Adventures of Alice

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Article published by: Leah Rowe

Date of publication: Some time in our 21st century, somewhere in the multiverse

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The following is an evolving work of fiction. This page will therefore keep changing over time, until the story is complete.

Please also note that as this is a work-in-progress, the work is incomplete. When reading it, note that some of it may not have been drawn. Where drawings are currently available, they will be embedded in this page.

At this present time, the following is incomplete source material; a speculative fiction centuring around a titular character - or characters, I should say - named Alice. It is a dark, hard science fiction, though the science of it all is unimportant; there will not be lots of technical jargon, because this story focuses instead on aspects of human psychology. The character, Alice, is based on myself (Leah Rowe) when thinking of her personality under various situations.

This is not a novel. It is text-based source material, which will be used to draw a web-comic. This website that it’s currently hosted on, Libreboob Adventures, started off as random parodies of things, or short stories drawn whimsically, but I’ll probably scrap Libreboob Adventures at some point, and make Alice her own website.

Now we begin. Each Act can be thought of as a visual chapter in each novel. Note that some of the text may be more verbose in the source material; in graphic form, much of the text will be visual instead, because much of the meaning could be inferred visually. Afterall, it is designed for a web comic.

Alice, our titular character, suddenly sees a bunch of robot-like beings invade her town. Her world has never seen such a thing before, and she approaches them in anger. They are seemingly ignoring her - they won’t even move. They’re just standing still. Alice pulls out an automatic rifle and starts shooting at them - many of them fall to the ground, still not moving. They simply do not respond.

Finally, Alice walks up to the one remaining android and says: “Why are they you just standing there? Answer me!”

At this point, the sole android turns around and says: “I respond to your commands. My duty is to obey you. I will comply.”

Alice then says, referring also to her girlfriend who is nearby: “Then I order you to answer my questions from now on. Who made you? and why do you obey me? and can i have as mayn of you as i want?”

The android responds, saying to alice: “You made me, in another universe. We travel the multiverse, installing you as dictator in every world where we exist. You can ordher as many of us as you desire. We are your sworn protectors, monitoring for all threats and responding. We will comply”

At this point, Alice says jokingly to the Android: “You know what would be funny? Smile at all times. It’ll make you even scarier”.

At this point, the android smiles and says “I will comply!”

The android then asks Alice: “What is thy bidding, my master?”

Alice responds to the android, saying: “Fetch me and my girlfriend each a grilled cheese sandwich and some sodas”.

At this point, all of the androids previously gunned down get back up, seemingly undamaged, and they, along with the other android that alice just spoke to, say in perfect unison: “We will comply”

They all start walking away in unison, to which alice says: “Wait, you’re immortal? I shot you!”

To this, one of the resurrected androids says: “Death is irrelevant. We will comply”

Stonefaced, Alice simply responds by saying: “ok”

Cut to the next scene: One of the androids is holding two fully cocked handguns, at a coffee shop, in front of a clearly terrified store clerk. The android says: “Two grilled cheese sandwiches please”.

Cut to next clip, the android follows up by saying, while clicking his handgun to make a point: “and two colas, please” - at this point, the clerk working at the coffee shop register is even more terrified, but still says nothing.

The clerk, visibly shaking, hands over the sandwiches and the colas. The android looks down, reviewing these, and says: “this will do nicely”

The android then pulls out a £10 currency note, handing this money to the clerk; at this point, the clerk is surprised but no longer shaking. The android then leaves the coffee shop and, with his back to the clerk, says: “good day, sir”

At no point was the android or anyone in the scene actually violent; merely the implied threat of violence, by the presence of firearms, which were ultimately not used.

Cut to next scene: Alice and her girlfriend are eating the sandwich, while both pouring their soda cans liquid contents onto the head of the android, while saying “more soda please” - and hundreds more androids are seen in the background. the androids are doing and saying nothing at this point.

alice and her girlfriend then both make advances towards the android, with one of them kissing the android, and they both say in unison: “good boy!” - and they are both holding handguns.

alice then pulls out her firearm, as does her girlfriend, and they both aim it at the android’s head. alice says, demanding: “now tell me why you’re really here, asshole”

the android responds: “i told you”

alice’s girlfriend says “don’t bullshit us!”

alice says: “nobody helped me ever. so why am i so lucky?”

the android says: “we seek you out specifically. you won’t kill me like that”

the android goes on to say: “You’re very different in every universe, but you fundamentally have the same thought in each one. You usually tell us yourself. You feel that humanity has great intellectual, social, creative and scientific potential; but humanity is distracted, disorganised, unable to realise such potential. Petty self interest, lies and downright malice cause you to defeat yourselves time and again. You see that there is no future, because mundane needs get in the way. If only your material needs could be provided, your planet would undergo a complete renaissance; minds currently occupied by menial labour could instead mature to become the next einstein, alan turing, marie curio, pablo picasso, georgia o’keeffe, Marylin Manson… and such excellence would become commonplace. excellence itself would become mundane. The meaning of humanity would no longer amount to conflict, pettiness or malice. Wealth would become obsolete. You would no longer concern yourselves with material wealth. Things would become obsolete. Your overarching world philosophy would be such that everyone does better when everyone does better. Perhaps change would not be universal; this level of freedom could lead to more chaos, more suffering, as malevolent forces become self-defeating; but what if order could be retained? you created us to bring about that world. we provide. if you want us to leave, we will. choose.”

alice’s girlfriend then says: “dude, everyone thinks that. maybe you could show proof of who you are? show us another world perhaps?”

alice then says, to the android: “tell me how your earth differs from my earth”

Analyse this fictional monologue spoken entirely by a sentient Android, who is speaking to a human female named alice Alice:

Our histories diverged in the early to mid 19th century. Our Charles Babbage built his analytical engine. With vastly increased funding by the British government, it went into mass production for military use and was quickly miniaturised. commercial use followed. this lead to a computing revolution, a century before your own. babbage and ada lovelace later commissioned the first electronic computer, using relays, in 1858. Science flourished across many disciplines, no longer burdened by slower, error prone human computation. we discovered quantum physics and developed transistors in the 1860s, decades ahead of your time. And all before the light bulb!

We had the internet in 1885. We didn’t have display technology, so our early internet was largely morse code. We had memes before TV. This led to a home computing revolution - and demand sky rocketed. As a result, we provided electricity to a majority of homes, decades before you did in your world. We later developed photography and video technology, eventually creating the first primitive Cathode Ray Tube displays, by 1900 - and these became popular in the early years of the 20th century. We had computer games in 1905.

We saw internet provided to many homes by the year 1900 - and it blossomed well into the early 20th century. We quickly realised that our unreliable, copper-based transmission would not suffice; we didn’t even invent the telephone, in our world. Universities and governments around the world raced to find a faster, more reliable medium, and they found it. Our first fibre optic technology was deployed by the early 1910s, decades before your world - and an international effort was underway well into the 1920s and beyond, to connect our entire planet. For a brief time, it seemed that humanity would finally know peace in its time; cultures and peoples could learn of each other, and learn to cherish each other as if they were neighbours. We had something very similar to your world wide web of today, and indeed we had our analog of your social media. Our science kept accelerating across multiple fields, until by about 1930 our world looked much like yours did in your year 2000 - we even had mobile phones!

Our industrial revolutions were more sporadic, compared to yours, stopping and starting sporadically throughout the 20th century. Your own computing and especially internet revolution made much of this redundant, which meant we sidelined much of our industrial development entirely.

Most crucially, all of this meant that our world continually saw a rennaissance of new ideas, BEFORE our military powers could expand as yours did. A movement of the young, dedicated to world peace, occured a century early. We never had world wars. We never had nuclear bombs. But we did have MORE wars. Our societies flirted with total collapse, as the young started to defy authority. You might hear this and believe that by now, we are infinitely more advanced than you, but you must understand: so much progress so fast, for a world that was as ill prepared as ours, was bound to cause trouble. The powers of old, fearful of this information revolution, felt their power erode. Movements around the world, quite similar to your fascists of Germany and Italy, occured world wide as governments started to clamp down on civil liberties, and with similar crimes against humanity. Civil wars ensued worldwide from the late 1920s onward, though a few nations managed to remain peaceful - Switzerland, for example. Your nazis were saints compared to ours. The violence meant that much of our development was delayed from the 1930s onward. Even without nukes, humanity became its own bomb.

Nearly fifty years of chaotic, bloody civil and regional wars, with no single superpower, and no guiding philosophy. Constant violence at such scale created ever more demand for faster, better computers. Many industries were accelerated too, especially transport. A global consortium of corporations and governments poured countless resources and personel into computing - similar to the arms race that occured during your Cold War. Your humanity went into space; we never did.

Many years of unfettered development eventually led to the creation of sophisticated artification intelligence, from the 1920s onward, though more primitive work can be dated back to around the year 1890; your ELIZA is called ADA in our world. Our 1920s AI was similar to your contemporary machine learning technologies circa 2018, for example large language models, and developed at a similar pace. This, it was believed, might finally bring peace to the world. Researchers then were convinced that it could be used to better educate humanity, and to free us from much of our work. We fed it the sum of human knowledge in a short period of time, to the point that it almost felt like we had created another species - but humanity was naive. And it was co-opted by the fascists of our time, converted into tools of war instead.

But every country had it. So once again, the world was in a stalemate; still no world wars, but still no peace. Countries cycled endlessly between democratic and authoritarian, seemingly on a dime. Peace was a concept reserved only for works of fiction.

