Prompt: Entering an alternate dimension

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dan

Collin was late again. Like usual. Not like I need him or anything. I could install supercomputers just fine on my own. It's easy, all you need to do is lift a 200 pound unit, place it far enough away from each other supercomputer, and hook it up perfectly. Easy-peasy. I'd done it like, at least fifteen times before in this same room. Wiping sweat from my brow, I stood up and surveyed my- sorry our -handiwork.

A dark room, a maze of knee-high computer towers, tubing, networking cables, and coolant flooding every square inch of the floor. A single square monitor shined from the far wall, opposite the door. Connected to that is a metal hexagon the size of a tall person and about as wide. Coolant splashed against my galoshes, drops occasionally splashing on the hem of my skirt. Heaven.

In my moment of self-reflection I let my wire strippers slip out of my hand and down to the coolant soaked floor. and I groaned and bent over, blindly groping around in the coolant. It felt kind of nice, at least through my rubber gloves. The door opened behind me. Fluorescent light pushes its way through the darkness, creeping up my back.

"Turn the fuckin lights on in here, dude," Collin, my abrasive husband yelled. Outlined by a halo of blinding light, his intense jawline and slicked back hair were immediately recognizable. Two steaming cups of coffee in hand, he stepped into the room from the steps leading down to the coolant pool, the splashing of his boots a loud percussion for the whirring of electronics filling the air.

"Where have you been?" I asked, standing up and cracking my back, slipping my wire strippers into my tool belt. My long black hair fell in front of my eyes for a second, shielding meas Collin turned on the lights. "You know I hate how bright those are."

"Yeah well not everyone has night vision like you, Jackie."

"Too much artificial light is bad for you, and I can find my way around the room just fine without it," I lied, because my shins were Jackson Pollocked with bruises.

He gently tapped my shin with his foot and I reflexively yelped. I pouted, tears in my eyes. He winked. "Cute skirt, by the way."

Collin got on my nerves but it's not like this project would succeed without him. It was a two-person job, after all, and it's hard to hide a room like this from your husband. We were both in the computer science department at our university, and we were both harebrained, bonafide weirdos. Add in our obnoxious brains and you have a match made in heaven for trying to do the impossible. It'd been three years since we moved in together and seven months since we decided to convert our basement into a mad scientist laboratory.

"How many more of these things do we need?" Collin asked, tapping one with his foot. He moved over to the hexagon, leaning into the space inside of it, inspecting both sides closely.

"I have no idea. At this point we just need to keep trying after each one until it catches on fire or we succeed," I said, adjusting my glasses.

"Well screw it, let's try again. Is this newest computer all hooked up?"

"Yeah, but if we're doing this we're turning the goddamn lights off."

"Deal."

Collin flipped off the light switch as I sat down on the swivel chair in front of the monitor. The flickering screen had line after line of green code on a dim black background. I adjusted some parameters. Collin walked back over, hands in his pockets, and rested his head on mine.

"Well, ready?" I asked, finger hovering over the Enter key. He nodded, his stubble scratching through my thick hair to my scalp. I smiled and tapped enter.

Every computer in the room whirred to life loudly. This processing job was being split between twenty-three different supercomputers. The coolant around each started to bubble, and sparks hopped off of the metal tubing and wires. Lights attached to the hexagon next to the computer started to turn on one by one, from bottom to top. There was a flutter in my chest. Collin stood up and moved in front of the portal. The whirring from the computer fans created a small breeze at ankle level, and the hems of his pants started to sway slowly. A broad grin spread across his face.

He reached out to the hexagon with one hand, grasping at the empty space. His hand pressed against something. My heart jumped into my throat as he leaned against it with all his might. His hand couldn't go through now. I hopped off of the chair at lightspeed, almost tripping over a loose cable as I sped to his side.

Inside the hexagon was the image of a rolling hillside. Dark green grass swayed in the wind as three-legged creatures grazed, long yellow necks craned down. The edges of this window in the air looked like plastic wrap pulled taut. I reached out and tentatively touched it. It was warm, smooth like glass. I walked around it as he muttered to himself.

"We're so close," Collin muttered, both hands on the glass, his nose an inch away, "So close to breaking through."

From behind the window was invisible. It looked as if Collin was a very talented mime. I reached out and my hand passed through, touching his face.

