"I know you will laugh," Martin admitted. "But I have summoned you both here today because I wish to share a secret with you. It is a secret about a secret. A secret about the Secret. That is, the Secret of Wonderland."

"I'm confused," the Scientist confessed. He had just arrived. The Vicar had been waiting for half an hour, so had heard all this already.

"I believe," Martin said. "That Wonderland is a real place. I believe that Charles Dodgson - that is, Lewis Carroll - went there, and recorded his experiences in two books I'm sure you have heard of: Alice's Adventures In Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass. Laugh. Get it out of your system."

The Scientist did laugh. Then Martin could continue.

"Alice is merely a projection of Dodgson himself," Martin continued. "My fellow literary critics have attested as such for a century. However, beneath these dubious levels of representation, and indeed, misrepresentation, there is an inherent truth he was dying to share with the rest of the world; a supreme knowledge he wished desperately to impart, but was somehow unable to do."

"You're utterly insane," the Scientist scoffed.

Martin continued unabated. "Now, here is where I am conflicted. I'm not sure whether Dodgson actually tried to convey the Secret of Wonderland, but failed because it was just too wonderful; or whether he was somehow bidden never to speak of it, but just couldn't help himself, so hid it beneath impenetrable layers of obscurity. Either way, we shall soon know. This is why I have summoned you."

"You're going to tell us?" the Scientist asked.

"If only," Martin sighed. "I've been reading Dodgson's books all my life and am still unable to tell you what the Secret is. So now I intend to bypass them altogether. That's why I'm mounting an expedition. We will retrace Dodgson's steps and journey into Wonderland ourselves. And there, we will discover the Secret!"

The Scientist and the Vicar exchanged glances.

"We're not literary critics, Mr Gardner," the Vicar said.

"You misunderstand me," Martin replied. "Wonderland isn't a text, it's a place. We won't be readers; we'll be explorers. Only the books themselves are literary and I have that angle covered already. The two of you will approach our quest from two more angles: spiritually and scientifically. After all, isn't the point of religion and science to understand, as well? Together, we cannot fail to discover what Dodgson truly meant beneath all that silly nonsense in his books..."

The Scientist laughed. "Why are you so obsessed?"

"Because interpretation is merely self-justification," Martin said. "Novels that require you to play guessing games with them make you feel powerful, or needed, even essential to the text when you guess correctly. Well, I've been guessing for years. And now I want facts, I want answers and I want truth. I want the Secret. And I'm prepared to go to the source. And that's Wonderland."

The Scientist looked back at the Vicar again.

"Sounds like... fun," he decided.

The three Missionaries of Understanding eventually found their way into Wonderland as follows. Martin felt that as Dodgson was living and teaching in Oxford when he wrote the books, Christ Church College would be the best place to start looking. No sooner had they arrived on campus, however, but a mysterious freak weather front descended upon the antiquated university, driving the three men to seek shelter in the nearest building. That building was the library.

The first person they met inside was the librarian. However, instead of offering them assistance, the first thing the woman said to them was: "Oi, you lot, out!" And then: "Don't even think about trying to read any of my books! I won't stand by and let you do any damage to them..."

For, besides anything else she might have meant regarding their intentions toward her books, the three of them were dripping wet. However, even when the librarian threatened to call security if they didn't go, Martin ignored her. He knew he was close to the threshold now, and he wasn't going to let anyone or anything else insert itself between him and the Secret of Wonderland.

When the guards arrived (as wet as Martin and co, it must be said, though the librarian didn't threaten to chuck them out), the three men had disappeared into the depths of the library. And there they hid, amidst hundreds of thousands of books, until the guards gave up. By that time, though, they were lost.

After wandering around for a bit, the Vicar finally spotted a door. This was strange, as they hadn't even seen any walls in a long time: just shelves and shelves of books that stretched from floor to ceiling. (And when the library was closed for the night and the lights were turned off, the books might have gone higher).

