Anna sat on the edge of her bedroom windowsill. She dangled her legs over the side, spit between her anti-gravity boots, and watched it fall twenty five feet to the lilac bushes below. Anna looked up and saw one of the remaining clouds from the afternoon storm roll quickly across the sky, obscuring the moon for a moment. Her goggles picked up distance, temperature, and wind speed on everything in her field of vision. Sensory overload. She turned off the display on her glasses to take in the full expanse of the night sky instead..
Uncle Jack had gone to bed an hour before and every exterior light on the farm had been turned off, right on schedule. No lights. No hum of motors. Just a chorus of frogs and crickets and the soft hush of a night wind. Her uncle wanted to simulate nature as much as possible by turning the farm dark at night to help regulate the farm animals’ circadian rhythms. On cloudy or moonless nights, she couldn’t see her hand in front of her face. But on nights like this, especially after the evening storms had passed and the sky shimmered, she could read a book by moonlight; a light so bright that the trees around the perimeter of her house cast shadows across the lawn.
Anna looked back to the clock on her nightstand. The display read 11:05. She took in a deep breath and paused. What if the boots malfunctioned, or she lost focus, or the safety wasn’t set like before? Anna tentatively scooted a little off the ledge. She tapped on her goggles and the display came to life. This is it. She felt like a tight-rope walker; just a step out into nothing with only a thin thread of wire separating her from empty space. Anna breathed in deeply to calm her nerves, then took her first step out the window.
If someone were watching from the yard below, they’d see a young girl walk hesitantly in midair as if balanced on a transparent pane of glass. Her steps were awkward and slow at first, as if she were afraid the glass would break if she moved too quickly. Just nerves, she thought. Her first solo flight. She watched her pale shadow move across the lawn and with each step her confidence grew. The boots worked fine. She worked fine. By the time her shadow reached the edge of the lawn, she was ready. Herbie playfully ran in circles beneath her, enjoying this new game.
Anna checked the settings on her goggles. Mara had already programmed the wormhole as a destination -- 3.5 kilometers southeast from her home and over a kilometer in the air. All she had to do was follow the faint blue target and she’d be at the wormhole within minutes. But, there was no rush to take the straight route, not yet, not when there was so much to discover from this view on top of the world. Anna leaned forward and felt the warm night air wrap around her as she glided up and above the barn rooftops and then out across the fields that circled her home.
Every second Anna ascended into the sky, the dense sound of crickets and frogs grew fainter until all she could hear was the wind rushing past her ears. This is what it must be like for a bird. Weightless. To fly without effort. Quietly riding on air currents or, for Anna, waves of gravity. The valley opened up before her. Patches of woods ran like dark rivers across the valley. Each field, a colored square in a patchwork quilt. Tiny headlights from what looked like toy cars bounced down different country roads, heading in different directions, oblivious to each other or the girl silently flying above their heads.
The light atop the radio tower on the outskirts of town, blinked red. Just past the tower, a grid of lights crisscrossed Smartt creating a luminescent haze that floated above the town like a halo. To the east of Smartt, in a large circular patch of dark woods, small fires burned in a line. It must be the high school kids at the quarry party.
Anna veered off course and headed out towards the makeshift fires instead. A quick ten minute detour to see how the other kids lived. She thought about her friends and what they would think if they could only see her now. I’ll make the party after all. Within a minute, she was flying hundreds of feet above the trees that lined the quarry. But, even at that height she could hear the sounds of car stereos thumping and kids screaming as they jumped from the edge of the quarry to the dark waters below. She watched kids wander from campfire to campfire in small packs. Some danced. Others drank. So, this is high school.
She slowly descended to the tops of the trees. From this distance, Anna could hear a tangle of muted conversations and make out the faces of some of the kids by the light of the fire. Anna recognized one of the girls, Katie, a waitress at the Ivanhoe. She spied two of the Killer B’s, Brittany and Brooke, or was it Bethany. They all looked the same to her. The two B’s seemed to be holding court in front of a group of upper class high school boys, completely comfortable and in control of those around them. Anna didn’t know how they did it. It was just the natural order of things for girls like the B’s. Flying in the sky without a net? Anna made that look easy. Talking with upper class boys? That was terrifying and incomprehensible. It was a mystery as deep and dark as the wormhole she had set out to find.
Anna had felt invisible for most of her life, an outsider looking in. What would the kids think of her if they could see her now? A superhero. The girl who could fly. All she had to do was fly a little lower and announce herself to the world. The fantasy played out in her head. The shocked expressions. The shouts of encouragement from the high school kids. The adulation. “Look up in the sky!”
Then Anna realized one of the boys, dressed in a letterman’s jacket, was looking straight up at her; his expression confused, half drunk and totally terrified. He pointed a finger at her, but he was unable to string together any words that were recognizable. Before he could alert the others, Anna shot straight back and out of his line of sight, leaving the boy rambling to his friends about the beautiful girl he just saw, an angel flying in the sky.
