Alice paused in the middle, wondering if she’d reached the edge of its story.
But there, after another two steps round the corners, before three mirrors that made a thousand bottles out of one, waited a single bottle—as if that were its default setting; its neck drawn out—perhaps in mild impatience at Alice’s tardiness.
It was filled with a liquid, as red as any garden rose. Its label read, quite clearly, “DRINK ME.” The letters trembled ever so slightly.
“They could hardly sit still to be read,” she giggled. “How very Alice of them!”
“Well now,” said Alice to herself, “it is remarkably obliging for a bottle to ask so nicely.”
She looked all around, half-expecting a second label to appear with a “PLEASE DON’T.”
She was—as I could have told you—quite as cautious as a download, pausing at ninety-nine percent—and she could never quite master the Hot-and-Cold game—shivering when she should be seeking, flushing when she ought to be freezing, and generally confusing herself, most delightfully, all the while.
When no such warning appeared, something triggered—like an invisible program buried deep inside her curiosity.
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