Alice rolled her eyes, deciding that this C creature was perhaps more annoying yet endearing than curious. Despite the incredible insensibility of it all, this new world felt remarkably peaceful and comforting (that is, as long as Alice remembered to hold her tongue). Still, it seemed that there was very little that she could hold to from her memories here; it struck her as positively queer that she would feel almost homesick for such a distressing time in her life, but even familiar nonsense was still familiar as far as she was concerned. Familiar was certainly the word that came to mind as Alice glanced around idly and noticed a small white figure in dapper dressings. The tiny spectacles perched on its nose, the nervous gait of its dashings--familiar indeed.

“The white rabbit!” In her newfound joy, Alice forgot the cardinal rule that C had laid out for her. Then again, it seemed better to forget, anyway. It was a silly rule without rhyme or reason. As Alice felt C tugging at her sleeve again, she glanced back around and saw the two curious figures from the horizon.

“Bit!”

“Bot!”

“Bit!”

“Bot!”

They were a profoundly merry pair, dancing about as a new landscape literally shot up around them. With every happy step and every delightful step, a new rustling tree popped up here, an expanse of emerald shrubbery sprouted up there, and a soft dirt path seemed to unfurl itself at Alice’s feet and beyond. There was suddenly no sign of the white rabbit, lost in the now starkly reddish tint of the sky, soon blackened with night and then speckled with early dawn. The two figures, short & stout and tall & lanky, sang and pranced their way around Alice while C looked on disapprovingly.

“I do believe you’ve gone and set them off. Not very prudent, you see?”

The two stopped dancing in perfect unison, eyeing C with a look of sudden astoundedness.

“Set us off?” sang the short one.

“You wouldn’t dream of setting us off!” sang the tall one.

“But ‘tis such a good dream, so I just might,” C replied.

“Ah, boo,” sang the stout one, shuffling over to Alice’s side. “You’re no fun. This one, on the other side, this one hasn’t heard our story!”

“You mean your story,” sand the lanky one.

“Why would I mean your story?” sang the short one.

“Because you hardly ask why at all,” sang the tall one. “A good story is a good story to you solely on the basis that the story is good.”

C nudged Alice. “You see?” he muttered. “No sense to these glatches.”

“But the story is good,” sang the stout one. “If the story weren’t good, would I keep telling the story?”

“Yes, I do believe you would,” sang the lanky one. “There is nothing to the story, so a new something springs up every time the story is told. The story never gets old, but the story certainly feels as though the story has been told before!”

“Are you certain that you aren’t the one who feels that the story has been told before?” sang the short one.

The inside of Alice’s head began to throb amidst the dissonance. “If you don’t mind, I must be on my way if you two haven’t anything more important to say.”

“Why, we do mind!” sang the tall one, springing up in front of Alice.

“We’ve nothing important to say,” sang the stout one, bumbling over behind Alice, “because we never say anything important! The important must be sung!”

“I do believe,” C spoke up with a subtle note of disdain, “that I’ve never heard such an insensible and cacophonic language for music in all of my days.”

“Surely you don’t believe such a thing!” sang the lanky one.

“The first verse is over!” sang the short one, rolling alongside his companion in front of Alice. “Now, my dearest brother, the chorus!”

Nightfall sprang back overhead as the two figures cleared their throats. The tall one opened his mouth to begin, but the stout one burst into a symphony unlike anything Alice had ever heard before. Mountains began to spring up and toss the trees aside as he bellowed on.

“Everything was something in everyone’s eyes! That was how we were named! We had values ascribed by theories and guessings, all such a roundabout game! But roundabout and roundabout they circled far back and again: for this little fellow--myself, realize--hadn’t the virtue of a name! Before I was nothing, and nothing was me, yet nothing occupied the space: ‘twas all thrown askew, this numbering thing, as long as empty I remained--”

“No, see, there you’ve gone and ruined everything,” the lanky one sighed.

“With such misplaced rhyme and backspeak, I wholeheartedly agree,” C smirked, “you see?”

“But this is the good part!” the short one complained. Waves of hills started to jolt the forest path. Alice groped and dug fiercely through the dirt, fearing that she might tumble away with every word.

“No, no, this part isn’t good!” sang the tall one. “What good is something for nothing? What is gained besides that which wasn’t there and is no longer here?”

“But that’s the rub!” sang the stout one. “Before, there was nothing for something for nothing! Don’t you remember how many somethings were made nothings by that one lack of something? If there isn’t something for nothing, then what good is nothing? Space, I tell you! Space that is occupied by nothing! Space needs a certain something, certainly with certainty!”

Alice noticed that C appeared to gag with every certain utterance.

