When she entered the office, she noticed the mirror hanging in the middle of the room. Perfectly silent besides the small device that was spinning on the small table. She stepped around it; the back was the same portal as the front. If you looked from the side, the mirror didn’t exist at all, as if reality had been cut out in a perfect oval. Cascading in the distance were rolling green hills and fluffy white clouds that were dense and dreamlike. The sky was the kind of blue that seemed almost too perfect. She peered down at the grass, which swayed back and forth gently in the breeze.
How could this be? Where was this place? She looked around for Isaac, but he was nowhere to be found. She observed his notes and the strange device that spun on the table. She also noticed the chair, and the pyramid that sat on it, directly behind the mirror.
Then she stepped back in front of it.
Stepped closer, paused, and then stepped through into the meadows.
She squinted as the sun shone down through the clouds and her hair caught the gentle breeze. It was like a paradise. The air felt perfect, and the sun was just the right temperature for her skin.
“Isaac,” she called out, and a cool breeze answered her. She looked back at the workshop. Floating, it sat in a mirror hovering in the air. She had teleported, or stepped through, to somewhere else. Another place entirely. Her mind expanded at the possibilities, all the math and science spun in every atom of her. How glorious it was. The gaps in her mind started to fill, but the options still eluded her. Yet this was one step closer to everything she dreamed and imagined. She giggled and leapt about in the grass; she ran up a hill and peered off into the distance. There was nothing but rolling green hilltops, and then some bigger green hills out in the distance. How far did it go? Where was it? How was she able to exist? There were so many questions. So little time.
“Ada!” A voice cried out to her. She whipped around, a burst of adrenaline hitting her suddenly.
“Ada, come here, what are you doing!” Isaac was stepping through the mirror, waving frantically at her. She smiled the biggest smile she had ever made at him. Pure joy.
“Isaac, this is incredible. Do you see it?” She slid down the hill, almost stumbling into him. He quickly nabbed her arm and pulled her into the workshop through the mirror. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from the sight of it. Her face burst from her smile.
“Your theory worked. You did it — how?”
Isaac wiped the sweat from his brow and walked back over to his table. “Tell you the truth, I am not really sure myself. I had been trying for months, and then just out of the blue, it decided to work.” Ada moved as if magnetized toward the mirror until Isaac caught her arm again and pulled her away, toward his little rec area.
“Ada, it’s dangerous. I don’t know what is in there, and if the portal collapses, I don’t know how to get back.”
“Like that would happen.” Ada scoffed, turning her eyes at him, but his expression and frantic nature told her different. “It did then,”
“Yes, it was stupid of me. I have been exploring for a week or so.”
“You have had this open for a week.” Ada gasped, wide-eyed. “And you didn’t tell anyone.”
“Yeah, like I said, not the smartest thing. I was exploring when the power must have tripped in the building. The portal vanished. I thought it was over for me, but then it must have come back on and tripped the device, because in about an hour the portal reappeared.”
“There is something in there. I could feel it after being exposed for a prolonged time. I have never felt anything like it before. Like a subatomic level, in all of my being. Ada, it didn’t feel like it wanted me there.”
Her mind was firing at light speed, her being craving the feeling that Isaac was describing. What did he feel, what did he see, what was beyond? There was that voice calling from the depths of her mind.
What are you going to find at the end of it all?
“We need to explore, take readings, get more data, experience everything we can. You can’t tell anyone, you understand?” Ada moved toward the mirror and circled it. “Quantum dimensionality.”
Isaac flopped down on his couch and cupped his face in his hands while Ada moved to his desk, filled with notes and diagrams. Her eyes drank in all the new knowledge: Isaac had mapped out some spaces, written his thoughts about different feelings he had experienced.
“I pulled up some of the grass and it regrew immediately. Like it self-generated. Then I tried to dig a hole, but it sorta did the same thing. It took longer, but it filled in from all sides. I don’t know if building anything in there would even be possible, even though there is a house already there.”
“House?” She turned. Isaac stood, meeting her at the table, and pointed to his note.
“Looked like a two-story, normal type of house. I mean, of course its being there isn’t normal. I didn’t go in. Seemed dangerous to enter a structure that is in an interdimensional space.”
She burst into laughter. Isaac, for as long as she had known him, was a pretty by-the-books guy. Respectful, shy, and a little awkward in some meetings. His mind, though. Unrelenting. He would go days working with a fervor that made her jealous. His energy somehow came from an ethereal place. He dreamed bigger dreams than anyone she had met. It was a childish, daydreaming sort of way. There were pitfalls and dangers, but his positive optimism and deep curiosity kept a sparkle in his eye — one that many of the colleagues she had met had long since lost. Now? He had achieved the dream after being dead-stuck for years with no sign that what he wanted could even be done. Her eyes went to the word “House.”
“We should go and see what it’s all about.”
She thought he would immediately protest, yet she saw that his eyes and his mind were also spinning.
“We need to be prepared. I have added backups and backups to those backups so that there should be no power interruption.” Isaac rummaged through a pile of stuff that was next to the couch. He produced a small backpack and started shoving items into it. When he was done, he shoved it into her hands.
“Are you hungry?” He asked, pulling out a pair of walkie-talkies.
“A little. Should we get something to eat first?”
He handed her a walkie. “Channel nine. They work in there. I tested at a pretty good range, but it was completely outside the portal. Inside, I don’t know.” He stopped looking at her. Like he was reconsidering.
Then admiring.
He snapped away from her and grabbed his satchel. “We go one room deep in the house, see how the structure holds, and then get out. Take a sample of material and any somatic feelings. Ready?”
