She plugged in her USB drive—a scratched, 8 GB Lexar with a skull sticker on it—and double-clicked the .exe . There was no installation wizard, no license agreement, no serial key prompt. A tiny terminal window flashed:

Following the hare... Polishing the looking glass... We’re all mad here.

He tried to close it. The window wouldn’t close.

A green progress bar filled. And then—nothing. No icon. No shortcut. Just a folder named WhiteRabbit on her drive.

I’ve been watching. You used to make album art with me. Now you make loot boxes. You’ve changed.

The splash screen appeared not with the usual sterile Adobe gray, but with a stark, minimalist white rabbit, its eye a single pixel of cyan blue. The loading bar didn’t say “Loading fonts” or “Updating presets.” It said:

She double-clicked.