Alice (The Trip Part 2 of 4)

Alice felt the sensation of electricity gently buzzing and snapping all over her as her head followed her body through the wall. When she felt her feet touching the ground she noticed that they made no sound. Standing in absolute darkness, Alice squeezed Little Alice’s hand trying to hold on to something familiar when she found herself squeezing a tightly clenched fist, with nothing between her fingers but her own flesh.

Startled, Alice began opening and closing her hand wildly trying to reach for the hand that was leading her through. “Hello?!” She called out, spinning around trying to find some sign of life.
Suddenly her entire body seized. Completely frozen, her heart began to beat harder as the electrical hum of the energy around her began to grow louder. Her strongest attempts to yell for help did not even yield a squeak. As the hum grew louder and louder she began to faintly make out a tiny dot of light in the far distance.

The light must have been at least a half a mile away, she could not understand why the sound of her calling hello did not echo even as much as a bathroom would. As the sound grew louder Alice felt the hairs on her arms and head stand on end. Slowly it began to feel as if every cell in her body were standing on end as the little dot of light moved closer and closer, growing with its proximity. Suddenly the hum began to sound like that of thunder with small cracking sounds of electrical arcs snapping and forming. The light rushed toward her, as if it were a train barreling down a tunnel. The thunder began to build, rolling hard and snapping lightly. Finally as the light reached her she squeezed her eyes as closed and tight as she could as the energy synchronized and cracked all at once in a cacophony that felt like being hit in the face with a bat.

“SHIIIIIIIIIIT!” she screamed as the energy sensation left instantly and was replaced by the very recognizable sensation of falling. She opened her eyes to find that she was rapidly being taken by gravity through the clouds. These appeared to be clouds. However, falling past them, Alice was able to see wires and silicon microchips running throughout them.

“They’re fake.” Alice looked up from her skydiver’s orientation and found Little Alice completely upright and unaffected by the wind, falling next to her. “The Hegemon had them built when the sky burned.” Little Alice solemnly informed.

“HELP ME!” Alice screamed.

“Just stop.” Little Alice chuckled.

“I’M FALLING! I CAN’T STOP!” She retorted.

“You’re falling because you think you’re supposed to. You’re looking around seeing clouds, and feeling wind and you think “that means I’m falling.” So you fall. Because you want to. If you want to stop, all you have to do, is stop.” To this Alice looked down and scrunched her face.
“And you might want to stop soon, there IS a ground.” Little Alice chuckled.

As Alice fell past the last artificial cloud she was able to see the earth below her. She stopped suddenly in mid-air.

“I knew you would stop.” Little Alice giggled as she floated over to Alice’s dangling position.
“What is this place?!” She begged as she stared wide eyed at the scorched planet below her. The ground had been burned to the point that it looked like a dry lake bed, with little jets of flame shooting through the cracks. In the distance from all around intermittent screams of pain could faintly be heard. Some sort of tree like plants even sported perpetual fire rather than leaves. “Is this hell?” she asked as tears formed in her eyes.

“Close. It’s Earth, about eighteen years from now.” The tears that were forming in Alice’s eyes fell, but she felt nothing on her face. When she looked at Little Alice she saw the tears falling from her eyes.
“What happened here?” As Alice inquired, Little Alice suddenly dropped toward the ground screaming. Alice could do nothing but stare in horror as Little Alice came nearer and nearer to the ground. Until...

The mushroom cloud almost reached Alice, dangling in the sky. The tears flowed like a spring from Alice’s face now. The shockwave traveled for miles in all directions in a wall of dust, destroying trees and rocks, leaving behind it flat barren, cracked earth.