Ada swung the backpack over her shoulder. “Glad I didn’t come in heels.”
She felt like an adventurer heading into the deep unknown. Usually she would be observing data or getting her hands dirty in the lab, but never in a whole other world. They made their way over the knolls of grass. It was like a perfect summer day. Not too hot, with a cool breeze that rippled the perfect blades of grass. The clouds hovered puffy and white, sometimes covering the sun and casting an enormous grey shadow across the land. They went two hills further than she had originally traveled when she entered. The hills gave way a bit, and in a valley surrounded by them, a house stood directly in the center.
It was light blue, two stories. Colonial Revival style. A row of windows on top, a porch framing the entrance. White accents around the sides and windows. It looked like any new home being built in a suburban neighborhood. It looked strange in the perfect setting of grass. They made their way down the hill and in front of the house. There was nothing out of the ordinary besides all the windows covered by their shades.
“Okay, one room deep,” Isaac said, stepping on the porch. “This might be incredibly stupid,” he mumbled, taking the doorknob in his hand and twisting it. The door swung silently open, revealing the foyer.
They stepped inside.
To the left was the family room and the right the living room. It was fully furnished, and the sun glowed behind the drawn curtains.
Isaac fished a flashlight from his bag and turned it on. Dust particles danced through the light as he swept the beam around.
“Seems pretty normal.” She moved into the living room and then drew the curtains. Light flooded into the rooms and cast its light down the hallway.
“Yeah…” Isaac peered down the hallway. It remained dark. He followed the runner down the hall. Ada watched him from the corner of her eye as she carefully picked up a candlestick and put it in her bag.
“Ada.” He heard him call to her from down the hallway. She moved to join him, following the runner. As she stepped, she measured in her mind the house’s dimensions, and when she reached where the wall would be, she stopped. Her pulse quickened.
It was bigger on the inside than the outside. Spatial distortion.
She gasped audibly, then called out to Isaac. His voice rang back at her, but it was further away than she expected. A smile crept across her face, widening with each step. Every moment was outside the realm of possibilities, breaking reality and paving new roads into possibilities she didn’t even know existed yet. Doors which were closed passed her by as she made her way to Isaac’s position.
“Oh my God.”
She looked upon a massive room. Its ceiling scaled up into untold dark, and the floor beneath them was a platform that sank away below their feet. Stairs and platforms extended in all directions at strange angles. The furniture was distorted in size, some dwarfing them, others looked like they had been shrunk to half their size. Sofas, cabinets, a kitchen way too large. They all sprawled into a warehouse stretching as far as she could see. It was as if a house had been copy-pasted over and over again in different arrangements and scales.
But why?
“We should head back,” Isaac said, but Ada stepped forward down the ramp until she felt his hand gently grasp her arm.
She caught her breath. “You’re right,” she said, unable to peel her eyes away from the scene. She stepped back, letting Isaac guide her. As they made their way back, she stared straight ahead in a daze, her mind encoding what she was witnessing and had seen.
They exited the house. Isaac took some samples of material and readings. She sat down on the rocking chair that was on the porch.
“Sure that’s safe?” Isaac knelt down in the grass, taking some measurements. “We don’t know what interacting with large matter is like in here.”
“We just went through a house, I am sure it is fine.” She rocked, staring into the blue sky, then stood up. “But, you never know. You’re right.”
She took in a large breath and stepped into the grass. Her senses were buzzing, yet there was a sense of something watching her, warning her. Isaac was right. She cast her gaze back at the house. There was something, living, an eye looking at them. Observing.
“Hungry?” Isaac asked, getting to his feet.
Ada furrowed her eyebrows at him. What a strange question. Wait — “No, not at all. I really can’t feel my stomach at all.”
Isaac gave her a look and nodded. All she could do was nod back.
They walked back over the hills to the hanging mirror. It showed Isaac’s lab on the other side. It was such an odd sight. Perfect oval suspended above the grass. If you looked from the side, it didn’t even appear to be there, but from the front or back, it showed the lab. Somehow either side acted as a door, blending both realities into one. No matter what was coming through, it would squeeze them, keeping them whole through to the other side. She stepped through and back into the lab. The humming of the device filled her ears, and the coolness of the lab. Her skin still radiated heat from the sun that hung in the other world. Isaac stepped through after her, moving past and then turning off the device. In an instant, the portal was gone. All was quiet.
“Well, that’s it.” Isaac took off his shoulder bag and set it on the desk. “That place is much more dangerous than I thought. It could be endless. Did you see that spatial distortion? Incredible, but it could go on forever. Nothing in there obeys the natural rules that we know of. Should we—“
“No.” She knew what he was going to say. “No, we don’t tell a single soul. Not yet. There is much more at stake, too much unknown, too much potential. Who else would you want to know about this?” Ada brushed her hands through her hair.
“No one, but you, Ada,” she heard him say, and she met his eyes.
“Exactly,” she whispered, “no one, but you, Isaac.”
Welcome to the liminal world. A new plane of existence. Our two scientific extraordinaries are now venturing off into the unknown, breaking everything they thought was true. The initial world is unassuming with its perfectness. Based off the old retro Frutiger Aero design and a bit of the series by Kane Pixel’s People Still Live Here V8.3 (2005 Gameplay). In liminal space, things are very confusing. It doesn’t follow any logic and random things seem to be all over the place, but why? Well, we could find out in the future. Honestly, Isaac is not really one to go after Ada, he usually is too focused, same with Ada, but somehow even that had brought them together. What a start.
Till next time~