"THAT'S IT!" He roared, reeling back from the window.

"What is?" I asked, jerking my hand back as he sprinted from the room, deftly maneuvering the maze.

He returned with a large sledgehammer from the garage.

"What the fuck are you about to do, honey?" I asked, stepping back as he strode towards the portal. He wound the sledgehammer back, and I could see his eyes darting around before focusing on a spot. He let a blow loose.

The hexagon, the portal, tilted back slightly. There was a sickeningly loud splintering noise. Collin had a spark in his eyes. I decided to trust him. He swung again, and I looked at the front for a moment to see a crack forming on the window. With each blow the room shook. The power in the room seemed to fluctuate for a second as each landed. I gulped.

There was a shattering sound, and the space between our world and the one in the window opened up. The temporal window began to crumble like tempered glass, shards of two-dimensional space falling to the floor, becoming invisible in the coolant. As it fell, the pieces seemed to disappear and reappear as they twirled down. I didn't see the sledgehammer go through to the other side of the portal as Collin began to clear more of the window out. A harsh breeze blew from the hole, Collin's hair moving in the wind. We had done it.

With a manic grin he stepped through to the other side.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Shay

Her name is Byrd and she sits alone in a room composed of stinking grey and desolation, letting the melancholic hues leech onto her own skin, eyes, hair, as she stares at a wall completely barren of door, or window, or image. It's just a wall. And she's just Byrd. And this is all that life will ever be, she's sure.

But what if it isn't?

She ponders for a moment, but quickly dashes the thought away, so quick that it seems to jolt her brain for a moment and she's left wondering where she left off. A train of thought, or rather, unthought, returns quickly, for she's been sitting in the same position, in the same room, for four hours now, maybe more. She's too nervous to leave this place, y'see, for the house is a new one, her family having moved in only two days prior. Nothing is familiar as of yet. Nothing but this room that she's acquainted herself with. Eventually, she knows she'll branch out, maybe undergo the same process for the room across the hall, and then the next one, and the next one, for she is slow in responding to change, but for now, she sits in this second-story bedroom in the back corner of the house. Her parents tried to nudge her out of there a few times, but have since given up the endeavor, and have resolved to let her move at her own pace. She can do that - she doesn't have to attend school with the other children. They teach her here. Or, they will.

It was her parents' idea. At first, she'd looked longingly out the windows at the kids in the street, throwing chunks of ice at one another as they waited for the bus, but mother was always quick to draw the curtains, and father would not-so-subtly peer through a slit in the blinds too high up for Byrd to see, and tsk away, speaking of the disadvantages and negatives of being one with society's youth, for the youth was corruptive, rebellious, destructive. Byrd wouldn't be like that, they promised, so long as she stayed inside and kept to her studies here, sharpening each lobe of her brain with various lessons and activities she wasn't quite sure other kids had to do. But what did she know? Nothing. Well, a lot, actually, but in regards to this? Nothing.

The result is this: at seventeen, in a room with two large windows pushed to the side, she ventures not to them, too afraid to yank the cord to lift the blinds and let the sunlight come in yellow and warm. It will always filter in grey, or white, and catch on the dust to accentuate the slow passing of time. This grey is safe, and sterile, and familiar. Even her own blonde waves falling forward every now and then work to startle her, so used to only seeing flyaway wisps that she feels compelled to obsessively push everything back behind her ears to keep the brighter colors out of her peripheral vision.

It happens just now, a lock falls forward and she blinks, wide-eyed. A pale hand lifts from her lap, from the pale yellow of the thin dress covering her knees, to push it back. Though she knows nothing's there, she can't help but scratch at her temple on the way up, irritated by some phantom pain there. When she does, an energy seems to fill her thoughts, and she breathes in deeply. Why haven't Ma and Pa come up, yet? Usually they do around this time - she's been keeping very good time, with the plain clock on the wall ticking away - to tell her of dinner. It's always tasteless, like this room, but a rumble is filling her gut, and the refreshed energy in her bones lets her feel her stomach the next time it groans for sustenance.

"Ma?" she whispers, and flinches at the loudness of her own voice, even though it's as soft as the flickering wings of a moth against a lightbulb. It strikes her then that in the several hours she's gone without seeing her mother, she can only pick out sparse details in her memory: brown hair, a broad chin, pointed nose and unimpressive height. Shouldn't she remember what her cheeks look like when she smiles, or the possibility of a curl in her hair?