“And what of reaching that something?” sang the lanky one. “What good have we reached?”

“Surely you haven’t forgotten!” sang the short one. “All of the bases are finally covered! Can you imagine all the somethings that can be done with nothing? How else would there be we two?”

The hills stopped rumbling through the forest path. Alice struggled to stand up, tripping over the illusions of her feet. This curious pair was driving her off the edge, she concluded, and all for nothing!

The tall one appeared to identify with the stout one’s logic. Sighing and straightening himself up, the lanky one gave an empathetic nod.

“So we’re clear on this little proof?” the short one sang.

“I don’t accept your conclusion,” the tall one sang. “I merely fail to reject your conclusion.”

The stout one looked down and kicked up some dirt. “Well, that’s no fun!”

“Ah, go stir up the pot somewhere else for a little bit, you see?” C interjected, tugging a disoriented Alice along through the shimmering dawn.

“No, no, you’ve thrown us out of sequence!” The short one tried to reorient his song, but it was too late.

“Bit!”

“Bot!”

“Bit!”

“Bot!”

The mountains around them leveled off into plateaus streaked with midday sun. The two figures danced merely along, their shadows crisscrossing over the majestic red clays and stones. Alice blinked rapidly, thankful that she had finally regained what seemed to be the willingness to be conscious.

“I do beg your pardon,” she looked down at C, “but how were those two creatures causing such a ruckus? In fact, what are those two creatures?” The question appeared completely foreign to Alice for the briefest of moments.

“I call them glatches,” C began, “but I do suppose that makes me a liar, you see? They’re ar-chi-tects and rabble-rousers, unaware of how big they truly are. ‘Tis a shame, really: they’ve seen everything I’ve seen, tainting and compressing all of my most beautiful words and functions into nothing but simplified--“ C swished a word around in his mouth, his eyes darting back and forth as though making sure the creatures were out of earshot. “--bizs and bozs--lifeless codes and scribbling, completely indecipherable soliloquies. The longer they run, the more overwhelmed I become! You see?”

Alice nodded absentmindedly. “Bit and Bot,” she mouthed. “Those are their names?”

“You’re getting knowledgeable,” C replied, “but ‘tis meaningless. There isn’t much for you to do with that knowledge now, here under this sun. You see?”

“I imagine I’m getting somewhere,” Alice said, smoothing out her dress and sitting down to rest.

C yawned and waddled over, leaving tiny footprints in the soft forest dirt. “I’m posi-tively exhausted. Cradle me.” He nestled his face in Alice’s chest.

“Come now,” Alice exclaimed, springing back to life and pushing C aside. Instead of tumbling away, he simply slipped around until he lay serenely in Alice’s arms. “I don’t see the meaning of this!”

C’s eyes perked up. “How could you not? So many beautiful things start with c! Cradling, cuddling, camping, curiosity, caterpillar--”

Caterpillar, Alice thought to herself. Even with C babbling in her arms, she began to feel very lonely. All this new company in this new landscape was very well and good, if too curious to appropriately describe, but nothing was familiar at all; if anything was, it seemed to be whisked away without a second thought. It had never occurred to Alice that she might actually miss that nostalgia, that series of days and nights.

“Christ--hey, are you listening to me?”

Alice snapped back to reality and stared down politely at C. “Certainly.”

“Certainty, that’s another!” C exclaimed with eager reverence. “And, of course, catastrophe!”

Alice’s brow furrowed. “A catastrophe doesn’t sound very pleasant.”

“Why, catastrophe sounds quite credibly pleasant!” C reasoned joyfully. “Ca-tas-trophy…the word sounds like an ancient princess or a spice laden upon dumplings! Catastrophe rolls right off the tongue in complete consecution of poetry, you see?”

Alice sighed, looking down at the wide eyed creature in her arms with a motherly affection. “I suppose I do see.”

C suddenly sprang up, his eyes directly locked with Alice’s. “Hey! Careful now! You oughtn’t idly utter something like that before the wedding of the century!”

Alice felt her own eyes grow wide as C seemed to be staring (albeit quite innocently) into her soul. “The what?”

A puff of smoke brushed lazily past Alice’s face. Inhaling too quickly, she began to cough violently, forcing C to tumble out of her arms.

“Oh, do quiet yourself,” a deep and penetrating voice suddenly spoke up. Alice blinked, swearing that something was there in the puff of smoke.

“I hope you realize the weight of this inconvenience, bearing wi’ness to your every struggle,” the voice droned on, “without ever hearing your name out of simple courtesy. What a girl.”

Alice’s eyes lit up with both surprise and wonder. This was familiar in the most gripping of ways.