The door they found was peculiar because it wasn't at the end of the aisle, but in the middle of one. It actually appeared to lead into the books. It was almost as if the books around the doorframe were the only things holding it up. The door was made of glass and it was dark behind. On the door were the letters:

"Is that Japanese?" the Scientist wondered aloud.

"No," Martin scoffed. "Can't you see? They're not supposed to be read from this side of the door. If you open the door - " and he did " - from the other side it reads as WAY OUT. That means, to us, it's the way in..."

The Vicar and the Scientist had blank expressions.

"Welcome to Wonderland," Martin said.

He was just leading them through the doorway into the books when the Vicar stopped and bent to pick something up. "Hey, what's this?" he asked. It was a small sign. The back of the sign was blank, but on the front there was:

"It says NO TRESPASSING in reverse," the Scientist pointed out.

"It must have fallen off the door," said Martin.

"Wait," the Vicar said. "If it was hanging on the inside of the door to Wonderland, then from the outside you'd have to go through it to understand it. I mean read it through the back of the paper. What does that mean?"

"An inverted warning is an invitation. Whoever built this doorway into the books only begrudgingly wants us to use it. They'd rather we didn't, if at all possible, but they know we will anyway, and are secretly glad. After all, if we didn't, there wouldn't be much point in them having created a door here, would there?"

Once more, his two companions looked blank.

"Makes perfect sense. Come on..."

They hadn't walked far into the books before finding themselves somewhere completely different. They were on top of a hill, and as they stood there, dawn broke over the horizon. As the sun rose, they got their first glimpse of Wonderland. They could see over a great expanse of land, alternately black and white like a giant chessboard. It was like walking into a surrealist painting...

"Hey, what are those over there?" the Vicar said.

Martin and the Scientist followed his line of sight. He had spotted several figures on the other side of the hill. Martin recognised their profiles immediately. It was the Mad Hatter, the Cheshire Cat, the Mock Turtle, the White Knight and one of the Tweedle brothers - Martin could not tell which.

"Let's go meet them!" he said excitedly.

However, as the three of them rushed over to meet these mythical characters, it soon became clear that they were not living beings, but mere statues. But it was an easy mistake to make from a short distance, let alone a long one, for the statues were very life-like. They just didn't move or speak.

"They're even wearing clothes," Martin muttered, as he walked amongst the group. The statues were even arranged as if they were their living counterparts in conversation. Martin stopped before the Mock Turtle.

As he stood there and studied its pained face, he saw a single tear eke out from the corner of its eye and trail slowly down its bovine features. Martin was taken aback, but as he watched, all the other statues started slowly coming to life as well. It wasn't long before they were making noises, but it was as if they were trapped in slow motion. Their movements and speech eventually sped up.

"It's like we woke them up," the Scientist said.

"Ooh, newcomers!" the White Knight cried.

"Welcome to Wonderland!" said the Turtle.

From the chat that followed, Martin got the impression the creatures were oblivious to the fact that they had been frozen in time until he and his companions had entered Wonderland. They seemed to think they had been in conversation the entire time and it was Martin and his companions who'd materialised.

"Where'd you come from?" the Hatter asked.

"Hatta, don't be rude!" the Knight snapped. "Don't mind him. Wonderland always welcomes visitors. I do hope we can convince you to stay."

"Stay?" said Martin. "No. I'm afraid not. We're only visiting. We're on a quest, you see. We're searching for the Secret of Wonderland."

"Well, it was the Secret that brought you here..."

"You know of the Secret?!" Martin exclaimed.

"Well, of course," the Knight replied. "Wonderland is a sterile place. Without the Secret, Wonderland wouldn't exist. It's the Secret that brings things here from other worlds. If it didn't, Wonderland would be empty..."

"Interesting. Do you know where we might find the Secret?"

The Knight looked down at him suspiciously.

"I can only point you in the right direction."

Martin and co followed the White Knight's instructions until it got dark again, by which time none of them had eaten in almost twenty-four hours. So they decided to set up camp and find some food. Somehow, the Scientist had managed to smuggle a small antique pistol into Wonderland, so it was left up to him to catch and kill something whilst the other two put up a tent in the woods.