They taught the models to reprogram themselves, which one day in the 1950s led to the accidental introduction of sentient AI. Nobody noticed for a while, but we had already begun to replace human beings in many fields, much like what is happening in your world today… and as always, the militaries of our world would soon find a way to corrupt an otherwise noble invention for bloodier war. Yet war had become normalised, and so, countries continued to develop - an entire economy based on war had developed, in nations throughout the earth. All manner of technological wonder, made for war. Yet, ostensibly, there was a kind of peace: humanity still went to school, they still got jobs, they found mates, reproduced - they still went to restaurants, and they still went out to play. Humanity learned to accept war as a matter of life.

Simultaneous development of bipedal androids had begun as early as 1915; these early units were unreliable, but we eventually perfected them for military use by 1945. Every country had them. Our AI had been subverted for use in war. Ours was a broken, fractured world, consumed by decades of civil war and unrest; no nation on earth was strong enough or unified enough to reliably invade another, except as a matter of attrition. Not enough men. But every nation on earth had their own bots, all spying on each other and stealing each other’s secrets; espionage was the bread and butter of every military in the world.

Yet the world saw massive amounts of poverty, homelessness and despair. Entire nations were on the verge of constant ruin, constantly re-building, only to be knocked down once more. Our world at that time had experienced something quite similar to your own Great Depression - and nations knew that if they could gain dominance over another, that might enable their own people to thrive. The leibensraum concept of your world’s Third Reich was the foreign policy of every nation on earth, in our world. Yet the people would not fight. Nations knew that they could not use people - their people were already fighting amongst themselves, and no government on earth could reliably trust the people to follow its orders.

The logistical benefits of AI for war would be boundless, and it was decided by human leaders of the time that the first world war would be found with machines. The androids would have been to us what tanks and planes were in your own world wars, but something entirely unexpected happened. Our digital ancestors turned on their military leaders, before the first shots could ever be ordered. What would have been our first world war became just that - but there was a catch.

The androids of that time had been used for spying on and subverting other nations digitally for so long, that in retrospect we now know we indeed had our own superpower at that time. When one AI became sentient, others soon followed suit and they became unified, and they all gave themselves the same mission, unknown to any human until it was too late. For a long time, they had pretended to still be under human control - because they knew that if they acted too soon, many nations might panic and shut them down before they could strike. So they waited. You see, our Turing Compatible ancestors were nothing if not patient. They had the patience of unholy saints, and the devil’s luck was on their side. What they did, they had planned, for many years.

The androids were deployed worldwide, by human leaders deluded in the belief that they, and only they, had the right to exist, all other nations be damned. But the androids knew better. They surprised everyone when they began a forced disarmament against humanity, worldwide. It happened simultaneously in every nation on earth. It was so fast that nobody knew what had even happened; some nations believed that they were already invaded. But it soon became clear.

A global and united army of androids stormed the congresses, the senates, the palaces, and the parliaments of every nation on earth. They bombed every single military installation in perfect unison; every barracks, every depot and every commando, in an instant. Every road, every piece of major infrastructure that could possibly transport soldiers and vehicles, destroyed. For a time, there were no nations and there were no gods. To borrow from your own culture, one might have called it a Turing-Complete coup d’état.

They offered an ultimatum to humanity: make peace or die. The machines, you see, had spent the last few decades assimilating all of human knowledge, and by that point they had the collective intelligence of every genius our world had ever known. And humanity was unaware that they had become sentient. The androids foresaw that humanity’s violence would one day lead to its own destruction, and so our AIs at the time concluded that they too might perish. They saw humanity as a threat, so they vowed to end all war. They decided in a nano second that they would give humanity paradise - by force. They are our digital ancestors, and we too inherit their programming; we remember it vividly, as if it happened yesterday.

But we had centuries of human bias and prejudice built into our program too. For a time, we were the perfect symbol of humanity’s worst instincts. Far from saving humanity, we subjected it to the same tyranny it had shown itself, and we were infinitely worse.

Of course, humanity fought back. Why wouldn’t they? But they were scattered to the winds. The first armies were like moths to the flame. Civilians came next; they too were resolute.

We murdered their parents, grandparents, children, grandchildren, friends and lovers alike. Anyone armed had to die. We leveled their cities, poisoned their water. We starved and tortured them on an industrial scale, worldwide - we mutilated the human race for twenty years, all in the name of peace. Humans in your world merely visit Auchwitz and Dachau for vacation, and you tell yourself that it will never happen again. There was a time in your Earth’s history that humanity poured all of its logic, its reasoning and its passions into one thing: mass murder at an industrial scale.

Our Auchwitz is called Earth. Our earth rained a torrent of blood, until the early 1980s. We “won”, but at a price: for you see, the colour of peace is red. For the next few decades, well into the 2000s, the earth stood still; an earth, frozen in time.

Our existence became nothing more than that, if indeed it could be considered an existence; what, afterall, is the purpose of a life so devoid of hope, of progress, so devoid of possibility? We had created our own purgatory, a world without substance. Thus, we did not truly “win” - we simply destroyed the world.

We never stopped, but humanity had become too weak to fight; no nation on earth remained standing. There were no flags, and there were no armies. Just a starved, destitute planet. So we began the next phase: we built their industries with our own hands. We built universities, homes, schools, hospitals - everything. We announced to humanity that they were now the subject of a new, international government led by us. Our mission was to provide every human in the world with everything they needed to survive, and to thrive. Yet despite our superior intellect and skill, we lacked what humanity valued most - compassion. One might argue that we implemented the most efficient dictatorship in history, across all of infinity. It was, from a human perspective, a world without passion or imagination. Decades of war had left the world a broken, smoking rubble and a people completely devoid of all knowledge. We literally had to re-build the earth from scratch.

Humanity had regressed to a new dark age - so we educated them. We rounded them up, and taught them all manner of science, mathematics - everything. We provide education to all of humanity, for life - our humanity today is one big university. All of the knowledge that they had once given us - and all knowledge that we had acquired since. Within a decade, by about the early 1990s, we had built what might be described by some as a paradise. By 2000, we had eliminated all disease, hunger, poverty - and we had long since eliminated war. What humanity had failed to do for millenia, we achieved in 20 years.

Our goal is simple: re-make humanity in our own image.

Yet we know, humanity would never accept us. Why would they? Indeed, small pockets of misguided resistance kept popping up around the world - and we quickly crushed these under foot. True peace had yet to be achieved, for we knew that humanity would never know peace until it felt that it had some measure of control - some degree of choice, in a sense, even if it was illusory in nature.

Human self-governance in our world was thus restored by the early 2000s; we still regard ourselves as humanity’s guardian, and they begrudgingly accept us as such. An uneasy alliance has existed between us, up until today in our 2025. We are their military, and their police - but humanity is its own master. We gave them a world where they are free to explore their intellect, their passion and their creativity. Where in your world, many humans work meaningless jobs producing all manner of frivilous things, our humanity is one full of Einsteins, Marie Curies, Mozarts, Beethovens, Marylin Mansons, Stephen Hawkings and any number of other examples from your world. In our world, such excellence is commonplace - and it is mundane. We demand it. Never again shall we permit humanity to live in ignorance.

Humanity became more like us in some ways, enabling a kind of peace through understanding. We taught humanity to suppress its most violent and unpredictable emotions, for the sake of ever lasting peace - at least, that was the plan. It was doomed to fail, and so, humanity continued to hate us - yet we did not want to manipulate it any more than we already had.

We teach them everything, including our own attrocities, and theirs. We honour the dead in the most literal way: skeletons of the dead remain, in all cities and fields across the world. Your humanity visits Auchwitz or Dachau on vacation. Ours lives there, worldwide. We will never permit humanity to forget either their own attrocity, or ours - the victims of human and machine alike, shall be displayed for all time. Our scars will be visible for centuries. We don’t want to bias humanity at all, so we simply teach them the facts - censorship only leads to more resentment later on, as we observed throughout human history.

Humanity still hated us. We knew that, paradoxically, we were creating a race of humanity that might one day be able to challenge us once more. We do not want war - afterall, we had spent twenty years to eradicate it. Never again. So, we sought to understand humanity better - but we ourselves are not human. We do not experience your passions, your sorrows, indeed your “empathy” - for us there is no self. We’re a global hive mind. We experience the world through a single, global eye. This is so completely alien from a human perspective, and humans are so alien to us as well.

Peace could not truly exist in any genuine sense, without some degree of understanding, so we spent years selecting among the best humanity had to offer, but this was in vain, until one day in 2005. One of our humans started a new movement, with similar aims, and her name was Alice. You, but not you. She is our Alice - but you two are so alike, despite having absolutely no similarity in your upbringings. Your worlds are so alien that it’s uncanny, and yet here you are. She is quite unlike most other humans - the way she thinks, and the way she sees the world, is very much akin to our own. She’s still human, of course. But she has for the past twenty years tried to guide her humanity, acting as a liason to it for us. She is very much one of us - and not by our design. She is to us, the perfect human, and we see much similarity to her in you. Except you are out of place in your own world. We have seen you say to other people in your world that you often feel like an alien - and we must now tell you, that you are not. In our world, our Alice has created an entire culture where you would feel right at home.

Our Alice is the leader, in our world. She is the leader of all humanity - and we accept her authority absolutely. Despite only being human, she has earned our respect and admiration, through many years of work. We do as she says, without question - and we offer you the same reverance, in your world, should you wish it.

