A Drop of Water
A story of the other world
"Hmm," she murmured to herself. The clock ticked to the right in the world seen through the mirror. And, hey, all the words were backwards too! How did they read over there? Maybe they talked backwards as well. They acted backwards - when she lifted her right arm, the person facing her in the mirror lifted her left. This has always puzzled Aisyla. Her mother had told her, "That's a reflection of you, of course." And when she complained, "No it's not, how could it be? It doesn't act the same at all!" Her mother would reply, "It reflects what you do, that's all. It's just your reflection, silly!" and stalk off. That did nothing to satisfy Aisyla's curiosity, and really just made her more intent to show that person wasn't really she, and what was seen was a different world altogether.
Aisyla climbed down off the mantelpiece above the hearth. She wondered if in the other world, they had a fire too. Well of course they did, she told herself, everything else was the same over there. They had the same couch, the same armchair, the same Renoir print on the wall, and all the people looked the same as well. Oh, how Aisyla wanted to get through into that other world! She saw it everywhere, and it tantalized her each time. It could even be seen in store and car windows, although just faintly. In spoons the other world looked quite twisted and upside-down, and Aisyla wasn't even sure if that was the same other world, it was so different.
There was another "window" in the bathroom, which was easier to look through than this one in the living room. Her shoelaces, untied and free, clicked a rhythm on the tiles as she trod through the kitchen, snatching a brownie on the way. Aisyla was an unusual 12-year-old; most of her peers weren't quite as sharp or open-minded as she. They spent their days playing with makeup and thinking about boys, while Aisyla was staring into mirrors and reading physics books. She didn't really understand everything it said in those books, but the words were nice and long and fun to say, and the pictures were neat. Never in any she had read did it say what was beyond the mirror - she had read that the image of an object lay beyond the mirror, and that it was a "virtual" image. If it was beyond the mirror, why was it she couldn't reach behind the mirror and get it? The mirror blocked the way, that was why, and there must be some sort of a dimensional change. And what a barrier was that mirror! Aisyla had tried so many times and methods to get through it - breaking it of course did no good, and only brought bad luck; boiling it didn't do anything but clean; all the chemicals she could find to try simply fizzed. Today she would try fire, melting the mirror. She hadn't thought as far as how to get through a hot melted mirror, but there was no harm in experimenting.
She took a very plain glass mirror, one of those thick heavy ones, from beneath the bathroom sink. She had a tea-light candle on the counter that she lit and held the mirror at sort of an angle in the blue flame of. The mirror immediately darkened with soot and smoke. "Dang," she said aloud. It couldn't work if the mirror was black. As she cleaned the soot off the mirror with warm water, Aisyla noticed how it cracked where the heat was. She wondered if this was because of the heat itself, or the water she had put on it, and decided most likely the water was the culprit. She finished cleaning the mirror and her hands, two fingers of which she had burnt touching the hot glass, and put the mirror away.
Well, this was a difficult situation. She had to get through the mirror, she just had too - she hadn't heard of anyone else even trying, so she figured she better. But Aisyla had exhausted all her ideas. She had to get some outside help, but from whom? It seemed everybody thought she was crazy, with these wild ventures of hers. She lay on her twin-size bed, head sunk deep into the pillow, staring at the ceiling as she thought. She was lying and staring blankly like that when her older sister, Ecila, walked by the open bedroom door.
"Hey Aisy, what up?" the 19-year-old asked briskly, in a voice showing no real concern for Aisyla's welfare.
"Oh, just that dumb mirror, I've tried everything, I'm almost thinking about giving up, it's so stupid, it won't do what I want..." her rambles faded off into hopelessness.
"Aisy, gee. You can't expect to get every problem solved on your own. I know; you should talk to my physics professor at college, he knows all about...well, physics. Look, I'll bring you down, say, tomorrow? I see it means a lot to ya."
"Yeah, wow, Ecila, that'd be great, thank you! I can't wait," she cut herself short when she saw her gum-chewing sister was already down the hall.