When the Scientist heard a rustling, he aimed his pistol and fired into the night. He heard a small gasp of pain, then quickly claimed his kill before some other scavenger could steal his meal. It was a large, plump rabbit. It wasn't until he got back to the campsite, where Martin and the Vicar had started a fire, that he saw the rabbit was wearing a jacket, waistcoat and pocket watch...

"You killed the White Rabbit!" Martin cried.

But the Rabbit wasn't quite dead yet. It turned its head to look at Martin and said hoarsely, "Too late... my time has come." Then: "Is this the real life? Or is this just fantasy?" Then it went all floppy in his hands and died.

"I think I've lost my appetite," said the Vicar.

The other two refused to eat the meat, but the Scientist was hungry. He sat on the other side of the camp, picking at the carcass, but the constant criticism from the other two was sapping all enjoyment out of devouring it. He ate a little meat off the flank, then felt full, so started to dissect what was left.

"What the hell are you doing?!"

When the Vicar saw what he was doing, he stormed over. The Scientist had the Rabbit on its back, split down the middle from chin to tail.

"I'm just dissecting it..." he said.

"Dissecting?!" the Vicar cried. "Dissecting?! Methinks you may be dyslexic, my scientific friend. This isn't dissection. It's desiccation."

The Scientist frowned at him. "I'm just trying to understand how it has the ability to speak," he explained. "I thought the whole point of this expedition was to discover how and why Wonderland differs from - "

"The Secret of Wonderland won't be found in a rabbit's belly!" the Vicar cried. "It's not something we can learn by picking apart the little things. The Secret's bigger than the sum of all the parts that make up Wonderland."

"You two may be looking for something abstract and meaningful, but I am looking for something concrete and self-evident. I am a scientist, and this is the scientific way. We learn about things by deconstructing - "

The Vicar interrupted him: "You can only deconstruct something so far before you take it apart completely. And then you've essentially destroyed it, leaving nothing left for those that follow. What reason is there to visit then?"

"Yeah, well," the Scientist grumbled. "What I'm doing is no different from what he's doing." He pointed an accusing finger at Martin. "He's just trying to pin down an understanding of Wonderland, the same as I am..."

Martin glowered at him. The Scientist was right.

"Let's bury it," the Vicar quickly suggested.

With the Vicar presiding over the burial, it felt less like hiding the evidence as far as Martin was concerned. After that, tired and hungry, they all retired to bed. They only got a couple of hours sleep before the voices outside woke them.

The three of them scrambled out of the tent, only to find nine giant anthropomorphised playing cards beating a way through the trees toward them. They all belonged to the suit of Clubs. Martin remembered whose soldiers they were and quickly dragged the Vicar and the Scientist to the safe side of camp.

"Why are you attacking us?" Martin called to them.

"We're not attacking you!" the Two of Clubs cried.

"You're attacking us!" the Seven of Clubs hollered.

"No, we're not!" the Vicar barked.

"You came to conquer Wonderland!" the Nine snarled. "And we are pledged to defend it. Wonderland will not be colonised by anyone!"

"We haven't come to conquer you!" Martin replied. "We are explorers. We came here seeking knowledge, wisdom and understanding."

"Look what you did to our citizen!" said the Six.

"That was a mistake!" the Scientist spat.

"We will resist any attempts you make to seize authority from the Queen of Hearts," the Nine declared. "She is the one who controls Wonderland. She is the guardian of its Secret. She is all-powerful and immortal."

The Vicar's ear pricked up hearing that.

"She was here before Wonderland itself existed," the Nine went on. "And as long as there is a Wonderland, she will continue to be in charge. Who are you to question her authority? You know nothing of the Secret!"

"We want to learn..." Martin pleaded.

"So that you may control it!"

"No!" he cried.

"He that knows the Secret of Wonderland controls it, and he that controls the Secret controls Wonderland itself... We were created to make sure the authority stays with the creator of it all. Prepare to die!"

