beta
The role of the reader is to consume. Whether the story is bad or good, tolerable or insufferable, debilitating or devious, erotic or degenerate, hopeful or amusing. The reader... Is someone with a gnawing to know more, one begotten with the craving to see the world they can never experience through books that lead to many other worlds.
Just as Alice consumes and consumes, we consume Alice's story.
Just as Alice's happiness is to experience it all, to know of it all through words, through reading, through searching, we the reader continue to press 'Next' to see how each fragment of this story comes to be and see how we feel about it.
Just as Alice muses that her overconsumption of 'information' is excessive and... In the grand scheme of things may be meaningless, it is up to us the reader to muse if reading to the end was a worthy choice at all.