Alice Knight got up,
       on time.

She prepared herself for the day,
 unhurriedly,
 knowing that she would not be late.

She opened her bed,
 to air,
 and climbed through the mirror above her chest of drawers.

No time later she climbed out of the mirror in her office,
 absolutely on time.
For Alice most days started like this, home, and then work.
The fat gold watch that she kept on a chain in her pocket kept her safe, kept her right, kept her precise.
It should not be supposed that Alice wore a rather impractical blue dress with an apron. The pocket containing the watch was in a tailored waistcoat and Alice’s clothes, though striking, were more sensible than that.
Problem solving was her business and it was a serious business.

Francesca, one of Alice’s P.A.’s, walked in without knocking and put a few files in Alice’s hand, then slouched out of the room.
Each file was a problem,
 they would each have to be solved.
Alice scanned Francesca’s untidy notes on the front of each file.
The files were in rough order of urgency.
Alice grabbed the top two files and dived into her main looking glass.
No time later she crawled ungracefully out of the rear view mirror in her crazy sportscar. She flung the files into the tiny back seat.
Painted with a chessboard pattern, red seats, mirrored bumpers: she thought that the car looked disgusting but… she paid her staff to be creative and she was determined to drive their creation.
Apart from looks she loved the car,
 it did everything just right,
 or a little better.

Right now the car, “The Knightmare” as she called it in her head, was leaping towards the site of the first problem of the day.
Alice always liked to solve the first problem quickly to get her going for the day, Alice’s staff knew this and would have provided a simple one to start off with.
She let the car drive and flipped through the file.

Some rich client, his name wasn’t important, had got himself trapped in a hostage situation in his skyscraper. The problem was obviously to get him out, a.s.a.p.
Most hired fixers would go in quietly, remove just their man and vamoose. That wasn’t problem solving in Alice Knight’s book.
To satisfy herself the whole situation must be defused in the next fifteen minutes to half-an-hour. Piece of cake.
Alice smiled and slowly went invisible from the toes up.

With the watch and the car there was time to spare before she arrived, time to scan the second file and find out a little about the next problem. It was a problem within her own organisation, “Probably Practical”, a major employee had been absent from work for three days. The problem could be anything. But there was no more time, she was at the skyscraper. She had to go.
The car parked itself a block from the line of police sealing off the street. Alice got out her portable mirror and leapt inside, pulling the mirror in after her.

Alice floated in the space behind the mirrors. No time passed. Through each mirror she could see the real world, frozen and still.
The skyscraper was full of mirrors, huge ones, through which she could see the whole situation. She counted the criminals, examined their equipment, she planned little plans for how to overcome them. She found the rich client and thought about how to get him safe. But Alice preferred doing to planning and so she reached out and pulled a terrorist into the mirror beside her.

The woman went stiff as a board, her eyes were glazed.
 Nobody but Alice could stay awake on the other side of the mirrors.
 People could travel that way but they could not remember it,
 could never control it. Alice took the weapons from her body and took her body to a cell deep in the heart of Probably Practical headquarters. No time passed.
Alice flit back and forth to the skyscraper each time bearing back a helpless hostage-taker. It took less than five minutes in the real world and Alice felt a little bit of anti-climax. She decided to give the police and the terrorists a bit of a show.
She slipped a piece of mushroom from her so practical pockets.
This had been the caterpillars gift.
She munched the mushroom and felt familiar stretching sensations as she grew,
 and grew,
 and grew.

The sun shone in the real world, making the whole of the skyscraper blaze like a mirror, and out of that mirror stepped Alice, visible once more, and gigantic, and terrifying.
Her limbs were rubbery and unrealistic, she wrapped one arm three times around the towerblock, one foot on the ground, one foot braced against the tower ready to climb, face laughing and lolling on the plastic neck, the other arm snaking into a high window and pulling the leader of the terrorists out into the free sunlight. Alice gently lowered the screaming man into the arms of the screaming police.
She smiled a smile of rare size and went slowly invisible.
Problem Solved.
The rich client could come out at the same time as all the other hostages. She wasn’t a taxi service, no matter how important they were.

Charged from her morning’s first success it was time to press on. The rabbits gold watch dragged her onward. She mustn’t be late.
Next Problem.
Wonderland-Alice had been off work too long without explanation,
 it was time for the boss to go to her house
 and ask what was wrong.
Probably Practical was a close working environment,
 for better or worse.