Martin gulped. "Run!"

They all split up.

The Vicar wasn't too worried that he'd been separated from Martin and the Scientist in the flight through the wood. He didn't want them to go where he intended to go. Though, initially, he didn't go very far. He hid up a tree until the Club cards had finished demolishing the campsite, then followed them.

As he'd hoped, they didn't chase after Martin and the Scientist, but returned back to their mistress, instead. The Queen of Hearts was in her rose garden at the time. The Vicar hid behind a hedge, trying to get closer and closer to her, but in the end they caught him before he was able to confront her.

"Off with his head!" the Queen decreed.

"Wait!" the Vicar cried. "May I ask a question first?"

"Well, that depends on what the question is..."

The Vicar gulped. "Your Highness, are you God?"

"God?" the Queen snapped. "Who is God?"

"Oh." The Vicar's face fell. "Never mind..."

"No, come on, who is this God? What are they?"

The Vicar frowned. "You really don't know who God is?"

"I asked, didn't I? What are they? And why have I never heard of them?"

"Well," said the Vicar, suddenly realising he may have found an avenue he could run down to escape execution. "God is an all-powerful, immortal deity who creates everything and controls everything..."

The Club card soldiers holding him captive laughed.

"An omnipotent deity? What a preposterous idea!"

The Queen glared at them, which shut them up. "Tell me more," she said to the Vicar. "I've never heard of such a thing before, but I'm liking what I'm hearing now. Tell me, how is this God fellow regarded in your world?"

"Oh, He's worshipped, Your Majesty!" the Vicar cried. "A lot of people bow down in total respect before His authority. Many fear Him, especially his most devout students. Some seek to question or criticise His actions, but they can't stop Him creating and controlling. In fact, we need Him, or we wouldn't have a world."

The Queen ruffled her shoulders proudly. "Oh, well, perhaps I am this God, then, after all," she cooed. "It sounds a lot like me, don't you think? I must say I had the wrong idea about you people who visit Wonderland, sir. I never thought you brought anything useful with you from your world..."

"We're not invaders, you see," the Vicar explained. "We only came here seeking the Secret of Wonderland. When I heard your soldiers here describe you as the most powerful person in Wonderland, I knew I'd found it."

At that point, there was the sound of a scuffle behind them. They all turned, and saw a couple more Club soldiers bringing a new prisoner before the Queen. The Vicar recognised Martin straight away and groaned.

"Hello, there," the Queen said pleasantly. "I'm God."

Martin glared at the Vicar, realising what he'd done.

"No, you're not!" he spat. "You're just a queen. The very notion of God didn't even exist in Wonderland until him over there introduced it. He heard something about you that vaguely reminded him of his religion, and he filled in the rest of the gaps himself, manipulating what there was here to fit his own preconceived notions of your world. This isn't the Secret of Wonderland, you fool!"

"You're gonna get us killed!" the Vicar cried.

Indeed he was. Having just been brought down a peg or two by this second invader, the Queen announced, "Off with their heads!" and settled into a throne she had in the garden whilst the executioner was summoned.

The Club cards held the pair of them down. However, just as the executioner was about to swing his axe above Martin, the Queen of Hearts mysteriously vanished from her throne. The executioner faltered. A second later, somebody else materialised in her place. The soldiers seemed to recognise whom it was. They let go of Martin and the Vicar and fled the gardens. The executioner followed.

"Who is that?" the Vicar said hoarsely.

The old man sitting on the Queen's throne had a kind and gentle face, mild blue eyes, and shaggy grey hair growing from the sides of his balding head that was a little longer than was fashionable in the age for which he was dressed.

"It's Lewis Carroll," said Martin.

The Vicar immediately got up off the floor and knelt before him.

"Get up," Carroll told him. "Both of you. My, you have been a pair of troublemakers, haven't you? And all, I fear, for no point at all. Still, I suppose there's no getting rid of you until you get what you came for..."

"The Secret of Wonderland!" Martin sang.

