Mel suddenly felt the floor fall out from beneath her and her stomach lurched. Before she knew it, she felt she was being compressed, the breath squeezed out of her. “I… can’t breathe.”

It’s just a normal day for Mel and Sage. They’re walking home from school, when they come upon a battered vending machine of mysterious snacks. While examining it, the sisters are whisked away to another dimension by the seemingly innocuous machine. They encounter advanced memory-enhancing technologies, a strange new government, and an ominous secret behind it all. Follow Mel and Sage as they discover friendships, unravel an unknown family history, and brave a multitude of hazards to save a society in a world that was never theirs.

Judy Liu’s debut novel is a passion project motivated by a desire to explore the concept of a “perfect” society. In it, she explores both the fantasies and the frightening possibilities that can exist in a world of any design. The Vending Portal is a lightly distorted, funhouse mirror to reflect the pitfalls of our own society, seen through the innocent eyes of two young protagonists.