Alice sat in the car, thinking about Wonderland-Alice.
When Alice had first gone through the looking glass,
 on the day when everything changed,
 another girl had come the other way.
That girl was Wonderland-Alice,
alike to Alice in every way… except that she had lived her whole life in a world without certainty.
Because of this she was more suspicious than Alice,
 more greedy,
 stronger in many ways.
She was more resourceful than Alice
 but less adaptable, more easily stuck in bad patterns.
She still wore the traditional blue and white dress,
 the traditional blonde hair.

Alice had been repelled but fascinated by her when she returned from behind the looking glass to find a strange twin loose in her world.
Wonderland-Alice seemed to be things that Alice had thought that she wanted for herself.
 She was stubborn and selfish,
 she was independent and demanding.
Alice was just starting Probably Practical with her new powers and it seemed… right to give her a role in the business.
She seemed glamorous in her slightly gothic clothing.
She seemed free.

But Alice had found that she was not free.

She was not free to relax.
She could not feel herself at home anywhere.
Everything in her life was either ‘curious’,
 or ‘curiouser’,
 even everyday things.
So Wonderland-Alice was a little confused.
She was dedicated to her work and struggled always to remember,
 that something done today
    affected tomorrow.
Oh dear,
    the car was there already.
It was time,
 but Alice did not want it to be time.
She realised that she was nervous.
 Nervous at meeting her own wilder self.
She had to get out of the car.
The gold watch meant that she could never be late;
 that’s what the White Rabbit’s gift had meant.
The world now ran to her time,
           And she ran to its.
 Which meant “Get out of the Car!”
 Alice did.

Wonderland-Alice’s house was very normal; small.
Brick at the front and glass at the back.
Two small gardens full of long grasses and wild flowers,
 sometimes called weeds.
Alice walked up the stone path, fully visible in the weak sunshine.
She put her finger on the bell.
                 There was no reply.
She rang twice. Three times.   Nothing.
She hopped up onto the wall that ran between Wonderland-Alice’s house and her neighbour’s. She walked along the leaf-strewn wall, one hand on each house, and leant, smiling, into the back garden.

 

Wonderland-Alice was walking round and round her garden,
 like a teddy bear. Muttering to herself.

Alice leaned further into the sunshine and called out,
 “Hey Hey Hey!
 Long time no see.”
Wonderland-Alice looked up sharply. Her eyes were hostile
 until she recognised Alice and they faded, not welcoming.
Alice and her training looked for the problem.
Could it be her? Best to get on with it.
Alice sat down on the wall,
 “What’s the problem?” she asked, realising that she was still nervous.
To combat the nerves she impulsively jumped into the garden, close to Wonderland-Alice.
The two Alices grinned at each other, still awkward after years of friendship.
Alice realised that this was only problem two of a busy day and repeated,
“So Al, what’s the problem?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know, work. Going to work. What’s up?”
“I dunno, did you miss me?
 Has the company folded without me?”
“We’re ticking over.” Alice played for time. She thought that she had spotted the problem but she had to move in on it without scaring it away.
“What have you been doing these last few days? Anything fun?”
Wonderland-Alice replied in a tired voice,
 “Not much. I bathed in the wan light of television for a day.
  I slept for a day.
  Today I’m pottering in the garden.”
Alice was now sure. There was no man trouble, no money worries, no health drama. The problem was between Wonderland-Alice and her work. It was a problem with Probably Practical.
Those problems were the easiest to solve.
All Alice had to do was change the way that she did things.

But first she had to find out what the issue was exactly.
She probed for information.
“Left any cases undone while you are taking your holidays?”
Wonderland-Alice looked at her with a face of malice.
“Not likely!
 You could have got a performing monkey to do it while I was off.”
Alice thought that she had it now.
“A monkey couldn’t have helped Shauna.”
Shauna was a troubled kid whom Wonderland-Alice had talked to until her troubles seemed small enough to deal with.
Talked to her for days and days. Talked to her without trying to solve any problems. Just talking and talking to another human being.
“That’s a cheap shot,
              using my only success against me.”
“She’s not your only success; and you know that I’m not against you.”
“Still…” Wonderland-Alice seemed to want to be annoyed but not quite able to be, “What are you doing round here anyway? Haven’t you got a world to save?”
Alice laughed. Wonderland-Alice was so theatrical in her annoyance that she couldn’t help it. She laughed at her like adults do at a clever toddler.
Alice cared for her in a way that would be difficult for anyone else to comprehend. She wanted to protect her as if she was her own daughter but she also wanted to prove that she was separate from her in a way that twins might understand.
She could never be sure how Wonderland-Alice felt about her. She was so grim and closed and serious. Alice thought that she liked her, hoped that she had grown to feel something positive for her in the years since they had come through the mirror into this world. Wonderland-Alice had never gone home, surely that said something.
She had stayed because Alice asked her to;
 because it seemed important at the time.
But time had passed and now clearly Wonderland-Alice was unsatisfied by her work at the firm.
            Alice’s firm.
Wonderland-Alice had stayed because of Alice’s burning idea, now that idea was cooling and Wonderland-Alice was fading.
Alice was just so busy nowadays.
 She relied on her team running smoothly around her, she had no time to shape the team, to coax her people into shining like they could with her encouragement. And now the team was fragmenting,
                              here was the first serious crack.
This was a problem Alice must solve. Must solve or give up problem solving altogether.