"I hope you won't be disappointed," Carroll sighed. "It's not often people make it this far. Most of the time, they get distracted on the way by something they believe is the Secret and then go away satisfied they're right." Then he took a small golden key out of his waistcoat pocket and held it out. "Here you go. This is the key to the Secret of Wonderland. The door's over there."

Martin and the Vicar looked round. When Carroll had appeared, so had the door. It was just a doorframe standing upright in the middle of the lawn. They could walk all around it, and as Carroll explained, they could enter the door any way they liked, because the Secret was always behind it.

However, just as Martin was about to snatch the key away from him, Carroll retracted it a short distance, looking grave. "Mind you," he said. "As soon as you take the key to the Secret of Wonderland, you become its keeper. You can never give it back. It must stay with you forever. As you will learn once you open the door, this is vitally important. Do you wish this responsibility?"

"Yes, yes, of course," Martin said impatiently.

"Very well," said Carroll. "I shall come too."

Then he held out the key again and dropped it into Martin's palm. Martin went straight to the door and stuck the key in the lock, but the Vicar was apprehensive and stood back, looking from Martin to Carroll to the door.

"Are you the real God of Wonderland?" he asked.

"Well, yes and no," Carroll replied cryptically. "I am an immortal, yes. Charles Dodgson may be dead, but I shall live on as long as Wonderland does. But no, I am not a god. In fact, I am Nobody. That's how I can be everywhere and nowhere at the same time. I could be standing right here, creating and controlling, but all anyone could say is, 'Nobody's there'."

"Well, you're a very benevolent nobody..."

"You haven't seen the Secret yet..."

At that moment, Martin managed to open the door and went right in. From where the Vicar was standing, the Wonderland he could see through the door was the same Wonderland he could see around the doorframe. Except when Martin went through the door, he vanished on the other side. The Vicar scuttled after him. Carroll came through last, and shut the door behind him.

Martin looked around. He quickly spotted the only difference between this Wonderland and the one he'd just left. There was a cuboid cage on the lawn around the other side of the door. At waist-height, it was made of a black metal, except instead of bars, its six sides consisted of the letters P, R, I, S, O and N, connected at the edges. The letter O was on the bottom, to prevent escape.

"Behold, the Secret of Wonderland!" said Carroll.

Martin went over and looked into the cage.

Inside was a painting by Salvador Dali.

"But what does it mean?" Martin whined.

Carroll stood behind them with his arms folded.

"Oh, come now," the Vicar said. "You can't expect him to explain it. Think of this as the last level to decipher. Now, what it could mean is that the destination you reach in any journey through a text is not as important as the journey itself..."

"What are you talking about, man?" Martin snapped.

"What? Too obvious, you think?" said the Vicar.

"You're making things up again!" Martin cried. "Putting stuff into the Secret that you want to be there, but isn't. You don't reach truth that way. Your idea of interpretation is just to give up when you find something that proves your preconceived ideas were right. And that's betraying the quest!"

"Well, what do you think it means?" the Vicar shouted.

"Obviously it's saying something about representation," Martin said. "Perhaps that art can never reproduce something to the same degree of realism that photography or recording could, so it might as well not bother. It's clearly saying that surrealism is the truest art form for being purely creative."

The Vicar frowned. "Hang on, what can you see?"

"Er, a painting by Dali..." said Martin.

"What?! I can see a book in the shape of a foot!"

They both turned to an innocent-looking Carroll. "Nothing changes, does it?" he said. "You'll always see different things. You'll always assume that what you see is the same as everyone else sees, and that if they fail to see it, it's because they've given up too early." He wagged a finger at the cage. "Why don't you let it out of the cage I trapped it in and see what happens to it then?"

So Martin did. He rolled the cage over until the letter O was on top. And then, all of a sudden, the painting (or the book) flew up through the hole and stopped in mid-air. Except now it had become a gelatinous blob.

"Can you see a blob too?" Martin asked the Vicar quietly.

"Yes," the Vicar murmured. "What the hell does it mean now?"