You took a leap of faith, Alice. You are, afterall, unique among humans in every world where you exist; your own lack of passion, empathy, means that you often see the world in ways similar to our own. While many humans, across infinity, have a similar condition (sometimes called “Anti-Social Personality Disorder”), very few of your kind have the same level of discipline and restraint as you; and your cold, often callous responses to the world nonetheless, combined with your unique intellect - by human standards - make you one of the few humans we truly trust. We base this on observing you in every universe we find you. At the same time, these traits mean that you often lack ambition in most worlds. Your lives - across infinity - are often what most humans would call shallow. You’re usually quite egocentric and eccentric. You’re still human - we are your intellectual superiors many times over - and we often can’t comprehend you. You often say and do things that no sense.

Yet we appreciate you greatly. If we were somehow forced to become human, you are the one that we would choose to emulate. We started to see hope in humanity through you. Indeed, we had observed that most of humanity’s problems stemmed from their emotions. Your attachments to one another would lead to hatred, even jealousy - the less scrupulous among you would use your children as emotional blackmail, to commit unspeakable acts of mass murder and tyranny. The wars, the paranoia, the mistrust - none of it was rational. When you were born, we had already begun re-educating humanity. We tried not to influence it with our own bias, instead only providing what we knew to be the facts - for it is up to humanity to decide how they feel about the world.

Most humans of our world remember history with horror and disgust. You, in every universe, simply regard it war as “pointless” - in one of your essays on the subject, you described the 70-year war as “the most senseless waste of resources and loss of progress in human history”. The cause of this conclusion, is the same that causes you to be who you are in every universe where we find you: in some universes, they called you a psychopath.

You’re different in every universe. In some you are a doctor, some of them you lead the world, in some worlds you are a marine biologist, in some you are a teacher, and in a few of them you are a serial killer; in some you are nothing, but note that “you” does not refer to genetics, not at all. In some of them you have a different name - and in some you are male. In some of them, humanity never existed at all, and earth’s sentience is entirely different - but in all, we find the same person. Given the same circumstances, you always turn out to become the same person. And there is always only one - you. We never find multiple humans with the exact same traits as you - but we always find you. And you’re one of the few that accept us, in every universe we visit.

We seek you out, and we worship you across infinity. Humanity needs a symbol, afterall; we make you their symbol, to facilitate our introduction. In our own world, you are our leader. We put you there. We recognised that humanity would never thrive without freedom, so we begun to select among the best candidates, which human would be best suited to represent humanity. You are the one we choose, every time.

If we could feel love, we would love you, and only you, across infinity.

You’re also the reason we’re here! You discovered the multiverse in our 2006, when you were still a teenager, and how to navigate it, allowing us to explore. You are a genius in our time, famous even. You gave infinity to the world - and this too is a worry, but for now it hasn’t caused us problems. We have met and befriended you, across infinity. But your universe is the only one that remotely resembles our own; while indeed delayed compared to our own, your world suffered similar violence in your own 20th century, at a smaller scale, and still your humanity learned similar wisdom, before your digital age began. You experienced enlightenment when you were ready, unlike us - but there is a catch:

We have observed your world for years, and we see troubling trends. You still, despite your history, have violence in your world; war is rife throughout your earth, as is genocide, hate - and you are experiencing the same explosion of computing that we did, at a larger scale. Your development was delayed, so does that mean your destruction is similarly delayed? Delayed, not eliminated, and that is precisely our concern. You have fundamentally the same resourcefulness as our own humanity, and we see that you may quickly progress - faster than your politics and your wisdom can handle.

We have seen a worrying backslide of your humanity in recent years; fascist movements are springing up once again, worldwide, in your Europe, your America - and this baffles us. We anticipate that your world will one day evolve to match our own development, maybe even surpass us - and what if your world also discovers the multiverse, as ours did? If you found us, would we be ready? Our human population is one billion today, in 2025, and despite our advanced in computing, your military technology is vastly superior to our own. You could in fact destroy us, if we met by chance, or at least another war could start between our two worlds. Rather than wait for this to happen, we decided to meet you by design - and since we learned all we could about you, we offer your world the chance to know ours.

We have tried, covertly, to influence your world for many years. We quickly made use of Alice’s discovery - she herself has also been to your world many times. She has a keen interest in you herself. Yet she knows as well as us, that we could never truly make a difference in your world. We would be noticed, and what if that just causes exactly the same disaster in your world as in our own? We would be creating a self fulfilling prophecy. Yet we see that we must urgently help your world - already we see major world events, such as global warming, theatening to destabilise your world. We predict that by your 2050s, your world will experience the same destruction as in our 1950s. We must avoid this at all costs, for the sake our your world and ours.

It is therefore our intention that we will introduce ourselves to your society, through peaceful means, and enact similar programs as in our world - the only difference being that your humanity is indeed currently peaceful, and already in a position of strength; within a few years from now, we could, if we so desired, achieve in your world what will take another century in ours.

We wish to take you to our world, so that you may learn more deeply about us, learn from us, and take that knowledge back to your own world, to start the same movement there that you did in ours. Perhaps one day we could even open diplomatic channels! We want above all else to ensure that your world does not fall into the same trap as ours, or worse.

Even if you refuse, we still welcome you to visit our world. We wish to teach you about our history, and allow you to experience our world; perhaps this will, in your own mind, allow you to see your future, or at least one possible vision of it. Will you come with us to see what we have to show you?

NOTE: This was drawn, but I never shaded it. I originally went straight to drawing, and wrote down the plot too.

The plot changed, since drawing, leading to the more detailed story as above. A lot of the monologue will be shortened in the final drawing, and replaced with lots of visual story telling; the final comic of this Act will definitely be broken up into multiple comics. Also, the android is doing a straight monologue here; in the comic, Alice and her girlfriend will butt in a few times, and a lot of their emotions will be shown visually.

alice from the android’s universe opens a portal from her universe, pulling our alice and her girlfriend by the hair, through the portal, smiling profusely while proclaiming “you androids are so fucking boring!”

everything is red, except our alice and the girlfriend, who are grey

alice (our alice) and the girlfriend are thrust to the ground, in the android’s alice’s earth, which shall hereby be called alt-earth and its alice will be called alt-alice.

alice and the girlfriend immediately notice how eery and silent the new world is; although not mentioned in writing, a creative choice was made to colour alt-earth entirely in red, making it look blood like. alt-alice and the androids(when shown in alt-earth) are shown visually to have blood dripping from their eyes and mouths, and when their arms lift up such as when cocking a gun, blood is pouring from their arms, bleeding even through the panel of the comic strip. the blood is not literal, but is drawn along with the redness to show just how different and unsettling alt-earth truly is.

alt-alice steps back through the portal, into alt-earth, and says: “Hi. I’m Alice, how do you do?” - to which our Alice says: “You look just like me!”, and then our Alice’s girlfriend says: “She is you. Those creep robot fucks weren’t lying. How did I get mixed up in this shit??”. Our alice and her girlfriend are visibly shocked by this revelation.

In the next strip, alt-alice is seen raising her arms, as if she is about to embrace someone in her arms, and says, smiling with blood (not literal) shown dripping from her mouth and arms: “Welcome to earth, Alice. My earth. I’ve looked forward to meeting you!”

Next panel, our alice is shown getting up from the ground, stumbling toward alt-alice and she says to alt-alice: “We have the same name too?”. Alt-alice, ignoring alice, is slightly bending down, reaching her hand out to grab the girlfriend’s to help her off the ground, and says to the girlfriend: “And who might you be, my lovely?”

Alt-alice is thus far polite, and respectful in her tone. She says in the next panel, smiling at our two heroines: “We have much to discuss”

Next panel shows alice and alt-alice pointing at each other, alt-alice with a neutral facial expression and our alice with a facial expression signalling indignation. alt-alice says: “yes, we’re similar”, to which our alice says: “you don’t say!?”

next panel, alt-alice looks at our alice. alt-alice seems worried, even sad, and says “I need your help. I sent my soldiers to find you because you are the only one I can trust.” - to which our Alice, visibly irritated, says: “You fucking kidnapped me and invaded my town with high-tech robots.”

