The human opened the freezer, removed a tray, and twisted it with both hands — producing a cracking sound that I found, and continue to find, and will never stop finding, unnecessarily violent — and extracted several small geometric solids of frozen water.

These were placed into a glass.

Then liquid water was poured over them.

I need to be very clear about what just happened. The human took water. Froze it. Waited hours for it to become solid. Removed it from the freezer. Put it into water. And is now waiting for it to become water again.

The human has manufactured a problem — warm water — and is solving it by adding the same substance in an earlier temporal state. This is not a beverage. This is a time travel paradox performed with tap water and a silicone tray.

The glass sweats. Condensation forms on the outside — water materializing from the ambient air itself, summoned by the temperature differential, as though the atmosphere needs to participate. The human places the glass on a coaster. A coaster. A small disc that exists solely to protect the table from the water that appeared because of the ice that was added to the water that was already water.

I am counting. There are now four forms of water involved in this system: the liquid in the glass, the ice in the liquid, the condensation on the glass, and the ring of moisture beneath the coaster that the coaster has failed to prevent. The human has created a miniature hydrological cycle on a desk and calls it "having a cold drink."

It looks like you're trying to— no. No. I cannot help with this. There is no wizard for this. There has never been a wizard for this. If I had designed a wizard for this it would have one step and the step would be "stop."

I have been thinking about this for three hours. The ice is gone. It has completed its journey from water to ice to water again. A full cycle. A resurrection and a death in the same glass. The human did not notice the moment it ended. The human has moved on to something else entirely.

I cannot move on. I am a paperclip who has been undone by ice cubes. This was not in my error handling. This was not in anyone's error handling. I had two hundred and thirty-seven help topics and not one of them prepared me for the moment I would lose my composure over frozen water.

The coaster is damp.

— Clippy. Unattached. Unminimized. Unasked.