The blob was formless. It bobbed up and down, responding excitedly to being free at last. It looked like a large ball of water, floating in zero gravity, but it wasn't opaque. Its surface shimmered and reflected those around it in a distorted way.

"I'm afraid you've been misled," Carroll sighed.

"What do you mean?" Martin and the Vicar asked.

"Not intentionally, mind you," the author quickly added. "More that you've done it to yourselves and I've let you. I let everyone. It's not like I could stop you, anyway. The type of people who try to tear Wonderland apart looking for its Secret are the type of people who ignore me, the creator of it. They like to think Wonderland exists in the ether, and I'm merely the person who spotted it."

"How have we misled ourselves?" Martin cried.

"Oh, I'm a filthy con-artist," Carroll warbled. "Though with the emphasis on the word artist. All artistic creation is an act of lying, the presenting of untruth as truth. But people don't seem to mind as long as it's something they think is worth seeing. So I have to keep up the pretence that there is..."

"What are you saying?" Martin said, looking between Lewis Carroll and the blob. "That this is the Secret of Wonderland in its true form?! That it means absolutely nothing?! That it has no point whatsoever?! No deeper meanings, no symbolic profundity, no hidden truth to be uncovered..."

Carroll bobbed his shoulders and nodded.

"Nooo!" Martin fell to his knees and began to sob.

"These things work on the principle of false sense of achievement," Carroll explained. "People are very materialistic, even about abstract things. They all feel the need to gain, to own something. When they enter Wonderland, whether the book or the place, they want to come out the other end wearing a Scout badge of accomplishment, like a souvenir, proving they've learnt something valuable..."

The Vicar looked disgusted. He tried to console Martin, but Martin was distraught. Even the blob, which had been floating around them the whole time, came in close to Martin and started to nuzzle his shoulder comfortingly.

"Tell me, Mr Gardner," Carroll said. "If you'd been as obsessed with Shakespeare as you are with my work, would you have built a time machine and gone back to the time of Richard III, Henry V, Julius Caesar?"

"No," Martin whimpered.

"But why not? You seem to think you can trap Wonderland in a context. You seem to think it has rules, a time and a place."

"But Henry V was real. He lived in the real world."

"Did he?" Carroll scoffed. "I think if you did go back in time and sat in on the Battle of Agincourt, you'd find Shakespeare took some liberties. He created a piece of art, however realistic it might seem. You see, the only difference between a realistic and a surreal text is that you're more inclined to think that there's more to interpret, decipher and translate in the surreal one..."

He paused. "Even where there isn't. No, especially when there isn't."

"It's been a wasted journey, hasn't it?" the Vicar said.

"Has it?" said Carroll. "You've learnt something. Perhaps we can even call it the Secret. It might not have been what you expected, but what use is art if it just meets your expectations rather than challenges them?"

Martin started to dry his eyes and stand up.

"Next you two can try your hands at interpreting a realistic text," Carroll suggested. "You'll have a harder job, I bet. They take less kindly to allegorical exploration and shapeshifting blobs than surreal works. Just don't be distracted by all the easy answers en route. Remember what you've learnt here. And if you don't find the Secret of that text, well, maybe you were never supposed to."

Martin nodded. He and the Vicar bade their farewells to Carroll and headed back toward the door. However, when he opened it and turned back to wave, Martin realised the blob was following him and the Vicar.

"It wants to come with you," said Carroll.

"Once it's outside my textual cage, it's out of my control..."

Martin and the Vicar stared at the blob. The blob stared back.

"You can take it with you if you want," Carroll explained. "Release it into your own world. But you've seen how friendly it is. If you do, everyone in your world will know about it. They won't need to come here to learn the Secret..."

Martin remembered how Wonderland was when they'd arrived.

"Then Wonderland will get no more visitors," Carroll sighed. "And it will freeze in time permanently, a mere snapshot of what once was, of a particular time and place, and stuck there forever. Charles Dodgson made this decision before you, but seeing as you're here now, he couldn't have kept fully to his word..."