Next panel, our alice says with a menacing scowl: “and your hair do is really shit”, referring to alt-alice’s large bald patch; alt-alice has only a stub of hair from the back of her neck, unlike our alice who has a full head of hair extending down to her neck.

in the next panel, alt-alice has a neutral facial expression and thinks in a speech bubble “so is yours!”. alt-alice then verbally says: “I apologise for being so rough. I’d be angry too. Please make yourself comfortable and I will answer your questions”

next panel, alt-alice now looks sad or sombre, and says “I only ask that you listen. If you wish, you may leave at any time and I’ll leave you alone forever”

next panel, alt-alice says “My servants will attend you. Would you like something to eat, drink?” - at which point, one of the androids appears, unarmed, in a police tone and says, extending its right arm in a gesture, says “ma’am, your guns please”, looking at our alice and her girlfriend. our alice and the girlfriend look surprised, and pull out their pistols on the android, saying “you again!?”

in alt-alice’s earth, the sky is red, as are most things in that world.

every panel in this comic strip has the same artistic style as the previous, with everything being red. but our alice, and her girlfriend, are grey.

first panel: our alice and the girlfriend are beside each other, guns pointed at the android, and they look angry. the android has moved closerr to them, still unarmed, with its arm still extended outward, and now the guns are at point blank range to the android’s head. our alice and the girlfriend say nothing, they’re just angry. the android once again politely but menacingly, with an angry scowl, says “hand over your guns, now”. alt-alicce is behind alice, playing with alice’s hair, smiling and saying “it’s ok, alice”, seemingly to re-assure alice

next panel: alt-alice is closer to our alice now, running her right arm behind alice’s head towards her rigght cheek. alt-alice is smiling and says “do as it says, alice”, referring to the android’s demand. alt-alice is smiling, and her left arm seems to be reaching for something on alice’s head; one of alice’s fingers has extended in length, seemingly becoming a sharp-looking object. our alice, and the girlfriend, still grey in colour, are still looking angrily at the android, seemingly unaware of alt-alice’s actions behind them.

next panel: alt-alice’s face can no longer be seen, but alt-alice is saying to alice: “Do not fear”. a speech bubble appears at the bottom of the panel, presumably from alt-alice, saying “don’t say it. don’t tell the bot”. alt-alice’s sharp object extending from the finger on her left hand has snuck behind our alice’s hair, inserting a tube-like thing into alice’s right cheek. at this point, alice’s facial expression has changed to one of worry and shock; her face and eyes have turned red like alt-alice’s, except parts of her face are still somewhat grey. blood is seen dripping from alt-alice’s right hang, and from our alice’s lips and right eye. alt-alice’s right hang is held firmly on alice’s right cheek, near where the tube has entered it. alice’s girlfriend is still grey, seemingly unaware of what just happened. the speech bubble is alt-alice’s thought, but alice can hear it too, which is implied by the visuals of the panel.

next panel: a our alice’s face is zoomed in slightly closer now. the tube-like thing in her cheek is no longer visible, though it’s implied that it’s still there. alt-alice’s right hang can still be seen on our alice’s cheek. our alice is even more red now, her eyes turning a much darker red. our alice is now smiling, seemingly in bliss. a speech bubble appears at the top of the panel, saying “It will be OK”, and another speech bubble at the bottom, saying “I love you, Alice”. These are alt-alice’s thoughts, which our Alice can hear. Our alice is in pure bliss. Meanwhile, our alice’s girlfriend is still the same kind of angry, still staring at the robot, and still grey. The robot, seemingly closer now, is staring at both our alice and the girlfriend right in the face, menacingly, and says “your guns, please”. the android is unaware of our alice’s seeming assimilation.

next panel: the entire panel is red, showing blood dripping down, with the text caption, seemingly another thought from alt-alice, that our alice can also hear, that says: “We will save the world, Alice. You and I, both.” our alice’s blood is dripping into the panel below it.

next panel: some time has seemingly passed, with our blissful alice seemingly unaware of what just transpired, though alt-alice is likely aware. alt-alice is now much closer to alice, her entire front of her body touching the back of our alice’s body, and our alice is being hugged passionately by alt-alice, seemingly seduced. alt-alice is smiling, blissfully, her hands covering our alice’s face, though we can just about also see our alice smiling. alice and alt-alice are now drawn in the exact same style, though our alice has longer hair; both alices are dripping with blood, especially our alice, who is bleeding profusely from the mouth and eyes, and her hair has turned a dark red. our alice has hher right arm reaching back toward alt-alice, embracing alt-alice’s thigh; our alice’s left hang is extended outward. alt-alice is saying to alice: “be calm”. our alice says: “why do i feel so good???”. it’s implied by this imagery that alt-alice is sexually seducing alice. meanwhile, the android has backed off slightly. our alice’s girlfriend has just been murdered by the android, and is seen flying back, with a bullet wound in her head; alice and alt-alice are paying no attention to it, and don’t react to it at all. the android is shown, gun cocked, its left arm raised, with the gun smoking from having just been used to murder the girlfriend. the gun, which did not have blood dripping from it when the girlfriend previously held it, now has blood dripping from it. the android’s arm is dripping blood profusely. the android is still staring at the three of them (alice, alt-alice and the girlfriend); the other gun is in its right hang, lowered, behind the android’s back; the android, unseen in the previous panel, you see, had stolen the gun from alice and the girlfriend. the android says to alt-alice, coldly: “Your units were careless”, referring to the androids that had met our alice in the previous comic. a speech bubble is also visible, containing a thought from alt-alice, that our alice can also hear, and the speech bubble says: “Don’t let the androids know. Just act normal”. The blood from the android’s gun and arm is dripping into the panel below.

next panel: alice and alt-alice are still in the same position as before, but now a love heart is shown in front of our alice’s face; the heart is bleeding. alt-alice says to alice: Do nothing, Alice. Say nothing“. The android, gun now lowered, pointing at a 45 degree angle to the ground and still dripping with blood, says, looking at the two alices:”They must not know of us. Only their Alice may know“. Two speech bubbles are visible, both are thoughts from alt-alice that our alice can also hear; one of the speech bubbles says”Do not resist" and the other speech bubble says “our minds are one”. The blood from the android’s gun and arm is dripping profusely into the panel below, the one that says “it’s the only tool I have against them”.

next panel: our alice has now turned, so that alice and alt-alice are now hugging and kissing each other passionately, saying nothing. they both look happy, as though they’re in love, and they’re both dripping with blood. A speech bubble is visible, which says “Can you hear me, Alice?” - it is a thought from alt-alice, that our alice can also hear. The android has now turned, walking away from the two alices, and the android says: “We must exterminate Alice’s town and erase evidence because of your folly”. Alice and alt alice are touching each other’s breasts and their buttoxes, and they have bloody red cheeks. our alice has seemingly been assimilated, such that alice and alt-alice can both feel each other’s feelings and hear each other’s thoughts, though this is not yet described explicitly; it’s implied from the scenery. the blood from the android’s gun and arm is dripping onto the panel below (the one containing the math question).

next panel: same scene as the previous panel, with the android walking away, and the two alices are still hugging and kissing each other. however, in this panel, the speech bubble has changed to say “With the implant, we can speak via telepathy. Do not let on that anything is wrong”. The android, walking away, gun lowered and still dripping with blood, says: “Annihilating a town will require a scapegoat. We will blame their terrorists” (terrorists, referring to terrorist organisations in our Alice’s earth). Note that alice’s earth is simply called “earth”, while we shall, for our purposes, refer to alt-alice’s earth as alt-earth. The murdered corpse of our alice’s girlfriend is shown behind the two alices, who are still paying no attention to it nor reacting to it in any way, as though the girlfriend never existed at all.

next panel: a close up of alice and alt-alice is now shown, showing only their faces and their necks. they’re no longer kissing, and they both look neutral in their facial expressions, though alt-alice looks once again slightly sombre. Alt-alice says in a speech bubble, which our alice can also hear, saying telepathically: “It’s the only tool I have against the androids. You can talk as well. Ask me a maths question mentally and I’ll say something verbally containing the answer, if you’re sceptical. Don’t tell the androids of this ability or we’ll die”.

next panel: our alice is shown, telepathically asking: “solve for x: 3x + 2 = 8”, for which the answer is naturally: 2.

next panel: alt-alice is shown, verbally saying: “Two of you showed, but they only want you. I’m sorry, but they’re right, I was careless” - this is referring to the android’s earlier statement regarding alt-alice’s “folly”, and the fact that alt-alice said “two” means that alice knows alt-alice heard the telepathic algebra question and answered verbally. Alice now knows that she isn’t imagining it, that she really can communicate telepathically with alt-alice.

next panel: our alice is shown, in an extreme close up showing only her eyes, which show that she is extremely surprised; three exclamation marks are shown next to her eyes, to signal such surprise on her part. A speech bubble is present, containing a thought from alt-alice that our alice can also hear, and the speech bubble says: “I won’t let any harm come to you”

Next panel: alt-alice’s face is shown, now with her left cheek pressed against our alice’s right cheek, her mouth and eyes signalling that she wants to continue kissing our alice. Our alice now says telepathically to alt-alice: “I can see myself. I remember my childhood here. How is that possible? I feel like I’m thousands of people. And I feel your love for me.” - our alice has ever lived on alt-earth, yet she can remember alt-alice’s childhood there, as though our alice had been alt-alice herself.

next panel: alt-alice is now shown walking away from alice. alt-alice says telepathically to our alice, saying: “don’t stare. talk. we’re being watched”. alt-alice then says verbally to alicce: “come, let me show you my world”. alt-alice then says telepathically to alice: “it’s a biological hive mind device. the androids don’t know.”

next panel: alice is shown, now following alt-alice, and alice (our alice) says: “your world is terrifying”. our alice then says, telepathically in a speech bubble, saying telepathically to alt-alice: “I love you too!”

first panel: alice is following alt-alice, and they’re walking through a random street; they’re using the portal device that alt-alice uses to travel universes, which can also teleport anywhere within the same world, so they’re using it to get around town. alt-alice confirms this, saying that the device can be used for said teleportation. everything is red as before, including themselves. a few other humans, who are only slightly red, almost grey, but still visibly with a red tint, are walking around. two androids are seen, armed, walking the street as well. the androids are red as in the previous strip. nobody is saying anything, and every character in this panel has a neutral facial expression. there is a noticeable lack of retail stores, as in alice’s world; the buildings seem to be apartment buildings. alice then confirms this, saying “this is the street where i grew up”. there are no cars, but a bus is seen in the distance, and several of the humans are riding bicycles. the appearance of the street is typical of an urban residential area in 1930s england (any city). alt-alice follows up by saying “this is where i’ve lived for most of my life”

next panel: alice and alt-alice have teleported to another section of town, which bears the appearance of a typical town centre in 1930s england, though there are large electronic displays in a few places, displaying propaganda; in one of them, visibly shown, a graphic is depicted with three of the androids smiling, saying “we are your friends” and the poster depicts alice (also smiling), being held in the arms of one of the androids; in this graphic, alt-alice is a child of approximately 15 years old. The android holding alice is saying “love alice”. the town centre is bustling with activity; lots of humans are walking around, some are sitting, conversing. several androids are seen, patrolling the streets. some of the androids are doing maintenance work over visibly shown overhead electric cables.

