Alice makes a wish, and discovers that she has the power to stay young forever. But it doesn't work quite the way she thought; and this new life includes a whole lot of adventures that she never expected.
This was my first attempt at using AI to wri...
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Alice sat at the table with her fellow students, beaming with pride as she looked down at the certificate declaring her freshly-minted doctorate. It had been a long and difficult journey, but she had finally made it.
"Wow, Alice, I can't believe you graduated at such a young age," said Nikki, raising her glass of champagne in a toast. "You must have been some kind of prodigy."
Alice's breath caught in her chest and her cheeks flushed as Nikki complimented her. She couldn't help but admire the way Nikki's hair cascaded over her shoulders like a waterfall of silk, or the way her eyes glimmered in the light. She really was beautiful when she let herself dress formally; and it was hard to remember that they were just friends. Alice took a gulp of her own drink, and the lukewarm liquid burned down her throat. She tried to act calm and collected on the outside, but inside she was a storm of emotions that threatened to burst out of her at any moment. The courage to confess her feelings for Nikki eluded Alice like a mirage in the desert, shimmering tantalizingly close yet always out of reach. For so long, she had told herself that her reticence was because of the age difference, and knowing that Nikki probably had no end of suitors her own age. But somehow, the months when they had been the same age had still been a succession of perfect moments where she told herself she would say something tomorrow.
"Well, I did have a little help," she said with a smile, letting the subject change before she could get any more embarrassed. "I had this strange dream, and it kind of restored my excitement about my studies."
But once she started talking about the things she'd been keeping secret for so long, it was easier just to continue. She told her friends about the dream, omitting some of the more embarrassing details. She described the courtyard filled with fountains, and the baby and reaper figures that had pulled her in different directions. She told them about the fountain of youth, and that she had somehow managed to escape the grasp of the reaper and step back to a lower number on the line.
Her friends were amazed, their eyes wide with wonder. They couldn't believe what Alice was telling them, and they must have thought this was some kind of elaborate joke. But instead of saying how ludicrous the story was, they bombarded her with questions about the courtyard, and why she thought it was more than just another weird dream. They wondered why she would have gone back from an imagined higher age to the age she really was. It was a perfect opportunity to tell them that she should really have been twenty-eight – or twenty-nine, as she'd celebrated a birthday since then. But...
"It's hard to explain," she answered with a shrug. "I just felt like I had a new lease on life, and it helped me to finish my thesis."
She felt a little bad about the half-lie, but she knew there was no chance that anyone would believe the truth.
"It's still remarkable," Nikki said, with a shake of her head. "It's like you're some kind of prodigy or something. I mean, we're both twenty-four, but I've probably still got a year or two left on mine. You're one of the youngest in our class, but you already defended your dissertation."
Alice laughed because she didn't know what else to say. But she felt like she needed to tell the truth, even if they brushed it off as a joke. The longer they kept on chatting, the stronger the urge became.
"No, seriously," she said, the next time Nikki said that she hoped she would still be so young. "I had that dream, and then I woke up and I was twenty-three again."
"What do you mean?" Derek asked, looking at her with concern. "You are twenty– well, twenty-four now. Are you feeling okay?"
Alice took a deep breath, trying to explain what had happened to her. She told them about her hair going from grey to auburn, how she had thought she was hallucinating, and how she had realized that she had somehow managed to wish herself younger. And everyone went along with it like good sports. There was no way they would actually believe such a wild story, but they could accept that it was a dream, or a tall tale for entertainment, and they started to ask more questions.
"So, how old were you before? Before you got younger?" Nikki was the one who came up with the obvious question. And suddenly Alice was embarrassed.
"I was twenty-eight," she said. "The oldest of us. I know it's only a few years. But... with the time I'd spent on my research before you even came here, I felt like a different generation. Like no matter how much you respected me it was as a kind of mentor before a friend. And after that it would have been so weird to ask you to..." She stopped herself abruptly, aware that the fourth glass of wine had loosened her tongue enough to blurt out her affections for Nikki with no warning.
"To what?" Derek asked, apparently a little under the influence himself. "We're all your friends, so we'd..." Finally he mumbled to a halt as the bemused stares from everyone else.
"You're going to ask me out?" Nikki asked, and it was all Alice could do to come up with a couple of indistinct mumbles about how she didn't want to make it awkward. She wished she could take the words back, but thankfully Nikki could cover her own embarrassment by changing the subject. "Wait... I remember that. The mentor thing, I mean. Professor Fry said you're a good person to ask if I need help with all the admin stuff, because you've been here a couple of years. I mean, I know it's not like school where everybody's the same age, but... if you'd been here a couple of years when I finished my bachelors degree, you must have... Like, you must have graduated high school at fifteen or something. And I remember respecting your opinion because you were older and wiser, even if you're a year younger than me... how can..."
"How long have you been planning this joke?" Aiden asked, and then everybody was laughing again. They didn't believe, not really, but at least they weren't pushing for more details about Alice's crush. She still wished there was somebody she could talk to, but this was probably the best outcome she could have hoped for.
As the evening drew on and the friends said their goodbyes, Alice couldn't help but think about her renewed youth and all the possibilities it held. Regardless of the circumstances, she'd earned her doctorate at a young age, and there were still so many options in front of her. She went to bed with a smile on her face, feeling grateful for the strange dream that had given her a second chance.
* * *
Alice woke up feeling disoriented and confused. She sat up in bed and looked around her bedroom, trying to make sense of what was happening. There was a smile of triumph on her face, but she couldn't quite remember what success she had been so proud of. It was then that the first rays of sunshine warmed her face, and she shifted position to notice a cold stickiness against her legs. When she opened her eyes, she looked down to find the bed sheets damp. She was mortified as it slowly dawned on her that she had wet the bed, and it was all the more shocking for being unfamiliar. She couldn't remember waking up to wet sheets even when she'd been a child; the only familiar feeling in her memory was the one time the previous year when she'd dreamed of fountains. And that thought made her glance towards the mirror; only to see a younger face staring back at her.
Panic set in as Alice realized that she was now 18 years old. She couldn't believe it. How had this happened? Could she have made the wish to be young again, and revisited the courtyard with the fountains of youth without even remembering? She had been an adult just yesterday, and now she was a teenager again.
Alice was worried about what this would mean for her future. Would she have to go back to school and start her doctorate all over again? Would she be able to find a job at her new age? She had no idea what to do. In her panic, she even started to call her parents for support; but put her phone down with the number half-dialled when she remembered that she was an adult now, and had to solve her own problems.
