As the progress bar crept forward, Elias felt a strange sense of vertigo. In Chapter 3 of his literature class, they had been tasked with "Falling Down the Rabbit Hole"—not into Wonderland, but into the architecture of their own minds. He had written a story about a girl named Alyx who didn't follow a rabbit, but a glitch.
Elias closed the file. He looked at his hand, half-expecting to see a glow. There was nothing there but the shadow of his mouse. He realized that while the file was dated 2021, the feeling of falling—of searching for meaning in a mess of data—had never really stopped. Story Components 11_ch3_2021-11-13_AiW.7z
Alyx didn't see a White Rabbit. She saw a notification that shouldn't have existed. It was a flickering icon in the corner of her vision, a neon-pink cursor that pulsed like a heartbeat. When she clicked it, the floor of her bedroom didn't give way; her reality did. The walls became lines of green code, cascading like rain. As the progress bar crept forward, Elias felt
The lasting impact of creative expression across time. Elias closed the file