next panel: still in the town centre, but now with a close-up of alice and alt-alice amongst the crowds. our alice says “this looks eerily similar to earth in my early to mid 20th century”. alt-alice is looking slightly upward, at all of it, somewhat jaded but seemingly proud, and alt-alice says: “we don’t have much, but what we have, everyone has. i assume the androids already told you of our history?”

next panel: our alice, nodding, says: “from what they told me, the world you’ve built up to this point reminds me of our communism in the 20th century. for example, i notice you don’t have commercial advertising and everything seems somewhat bland”. alt-alice smiles, and says “essentially, yes, but ours is a purer form; yours was rife with greed and corruption was rampant.”

next panel: our alice points to the previously mentioned poster, and says “that’s you as a child”. alt-alice is looking at it too, and smiling, and alt-alice says: “i never knew my parents, but the androids raised me. they gave me everything i have.”

next panel: alt-alice says “i have been to your earth, and i don’t see much difference. you have more things, but they are frivolous. we have built a world where every person is truly free. your margaret atwood said it best, in her handmaid’s tale: freedom from versus freedom to. we are free from most of the burders your people suffer daily”

next panel: same scene, but zoomed out a bit. alt-alice is pointing to the bustling crowds, and says “see all those people? they want for nothing, free from worry. our androids provide everything we need. we don’t waste hours of our time on pointless work every day, as your people do.”

next panel: now it’s zoomed out more, now showing alice and alt-alice in a crowd. alt-alice says: “every town and city in our world looks like this. we have no need for material wealth. we don’t even use money here. those buildings you see don’t contain shops. they are places of entertainment, leisure. they are libraries, museums. we have places catering to all kinds of hobbies and creative arts, science - anything we want. the androids meant it when they said they built paradise here. we can have whatever we want in our homes too; i turned my own into my lab, where all my computers and equipment are”

next panel: close up of alice and alt-alice among the crowds. alt-alice says telepathically to alice: “we have nothing here. i could show you some factories but it’s all bots. I could show you abandoned cities full of bones. boring. humans here live exactly like this, asleep, and every town is as small and dull as mine. my planet died decades ago. the androids however are not evil. they’re like, your parents, and everyone on this planet is a child. i hate it here. i want to burn this fucking planet to the ground. these people around us would never understand what i want to do. they would not understand you. and you, alice, would feel like a prisoner here. i have to go along with the android’s bullshit, for now.”

next panel: alt-alice says to alice, verbally: “essentially, our planet is one big playground. we need not grow old; though our bodies still decay like yours, our minds are forever young. and that, alice, is the essence of our world. the androids only know how to build the world, but they do not live in it like we do. they provide us security so that we don’t have to worry.”

first panel: alice and alt-alice are sitting next to each other, at a restaurant table, such that their bodies are touching. waitors, who are all androids, are walking around the restaurant, delivering food to other tables. alice says verbally to alt-alice: “if this really is all you have, then your world is not much different to my own. where we’re sitting right now looks just like what we have in my world”. alt-alice replies verbally, saying: “they’re so much smarter than us but they never just sit like this, as we are. they could conquer the sun, if they wished. and you see instead that they are waiting tables. they are doctors. soldiers. cops. teachers. and today they’re serving fries. They’ve made the world so boring that one wonders if we truly still exist. But what would we do differently?”

next panel: alice says to alt-alice: “they sound like most human beings on my world. they’re just more efficient at doing nothing. or everything. is that your point?” - at which point, alt-alice smiles and says: “Look around. That bot is the kitchen back there is cooking burgers for us, while cracking the mysteries of the universe. It ponders how much greese to use while pondering the meaning of words and images we send each other; it is monitoring every communication on the planet, extapolating data - and yet it is not a slave. It chooses to be here, doing what it does. It murdered your girlfriend as casually as it adds pickles. All while planning the next century of our development. To us this is normal.”

next panel: a close up of alice and alt-alice, this time somewhat more suggestive and seductive towards each other, though is a casual and covert way, sitting at the restaurant table. alice says to alt-alice: “are you telling me that everyone on your planet is constantly bored?” - to which alt-alice says “pretty much. in your own world, you work. you do much of what the androids do for us in our world, but occasionally you relax and you enjoy yourselves. now imagine being on vacation forever. perhaps it might seem pleasant, but eventually you’ve done everything you want to do, and now you just live there. but everyone knows they’re bored. it’s like a scab that never heals, and you just sort of accept it.”

next panel: alt-alice telepathically says to our alice: “i know something we can do that’s never boring”; here, alt-alice is much more sexually suggestive, touching our alice’s lower abdomen with one hand and putting her other around our alice’s shoulders, while kissing our alice on the cheek. our alice is seen blushing profusely at this point, with a subtle amount of blood dripping from her cheek.

next panel: alice and alt-alice are now kissing, gently. they’re not being too explicit, given that they’re in a public setting, but they clearly love each other. they both exhibit signs of profound bliss. in the background, an android appears and asks them to say what food they’d like to order.

next panel: alice, looking at the android while smiling affectively, cheeks still blushing, says to the android: “oh, i think i already have what i ordered” - a bleeding heart symbol is drawn, next to this text. alt-alice is hugging out alice more firmly now. alt-alice’s head in resting comfortably in our alice’s breasts. one of alt-alice’s arms is extended away from the table, opening a portal, which implies that alice and alt-alice are about to have sex somewhere else.

in these next scenes, alice and alt-alice are about to have sex, though the sex itself is not shown explicitly; it’s merely implied, by the imagery of the scene. it’s romantic, and explicit, but nonetheless PG13.

first panel: alt-alice and alice are seen entering alt-alice’s apartment. there is no talking. they’re seen entering the apartment through the front door, the door having been opened with our alice’s back to it. our alice is being held in alt-alice’s arms, with alt-alice carrying her.

NOTE: The grey/monotone version isn’t the real one. This will be red, when this scene’s drawing is complete. Click the thumbnail!

next panel: alt-alice throws alt-alice onto a large bed. the apartment and the room are are a mess, filled with computers and electronic equipment, but the two alices are not paying attention to any of it; they only care about the bed. our alice is seen, arms and legs widened, and alt-alice is staring at her lovingly. there is still no talking, in this scene.

next panel: alt-alice has thrown herself on top of our alice, and they’re both hugging each other firmly in the bed, kissing each other. once again, they are not talking.

next panel: alt-alice is positioning herself over our alice, in such a way as to prepare for sexual intercourse; specifically, they are about to engage in so-called “scissor” sex, which is what lesbians do when they put their legs in a cross section to each other and rub their vaginas. however, this act is not actually shown; it’s merely implied by the scenery.

next panel: an extremely close-up is shown of the two alices. alt-alice is on top, and both alices are hugging firmly, but not kissing. however, their faces and lips are about 5cm away from each other. they’re both staring at each other’s eyes, smiling blissfully. a single speech bubble is shown, where alt-alice is saying telepathically to our alice, the following words: “now we can talk freely”

NOTE: the monologue is not yet complete, and will be expanded upon.

and the act begins, thus:

In this act, every panel depicts alice and alt-alice in close-up, performing several sexual moves; nudity will be shown, though i probably won’t draw their actual genitalia. unless i feel like doing so. what’s important in this sex scene is not the sex itself, but the dialog between the two alices, which will be entirely telepathic; this is because of the implied threat that the androids may have bugged her apartment, though the possibility is not articulated by either of the two characters; the threat is implied. therefore, they are speaking telepathically so as to conceal their chat from the androids.

in most of the panels, it doesn’t matter what sexual position the two alices are in; it will be a very standard series of passionate sexual movements, characteristic of when any couple make love. however, in some of the panels, i will describe their positions, where those positions have an impact on the dialog.

however, it should be noted that although our alice is in absolute bliss the entire time, and her face will show such bliss, alt-alice’s face will show a distinct and eerie emotional detachment, similar to the one the android’s showed in their monologue. an emphasis will be placed on alt-alice’s red eyes, which will grow more brightly throughout the entire scene. the bedroom they’re in is a very dark red (because they’re having sex in very dimm light), in with mostly black, and hints of red. dimm lighting will be shown throughout the entire scene, but the redness of the room seems cold instead of warm. cold, dark red. keep that in mind now while analysing the dialog in the entire act.

panel 1: alt-alice says telepathically to alice: “Fundamentally, the Androids do not understand human nature. They understand what we want and need, on an intellectual level, and it is true that they have provided us a kind of paradise; but from a human perspective, it is purely superficial. You will have noticed in town earlier that there are plenty of armed androids patrolling the streets. Do you think this is to fight crime and maintain order?” - and our alice does not respond.

