Continued from last week
The next object to be tried was a living mouse. In his journal, Andi advised her to tether the mouse and proceed to let it walk through the hole. After it had done so, she should pull it back out and see what happens. The first try returned only parts of its legs. The second returned only the head of the mouse.
Months went by without much to celebrate. Each mouse was maimed every time it went through the portal. She was about to give up when Tuti caught the last note Andi wrote to her inside the journal, urging her to keep trying. She held the book to her chest and had a good cry. She missed him. She didn't know how to live in a world without him; yet he was never too far away. He was watching over her from wherever he was.
Then she fell asleep. When she woke up, a very thick and heavy book fell off the shelf and hit her feet. She cursed at the book, Faraday Cage 2.0, while massaging her feet. But something happened at the same moment. Through the corner of her eye, Tuti saw a mouse running back and forth, in and out of the portal.
Alive.
She had done it.
That time Tuti realized there were a lot of her husband's motivational words on the last pages. It took her another month to prepare herself for what was to come. After the trial with the mouse was done, the next step was to send herself through the portal. She had to be sure the wormhole was safe enough for a human being to pass through. She did several more experiments using more animals. Once they all returned to her unharmed, she considered the best time to send herself through the portal.
One day, Tuti extended her arm and attempted to touch the portal slowly. Then she stopped right as her fingertips made contact with the border of the portal. Feeling it was safe enough for her to push through, Tuti let her arm be swallowed by the wormhole. It worked. She wasn't in pain and her arm was unharmed.
She closed her eyes. This was it. Her time had come. She took the first step toward the portal, then another and another - until she found herself standing in a giant circular room. All around her there were endless doors stuck to the ceilings. Wait, she thought. The room did not have a ceiling. She was stunned at the sight of all those doors. At first, the image of those endless doors excited her and then it scared her.
The room rotated. She turned to the portal that connected the giant room with the research facility. She couldn't tell which was which. Tuti opened the journal. On one page it said, "The formula to go home." She studied the doors to no avail. They all look identical. She panicked and began walking randomly from one door to the next. Her own footsteps frightened her somehow. Then she stopped in front of a door. She closed her eyes, opened the door and walked through it.
When she opened her eyes, she was back at the research facility. Her husband's notes had led her to the right door. Thank God, she thought. Tuti immediately rushed to her computer and begin to write. "The Intersection of Universes," she typed on the title page of a book she had been working on for quite some time. "A promise to the man I love, Andi Romaz."
She also left a note for her editor, Vera, to tell her she was going to another world for a very long time and that the book would be her legacy.
Tuti expressed hope the book would help change the future of mankind. After she had finished writing the note and compiling her manuscript for publication, Tuti crossed the room and stood, once more, in front of the portal she had created. She took a very deep breath. Then she took a step forward. "So long, Earth," she whispered to no one. It was time to explore new worlds. A time to live. "So long...."
The writer is a banker
---David Chandra Purnama
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