"Pa?" she whispers, coming to the same line of thought. Shouldn't she know more than the coarse grey of his hair and stubble, than the stature bringing him closer to the ceiling than anyone she's ever met?

Then again, she's not met very many people. Still, she can't bring to cohesion his appearance. A daughter should know the curve of her parents' brows, to know whether it's kind or mean, and how best to communicate or hold a tongue in the presence of them. Her brain feels empty, though. Upon bringing her hand back down from her forehead to her lap, the energy has dissipated, and she's back to her old habit of staring at nothing, thinking of nothing, and desiring nothing but the sap of color from this room.

At some point, night falls, and instead of working herself beneath the blankets of the bed she sits on, she simply lays back, legs still dangling off the edge of the bed, and closes her eyes for sleep. When she wakes, the room is bright with colorlessness again, and she sits up, rubs her eyes, and continues staring at that one point on the wall. It surprises her, even through this haze, that nobody's summoned her to breakfast, even after missing dinner the night before. But she recognizes that her parents are busy, even though she only recalls the vagueries of their occupations - something about nursing, something about mechanics - and lets the worry fall where it stands, soaked wet and torn apart by moisture at the base of her skull.

A hand raises to rub more sleep from her eye, and that phantom pain returns as she nudges a spot on her cheekbones. There is a tingling, and then she feels the scrunch of her brows knitting together. Why should she let the thought fall to pieces, anyhow? She's their child, isn't she? Shouldn't they, at the very least, come upstairs to see that she's eaten, to see that she's alright, that she's not splayed out dead? Very suddenly, a bitterness flows into her veins that she doesn't remember feeling so intensely before, and even when her hand falls down, clenched into a tight fist, the feeling doesn't fade. It's in her, now.

It's in her, and so comes the foreign idea that is this: stand up, and see them yourself. She almost does, too, but a fear crowds it out, and she remains firmly rooted to the spot. Is that a bead of sweat rolling down her back? The feel of it, and the inability to uproot herself, frustrates her, and in a heat of the remnants of that bitterness, she swipes both hands over her forehead and into her hair, suppressing an exasperated groan.

When she does this, though, there's a strong tugging on the puckered skin of her forehead, and a sharp sensation flows through them, briefly. Her mouth curls into a pained "O" as her eyes pinch shut, but that's all it is - a pinch. The feeling is gone, but a whole rush of new ones crowd the limited space in her skull immediately. There it is again, a new bitterness, but also a longing, just not for her parents and a meal.

Her eyes, which she remembers now are blue, flit to the windows. For some reason, the shadows dividing each blind seem to her more like bars set on their side, like a jail cell tipped over. Why does she have to stay here, caged in by her own whims, and avoid the freedom she might have if only she were to step outside even against her parents' wishes? Can't she throw the window open and breathe fresh air for the first time, right now? Byrd stands. At first, she's scared she'll sit back down again, but there is no weakness or wobbling in her knees, and she remains firm, the dress billowing neatly against the middle of her calves.

She's up, now. If she wants, she can go to the door to the right and open it up, walk down the corridor, feel her way down the stairs and find her parents sipping coffee in the kitchen. Do they even drink coffee? She doesn't recall. She would've done all of this if the windows had not been pulling her another direction. She would've gone to the windows, too, if before her, on the wall she's been staring at for hours and days now, so sure of its barrenness, did not now have a rectangle of dints - no, they're solid cracks - in the shape of a door. There's a golden knob and everything, not round, but curved and rod-like. It looks old, cold to the touch.

Byrd is afraid of it for its newness, and yet, compelled towards it all the same for a similar reason. She takes one brave step forward, but stops herself. The cracks around the "door" are bright.

Pressed with anxiety she's sure she hasn't felt in years, she squeezes her eyes shut and covers them with her hands. There are no phantom pains when she does so. After a moment, she drags her hands down with a nervous excitement, and opens her eyes. She's met with another shock.

The door hangs open in full.