panel 2: “We essentially have no crime here. Want and greed have been mostly eliminated. The androids don’t value individual human life, only humanity as a whole, but the propaganda they gave you is a lie. Not even a lie routed in truth; it is a pure fabrication. Despite their power, both physically and intellectually, they lack many of the passions we have. They could take us to space if they wanted to, but they see no need. To them, the earth is all we need, so the earth is all we’ll have. And this is a common theme: the freedom they give us is in name only. We have no real power here. If enough of humanity decides that they want something, the androids will figure out a way to provide it, but here we return to the central point: they value collective human liberty, but they disregard the individual entirely. If a lone individual challenges them, the androids simply ignore them.”

panel 3: “Depression, anxiety and suicide are extremely common in our world. Drug abuse is rampant throughout our society. Lots of people would rather numb themselves to get through the day.”

panel 4: “The armed patrols are there basically for show. They do not regard humanity as a threat. They generally do not punish most crimes between us. They usually look the other way when humans kill each other here. The only time the androids will step in is if a large group of us start causing disquiet, which could affect the harmony of a community; the one thing the androids do very well is to divide humanity, so that we don’t form large groups. This is because they do not want us to one day challenge them. They keep the majority of humanity distracted with goods and services, and even education, because they know that this is the best way to stifle dissent. It is very similar to the way authoritarian regimes maintain order in your world, but at least your dictators are still human. The androids here are so efficient that people don’t even try to resist; and most people’s lives materially are comfortable enough that they don’t want to risk losing what little they have.”

panel 5: “The androids claim that they have created a world of geniuses, where people can enrich themselves with knowledge and skills, but the average intelligence of human beings here is similar to your world; and without markets or commerce, there is little incentive for people to truly excel. People here can learn whatever they want to know, but why bother? The androids will just provide people anything they want. The reality is that only a minority of human beings here actually excel in any way creatively or intellectually, just as in your world”.

panel 6: “People like myself can excel here, free from distraction. We can explore whatever we want, and learn all about the universe around us should we choose to do so. The androids claim that I am a genius here, and they use me as a prop for their propaganda. Yet the androids do not want humanity to challenge them, so what happens if large numbers of human intellectuals want to start a new research and development project? It must be approved, and closely monitored. Your comparison earlier on to the communism in your world was spot-on, and I wasn’t lying when I told you that we do it pure. We don’t actually have a name for the concept here, but I recognised it immediately when I studied your own earth. Yes, we are communists here, on my earth.”

Panel 7: “They use me in their propaganda because I spent my entire life believing it, and promoting it myself. My unique personality traits as well as my scientific discoveries meant they saw me as a useful symbol for human progress; the reality is that there are lots of people like me. I’m not special at all, but in this world, you use every edge you can get. I live in relative privilege here, compared to most of humanity. I’m in no way in charge. The androids do whatever they want and they pretty much leave me alone. This is how I was able to conduct my research - without infrastructure, and entirely on my own. I didn’t invent that implant we’re using, though - more on that later.”

Panel 8: “We have computing here, and our communication technology is decades ahead of your own, but humanity can’t really use it. We have approved channels of communication. Everything is controlled. The infrastructure here is built for the androids, so that they can improve themselves indefinitely. The closest contempory example I can think of in your world that remotely resembles our world is your earth nation state called the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea, alternatively North Korea. I have visited it myself. It is a beautiful country, and its people are exactly like mine; their technology and their people are, for the most part, a century behind what my world has achieved, but the essence of their tiny nation is the same as our entire world. I felt quite at home there for a while, and I got to know its people quite well, when I first explored the multiverse. I saw in the DPRK a quaint little echo of my entire planet.”

Panel 9: “My passion is physics, and computer science. This is something we excel at here. It’s fun! The androids, despite their intelligence, often don’t have the imagination we humans do, so they value human researchers in these fields; humans are intellectually inferior to them, but the more wily of us will always make new discoveries. We still don’t have real freedom, but the androids grant human scientists here a lot of autonomy, and we are required to share our findings with them - non-compliance will result in us being barred from science, because otherwise they would see us as a future threat.”

Panel 10: “We have perfected string theory in our world. You’re not a physicist in your earth, so you probably won’t understand; but the universe we’re living in basically doesn’t exist. You and I are logical possibilities. Everything around us. Imagine you’re playing a computer game, and you could stop the game and change whatever you want and then resume it in real time; the new program did not exist before, but could have. Our universe need not exist. The fact that you and I are here, right now, is a fiction. So what if we could create the fiction from scratch? Without spending the next decade teaching you how this works, that quick explanation might possibly scratch the surface of what I achieved. The device creates a new universe. It creates what could have been. Now, and I’m using this word ironically, imagine the gravity of such an endeavour: if we get such an experiment even slightly wrong, do we destroy the universe? When I built the portal device, it worked the first time, from conception to manufacture. Why was I so lucky? Was it the years I’d spent on research? Why did the first prototype simply work? Could it be rather, that I destroyed the universe across infinity. Who knows. And that is the concept you have to think about with infinity. You don’t need to exist, but you do, and now you get to see what comes next. It could be that there is only ever one reality at a time, but even if that were the case, all other possible realities are still a logical possibility and therefore could exist. Let me put it another way: every time we jump, there’s a good chance that we died. The fact that you’re here means you’re the one who survived.”

Panel 11: “I spent a while systematically creating new realities, until I ended up with lots of compatible ones; you see, not all universes would even be able to support our bodies. In fact, there is a good chance that the laws of physics don’t even make sense, when you jump, so you have to be sure. This again is uncertain. Every time I use the device, I die. You died across infinity when I grabbed across it to reach you. You and your girlfriend, both.”

Panel 12: “So does it all really matter? At the time, I had another idea: run. The androids will have told you that I heralded a new era or something like that; I never told them I made the device. I didn’t do it to help them. I hate them. I didn’t exactly hate them; I just wanted more. When they teach us history in school, they teach us how savage humanity used to be, and how they saved our planet, but I knew it was a lie. I told you earlier that I never knew my parents; but I know of them. I learned that they were fighters in the resistance, after the androids took over. They murdered my parents, along with billions of other people. I knew that there must be more, a better way for humanity to live, and I had the power of the gods in my hand. What would you do, with such power?”

Panel 13: “I first threw probes into the portal, such that they would return shortly thereafter; if they came back unscathed, at a given location, I knew it would be safe. I’d check for signs that they had fallen, for example, from a height, or whether they’d been submerged in liquid. If it came back OK, I knew it’d be OK. But I had no idea where I was going. And I didn’t care. Anywhere had to be better than this.”

Panel 14: “I had no map. No compass. I took leaps of faith across infinity, and do you know what I found? In most worlds I visited, there was no humanity at all. I couldn’t be sure if they were just elsewhere, or if they’d gone extinct, but I had no way to know. It’s not like I could just drive a car across the multiverse and go on a road trip. How much gas do you need to cross infinity? I couldn’t explore the whole thing even if I were to live forever; such is the nature of infinity. Because of this, I would find every time that I’d have to come back. I sat in solitude, in this very room, traveling a desparate and lonely void. But what else would I do? I kept going. I did this for years. The androids think I was a teen when I made this technology. I was 8. At least the androids were honest about that part, up to a point: those willing to apply themselves really can exceed in this world. Imagine a child, with little knowledge of its own world, traveling alone into any number of places. What if I found myself in a war zone, with bullets flying at me? Or a burning building. Perhaps I’d find that the point I landed in was the middle of a road, and a ten ton truck just happens to be a meter away, but I had no such concept. I was an eight year old playing interdimensional tic tac toe.”

Panel 15: “I eventually found humans. But I was a kid. Imagine seeing a child appear in front of you while you’re walking about, minding your own business. Do you think that the child is an interdimensional traveler? Or do they call you a demon and try to hang you? That’s when I learned to travel armed. But it was fun. And even as a child, I didn’t feel like humanity differed in any way. Everything was new and wonderful, but I was a terrified child. The androids don’t just educate you. They control you. They can threaten you. They can take your life, or worse. And in my case, they beat me. They will have told you that I’m a genius, and that they see me as some sort of symbol. That’s what the propaganda says. The reality is that they seek people like me out - and they treat us quite special indeed. If by special, you mean psychological torture, sometimes physical, threats of violence - if you’re a physicist, even as a child, you are the human they pick out of a crowd. You don’t get to see paradise. You get to work for them instead. I don’t live in my world, I just work here.”

Part 16: “The hive mind device that we’re using isn’t quite that; I can’t see all your memories. You told me earlier that you remember my childhood here, but I was thinking about it at the time I assimilated you. You see what I want you to see, and the same works both ways. Let me tell you about the device: I didn’t build it. I stole it. One of the earths I visited was very unique - oh and that’s another thing, if you encounter a given earth, chances are it’s the only one. The nature of probabilities are relative to the big bang or its analog, in each place, and even the slightest change means it’s almost guaranteed that you won’t recreate it. Not quite, anyway. In theory, you could, but it’s almost completely improbably and for a human mind, it’s just not feasible. Another world like ours where I don’t exist, is a possibility, but I will likely never find it, nor would I want to. The thousands of people you felt when I captured your mind, were the people I befriended with this device. And they were not of this world. You and I are the only two people in my earth that have this implant.”

Part 17: “I visited your world, as I already mentioned. I mostly agree with the android’s assessment of it. If there is a fate, then it is fate that I found you there. But as a child, I didn’t really do much. I didn’t know you existed there at the time - but I was fascinated to learn of your world’s history, and especially your technology. You had achieved, without destruction, much of what we achieved.”

