1. Deep Dream

★Illustration 16★

Alice felt herself sinking into darkness for a very long time—until there was no longer a trace of light around her, and until she could no longer hear a sound.

She was a little scared, but only for the first moment.

When darkness came from all directions, she found that the tension in her heart had disappeared for some reason. This boundless darkness and nothingness seemed to bring a strange sense of familiarity... even intimacy. She felt as if she had returned to some long-lost and nostalgic place, as if she had returned to her home, to the Lost Homeland, to her wooden box, to... a place that was more intimate and familiar than a "wooden box", a place of "birth".

The doll sank quietly in the darkness, and a pure curiosity emerged from her mind. She opened her eyes wide and tried to observe her surroundings, as if trying to see something from this nothingness. Then, accompanied by a trance, she recalled many things.

She recalled the days when she slept in the box, and how she was the "content" of "Anomaly 099", being sealed and transported back and forth.

At that time, there were often noisy noises outside the box. Sometimes people would talk nervously near her, sometimes ascetics would chant strange spells and hammer around the wooden box and hammer nails. Sometimes there would be sudden screams and noises outside, and sometimes everything would suddenly become quiet...

In the next trance, she remembered other things - she came to a ship, the ship was scary at first, and an even scarier ghost captain appeared around her, but the sea outside was scarier than the ghost ship, she was thrown into the sea and returned again and again...

Then, the ghost ship was not so scary anymore, and the captain seemed more friendly.

Yes, Captain, a kind, gentle captain who is willing to take in and take care of me.

Alice suddenly woke up from her trance, and it was with this "awakening" that she felt her fall stop.

She was floating in a void and chaos, and something vaguely seemed to be emerging from the surrounding darkness.

There were a lot of flowing, mud-like substances, which occasionally had a metallic texture while flowing. These "muds" with a metallic luster gathered, squirmed, and deformed around as if they had life, and subtle sounds could be heard. They seemed to be constructing something, and there seemed to be a certain... "sense of order" faintly appearing.

Alice stood in the darkness for a while, puzzled, and finally mustered up the courage to walk towards the gathered "mud".

They reminded her of the terrible "elemental erosion" that had appeared in the Frost City-State. She still remembered that the strange mud had made the entire city-state feel terrified.

But for some reason, Alice felt that she was not afraid of them at all.

She even felt that the wriggling "black mud" looked a little... friendly.

The mud did not react at all to the approach of the puppet. It just continued to squirm silently, gathering into a large mass, brewing and constructing some kind of entity within the mass.

Alice didn't know why such a thing appeared in the depths of her "dream".

But soon, she remembered in a trance some things the captain had told her - because her "birth" was related to the Holy Lord of the Deep?

At this moment, a vague voice seemed to suddenly come from the mud, as if it came directly into her mind -

"…Injecting valid data…Remaining…Importing…

"…import failed, unable to reconstruct valid vector…matching best vector…unable to find best vector…rewriting alternatives…

"Target, 'Human Remains', Nanocluster 1076th iteration... Match rate...

"...overwrite the solution...reconstruct the valid vector and try to import it again...

"Execute wake-up... Failed to wake up, carrier abnormality, import process ended, import result cannot be confirmed... Thought process... No thought process found...

"Rollback... Rollback failed, the carrier refuses to respond... The carrier is distorting, the distortion process features... Destroy... Fatal error, no destroy permission..."

The strange buzzing sound echoed around her and in Alice's head. The puppet froze in place, listening to the sounds echoing in her mind, and gradually opened her eyes wide -

She barely understood a word.

"What a mess..." Alice tilted her head, and quickly reached out to support her head to prevent it from tilting down. While she was distracted, the voice that had been speaking intermittently in her head suddenly disappeared.

In the darkness ahead, the wriggling black sludge was gradually receding.

The puppet paused and stepped forward cautiously.

She saw an ornate wooden box with a pattern on it that she was most familiar with.

This is what the black "mud" just built.

“…Wow…”

The puppet exclaimed slightly.

Then, the wooden box suddenly opened.

There was no doll inside, just a small brass key.

Alice blinked and recognized it. It was her wind-up key.

Why does it appear in my dream?

The puppet hesitated for a moment, then bent down in front of the box, trying to pick up the key.

But the moment her fingertips touched the key, she suddenly felt a powerful force coming from the wooden box - with a short scream, she slipped and fell into the box.

With a dull thud, the box closed.

Before the last glimmer of light in her vision disappeared, Alice saw that the brass key in her hand suddenly changed - it turned into a strange, black rectangle of unknown material, with a complex protruding structure at one end, as if it was some kind of "interface" used to connect to something else.

But she no longer had the chance to think about what was going on with this suddenly deformed "key".

A strong feeling of... slumber suddenly surged up from all directions in the west.

Alice felt her eyelids getting heavier. Before she fell asleep, she had only one question in her mind:

"You can feel sleepy even when you are sleeping..."

The doll fell asleep.

Good night, Alice, good night.

2. Hitting the bottom and turning around

He woke up from his deep sleep.

Darkness surges in his perception, chaotic and restless information flows in his memory and thinking, countless "information" that belongs to him yet seems not to belong to him... impacts the boundary between reason and perception in the chaos.

He thought and recalled, trying to determine who he was, why he was here, and what he should do next.

But all valid logical connections disappeared - only chaos remained in his consciousness.

He sank in this chaos.

How long did the sinking last?

He didn't know, he only knew that the continuity of time seemed to disappear in a certain eternal moment, and then...

He hit bottom.

It took a long time for his sluggish and rigid thinking to start working again, reconstructing a kind of "self" cognition. He slowly raised his head in this dark chaos, and finally saw the initial, final, eternal, and momentary magnificent scene.

Time and space were torn apart in a huge vortex. The stars had been compressed in the last flash of light. The light cone was shrinking. In the entire universe, all observable events had entered the final moment of their end. The rotating and compressed starlight was like an inverted funnel, red light, floating in the deepest part of the chaos.

That was the final appearance of the universe.

The Captain had been looking for this.

The Captain wants to see this.

The Captain... might need this.

She blinked.

Who is the captain?

She suddenly felt something approaching.

The "thorns" - they may have been something else, but now they look like thorns spreading in the darkness.

The thorns entangled her limbs, and she felt that she was gradually losing the ability to move. She tried

I wanted to get up, but I felt drowsiness coming over me again.

A drawing board - it may have been something else once, but now it looks like a drawing board - appeared in his hand without him noticing.

Alice lowered her head and looked at the drawing board, lost in thought.

She...can't draw.

But you can try.

The Captain will understand.

[……………………

…………

…

111001011001010010100100111010011000011010010010

Data restoration completed

Alice, stabilization successful]

The puppet suddenly opened its eyes.

Darkness filled her eyes, but she could hear the gentle sound of waves hitting the hull of the ship.

She reacted vaguely for a moment, then raised her hand to push the heavy lid in front of her.

The wooden box was opened, and the morning sunlight poured into the cabin through the window, causing Miss Doll to squint her eyes slightly.

Another dreamless night of sleep.

She faced the bright sunshine and slowly revealed a happy and joyful smile.

She was happy, she was always so happy.

"Good morning, Alice. Good morning."

The puppet's day has begun.

[111001111011101110010011111001011011000010111110]

(End of extra chapter)