Anna’s heart thumped in her chest as she glided silently above the trees.
A voice came over the iCom. It was Mara. “That was stupid.”
“Yeah,” Anna replied quietly. “I guess you saw that.”
“Did you get it out of your system, at least?”
“Yeah.”
“Do I need to mention the danger you put us in if you get caught.”
“No, I’ve got it. Sorry.”
“Good. Now back to work.”
Anna checked the display on her goggles and set herself back on course. She changed her flight path just enough to fly straight up and through a small stratus cloud. Mist fogged her glasses and cooled her skin for a moment, then she popped out of the top of the cloud leaving a small swirl of condensation behind her.
Anna smiled. ‘I’ve always wanted to do that.”
“Just stay on target.”
Anna was close to a mile high now. The temperature was definitely cooler at this altitude and she regretted not wearing a jacket. Something to remember for next time. Her goggles flashed a green alert. She was within 200 meters of her destination, but there was nothing but clear skies, the moon and the curve of earth’s horizon in the distance. Maybe, Mara’s calculations were off or maybe no wormhole existed at all, as Mara had hoped. Just an aberration in her initial readings. Anna spun slowly to scan the entire sky. She moved so slowly it took almost a minute to complete a full circle, like the minute hand of a clock.
“Are you sure this is the right place?” Anna asked over her iCom.
“Positive.”
“Well. I’m positive there’s nothing here,” Anna replied.
Then a flash of light caught the corner of her eye. In a section of the sky just beneath the big dipper, stars seemed to bend in a circle, like light along the edge of a ripple in a pond. Anna cocked her head to the side. The bend of light followed her. Now that she focused on it, the ripple looked more like a lens from a magnifying glass that had been pasted in the sky.
“Wait…” Anna slowly glided towards the lens. “Are you picking this up?”
“Picking what up?”
“Straight ahead. I can’t explain it, but I’m looking right at it,” Anna glided closer but the bend of light kept its distance. An optical illusion. “You have to be seeing this.”
“Anna, are you sure? I’m not getting any readings from your iCom.”
The bend of light suddenly doubled in size. It now looked like a glass marble in the sky, allowing light from the stars and the moon to pass through. It was hard to judge the distance, but Anna knew she was getting closer.
“Whoa!” Anna laughed. “You have to be seeing this. I’m getting a closer look.”
“Anna! Wait…,” Mara’s voice was broken up by static. “There’s… [static] ...reading...wait.”
“Mara. You’re breaking up,” Anna tapped her iCom, but the static persisted. “I just hope you’re getting this.”
The static grew louder as she glided closer to the bend of light. The display on her goggles began to glitch random numbers and symbols. Then, the display went dark.
“Mara? I can’t hear you? Mara?” Anna paused mid-air. It was dead silent at this altitude.
The orb now began to glow as light swirled around it. She was only feet away. How did she get so close, so fast, Anna thought. She glided cautiously around the orb trying to keep a good distance, but she had no idea what a good distance should be. As she edged closer, the light from the orb grew brighter. Traces of pink and white flashed across its surface. A hole in the sky. From a distance, she had no idea how to gauge the orb’s size. Up close, she realized the orb was approximately four feet in diameter. Just big enough for her to fit through.
She floated straight above the orb and stopped frozen mid-air.
“Oh...my…,” Anna whispered.
At this angle, the orb was no longer a transparent crystal marble, but a window that opened up to a world brilliant in sunlight. Anna leaned in closer. Her brain had a hard time processing what she was seeing. But, it was unmistakable. She was looking into a different world.
Through the window of the wormhole, Anna could see a vast ocean spread across a horizon broken up by a chain of islands and atolls. Without perspective, she had no idea how large the islands were. They could be miles wide or feet across. But she did see waves crest against the alien beaches and sloping mountains covered in red and green vegetation. The sky on the other side was a pinkish color like sunset.
Anna turned her gaze away from the bright light and blinked. It took her eyes several seconds to adjust to the darkness of her own world. She turned her back to the glowing orb and looked down to her own valley and out towards home. She saw the moonlight reflect off of Tyson Lake in the distance and thought of Mara. She’d be worried by now and expect Anna to return. But, Mara had no way of communicating. No way of knowing if Anna was okay. No way of tracking her.
Which meant, Anna could do what she wanted, and what she wanted more than anything was to reach out into this new world she had just discovered. Just for a second. To be the first. To boldly go...one small step...to infinity and beyond. Anna turned back to the light of the wormhole and glided closer. She reached out with her left hand and watched her fingers bend and elongate the farther she reached into the light, like a reflection in a funhouse mirror.
So far, she hadn’t been torn into subatomic particles. That’s a good sign. She reached in even farther, up to her elbow, and all she felt was a gentle breeze against her skin on the other side. It was the perfect temperature. Warmer. Anna closed her eyes and took in a deep breath before submerging her entire face into the orb like a pail of water. She paused for just a moment, feeling the warmth of the alien sun against her skin, then opened her eyes.