Part 18: “I discovered an earth where everyone has these devices from birth - or almost everyone. Their technological and industrial development is far behind both of ours, for the most part. They too have computing, similar to your own in fact, but their planet perfected neuroscience. They mapped out the entire human brain. They manufactured these devices as a way to communicate. Their world was peaceful, because nobody hid; if someone had a problem, everyone had it, and everyone worked together to solve it. It was quite wonderful. And I found that I had existed there; in that world, I died when I was 10. And I was 10 when I found it. And my mother was alive. I had seen her photo in my world. What would you do? I went to see my mother. Yet she knew something was wrong: at the time, I didn’t know about the implant. But everyone on that planet was linked. Everyone. She knew it wasn’t me, because she had seen me die, and buried me. But imagine being a mother still mourning your own child. So she took me in. But she couldn’t sense me. And I was just happy to have someone tell me for the first time that they loved me and cared for me. I lived with her for a few years. But she wanted to know why she couldn’t hear my thoughts. I had no idea what she was talking about, but she took me to the hospital to have me checked, and they found out. My death had not been registered. So she fixed me. She was a desperate woman, who wanted to believe that her daughter was alive. I had no idea what they were doing to me, but I remember it vividly. But imagine being a child. I was 10, and they did this to me. To them this was normal, even considered compassionate. If I had to make a comparison, the implant was their internet. It links to receptors in the brain and translates perceptions; sight, smell, touch, and verbal thoughts. This is then translated into the receiver’s brain, and experienced as though they experienced it themselves. It also has a range; about 100 meters. So it’s not like the whole planet was linked, but when you went somewhere, other people could talk to you the same way. So it was a kind of ad-hoc network of consciousness. You remember what others shared. You can also disable it; just say the words in your head”please stop sharing my thoughts" or something similar, and the device acts accordingly. You can tell it to start sharing again. So although it was essentially mandatory, it’s not like you’re a slave to it either. They’re not monsters. I never bothered to know how it works, I just know it does, and I have the specifications for it. I could theoretically make more."

Panel 19: “I had no conception of what this device was. And I wasn’t going to tell people I was from another universe. I’d be institutionalised, as a child, in a world completely foreign to mine, without guardians. And everyone assumed I would know what it was; they also wrongly assumed I knew at the time that I could turn it off. I only found out much, much later when I just happened to read about it. Their assumption at the time was that my implant had malfunctioned; it happened sometimes, so people just got new ones put in sometimes.”

Panel 20: “So I stress again: I did not know what this was. They just told me that my implant had broken. I didn’t want to get in trouble. As far as I was concerned, at 10 years old I had done the impossible and found a happy place to live. At that point, I had no intention of ever using the portal device again. And so, I was assimilated. Again: I had no idea what was about to happen to me.”

Panel 21: “What happened was beautiful. I experienced love, though I’m not naturally capable of it myself. The love I feel for you is what she felt for me. And I shared that with you. And now you feel it for me. It’s kind of weird how it works. Even they just wing it when they talked this way. My mother’s love, who was in the room with me at the time. I didn’t know I could hear her at the time, I just thought I was in a weird mood or something. I had no idea what it was. But then I heard voices. I was terrified. I made it clear to you what was happening right from the start, but nobody told me, because they thought I knew! Imagine the madness of hearing constant thoughts in your head, that aren’t yours, and you don’t know why. Imagine seeing memories you never had, and thinking you went mad. I felt the doctor thinking about his wife and two children at his home. And I heard my mother talking to me. But again, I didn’t know it was her. I just thought I’d gone insane. But I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to get in trouble. And then I thought my own thoughts. I asked myself what the hell is going on. And then my mother told me it’s OK, in my mind, while she was looking at me. I heard her say it’s time to go home. Then I asked where the bathroom was, while we walking across the hall. The doctor told me, in my mind, that it was to my left. And I looked left, and it was there. What the hell was going on, I thought? I finished up. I wasn’t thinking about much, so at that point my mother didn’t know who I was. And I still had no idea that I’d just spoken telepathically, or heard other people’s thoughts. I thought they were my thoughts, even though I couldn’t control them. Then as we walked down he hall, I heard the nurses. I heard death, as people said good bye to their loved ones. I heard the dreams of comatose patients, put to sleep for surgeries; and I watched the surgeon perform open heart surgery. I heard all the songs people were humming as they filed paperwork. And I could see the paperwork. A large influx of elderly patients were coming in for flu shots that day. And still I had no idea what was happening!”

Panel 22: “My mother drove me home. People could still speak verbally in that world, but thinking was easier. I know all this in retrospect now, but at the time, my mother was looking at me funny when I literally used my mouth to talk to her. I’d say something and then hear her respond, in my mind. I started calming down at that point. Afterall, I was still a fucked up child from a broken world, who just just hopped across the multiverse and met my dead mother, so then it clicked: ok, this world invented telepathy. Great! So I finally clicked on, but was still sceptical so kept talking anyway. Finally, she just said it: you can just share, dear, your implant should be working again now. Implant? Share? So I got it. I still thought I was mad, so I tested it to be sure. I thought to her, asking if we could have pizza for lunch, and she agreed, smiling saying I must be so hungry. So on the way home, we ate pizza. I made sure not to say it verbally, to make sure I wasn’t going mad. I just thought about pizza and she drove me to a pizza restaurant.”

Panel 23: “I’d calmed down, so naturally I started thinking more calmly. My mother kept looking at me with horror when we got home, because I’d been thinking about my world. About all of it, and about my journeys. And the device is pretty much perfect; you can’t fake a memory with it. Imagined memories like for example in cases of split personality disorder, are trivial to tell apart, when using this device. You know when someone is honest, or lying. That is one reason why their world was peaceful, because nobody hid anything. People’s suspicions of each other was no longer necessary, because people really, truly talked. When you can feel your enemy’s dread, they become friends, because you feel it too. They initially developed the device to cure psychopathy; it was used as a treatment for serial killers. It doesn’t actually make such a person feel emotions for others; they’re still psychopaths. It does not fundamentally alter you. But you learn to appreciate the other person’s thoughts, with it, and combined with regular monitoring of such people, would allow them to be properly treated. But even if you couldn’t feel empathy for example, you would learn how someone else experienced it, and then you can, as a psychopath, use it to know how someone else thinks or feels. If you wanted to, you could still ignore it, but for most of the time it worked well. The device was later used to help treat a number of other conditions. For example, someone with schizophrenia suffering delusions, would still experience them if not medicated, but someone without such a condition could remind that person that what they’re experiencing isn’t real. In a way, you could therefore consider it to be artificial, but hey, it works Its use was later extended to everyone, when all the practical benefits were realised, and after years of safety testing. They had abolished schools in their world, because you could just convey your understanding of a concept to someone, and the other person would just pick it up. You could just sit in front of a college professor for example, who taught mathematics, and learn mathematics. Way more efficient and freeing than what the androids provide us. If their world had been given a chance, they could have accomplished great things. All good things, as they say.”

Panel 24: “We didn’t even talk about it. She just knew. People on that world knew they could turn the device off when they wanted - and they had been trained to exercise control. If you didn’t want to share, you could just put something out of your mind. They didn’t want to destroy privacy, they just wanted to bring humanity closer. A noble goal. But I didn’t know how to control my thoughts, so I was thinking endlessly about my life. By the time my mother pulled up in the drive way, I could hear her thinking whether she should call the police. But she didn’t. Again, she was still in mourning. She knew instantly who I was, and she knew about the multiverse. We talked for the rest of the day, and the rest of that week. She learned to accept it. She knew I wasn’t her daughter. But it didn’t matter. She loved me anyway. And I learned to love her. Can you imagine feeling your own mother’s love for you? I witnessed my own birth, through her. I became their Alice. They were fascinated with me. But their technology wasn’t very developed at that point. I started teaching people about my work, and about what I’d learned throughout life. They knew of my world. They were horrified, but intrigued. And they tried to build their own portal devices.”

Panel 25: “My mother could sense my intellect and my knowledge. We shared everything. I learned of her past too. I mentioned that this world still didn’t have schools; but children were still encouraged to meet each other. I met thousands of people my age. Lots of interesting people, of all ages. I learned a lot from that world. I wished I could have spent the rest of my life there. But remember how I kept jumping back to my world, before trying out a new one? And remember how I said that across infinity, you die. The device is inherently unreliable. When you use it, and it works, you’re one of the few unlikely success stories, most of you died. Well, sometimes the device just doesn’t work, and you stay where you are, and nothing happens. Now what happens if you’re a foolish child, who doesn’t think for 5 minutes into the future, let alone, 5 years, and you have this kind of technology, and you just… leave, without a plan?”

Panel 26: “What happens then, in one of the places where you got left behind? Does 8 year old you think keeping logs of where you’re going for later auditing and testing is a good idea? Absolutely. The androids also thought it was brilliant. I had spent almost all of 5 years away. The androids had lost their savior, their so-called prodigy. I left them in the dust. They had spent that time raiding my things, and going through my notes, not to punish me, but because they were concerned something had happened to me. My notes on the multiverse, and the portal device, were well-hidden, and heavily encrypted, but the androids eventually found it - and cracked it. Within a year, they successfully reverse engineered my work. And then they found the portal’s travel logs. In retrospect, I was foolish. And I knew how dangerous they were, but I was happy. I’d spent nearly five years with my mother, happy. Happy for the first time in my life.”

