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This story should rightfully end upon this very moment.

But I must add that (just occasionally) Alice would feel a terrible itching feeling inside her skull. Why, it was as though a thousand termites were running hither and thither with tickling messages! And sometimes (just sometimes) Alice would feel a certain stiffness in her limbs, as though her legs and arms were not quite fleshy enough. Often she would find her limbs doing things that she had not quite willed them to do! At those moments Alice really did think that her limbs had a life of their own, as though her limbs were automated appendages.

"Perhaps, in the turmoil of those last moments in the future," Alice would sometimes whisper to herself, "I was confused with Celia? Perhaps it was the Automated Alice that really came back to the past?"

And until the very end of her God-given days, my dear, sweet Alice was unable to decide for certain if she was really real, or else really imaginary...

Which do you think she was?

Automated Alice img46

All along the stream of time and tears

Under skies where sunlight fades to breath,

Through hours and minutes, weeks and years,

Onwards gliding, we moor at last in death.

My name is like the sun in apogee,

Ascending only to wane and wax the moon.

To all who read this rhyme of apology;

Excuse this waning of Carroll by Noon.

Dodo Dodgson, long since died, transported

Alice to the realms of tale and feather.

Life is but a dream that time has courted;

In dreamings a girl could live forever.

Conclude this tale, my Alice in Auto;

Emerge to life an Alice immortal.