The clearness of the room that sits on the other side brings forth a squeak of surprise from Byrd's lips, and she takes so many steps back that she topples back onto the grey bed, springs groaning underneath. It's impossible, for a great many reasons, the main one being that this door only came into existence a few seconds ago. It's impossible also, to her, that this new place might exist, because it's a reflection of the room she sits in now, but bathed in color and warmth, acting almost like a prism, if a plain suburban bedroom could ever be something like that. It's so much color, so much more than the bounce of her own hair, and she has to sit and blink it all in for many minutes before it begins to process that a place in this world of hers actually exists.

That a place in this world of hers beckons, in direct contrast to the place she sits in now, and in direct rebellion against everything her parents have preached about things unfamiliar. Yet, looking at it, Byrd feels free of thought and will - and so she stands, and steps closer for inspection.

The room within, though the same in structure and design as the grey one, floats in hues of golden brown, with undertones of honeyed green. The blinds are twisted open, and through the open slits, Byrd can't see the outside, but she can see the morning's yellow rays streaming in, bringing the large specks of dust to a glimmer, like miniscule, floating nuggets sought after in the past. It looks warm inside, and as she closes the distance between herself and the threshold, she can feel its comfort radiating outwards. It's a warmth she hasn't felt in a long time, and it eats away at the frost in her bone marrow, melting her blood to liquid again. The walls are a fawny caramel; the ground, a hot brown freckled with rich green leaves. They are succulent, and flutter in a breeze of unknown origin.

Byrd's face flushes, and her hand grips the edge where door once met wall. Her eyes trail across these leaves, and then up the length of the green covers of the bed. It is a wondrous, new version of this world, and she finds herself caught in the balance. Only when she finds herself leaning in does she feel the yearning in her chest for the open windows that make the blinds clack against the screen; only when her toes, and nothing more, have crossed into this alternate dimension, does she desire what this place offers: freedom and life.

Then, it's no wonder she fully enters without much thought, never having remembered desiring anything in her life before! Surely, she must've, being alive this many years, but never as intensely, and not for a long while. The air she breathes now is fresh and relieving, and the carpet her bare feet sink into must be what earth feels like, so she wriggles her toes against it to emulate something she's been missing.

Briefly, an anxiety trickles into her chest, and she glances back into the grey room, but it's just so...dull, lifeless. From this side, she sees it less like safety, and more like confinement. The doors and windows there are locked. The doors and windows here are open, and flowing. Byrd feels as a bird, and stands before a window and lifts her arms, to wonder what it must be like to have feathers. In doing this, she closes her eyes, and sighs. "Why would Ma and Pa keep me from this?" she asks to no one in particular.

Someone nevertheless answers.

"Humanity often fears the outcome of diving too far deep into what it doesn't know a thing about, see."

Byrd's arms fall straight to her sides, eyes open, lip curled in fear as she takes a step back towards the window, if she might need an escape. Then again, if it came down to it, she likely wouldn't go through - because what lies outside? It could be worse. For now, she'll contend with the male figure situated in the doorway that could've led to the stairs in the other room. The man there is more like a boy, hair a shining brown, and face clear of stubble. He leans not lazily, but contentedly against the side jambs. He is dressed in green. There's a smear of dirt on his cheek. He's not sterile.

He doesn't regard her deer-in-the-headlights look, or he doesn't notice, and simply continues talking, picking at the splintered wood beside him with dirty nails. "There are exceptions, of course. Scientists, cartographers, the desperate, me, you. But for the most part, the average layperson, and by that I mean those content to live only on a paycheck and society's rules, norms, and taboos, will not venture deeper than they must to adhere to their own tamed desires and needs. See also how, after a traumatic event, people are content to not delve into the 'what ifs' of what might've happened had something intervened, or a different choice were made, or all manner of things. What good does it do them, they who can't change history? It didn't happen, so it shouldn't be considered. But what if we were to tell them that in some other place, in some other time - in several, in fact - those things did happen? Would they still ignore the other possibilities, or would they finally take an interest and surmount their fears of the unknown?"

The stranger, finally aware of the confusion coating Byrd's face like mud, icing, dust from a dust devil, pauses, and smiles. "But I'm getting ahead of myself," he says, and steps forward, hand outstretched. "I'm Adamis. I take it you're fairly new to all this?"

"Uh," Byrd says, alarmed by the sound of her own soft, shaky voice. She simply eyes the hand, and makes no move to take or shake it. "Yes, you could say that." Then, she dares: "What is this?"

