Lewis Carroll

The old man was chuckling and tapping on his computer keyboard, as if possessed by something, in a creepy laboratory with flasks of human brains and cages of guinea pigs.

"Great, great. This exceptional individual is beginning to carry a will… As a single individual, it is beginning to have significance as a form of life…"

He hadn't even noticed that the door to the room had been knocked down a few moments ago and a large number of police officers had come rushing in. It wasn't that he hadn't noticed; it was that he didn't care.

"You're Charlot Marvel, right? Hands in the air and face me!"

A young man in a riot gear uniform, holding a gun at the front, shouted out. But the man called Charlot… Lewis Carroll, kept on tapping on his keyboard with a childlike twinkle in his eye.

"Can't you hear me! We even have the authorization to shoot you over here!"

The young man yelled again. Lewis stopped there for the first time and glanced back with a twisted, doll-like smile. It was a bizarre smile that sent shivers down the backs of all the riot police. The eyes that were smiling did not portray anything; voidness. It was a "face" that could not be described better than that.

"Oh… you're late, gentlemen. I was expecting you to find me a little sooner."

Lewis turned around in his tattered white coat, creaking the round chair he had been sitting on. He was putting on his glasses, but the left eye was cracked and patched with tape. His all-back white hair was neatly combed.

With a peculiar smile plastered on his face, he looked around at the many riot police aiming their guns at him. Then, in a very light tone, he said.

"What are you going to do with me now?"

The leader of the group pulled out the riot cop's identification book from his pocket and presented it to him. Then he held out the documents he had tucked into a binder at his side.

"I confirm that you are Charlot Marvel, an internationally wanted criminal. This is José Alfonso, commander of the Italian Mobile Police. I have an international warrant for your arrest here. If you resist, I will shoot you dead on the spot."

When the young man who called himself Jose mentioned this, Lewis let out an amused chuckle. He then clapped his hands and started laughing, his feet snapping happily.

"… Shut up…!"

José declared in a strained voice while maintaining the gun pointed at him. The elderly madman widened his eyes and spread his hands.

"Fine. Shoot me."

"…!"

He looked at the riot police, who were gritting their teeth, and continued in wonder.

"The law is surprisingly lenient. I'm amazed that they didn't immediately shoot an internationally wanted criminal who caused a major accident involving hundreds of people. What a surprise."

"Shut up… you devil…!"

José slowly approached Lewis with his gun at the ready. When he spotted the triangular flask of human brains connected to the cord around him, Lewis said plainly. "Oh, be careful. They're all still 'alive', you know."

"You…"

"It's a bit of a misnomer to say that… There are those who are currently on the rampage inside. My Labyrinth is not functioning properly anymore. I think a lot of them are dead, but who cares?"

José pressed his pistol to Lewis' forehead.

The two men stared at each other for a while.

"Why did you do this…?"

After several seconds of silence, José asked in a grim voice. Lewis's eyes widened as if he was astonished, and he laughed while the gun was pointed at him.

"Why? Why? You ask interesting questions, you know!"

"…"

"Because it's fun, of course! When we were kids, we all dreamed of a wonderland! I've just built what I think is my wonderland for me, of all people!"

Just as Lewis was getting to that point, one of the riot police shouted out.

"Captain!"

Before José realized what was happening, Lewis had produced a pistol from his pocket and was pointing it at him. But without pulling the trigger, he placed it against his own temple.

"Wonderland is about to be completed. With the 'demise of Apocrypha', the world of despair will unfold! Everything is in place!"

"Wait! I'll capture you…"

The moment Jose was about to say that, Lewis didn't hesitate to pull the trigger on the gun against his own temple.

Bang.

With a light sound, the bullet pierced the elderly man's head, sending encephalopathy, blood, and human body fragments flying all around. Being exposed to it head-on, Jose was stunned for a while. After a few seconds, he came back to his senses and shouted.

"Medical team! Don't let him die!"

A flurry of men in white clothes entered the small laboratory. While they were taking care of the fallen man, Jose was staring at them with a face that looked like it was bursting with resentment, gritting his teeth.

"I won't let you get away with this… 'Lewis Carroll'…"

The muttering was muffled by the sound of a whirring ventilator, and then it was extinguished.

◇

The number of victims of the "incident" was estimated to be over 800. It was the worst accident since the postwar period.

Connecting mentally traumatized humans to machines.

The "Mental Rescue Online System"… M.O.R.S, a mechanism to recover mentally traumatized people by forcing them to dream and regenerate their broken minds in those dreams, has spread across the world exponentially.

People would transfer their consciousness to their own servers, live the life they wished in the virtual world, and repair their emotional wounds.

Their world had grown that ill. It was not uncommon for people to be unable to return from the dream world.

However, from a medical perspective, M.O.R.S. had gained a great reputation. A system that could repair people's minds without resorting to medication or surgery. People need it…

And then the incident took place.

The man who developed M.O.R.S, Charlot Marvel, had abruptly confined all the patients in the world to a single server. It could be said that they were unable to log out of the so-called virtual reality.

While in M.O.R.S, the virtual reality was perceived as reality. Therefore, the people inside could not do anything about the world that was being rewritten one nightmare after another.

In the first few weeks, the number of people who died in M.O.R.S. around the world exceeded five hundred. A year and two months have already passed since the incident. Charlot Marvel had gone into hiding, leaving it impossible to salvage the people within the isolated M.O.R.S. from the outside.

Finally, the death of a person… whose consciousness within M.O.R.S was confirmed beyond 800 people, that Charlot Marvel… "Lewis Carroll" had been discovered.