GRADUATE COMMON ROOM, CHRIST CHURCH, OXFORD UNIVERSITY
Fourteen minutes past midnight, the Pillar guides me through the empty, dimly lit corridors of Christ Church, Oxford University. He is supposedly going to show me into a room that has the ability to help me travel back to Victorian times. Given all the madness I have seen, I am still skeptical about the concept of going back in time. If it were possible and relatively easy, why wouldn't all Wonderland Monsters use it?
"Are we there yet?" I whisper.
"Patience, my dear Alice," he says, counting the doors left and right. "It's been a long time since I've been here. They always change things in the university." He uses his pocket watch as some kind of compass. I don't bother to ask. "A few years ago, they made a mess out of the university to shoot a Harry Potter movie." His voice shows he really disliked it. "But I'm not feeling like I am Dumbledore now. Thank you very much."
"Until you find that door, I am still wondering why Professor Gorgon Ramstein, a.k.a. Muffin Man, is doing this," I say, neglecting any silly side jokes of his. "I mean, I know the government dismissed his research, killed his lawyer, and he feels responsible for exposing the food corruption of companies. Is that enough reason to massacre all those people?"
"Of course not." The Pillar is still looking for the door leading to the time-travel room. "The Muffin Man, like all of us Wonderlanders, took a new identity in this new world. He became a professor. He even got married and had three kids. Margaret Kent ordered his kids killed."
I stop in my place. The Pillar notices and turns to look at me. I can feel silent anger creep up in my veins.
"Shocked?" He raises an eyebrow. "Well, do you want to know how his kids were killed?"
"I think I have an idea." Although I am beginning to get used to shocking deaths, I don't want to say it.
"Margaret seduced his kids to eat a great amount of expired Queen of Hearts Tarts," the Pillar says. "Enough to get them poisoned...slowly. When Gorgon drove his kids to the hospital, the nurses were ordered to conspire with Margaret and look away until the kids died."
"The same way he wants to kill everyone in the country," I lament. "And you still think something more sinister happened to him in Wonderland?"
"I am hoping so," the Pillar says. "Because if the Muffin Man is only fueled by his present-day anger, I don't know of any way we can stop him. To be honest, the man has been squashed like a cockroach in this life. And I don't know how to use this time machine to go back a few years. It's a Wonderland time machine. It only goes back to Wonderland. Let's hope we find a trigger point in his past and stop the story from the beginning." The Pillar turns the knob of the door next to him and pushes it open. "Welcome to the time-travel room."
I read the sign on the door as I enter. "The Graduate Common Room?"
"Formally known as Professor Einstein's Room." The Pillar follows me in and closes the door behind us.
The room is modernly decorated with a notable fireplace and a huge desk with old English carvings. There are a few souvenirs here and there, looking as if transported from the Museum of the History of Science. A couple of couches colored red and black are set on one side. There is a table with magazines in front of a large window looking out into the garden. One thing stands out: a blackboard with mathematical writings on it.
"Albert Einstein?" I ask.
"He lectured in Oxford for a while, and was given this room in 1930." The Pillar takes off his suit's jacket, which he rarely does. "I suppose you know Einstein is in many ways the father of the concept of time."
"I'm insane, but I went to school," I say, eyes on the blackboard. "So Einstein really knew how to time-travel?"
"Of course, he did. Einstein was as mad as Lewis. While Lewis Carroll stuttered, Einstein was actually autistic, but few people know that. Einstein was a great fella—bad haircut, though." The Pillar pulls the blackboard to the middle of the room. He does it with care and respect. "This same room had been Lewis Carroll's room for five years when he studied here."
"Wow." I like the connection. I didn't know about it. "That's about seventy years before Einstein came."
"Seventy years and no one discovered Carroll's secrets but a madman—a.k.a. Professor Einstein himself." The Pillar rubs the blackboard clean. The chalk doesn't come off.
"Secrets?"
"Technically, Carroll discovered time travel." The Pillar looks at me. "But since he wasn't sure a Wonderland Monster would end up using it, he kept it a secret."
"And Einstein discovered that secret seventy years later when he entered the room?"
"Along with other things, like the Zebra Puzzle, but that's irrelevant now. Lewis Carroll wasn't just anyone, Alice. He was an artist, photographer, writer, priest, and mathematician. Have you ever met anyone like that?" the Pillar chirps. Suddenly, I remember Lewis telling me about Einstein the last time I climbed up the Tom Tower. I believe the Pillar isn't lying. "Einstein reinterpreted Carroll's work by staying in his room in Oxford many years later. Do you know his messy hair was an aftermath of repeatedly using the time machine in this room? It rather fried."
"Why didn't Einstein tell the world about it, then?"
"Are you kidding me? You know what those lunatic politicians and businessmen out there would do with such a device?" He stops and looks at the blackboard. "Besides, the time-travel machine has never been fully functioning."
"Are you saying it doesn't work?"
"I never tried, myself," the Pillar says. "I only read about it, and Carroll used to hint at it. It works for only fourteen minutes, and I believe it has certain limits."
"Fourteen?" I grimace. "What's with this number popping up everywhere?"
"It only popped up once on your wall in the cell. This is the second time," the Pillar says, and then shoots me a suspicious glance. I know, it shows up all the time. "Did it show up somewhere else?"
I shrug. Lewis' vision was on the 14th of January, but he told me not to tell the Pillar about the vision.
"Aha." His tongue plays with the insides of his cheeks. "Little Alice has been having visions." I try to act oblivious of what he says. "Are you sure Lewis didn't give you anything last time when you met him through the Tom Tower?"
I hesitate, thinking he knows about the key to one of Wonderland's doors. I am glad I hid the key in the wall.
"It's okay." The Pillar doesn't push it. "We'll talk about that later. Now, we need you to go back in time to meet the Muffin Man."
"Which we will do how?" I crane my neck and squint.
The Pillar says nothing and points at the blackboard with sticky chalk. "This is called Einstein's Blackboard, the one he used for lecturing when he was here. It's one of the world's most valuable artifacts. Historians will claim the original one is in the Museum of the History of Science and that this one here is a replica. Actually, it's vice versa, but they don't know it. Originally it was Carroll's blackboard, and it is used to time-travel."
"And how is that possible?"
"It's easy," he says. "You write the date, time, and name of the person you want to meet, and then use it as a doorway to the past."
The blackboard is actually tall. Hypothetically, it looks like a door a mad girl like me could walk into. But unless the board's surface turns into rippling water or air, I don't see how.
"So, I just walk into it?" I give up and assume fantastically.
"Oh." The Pillar's lips twitch. "Of course not. Don't be silly."