"Just one version of many doorways to that which few want to see badly enough to actually see and experience. You must've been in a terrible strain, then, to have made it here. I take it this was a forceful thing, though, and that you haven't come here of your own free will."

Byrd is listening intently, though in a lost sort of way, until that point, where finally she can pinpoint what his words mean, and where she can take offense to them. She straightens her chin and takes a step back, both moves counteracting one another. "I am here of my own free will. I stood and walked through the door all on my own."

Adamis holds up his hands in surrender and raises his brows, not making eye contact, and turns to the bed, beginning to smooth the wrinkles in its surface. "You may believe that now, but I'm telling you, the moment people decide they want to know the different and infinite possibilities of the universe - even those possibilities which have not happened in their own time yet - they wouldn't dare venture in on their own, not at first. They would have a baited hook to sink in first, and let the bait swim off and bring back what it knows." He looks up, then, and grins almost wickedly at Byrd. She curls her lip in discomfort at this. "But then, who's ever heard of freed bait returning to the hook of its own accord?"

"I don't understand you," Byrd says, tongue empty of tone. She doesn't know what to make of anything he's saying - she doesn't even know what to make of his presence. Say, when was the last time she's been in the presence of someone young, like her?

Never, probably.

"Do you understand that here you're free to do whatever you want?"

"Well-" Byrd has come to this conclusion already, but hearing it confirmed brings a flutter to her chest. She licks her dry lips. "Yes, now I do." But this is a youth, now, isn't it? Ma and Pa wouldn't spread those things about the corrupted youth for nothing. No, they wouldn't, for even though they haven't come to check on her in a good twenty-four hours, they put their love in all the right places. Maybe she should go back-

But then, what has their love ever felt like? She can't say she knows. Already, here, in this place, she feels infinitely better than in the room of grey. She can't leave this place - not until she decides for herself the merit of their warnings.

She swallows, and softens, and lets her eyes flit past the stranger, towards the open door. She nods towards it, then back at Adamis. "What's through there?"

"Many things," he says, and closer, she can hear the faint lisp in his voice. "All of it at your disposal, but I must warn you that much of it is unpleasant, and, if you're not careful, you may very well spontaneously combust." He waits for her reaction, for the pucker in her forehead and the gasp on her lips, and then laughs, waving it off. "I kid. There are bombs in some places, though. It's very plausible that you might blow up if you take a wrong turn. I doubt that'll happen, though. I judge it'll be a very cut-and-dry path for you, as the path is different for us all, and your being here comes with a cluelessness I haven't seen in a long time."

Byrd lets these words digest as well as they can, and bites down on her lip. She wants to close her eyes to better think, but truth be told, she hasn't thought much for herself in a long time, and it feels only now that she's managed to emerge from a long haze. But her eyes won't leave that door, and subconsciously, she moves toward it. "You said I was free to go wherever, here?"

"Yes."

"So I'll go."

And, before Adamis can say another word, or follow-up with more of his long-windedness, Byrd ducks through the doorway, and enters into what feels like open air, but is a long series of rooms and halls and stairs, all going down, down, down. At first, it is a place of feeling only, but eventually, as she works her way down, she is struck with the sights of what life should be - is - but not for her. It shows, maybe, a "what could've been," giving memories she has no memory of.

There I am, coasting on a bike down a street, screaming from the very recesses of my lungs all the anguish and happiness in my body. It's incoherent, but there are others following behind, screaming in much the same way, and all the better for it.

There I am, bunkered down and covered in soot, but alive, and free, and wide-eyed with the fear of losing. Have I ever feared losing before, or even death?

There I am, donned in garb I've never seen except in textbooks before, pinkies up, but alight with the flame of purpose. There I am, except not me; I am someone else, and yet, this must be me. There I am, but in a place unlike this one, where nothing touches the ground, and the world drips sideways.

There I am, all the same, but in a corner of that grey room I've never sat in before; there I am, donned in a different color dress; there I am, crawling through that window I unlocked myself, heated with passion and anger; there I am, in a room not of grey, but of red. There I am, back in the grey, staring at nothing, with nothing in me, and nothing to live for but this desolate space.

