Unducking application for Richie
" 'But oh, beamish nephew, beware of the day,/If your Snark be a Boojum! For then/You will softly and suddenly..." the Cheshire Cat recites, breaking off when it notices it has company. It's sunning itself, draped belly-up over a parapet of the castle, but with an unsettling upside down smile it vanishes and then reappears on the bridge, just to one side of where the transformation took place.
(Not that there's any memory of a transformation, or of transportation for that matter. If there's anything to remember it's a vague impression of darkness, confinement, a trace of unfathomable cold, which vanishes like a dream after waking. And somehow, nobody nearby seems to have been looking in that direction just then.)
“Vanish away,/ And never be met with again?” Richie suggests. “Yo,” he adds, and gives a little wave. “I, uh, don’t suppose you know how I got here…?”
"Well, h-hi there!" says a squeaky voice. Mickey, beaming, is coming up the bridge from the direction of the central plaza. "It's great to see you again! And isn't it a beautiful day!" He draws in a breath and seems to be a millisecond from zipadee-doo-dahing when the castle's portcullis rattles slightly and drops half an inch. He glances over his shoulder. "Cut it out, fellas! Just a minute..." He pats his newly appeared pockets.
"If you were a book," asks the Cheshire Cat, apparently apropos nothing, "what book would you be?"
“Isn’t it always a beautiful day here?” Richie muses. “But right, sorry, question. Well, er. First up, I wouldn’t be a book, I’d probably be a comic, and it’d be a superhero one. Probably Particleman: The Day The World Ended!!!! (or did it?????).”
Mickey has extracted his notebook, and clears his throat. "'Boxers or briefs?'" he reads aloud, and promptly blushes redder than a fire truck.
There’s a pause. “I don’t think I even wanna know why you’re asking that,” is Richie’s only comment.
"Here's another," says Mickey. "List three things you'd do if you ruled the world."
“I’d make myself and V super-secret-agent spies, give myself the best car, and then abdicate.” He grins cheerfully. Ruling the world? Much too much trouble - power goes to people’s heads, it always does, and as dramatic as it would be to have Gear turn into the evil dictator of the world and require Static to either destroy him or get him to change his mind before pushing the button to activate the evil robot laser army, Richie isn’t interested. It was much cooler to drive around in fast cars with thousands of gadgets and stop evil dictators of countries from pushing the button to activate the evil robot laser army together with Virgil.
The Cat's eyes seem to be wandering in opposite directions. It says, "Is reality best described as (a) an absolute, not reducible to the sum of its parts, (b) the material or phenomenal world, as presented to us through our experiences, (c) fundamentally unknowable, (d) all of the above - please elaborate - or (e) fish?"
“Forty two,” Richie replies. “Oh, wait, it has to be one of the choices? Oh, man, I never got philosophy. Too many beards. Er… B, I guess.” Of course, he never really gets philosophy because Richie rarely gets anything these days that isn’t scientific. What’s the point in wasting time trying to work out the meaning of life and never getting an answer anyone can agree on when there are so many more useful things to do?
Mickey raises one white-gloved hand as though measuring his own height. "Are you tall enough to go on this ride?"
Richie looks from the ground, to Mickey’s hand, to the gap between it and his forehead. “I guess,” he answers. “Hey, uh, Mickey, Cat, not that I don’t love chatting with you and all, but I gotta be going… Y’know, people to see, all that.” He’s got to work out why he’s here when the last thing he remembers, he was in the Gas Station of Solitude Mark II with Virgil.