Elizabeth
I don't remember when I had fallen asleep but I must have been out for a while. I could tell it was already past sundown thanks to the window in the corner of the room. I tried my best not to groan as I slowly pulled myself into sitting upright; I failed. Letting out a long held breath, I closed my heavy eyes just for a moment to give myself some time to recoup.
Fuck.
My eyes shot open as I pulled out my phone only to see a heart-dropping number of unread messages and missed calls. God, I wanted to cry. It was my anniversary with Winston, we'd planned on going out for dinner at seven and then to a small local concert at eight-thirty. Now it was just past eleven PM...
I just stared at my phone in silent shock and horror as tears began streaming down my face, ruining the makeup I'd put on earlier for the date after cleaning up the lab. Though considering how long I was out it had probably already been smudged while I'd slept. As if it really mattered now. I wanted to punch something so bad, to scream, curl into a ball, snap my phone in half. It hurt so much knowing just how much I fucked up... Winston.. God, I was pretty sure he was going to propose.
Before I could pull myself together enough to finally bite the bullet and call Winston back, the door to the lounge room burst open. "Elizabeth! You've gotta see this!" Ryan yelled like he'd won the lottery. The energetic young man skidded to a halt when he saw the mess of a woman before him, but his pause was momentary. "Elizabeth look! It's incredible! After you left there was a freaky power out-"
"What?" Elizabeth said looking at him like he was insane but she also didn't seem fully there... Still dazed and confused from the anguish she'd felt only after just waking up. It was difficult to remember anything like this, but she definitely didn't remember leaving... No, instead she had walked into the lounge room for a short nap after putting on her makeup and getting ready for dinner... Right?
"Oh yeah I totally forgot, or maybe you forgot?..Or maybe just don't remember? Probably something like that, minor details. It's all because of this!" Ryan exclaimed, stepping deeper into the room. The boy was young, and not particularly mature. Elizabeth chewed his ear off on a constant basis, but she kept him around because she was desperate for any modicum of help in finishing her magnum opus. The small cube in his hand... Or it was in his hand; the moment he dropped his palm the cube stayed exactly where it was, denying gravity, the air in the room, conservation of momentum, the strong force, the weak force, the electromagnetic force. It defied the rules of the universe. It broke them. It re-wrote them.
"What the hell?! That's not..." Elizabeth began, having momentarily forgotten about missing her anniversary. She was a particle physicist and engineer, she knew something was
not
right here. There had to be some kind of explanation, some trick. "Tell me what's going on... It's not supposed to be able to do that Ryan!" She yelled a little louder than she'd intended, scaring both of them.
"I um.." He began sheepishly. "Oh right! I've been doing some tests all day, um let me show you." He said awkwardly bypassing her question for a supposed demonstration. He wasn't smart enough to truly know how anything he'd done today was possible, he was only volunteering in the lab because his Father, the Dean of the university needed to dump him somewhere all day and with everyone being so busy he ended up as the only person able to assist Elizabeth on her PhD project.
The cube suddenly began to transform, the smooth panels and intricate notches silently whirred while expanding outwards, connected to the round core of the device by black strings of some unknown substance or maybe energy. The entire scene looked like it was straight out of some kind of anime that Ryan would blabber about while Elizabeth worked.
Elizabeth's eyes widened in shock as she watched the cube shift impossibly before her eyes. This almost didn't seem like the same device she'd been working on at all. Though through it all, the one thing that scared her most at the moment was the look in Ryan's eyes as he smirked at her. He was enjoying himself, and he wasn't at all phased by the cube's actions, not even when a thin white light suddenly outlined her body, reminding her of something she'd seen from one of Winston's videogames... Fuck she forgot about Winston!
"Your name is Alice." Ryan said with a giddy confidence which made Elizabeth's stomach turn.
"What? Ryan, my name is Elizabeth..." I countered, baffled but.. I felt weird; as if the words coming out of my mouth felt wrong somehow.
"Your name is Alice."
