The Four Flatlanders were having a tea party, and debriefing their trip down the rabbit hole. Sarayu had made some fresh oatcakes, and Alphonse had made a fresh brew of organic Darjeeling.
Was that really a white rabbit with a watch and a waistcoat?
Robert was still trying to process all this new information. As a renowned former symbologist he knew that reality had a habit of slipping from his grasp. It seemed only yesterday that he was coming to terms with the fact that he was always being mistaken for a well known character in fiction. Now he was sliding down rabbit holes in Victorian England.
"We can go anywhere in fiction." said Sarayu. "I would love to meet Abraham Lincoln."
"But he was a real person. How do we contact him?"
Alphonse gave the matter some thought.
"We can go anywhere in the Flatland of Fiction. As characters you only have a mental existence, so your mass is just about zero. As an archetype I can traverse time and space in an instant. Real persons are a different matter. They have mass and complicated timelines. What if we met Lincoln. We know that he was assassinated. Could we keep that fact to ourselves, or would we be tempted to warn him?"
"Good point. I guess it would be sad to meet him, knowing that one day he would be killed, and not being able to tell him."
Abraham Lincoln is my nam[e]
And with my pen I wrote the same
I wrote in both hast and speed
and left it here for fools to read
"He was a poet." Sarayu had found one of Lincoln's poems on Wikipedia. "Does that count as fiction?"
And with my pen I wrote the same
I wrote in both hast and speed
and left it here for fools to read
"He was a poet." Sarayu had found one of Lincoln's poems on Wikipedia. "Does that count as fiction?"
"We can try and see."
The four sat down in a circle. Alphonse wrote down the poem on a piece of paper, and passed it to everyone to read and focus their attention. They were dressed in the same Victorian clothes that they had worn for their journey down the rabbit-hole.
Well, a fool is reading it.
"We should focus on 1865 again, as close to Lincoln's death as possible. That way we should not disturb too many timelines." Alphonse did not want to take any chances.
The four of them concentrated on the words of the poem, and the same year 1865, when the first edition of Alice was published. Down the rabbit hole again!
The circle started to spin slowly and they started to fall, past old bookshelves, teapots and through a dark tunnel. Ahead of them they could see a white rabbit with a watch. After a while the tunnel opened onto a field. In the middle of the field was a log cabin. Sitting on the porch was a man smoking a pipe, who looked a lot like Abraham Lincoln. They approached him and said hello. The man rubbed his eyes.
"Are you the little people?" he asked.
It was then that they realised that they had shrunk to about ten inches.
"Yes we are." said Sarayu without hesitation. Alphonse and Trylyan agreed.
"That's probably why you see the little people."
The president smiled. The light started to get dimmer. The four little people felt the pull of the circle.
"Goodbye, Mr President!" Sarayu called out. He waved back from the distance. In a few moments they were in the tunnel again, heading back for the barge and 2009.
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