"Maybe," Cissie says slowly, considering that. "Or the conveniences were to make up for what we were put through. Either way, Wonderland was powered by this thing they called the Core, and the Core is what pulled us there from our homes, and I guess it was powered off of our memories and our life forces or something? I was never totally clear on how it worked. Most people were more concerned with making it through the day than figuring out how the place worked."

She shrugs, and smiles a bit. "It's definitely different here. Not necessarily in a bad way. Like you said, the sense of community is pretty great. I think... there wasn't much of that, where I was, probably because we didn't really need each other to survive, like we do here. I don't think that's bad, either."