The Land Behind the Mirror | ONC 2022

Chapter 7

"Please don't tell me there is no way back! Please! Please!" Alba thought frantically, knowing fully well what her friend was about to say.

"What is it?" Alba finally gathered enough courage to ask. "Please don't tell me that I can't go back home."

The combination of physical exertion and hot and humid weather made her grumpier than she ever was back at home. She was becoming a person her friend didn't even know, but what was worse, Alba was starting to not recognize that person either. She was harsh and bitter, constantly complaining, but she couldn't help it. Everything was just way too much, and all her senses were working overtime to deal with it both physically and mentally.

"I am sorry, there is no way for you to return to our world. Not yet," Ana said, knowing that the truth was bound to come out sooner or later.

However, she couldn't understand how Alba didn't figure it out by now. Didn't she think that Ana would have gone home by now if she could have?

"What do you mean, not yet?" Alba said, releasing all her pent-up frustration on a poor branch of a tree that stood in her way.

She snapped it in half, throwing it to the side much more violently than necessary. It felt like she was losing her mind, and all the new feelings worried her. Her biggest fear was that she would go crazy, that she would lose herself in all the insanity that surrounded her.

"I was hoping to explain all this once we got back, once we cooled down a bit. But I guess I can talk while we walk," Ana said, taking a long sip of water in preparation for what was bound to be one of the longest conversations she had had since leaving her world. "It might even be better if you know some background information so that you don't get as shocked as I was when I first got here."

Alba said nothing, waiting for Ana to continue. Another reason was that even though her thirst and hunger were satiated, she felt awful. The heat and humidity were wringing her like a wet cloth, and she didn't want to say something she would regret as a consequence.

"So, when I said there were humans in the reservation, I am guessing that you made the same mistake as I did. That you imagined them as primitive tribes or something along those lines," Ana said, giving Alba a questioning look.

Alba nodded her head, although she didn't really have enough presence of mind to even think about those people, let alone figure out how she envisioned them. It was still good to go with the flow because the information Ana was about to share seemed important. Furthermore, she hoped that one day, when she wasn't ready to bite everyone's head off, they could be friends once again.

"The strange thing is that that's farthest from the truth possible. The humans here are very technologically advanced. I mean, I was shocked to see how progressive they were when I got here. It will come as a shock to you even though our world has probably advanced while I was gone."

"How developed are we talking about?" Alba asked, intrigued, forgetting for a second all the annoying discomforts that had plagued her mere moments ago.

"Well, you know that I am not very technologically savvy, and I can't really figure out a lot of it. Yet, it's clear that it's far more advanced than the technology back home. However, the principle they work on is quite different, so some of the technologies will be quite mindboggling for you. I know they were for me," Ana said, her eyes glinting with that same wonder that had made her go exploring with Alba so many years ago.

"What does that exactly mean?" Alba said.

Although she was sure she should focus on getting home, her curiosity was getting the best of her.

"Everything they do or make has to be ecologically friendly. That's the law as far as I understand," Ana said, wishing she had paid more attention to the details so that she could explain them better. "Their laboratories are very high tech, traffic system is amazing without polluting the environment, and there are so many other fascinating things to learn. I've been here for years, and I still haven't learned everything there is to learn."

"About that, you were about to tell me why I can't leave yet?" Alba asked, her terror at being trapped in the unfamiliar land coming back with a vengeance.

"One of the problems about being technologically advanced is they can do things that would have been impossible elsewhere," Ana said carefully. "As a result, one of the scientists here has discovered a way to make an interdimensional portal, or whatever the portal between different worlds is called. He wanted to explore other worlds, learn from them, but things didn't go according to plan."

"What happened?" Alba asked, waiting for the final blow to be dealt.

"He somehow found a way to make a portal in mirrors, something about how it's a great conductor or something like that. At first, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't get it to work," Ana said, breathing in deeply before the final revelation. "What he didn't know at the time was that he was actually onto something. The problem was he had somehow managed to reverse the process."

"What does that mean?" Alba asked, stomping her feet over stubborn plants that were trying to trip her up.

She was annoyed that her brain could barely follow the revelations. Still, there was nothing she could do but vent her frustrations on the plant life.

"Accidentally, he created traveling mirrors on the opposite side, on our side. Only when people started popping out of mirrors and ending up here did he realize his mistake," Ana said with bitterness that she couldn't hide. "Because he had tried the process on a few different mirrors, they believe that there are at least three old mirrors on our side that swallow people up and spit them out here."

"But can't he like reverse the process?" Alba asked hopefully.

"He thinks so and has been working on it for quite some time. Still, the answer keeps evading him," Ana said.

Even though Ana sounded defeated, not hopeful of ever going back home, her words gave Alba hope. After all, scientists often had groundbreaking discoveries when they least expected them.

"How long has he been working on it?" Alba asked, hoping to gauge how long she would have to stay and thus how best to adjust.

It was a question Ana didn't want to answer, but she knew her friend well enough to know that she needed the truth. They weren't as close as they once were, but if the two of them were to stand a chance of ever going back home or renewing their friendship, they needed to be completely honest with each other.

"As far as I know, he has been working on that particular problem since before I came here. I think he was trying to solve it since Dereck first got here," Ana said.

"He has been working on it for years, and he has come up with nothing?" Alba asked more harshly than she intended.

"Well, not nothing. But the doc hasn't found a stable way to return matter where it came from unharmed. His new gadgets told him that every object he tried to transfer to the other side has exploded or been destroyed in some equally violent way," Ana said.

She still remembered how much the watermelon fiasco terrified her as it went to their world and back only to explode spectacularly on the way back. "At least he has made it his life mission to help us go back home, to correct his mistake."

"I guess that's something," Alba said, her eyes peeled to the ground to make sure that some plant life wasn't trying to trip her up the way Ana's information has.

"We're here," Ana said suddenly.

Alba raised her head and was instantly dazed by what she saw.