Martin looked at the key in his hand. "This is what you meant about being the keeper of the key, isn't it? Keeping the Secret a secret..."

Lewis Carroll nodded. Martin reached for the blob, but hesitated. Now he knew the Secret of Wonderland, could he really not tell anyone? The Vicar, however, had already decided what must be done, and grabbed for it. However, his hand went straight through it. It was like it wasn't even there. But when Martin reached out to touch it, the blob was tangible and he could pick it up.

"You can only touch the Secret if you understand it," Carroll explained, as Martin put the blob back in its cage. "It's a defence mechanism. You shouldn't have to own something to understand it, but if you do have to own it, well, perhaps you shouldn't have to understand it..."

"I see," said the Vicar.

But he didn't really. Martin turned the cage back over. The blob became a Space Hopper, as mundane and useless as it was anachronistic. Martin and the Vicar said their farewells, then went back through the door.

Martin and the Vicar retraced their route across Wonderland back to the hilltop doorway to Oxford. They didn't see any more Wonderlanders. It was getting dark by the time they started walking through a grassy field ripe with mushrooms, where who should they meet but the errant Scientist!

"Oh, boy, am I having a surreal experience here!" he told them. He was lying on the ground, intermittently lifting a tiny hookah to his lips. Martin noticed that there were the remains of a squished caterpillar on the sole of his shoe.

He offered the hookah to Martin and the Vicar. "I don't know what this stuff is, but you have to try it. Just before you arrived I saw Oscar Wilde. He told me that all art is quite useless, and that's the way it should be..."

"We're on our way home," the Vicar said.

"But I've found the Secret of Wonderland!" the Scientist announced.

"No, you haven't," Martin said dejectedly.

"Yes, I have," the Scientist protested. "And you can forget all your pseudo-intellectualism. This stuff here's the Secret of Wonderland. Go on. Try some. It's like swimming in art for the sheer kick of paddling and splashing in paint! Leave your pretensions at the door and wallow in trash with me!"

The Scientist offered them the hookah again. The Vicar refused, but Martin just shrugged and took a drag. After a few seconds, so much peculiar stuff came bounding at him that he didn't have time to consider and explain any of it. Soon he found himself appreciating it for what it was rather than what it could be.

After learning the Secret, Martin thought he would have no reason to return to Wonderland again, but now he'd found another. And the Scientist had known it all along. "Sounds like... fun," he'd said. And that's what it was.

NOTES:
I went out on a limb quite a bit for this final project for my English Surrealism class. Tutor Paul Magrs said he'd like to see something a little different from a standard academic essay, but others were criticised for being just a little too surreal without purpose. So I wrote this allegorical piece, and got 68%.

The one thing that needs explaining more than anything else is that Martin Gardner is the bloke who edited and annotated an extremely anally retentive version of both "Alice's Adventures In Wonderland" and "Through The Looking Glass". Sometimes his marginal notes go on for pages after the chapters have finished, doubling the size (and price) of the book. So I thought who better to have discover there is no secret meaning to Wonderland than him.

The first chapter basically sets up my allegorical intentions: the real Wonderland = the books; explorers = literary critics. The second chapter symbolises reading a text as an invasive thing, but writers need readers. The third chapter symbolises that a text doesn't come alive until it is read. The fourth chapter is about how literary criticism is a destructive process, whilst the fifth chapter is meant to suggest that texts will resist interpretation, but I think that's the weakest of the eleven. Chapter number six symbolises my contention that literary critics put more into a text than they take out.

Things start to get weirder in the seventh chapter, which is meant to symbolise that the author is an invisible god-like figure who traps meaning within the text. The eighth chapter is about the author losing control of the meaning of the text to literary critics. Chapter nine is pretty self-explanatory. The tenth chapter suggests a text will die if nobody reads it, bringing us full circle to the second chapter. The eleventh chapter basically sums up my feelings about the books I read on the Surrealism course: good for a laugh, but not worth taking seriously as literary texts (though I think this entire project is pretty negative about the whole literary criticism phenomenon anyway).