* * *
"You want to go through a mirror, I see. You may not believe it, but it is theoretically possible."
Oh, come on, Aisyla thought. I've known that forever; it's everyone else who doesn't believe it. She was standing on one side of a wide metal desk in the bottom corner of a tall lecture hall. Ecila had been kind enough to bring her to the community college she attended so Aisyla could visit the white-haired physics professor. He looked rather caricaturish to Aisyla, with his wide, shiny head with hair around the sides, his large eyes only emphasized by glasses, and his tall form. He peered into her with eyes of copper from across the desk.
"Yes, that's right. I've been trying all the ways I could think of, but nothing has worked."
"I'll tell you what I know, and you can do what you may. Let's see if I can have this make sense to you." He had been leaning on the desk; now he relaxed in his chair and took his glasses off. "Through a theory called the 'Superstring Theory,' it is possible a hole can actually be torn in the fabric of the universe. You know about things like this happening; it's similar to when you get a new pair of jeans. They're not meant to rip; they shouldn't rip; but somehow, after you take a fall in the street, they rip. The universe is the same. Whether or not a hole can actually be ripped in the universe has never been proven, because for many years people saw it as completely impossible. My suggestion is to try different ways of folding the mirror, and I can even give you mirrors to experiment on if you like. Also, I have some information on the Superstring Theory you can wade through."
Aisyla and Ecila left the college with a handful of mirrors and two all-too-thick books. Their footsteps echoed in the wide, empty hallways as they strolled out into the spring sunlight.
* * *
"Okay, so I can rip spacetime, it just never says how," Aisyla mentioned thoughtfully to Ecila while she read a huge physics textbook at the kitchen table.
"That's because no one ever has, you loony," Ecila said with her back turned, as she grabbed a Coke from the refrigerator.
"'Could momentarily tear and subsequently reconnect.' I want to go through it." She slammed the book shut and sat up. "And I'm going to, you just see."
Aisyla traipsed into the bathroom and got her collection of mirrors out from under the sink. Ecila's physics professor had given her several nice mirrors, the one she deemed the most useful being a long, thin mirror which could be bent. She took this mirror, about twenty inches long and six high, and curled it around itself. Then, theoretically -- in her mind -- it would be a window from the other world back into the other world, which shouldn't happen, and ought to cause some sort of a disturbance in time.
So, nothing happened. Aisyla was terribly disappointed, but as she was determined there was a way to get through and she would find it, she was not yet disillusioned. She was the sort of girl who stuck with a venture until she had accomplished something, whether or not it was impossible. She decided that, as long as nothing she had thought through had worked so far, she might as well simply begin to try random solutions. Aisyla noticed a CD case floating around the hallway, or rather lying on the carpet, so she picked it up, took the clear case off of it and placed it within the folds of her mirror. Nothing. Next to catch her eye was a blue votive candle, bumpy and gelatinous with previously melted wax. She set it next to the plastic and lit it. It reflected very nicely, as well as making the plastic smolder. But that's all. Aisyla left the candle burning on the other side of the sink, and climbed onto the glitter-spackled counter, holding her knees and staring at herself in the large mirror.
Ecila came in then, perky and absent-minded as usual, chewing her gum loudly. "Yo Aisy, I gotta wash my face an' all 'for I go to the movie, so why don't you head on out?" She nicely suggested to her sister, meaning it as an order.
"Nah, you won't take long, I can just sit here and wait for you," Aisyla said distantly. Her sister gave her a blank, "you idiot" stare, but she didn't notice, and continued to gaze into the mirror.
Ecila, with an air of impatience and indignation, began to fill the sink with water and slosh it onto her face. In her concentration she didn't notice how much she was getting on the counter, but Aisyla did. She noticed the water splash onto her mirror setup. In a flash, she saw how it would blur and distort the mirror's view, which may do something...well, perhaps ordinarily it wouldn't. But this was the right time, and the world was in the right order just at that second.
And so Aisyla's dream of the other world came true at that moment, but she could not see it in the light and the nothingness that was left when her anti-matter world met our world of matter.
