Chapter One: The Clockwork Rabbit

Alice was minding her own business, which is the most dangerous occupation for a girl of her size and curiosity, because one’s own business has a wicked habit of becoming everyone else’s. She had laid out her tools upon the garden path—one honest screwdriver (which insisted it was quite respectable), a pair of tweezers (which took offense at everything), and a clockwork bird with its beak stuck slightly open as if it had been caught forever in the act of saying “Oh!” The roses wobbled about on their stems in a breeze that smelled faintly of coal and toast, and the daisies gave great, polite sneezes.

“Bless you,” said Alice, for she was a well-brought-up child, even when addressing flowers.

“Steam,” sniffed a daisy, quite dignified. “We are allergic to steam.”

“There is no steam,” said Alice, peering about. “Only sunshine and Sunday. If there were steam, I should see it, and if I saw it, I should surely say it.”

At which a discreet hiss sounded from under the azalea bush, and something somewhere went tick-tock, whirr-clank, hiss-puff!—the exact sort of reply that contradicts a person very rudely without saying a word. The roses coughed. The daisies sneezed again. Alice, being one who could not resist a noise that sounded like an argument between a kettle and a typewriter, put down the screwdriver and knelt in the flowerbed.

“I say,” she called into the dark. “Are you a mouse, a mole, or a machine?”

“None and all,” said a voice like a penny-farthing talking in its sleep. “Stand clear of the exhaust.”

Alice had just time to wonder if an exhaust was something you could trip over when the soil trembled and the bush erupted. Out burst a white blur with brass rivets, whiskers wired like telegraph lines, and a waistcoat stitched with gears that clicked themselves in a most improper fashion. It was the White Rabbit—only more so, as if someone had wound him up to a higher setting.

“You’re late!” he squeaked, and a valve near his collar let off an indignant toot. “Horribly, dreadfully, scandalously late!”

“For what?” said Alice, who did not at all like being told about her lateness, especially by a creature whose ears appeared to be tuned to the Foreign Stations.

“For the Invasion Tea, of course!” He tapped his breast, where a pocket watch had given up being merely a pocket watch and bolted itself to his ribs with a handsome row of screws. “The minutes are marching without permission! The seconds have staged a revolt! The hour has barricaded itself behind a samovar! Oh, oh!” He patted himself down as if he might find a spare minute in his pockets. “No time! Even less than that! Negative time!”

Do you want to find out what is negative time? Simply click on thje link, below, and enjoy.

https://thecrazymadwriter.com/alice-in-wonderland-stories/alice-in-steampunk-dalekland/