Eventually Alice was deposited into a small, dark chamber which contained only a neat and tidy desk; behind the desk sat a neat and tidy man with a neat and tidy fountain pen in his hand; he was scribbling away at a neat and tidy ledger. "Your name, please?" he neated and tidied.

"Alice."

The neat and tidy man scribbled Alice's name into the ledger, without even looking at her. "Your purpose in the city of Munchester?" he asked.

"To find a way out," answered Alice, which made the neat and tidy man look up at last.

"A way out?" he spluttered. "There is no way out! This is Munchester! The place where food goes after being swallowed."

"What is your name, neat and tidy man?" asked Alice.

"My name is Neathan Tidyman; what of it?"

"I want to get back to Manchester, Neathan."

"Manchester? Have you your tickling ticket?"

"Oh what a coincidence, Mister Tidyman!" said Alice, remembering Zenith O'Clock's promise. "I have just such a tickling ticket!" Alice pulled Whippoorwill's green-and-yellow feather from her pinafore pocket.

"Ooh, a green-and-yellow feather!" cried Neathan, snatching it from Alice's hand. "I've always wanted a green-and-yellow tickling feather! I can visit the Chimera!" He then proceeded to tickle Alice's nose with it! And then his own! "Oh yes!" he squealed, completely untidying himself. "Oh yes! Oh take me!"

Alice saw that three closed doors were waiting beyond the desk. Each had its own little handwritten sign: the first door read THE THIRD DOOR IS THE SAFE DOOR; the second read THE FIRST DOOR IS LYING; the third read THE SECOND DOOR IS REALLY THE FIRST DOOR. "Young girl, choose your door wisely!" Tidyman giggled as he tickled. "One of them leads to Munchester; another leads to Unchester; a further one of them leads to Manchester, and that's the only safe door: the other two are deadly."

"But which door should I choose?" asked Alice of herself. "Oh, if only Automated Alice was still with me! Celia would quite logically work out the problem. But as Celia isn't with me, I shall have to pretend to be her. Now then, let me consider..." Alice then logicuted thus: The first door claims the third door to be the safe door, but the second door claims that the first door is lying, so maybe the second door is the safe door. But then the third door says that the second door is really the first door, so it's the second door that is lying, which means that the first door is telling the truth: therefore the third door must be the safe door..."

"Quickly, Alice!" laughed Tidyman. "It's make your mind up time!"

Alice opened up the third door and walked through it.

Dorothy, Dorothy and Dorothy

The third door shivered and vanished as soon as Alice stepped through it; now she was standing on a small hill which overlooked a most pleasant landscape. The sun was greeting her with a cheery smile on its bright face. There was a winding country lane that stretched lazily into the haze of summer. A bluebird softly whistled a lovely melody from a nearby willowing tree, and a pair of rabbits in courtship gambolled happily through a field of buttercups. "I must surely have chosen the correct door," Alice congratulated herself, "for this is a very pretty land indeed! If only Celia were here to enjoy this particular part of Manchester with me!"

This was a world where it never could rain, and in the warm and shimmering distance a languid curl of smoke was rising from the chimney of a little wooden cottage. Alice set off down the hill and along the lane towards the cottage, and as she went along the bluebirds and the rabbits called out to her from the hedgerows. "Dear little Alice," they twittered, "how nice of you to visit us!" Alice was quite taken aback by this tenderness, so much so that she completely forgot all about the time and the jigsaw and the murders and even the writing lesson! Her worries were like mists dispersing. Alice walked along without a single care in the whole world, until she came eventually to the small rose-enshrouded cottage. There was a beautifully engraved name-plate on the door, which read DONE WONDERING. Alice gently tapped her knuckles upon the door and from within, in answer, came a kindly voice saying, "Come in. It's open."

Alice pushed open the cottage door and stepped inside.

An old, old man was sitting at a dining table, on which two plates of hot roast beef, carrots and potatoes were gently steaming. The smell of food reminded Alice that she hadn't eaten in a long, long time (except for a little wurm, that is!). "You must be hungry, Alice," the man said, gesturing to the second plate, "won't you join me?"

"Thank you, kind sir," said Alice as she sat down.

The old man looked at Alice then. He explored her keenly, as though to remember her forever, but the young girl was so busily feeding her face with the roast beef that she never noticed his eager study. "Have you forgotten me so easily, Alice?" the old man finally found the courage to enquire.

This question caused Alice to pause for a second (with a forkful of boiled carrot halfway to her lips), and to look across the table at the old man. What she saw then made her lower her knife and fork to the plate. "Mister Dodgson!" she cried, and she excused herself from the table and ran all the way around it until she was hugging and snuggling the old man. "You look dreadfully old, kind sir," she whispered to him, "and are those tears in your eyes?"

"And is this beef gravy dribbling from your mouth?" the old man answered.

"But what are you doing in Manchester, Mister Dodgson?"

"This isn't Manchester, Alice; you chose the third door, which was the wrong door."

"But I solved the problem so logically! How could I be wrong?"

"You forgot to remember that the second door was really the first door, and therefore the third door was really the second door."

"So it was the second door I should have taken?"

"That is correct, dear Alice," answered the old man, with a further tear. "The second door would have led you to safely, whereas the third door has led you only to Unchester. This world is where the living come to live after they have finished off living. This is where I live now, having finished my living in the year 1898."

"Oh Mister Dodgson!" cried Alice, "does this mean that I have also died?"

"You were swallowed by the Supreme Serpent, Alice, in the third of my books about you. I tried my best to save you, but I was too old and too tired to rescue you. I'm afraid that this does mean that you have died."

"And has dear Celia also been swallowed?" asked Alice.

"Luckily, I managed to allow Celia an escape. I found that her superior automated powers enabled her to resist the Serpent's maw."

"But where is Celia now?"

"Would you like some treacle pudding, Alice?" asked the old man.

"I haven't got time for your trequel pudding!" cried Alice (rather too rudely, I think). "I want my twin twister back! And I want to go home!"

"But that's vurtually impossible, Alice. What's gone is gone..."

"But if a thing is only virtually impossible, doesn't that mean that it just might be possible?"

"I didn't say virtually: I said vurtually, with a U in the word, instead of an I."

"But I want to escape, unlike you, Mister Dodgson."

"Well let me see," considered the old man; "I was a real person who once upon a time naturally died: but you, Alice, are both a real and an imaginary character, and how can imagination be killed? Maybe there is a little way yet for your story to continue... although it would mean going against all the rules of life, death and narrative." The Reverend's tears fell like puddles onto his unfinished roast beef. "I was rather hoping we could spend some time together, Alice," he choked, "but perhaps you must really leave me now..." And then the Reverend Dodgson leaned close to Alice's face and said these final words, "Will this young Alice kiss me goodbye?"