. “Is that what you believe, Cheshire? You said that some people serve the Demiurge and some people rebel against her, just as the Intercessor and the Adversary do. Which do you align with?” I gesture at the two statues.

Cheshire shrugs. “I know only what I was made to know, and I was made to be of use to you. I will support you however you choose to act.”

I glare at the geist. “You’re too smart to play dumb. You clearly know way more than I do about this universe, and you just as clearly have opinions about what you know. So spill.”

It’s the first time I’ve really seen her stop and contemplate something. She glances between the angel and the devil, her expression more thoughtful than devious for once. “I think that… in the end, we have no choice but to play the part we’ve been given. Whether that role be god or godslayer, it would be hubris to deny what has been written for us. We’re all slaves to God’s script.” Slowly, Cheshire reaches out and lays a hand on the statuette of the angel.

Is that how you really feel? Or is even that a performance? I place my hand on the statuette of the devil. “I think you’re wrong. And I’ll prove it to you, whatever it takes. Once we usurp the Lady of Shards, the Demiurge is next.”

Cheshire laughs. “Oh, Alice, you really are perfect. Well, regardless of your deicidal schemes, I think we’ve established enough of a philosophical foundation. Now, we get to talk about magic.”