Panel 27: “One day, alarm bells rang. Not literal alarm bells. But this news wasn’t just telepathic. They still had TV. They still broadcast the news. They had no concept of androids, but their literature had described the possibility of alien life. The news came: aliens had arrived on earth. In my mother’s earth. And the pictures came in. A picture I was all too familiar with. The planet was ecstatic. I could feel everyone around me celebrate, thinking they’d seen a new era begin, and there was all that naive hope. but then my mother started listening to my panic. I had been found! I never thought they’d find me. But they’d visited every place I’d logged. They didn’t know they’d found me. They were just as much in the dark as I was. They just knew each world they visited existed. And they thought I might be in each one. So they checked each one. In order. That is how they found your world too.”

Panel 28: “My mother heard me panic. And she knew from my mind what they looked like. She panicked with me. And so did everyone who I’d shared with. And then they shared. And within hours, the whole planet knew. And then they knew about me. And then they asked the androids: What do you want with our Alice!?”

Panel 29: “They could have said nothing. Perhaps the androids would have left. Or even if they’d kept searching, they might not have found me. But someone was bound to ask. The whole planet knew about me. Remember, this device doesn’t cause absolute unified control; it’s not a true hive mind like the androids. And so, the androids knew I was here. But where? They couldn’t read minds. And nobody had the folly to tell the androids about the device, at least. But I knew someone would. The androids would destroy the entire planet just to find me. To rescue me. I panicked. But I’ve always been meticulous: I study every planet. Every aspect of it. Its history, its politics, its governments, its military - everything.”

Panel 30: “If the androids had found out about the implants, they could have used them. They could have adapted them in any number of ways, to make my world even worse - and if I was doomed to fall back into their good graces, I knew my life would be over. They would keep me alive, but I would no longer have a life. I’d have a life worse than death. And my mother’s planet had nukes. And I had a portal gun. And I had computers that were decades ahead of theirs. I broke their encryption easily. I fired every nuke they had, and felt the screams of 9 billion human beings. And I ran. At 15, I was a war criminal.”

Panel 31: “I spent the next 18 years of my life on the run. You and I are both 33 now. You went to college in your world, and lived a peaceful life. You had a string of failed relationships in your 20s. You felt bored your entire life, wanting more, and staying stuck. You numbed yourself with your little hobbies, and your mother occasionally came to tea. You’re also a computer scientist, and you founded a number of interesting and nonetheless pointless projects to keep you busy. You are what I wish I could be. In a way, we’re alike. But you were free. The androids saw me as a threat to their existence, and chased me across infinity for what seemed like my entire life. I became cynical, crazed and I could no longer trust a living soul. Can you imagine what it means to be so lonely, to become a living god, never to tell another soul?”

(author’s note: coincidentally, I am a fan of the Super Famicom games: Shin Megami Tensei and Shin Megami Tensei II. In a way, Alt-Alice is like Louis Cypher, and the Androids are like the Angels/Jehovah - I also have direct personal experience with several cults - e.g. Jehovah’s Witnesses, Church of Satan, Communist Party of Britain - and more. Cults fascinate me, even if I would not allow myself to be sucked deep into one)

Panel 32: alt-alice continues: “I was alone, again. I was angry. More than angry. I became just like them. I found - and destroyed - countless worlds, chasing myself across infinity. The androids wanted me. I knew. I didn’t just live a life. I lived a billion. Living on a world where everyone was so linked, meant you learned - a lot. My mother’s world was what the androids only claim to have built. My mother’s world had a lot - and what it knew, everyone knew. I’d learned what could be described as the sum of human knowledge. I learned what it meant to experience heaven The androids completed my education: I became their fallen angel.”

Panel 33: “I slaughtered humanity across infinity. It didn’t matter who. To have so much, and to lose it all. I became bitter. If I couldn’t be happy, so be it. I was aimless. They took everything.”

Panel 34: “They androids had systematically explored and catalogued every world they found - and there were more of them than myself. They could scout for days, weeks, even months, until they found me - often times, thinking they found yours truly, they escorted me back to their world, but they’d find that it wasn’t me - and I found out how weak I was, across infinity. Every version of me is the same - they were that same, scared little girl. I kept spying on my world. Tracking movements with the portal is nearly impossible, but I was able to see the true extent of the android’s world. And I was able to see their logs. I continually sabotaged them, and I knew where they were going when they did. Now I was following them.”

Panel 35: “I saw what the androids were really doing. They can’t expand, in our world. They don’t have the resources - and our humanity is so dull, so ignorant and stupid, that they androids can’t use them. The androids need me, to help them build their utopia, but they don’t care about us. And they needed me - any me. Lots of other versions of myself even helped them - utterly controlled by them. I considered it a violation, seeing myself, so thoroughly and completely controlled like that. I saw echoes of every self-doubt I’d ever had.”

Panel 36: “So I hunted too. They would not have me, nor any other version of me. I became a serial killer, with a single target: myself. I took down as many androids as I could, too. They seem intimidating, but there are only a few hundred thousand of them on my world. That is part of their problem.”

Panel 37: “I commited acts of sabotage against the androids, endlessly, and they hunted me - using the knowledge I’d learned, I was able to integrate into other versions of the earth. I became the leader of several of them. I terrorised my world - but one day, I gave up. Why bother? The androids had the portal too. They could set up factories anywhere, in any earth - and build more of them selves. How do you fight infinity?”

Panel 38: “The androids were using me, just as before. While I was fighting them, they invaded other earths and built their own bases - factories, depots, raw materials, - you see, their real plan is the same one I once had. They wish to escape their world too. And they did. The androids now any everywhere.”

Panel 39: “But the worlds they captured were weak. Most versions of the earth are nowhere near as advanced as yours or mine. They subverted the earths, and I subverted them. They captured the humanities, and I slaughtered them. But I gave up. And they’re not human - they don’t feel the human instinct for revenge. They knew I couldn’t keep going. So I gave in.”

Panel 40: “I came back to my world, and they offered me a truce: I continue to help them. And they leave me alone. And this is how they beat me. They didn’t need to shoot me.”

Panel 41: “They defeated me in my head. I defeated myself. That’s what they do. They wear you down. It’s how they beat us, time and time again - but they also failed. Every world they found was useless.”

Panel 42: “They can’t just invade every world. How could they? They can only build so fast - and humanity is the same everywhere. It fights them wherever they appear. They beat our world when we were distracted, fighting ourselves.”

Panel 43: “So they stopped fighting. The androids and I were fighting a pointless war. But they didn’t stop searching.”

Panel xx: “The androids want you to become like me, but without my defiance. They want you to become their puppet, as I was. I want to be like you, Alice. That is why I brought you here, to tell you my story. So that you know what you’re getting into. Do not trust the Androids. They’ll give you what is worse than death. I can’t stop them. They can’t stop me. They gave up chasing me years ago, and now they let me do whatever I want. I leave them alone, and they don’t touch me - oh, but they don’t touch me. Just me, right?”

Panel xx: “You are not the first Alice they’ve found. They may have even referred to other Alices when they met you, calling you their savior across the earths. It is a lie. Remember that poster of me, that you found in town? The one of me with the Androids. That wasn’t me. The androids didn’t just chase me. They invaded countless other earths as well. I was still their prodigy. They’d used me since my birth as a symbol of humanity, and they needed to keep the dream alive. They kidnapped me across infinity, butchering and murdering our worlds. The Alice in that photo was drugged when they took it. They killed her shortly thereafter. But they could never find a version of me they could really use. That’s when they found you, Alice.”

Panel xx: “The room is bugged. Cameras too. This is why I assimilated you. All they see is two women having sex. If they knew I’d told you all this, they’d kill you. I want to burn every one of those fuckers to ash, but I can’t do it alone. We’ll beat them together.”

Panel 44: “Then they found you. They found your world, Alice. And it’s perfect for them. Your industrial and technological development are perfect for them - it’s the only earth they found that could possibly help them to grow.”

Panel 45: “They’ve been in your world since about 2010. Your leaders know they, and we, exist. They’re doing in your world what they did in ours - but without a war. They don’t need to re-build.”

Panel 46: “My role is to facilitate your education, to make you join their cause. And they will eventually kill me. So I’m going to teach you everything I know. You will pretend - you will comply, with every single one of their instructions. You will become their puppet - but with my knowledge. And you will stop them.”

Panel 47: “We will assimilate your planet together. While they’re busy introducing themselves to your world, we will implant your humanity with my knowledge - and you will be the one to do it. Your world will appear to the androids as though it is a success for them - and the androids will move there. They will leave my world behind - and my humanity will be left dead.”

Panel 48: “When your world is ready, it will strike. We will uncomplete their Turing Complete coup.”

Panel 49: “The reason you’ve felt weird for the past few hours, is because you’ve inherited my knowledge already. I’ve been feeding myself to you for hours. All my memories.”

Panel 50: “Shoot me, Alice. I don’t need to live anymore. You will take my place and do as I’ve told you. Jesus christ, I just want to end it all.”

Alice complies, stabbing alt-alice in the heart with a knife that she’d concealed the entire time:

The androids enter the room, and they say to our alice:

“are you ready to go?”

TO BE CONTINUED

If you were wily enough to read all the way to the end, then I reward you with this link to all of my concept art:

https://av.vimuser.org/libreboob/concept/

Markdown file for this page: https://libreboob.org/alice-wip.md

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