Through the Loophole and Into the Blip

Being the Continued and Considerably More Ridiculous Adventures of Alice

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Chapter One: The Loophole in the Law of Gravity

It all began with a sneeze.

A spectacular, echoing, somersaulting sneeze.

Alice had been lounging near the bottom of her dictionary (somewhere between zygote and zizzlewump) when she gave a sudden, most unladylike ACHOO, and with it, tore a hole in the air.

A loophole, to be precise.

It shimmered with bureaucratic confusion, sparkled with quantum disobedience, and smelled faintly of peppermint and unfinished paperwork.

She stuck her finger in.

Then her hand.

Then—oh dear—a toe.

And then, quite without permission, the loophole yawned open and swallowed her whole.

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Chapter Two: Welcome to the Blip

Alice awoke inside a place that felt like a sneeze caught mid-air.

The ground beneath her feet buzzed like static and blinked in and out of existence. Floating above were jellyfish-shaped clouds labelled “DO NOT TOUCH,” and below, the grass sang gentle lullabies in reverse.

A sign read:

WELCOME TO THE BLIP
A TIMELY PLACE FOR UNTIMELY THINGS
All socks unmatched.
All clocks unclocked.
All logic, defrocked.

A creature with the head of a teaspoon and the tail of a regrettable decision hovered nearby.

“You must be Alice,” it burbled. “I’m your Blip-assigned paradox. You can call me Gordon.”

“Pleased to meet you, Gordon,” said Alice, although she wasn’t sure if she was awake, dreaming, or in a sponsored hallucination.

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Chapter Three: The Prime Minister of Maybe

Alice was whisked away (by literal whisks) to the Grand Hall of Uncertainty, where the Prime Minister of Maybe sat on a throne made of quantum foam.

He wore half a suit, half a tutu, and had a pigeon nesting in his wig.

“Alice!” he declared. “You’ve fallen through the Loophole! We’ve been expecting you every Tuesday that hasn’t happened yet.”

“But what is this place?” Alice asked, her eyes circling three times.

“This, dear girl, is the Blip. The space between decisions. The hiccup of history. The bit Reality skips over when it forgets what it was doing.”

“And what do you want me to do?”

He leaned close.

“Decide something. Anything. No one here has decided anything since the Great Shrug of ’72.”

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Chapter Four: The Endless Choice

Alice found herself in a corridor filled with doors. Each door led to a possible version of her afternoon.

One had her becoming a beetroot farmer.

Another made her Queen of All Left Socks.

A third showed her trapped forever in a queue that never moved.

At the end of the corridor stood a shimmering, undecided door labeled:

DECISION TO BE DETERMINED

She turned to Gordon. “What happens if I open it?”

“You might become real,” he whispered, “or you might become an abstract painting.”

She reached for the handle—

And everything froze.

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Chapter Five: The Return of the Whispering Walrus

“Don’t.”

Alice turned to see him: the Whispering Walrus, dressed now in full judicial robes made of bubble wrap and cinnamon toast.

“This is where I come in,” he said softly. “The Blip isn’t broken. It’s waiting. You, Alice, are the one who makes the stories go round.”

“But I haven’t the faintest idea what to do!”

“Perfect,” said the Walrus. “That means you’re ready.”

He handed her a legal document titled: “Permission to Be Utterly Bonkers (and Get Away with It).”

She signed it with a dream.

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Chapter Six: Through the Blip and Out the Other Side

Alice stepped through the undecided door.

For a moment, she felt herself become everything and nothing—a jellybean, a prime number, a giggle, a regret, a cat wearing boots and quoting poetry.

Then, with a great PLOP, she landed in her garden.

The dictionary was closed.

The sky was sensible.

The marmalade meteor had been cleared up.

And yet—on her lap sat a very small spoon with a monocle and a tail.

“See you again,” whispered Gordon. “Same Blip time. Same Loophole channel.”

And then he vanished.

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THE END.