Alice (The Trip Part 3 of 4)

As Alice hovered in the sky trembling in horror, one of the mechanical clouds that she had passed earlier began to float in a small orbit around her waist. At the appearance of the cloud she immediately turned her attention to her new visitor with a look and feeling of complete bafflement. Able to inspect the cloud more easily, Alice could see that it was a synthetic mesh of what truly appeared to be water vapor integrated with little pieces of what appeared to be a clear gelatinous material that housed electrical components. She held back her tears and tried to remain as still as she could as the cybertronic cloud orbited in silence.

After a few short moments, Alice’s attention returned once again to the scene of devastation that lay before her. The plumes of dust and ash were beginning to settle, giving way to the motionless sea of scorched and spent earth as far as the eye could see. Directly below her, Alice could faintly begin to see an enormous crater, presumably where little Alice made impact, through the haze. The mere thought of the child version of herself hitting the ground hard enough to cause an explosion of that magnitude brought tears to her eyes yet again.

Suddenly the cybertronic cloud stopped in its orbit and floated upward until it was about a foot in front of Alice’s face. She immediately silenced her sniffles and stared wide eyed at the cloud, as it remained motionless before her.

“Uh..” she began after a few moments. “Do you uh…” She paused as she realized she had no idea how to go about attempting to interface with a cybertronic cloud from the future. After a moment or so, of thought, Alice simply decided to ask it one question. “What do you do, Cloud?” To this, the cloud lightly quivered for a fraction of a second before plummeting toward the same crater in which little Alice had been consumed. Immediately Alice hurled herself downward, trying to catch up to the free falling cloud.

As she caught up to the cloud she realized that their fall had already continued past ground level and into the crater. It was far more massive than it appeared from the aerial view she had previously. Though vast and deep the crater did eventually have a bottom that both Alice and the cloud were rapidly en route for. Alice reached out for the clear gelatinous material inside the cloud, and scrunched her face focusing as hard as she could on not falling anymore. She felt the wind on her face quickly slow to a stop, and very carefully lifted her eyelids open. To her astonishment, she had stopped only a foot or so from the bottom of the crater with the cloud lightly, yet firmly, grasped in her outstretched hand.

Alice took a deep breath of relief before opening her hand to release the cloud, and dropping herself to the floor. As she stood she realized that she was not standing on scorched earth, but rather a thin cobblestone road leading before and behind her as far as she could see. When Alice turned her attention to the sky from whence she and the cloud had come, she was startled to find a solid earth and rock ceiling hundreds if not thousands of feet above her. She looked to the cloud which floated once again before her face.

“WHAT THE HELL WAS TH--” Before Alice could finish, the cloud began to float down the path of the cobblestone road set out before them.