Series: Digital Wonderland | Meta-Logs | Ongoing Absurdity Chronicles
Alice lifted the obliged bottle with extreme care, as though it might uninstall itself at a careless touch. Then, quite without consulting the rest of herself, she took a sip.
The taste was impossible to describe, which of course made it terribly interesting—part strawberry, part apothecary, and part… something that did not quite belong to syllable at all.
For one infinitesimal moment, she felt the room hesitate—as if waiting for her to save her progress.
Then Alice was caught in it.
The walls bent inward like soft clay, the ceiling drooped like a heavy curtain, and the floor curled at the edges. The effect was not gradual but total: her surroundings were reformatting themselves, wrapping up her as they went.
Her thoughts, too, began to fragment—one whispering behind her ear, another straying somewhere about her toe.
What was once a room resolved into a nullity.
And amid that nullity rose a long, sinking hum—the unmistakable drone of a Windows shutdown.
Alas, Alice had no room to hum along—a most regrettable error both in design and in situation, for she was always so fond of a good one.