But what was the right answer?

Was Wonderland-Alice really meant to be a problem solver?
Should she not try to find her own feet without Alice? Without following Alice’s golden vision of Probably Practical?
Alice liked to solve problems quickly and talking to herself wouldn’t get anything done. She became aware of Wonderland-Alice staring at her; she had been quiet for too long.
“The world is fine. I’m here about you,”
 the two Alices had always been honest with each other,
“You haven’t been at work for three days. You clearly want me to notice. I have noticed and I’m here. What is up with you? What is it?”
Wonderland-Alice looked at her with her empty, level eyes and stopped walking,
“I’m exactly like you, why do I work for you? What is so special about you?
Alice was surprised but only for a second.
“Nothing is special about me. Its just that I got the gifts of Wonderland and you came through to the real world.”
“And in the real world what did I get? Where were the gifts waiting for me?”
“You got a world that you could understand for more than a few moments at a time. You got friends. And when you help people in my world they are real people and it matters.”
“Yes and falling down a rabbit hole here kills you.”
“Not me,” said Alice quickly.
“No, not you, but anybody else, like me for example.”
“I’m sorry I don’t know how to share my gifts, I didn’t mean to get them myself. Things just happened. You know how… inexplicable Wonderland is; do you know I almost said ‘curious’.
That’s one good thing about the real world. It never repeats itself. Not exactly.
Maybe I can only say this because the Rabbit’s watch works for me but I’m glad that someone is Alice without being
Alice Knight, Problem Solver!
I think that I need you around, and I don’t like being need so I give you jobs to justify keeping you around, to keep you from having to have an even worse job.”

Alice tailed off, Alice looked at Alice.

“You need me? What for? The pointless makework that you dish out to me? You want to save me from wasting my time by making sure that I do? Do you think that I belong to you? Do I belong to your precious Probably Practical? What do you want of me, except that I stay around to make you feel normal? What?”
Alice didn’t feel up to the questions, she felt drained by admitting her needs that she hadn’t known she had, she felt vulnerable. She also felt like a long-suffering mother talking down a complaining teenage daughter, and she hated the feeling.
She couldn’t help the way the world worked, even if it worked in her favour. She couldn’t help being special. Wonderland-Alice was asking too much. If your job was bad you wrote a letter, you didn’t just not turn up and have your colleagues come running after you.
Alice saw her solution.
“You should go back to Wonderland.
If you need to come back, you will.”
Wonderland Alice looked concerned,
“But you said that you needed me. Do you not want me to stay?”
“I would like that if you really wanted it also but I don’t think that you do. Maybe your place is not by my side, in the shadow of my powers. Maybe I’ve held you back by keeping you near me.
Maybe working in the real world is too much for you, too soon.
It is too much for me sometimes, I’m always on duty,
running to and fro, and I love it but…
I’m spreading myself too thin.”
“It’s not the work, really.” Wonderland-Alice seemed to be trying to encouragingly raise the tone of the conversation.
“You’re right. It does feel good to help real people. Shauna was a real victory, my real victory…”
Now Wonderland-Alice trailed off

and Alice looked at Alice again.
Friends again.

Alice would have liked to stay,
for biscuits or something,
she would have liked to have lain all day in the untidy garden but…
the problem was solved; and there were still a pile of folders in her office to be seen to before the end of the day.
The girls embraced and Alice showed herself out to her horrible car that she loved so much.
She was bang on time for her next engagement,
                She just couldn’t help it.

 

 

 

 

By ICAM
For Alice