Alice Asks: "What Is Real?"

Everyone laughed at the way he was. Nobody asked how he got that way.

"The sun rises in the west!"

"The world is flat!"

"Killing us will save us!"

This from a man who once was the Village Brain. The village was a place of high commerce and good living. Everybody wanted to keep the good life going - including the Brain. But in this pursuit the Brain noticed an increase of deaths among the weakest members: babies, the very aged, anyone voiceless. The Brain set out to rectify all this.

While others were busy with business, the Brain examined the dead. Their deaths were not natural ones: death by poison it was. The Brain traced this back to the village water well. Eager to share the results with his fellow villagers, the Brain published his works for all to read. But instead of saving the village as he'd hoped, The Brain suffered brain damage. Nobody cared what he wrote, it wasn't good for business.

"Business is life," they told him. And the Brain started to wonder if the sun rises in the east. What is real?

He stared in dreaded awe at the blind and the willing, seeing his fellow man in a new and terrible light. "I must dig deeper!" Staking out the well in the darkest of night, the Brain caught a frightened creature of the dark dropping poisoned pellets. When the Brain confronted the creature, it hissed and lashed out, claiming, "This is how I make my living! Don't interfere with my business!" Again with the business.

Onward and upward forever!

But who makes a living from communal poisoning? Who'd employ such a creature? The Brain followed the sorrowful servant back to its masters: the Greedy Men. Taking his silver, the creature departed while the Brain listened to talk of the Greedy Men. "The more we kill the more for us! Death to the weak!" they cheered, clinking glasses of village water. Again the Brain suffered damage. These men drank their own poisoned water!

And the Brain started to wonder if the world is flat. What is real?

Staggering and confused, the Brain asked where the future lay? The Greedy Men were esteemed as the Village Gurus for success. No one questioned them for that would be to question their most holy business religion. Undaunted, the brain sought another way to life, trekking through the Great Forest in search of hope on a journey of faith. His faith was rewarded when he found water true and unpoisoned. A place to start again!

"Rejoice! There is a way to live! On the other side of the Great Forest is life anew!"

"But why leave when there is no problem? For the villagers to believe they were on the wrong path they'd have to declare themselves village idiots. Better to drink poison than to do that! (Yes, they knew they drank poison now but since everyone was doing it, it must be normal!) And that's when things got curiouser and curiouser.

The damaged Brain started to wonder if they really could live by killing themselves. What is real?

Reality is we let this garbage control our lives. Really!

The Village Idiot (formerly the Brain) lost all hope and in a death wish of escape wrote a book to mock all the insanity and turtles he saw. "I'll speak the ultimate truth! Go ahead and kill me but I'll have my say first!" Originally titled, "Fuck you death-tripping, lying assholes who bring ruin to the watered land as well as the dry while ignoring paradise" he changed it to the shorter, "Malice in Wonderland".

'I don't think they play at all fairly,' Alice began, in rather a complaining tone,' and they all quarrel so dreadfully one can't hear oneself speak — and they don't seem to have any rules in particular; at least, if there are, nobody attends to them — and you've no idea how confusing it is all the things being alive; for instance, there's the arch I've got to go through next walking about at the other end of the ground — and I should have croqueted the Queen's hedgehog just now, only it ran away when it saw mine coming?'

The book was a smash hit, the villagers blind to their own insanity. Idiocy became genius once branded as such in the reality of their minds - sort of like the value fantasized of mere paper. This was seen as The New Hope (yes, they knew they were dying - but no one connected the poison with that). Soon they all were saying it in hopes of deceiving reality's ugly truths:

"The sun rises in the west!"

"The world is flat!"

"Killing us will save us!"