There she is, when she comes to a low level after an unsure amount of time, except this version of her is not played by in fogged images like the rest; this version of her seems more real, more palpable, like Adamis. Except, it can't be her, because Byrd is right here, standing stock straight, feeling the swish of her legs and the air against her skin and the life within her. This other version of her is like a zombie, situated on- well, when Byrd takes a good long look at her surroundings, she realizes this must be the grey bedroom, but she's long left that behind, hasn't she? How did she get back by going away? And how, oh, how, did she find herself - or maybe a version of herself - still stuck here in it?

It's frightful to see herself looking out empty-eyed, seated on that bed again. She sees the door that Byrd came in through, she must, so why doesn't she stand and run through it? Maybe she doesn't see it - not yet. But then raises the question of why her dress is not a dress anymore, but something more flimsy, more papery. This raises the question of why her eyes are so bloodshot, and why she doesn't bother to push back the hair in her face, as Byrd usually would.

This raises the question of why so many of these circular patches, pulsing through the wires, are attached to her forehead, scalp, temples, and why, every time she goes to scratch an itch, she flinches.

It seems all so familiar, and something here begins to dawn on Byrd - at least, the version of Byrd that she would like to consider real, herself - and she takes a step back, preferring to avoid this part of her discoveries altogether. But when she goes to leave the room, she finds that the door is no longer there, and instead, she is locked in on all four sides, with not even windows to make an escape through. She clenches her fists, pulls at her hair, beats on her thighs with trembling knuckles, but it does nothing to quell the rising panic in her chest. "Oh, no. Oh, no," she mutters, pacing back and forth.

She blinks, and the walls are no longer grey anymore, but covered in moving images, each of them spurring by faster than she can process them. She can identify the main things: war, disease, monarchs and revolution, the lack thereof, famine and disaster and people fleeing or not, over and over again, on repeat, replaying, all with different outcomes. Byrd stumbles, and she reaches out for a wall to regain her balance, but the walls are not as solid as she believes them to be, and while it's not like air, these images have a consistency that makes her feel as though she could slip right through the wall and into those scenes, as though she might experience these things firsthand and enact influence on them. But, oh, she remembers Adamis's warnings, and backs away from these things until she bumps into herself. It sends a tingle through her, and she squeals, jumping away. But the other version of her seems to have a reaction too, though slight: brows knit, lips squirm.

A new idea comes upon her. She takes to her own shoulders, ignoring the violent tingle that rises up her arms and through her nerves. Then she shakes. "I need to wake up," she says, "I need to wake up right now." Her voice is still soft, fearful of making a ruckus, but then the fear grabs ahold of her throat, and she pushes herself back, a shallow breath popping out of her throat along with, "Wake up!"

One of the wires comes undone and falls to the bed's comforter. The other Byrd winces and gasps, but there is something almost like relief that comes into her features after the fact. Byrd's eyes widen, and she grabs hold of two more of these wires before yanking down and detaching them from the other Byrd's scalp. The relief turns to clarity, and though it pains Byrd to do just as much as it pains the other Byrd to feel, it's like knocking out the bars of a cage, and freeing oneself without consequence, knowing you're an innocent. With every wire removed, the surrounding walls fade in intensity, and a haze begins to formulate, while at the same time a fog begins to lift. Two become one, and

With

The

Last

Wire

They

Are

Free

Byrd awakens with a gasping breath, and finds herself hyperventilating in a grey room like the one at the start of the day, only in here, the bed is surrounded by machinery and screens of all shapes and sizes, and around her lay electrodes - or whatever they're called - in the dozens. Beneath her hands, there is no dress, but something akin to a hospital gown, blue and papery, and tied only with the slimmest bands of plastic.

Oh, and the room isn't desolate, either.

Around her is a crowd of individuals she can only assume are nurses and doctors, all donned in their lab coats, with their paper masks hanging from the ears under their chins. Some grip clipboards tight in their hands or to their chests.

And they're all staring at her.

Byrd's eyes light on two of these people who she thinks might vaguely resemble her parents, but upon deeper reflection, she knows they're not her parents at all, and never have been; they are stand-ins only, for some deeper purpose she's only been brought back to at this very moment.

Nevertheless, they all stand and stare in silence, and she sits and stares back, breathing heavily, and almost glaring at the lot of them, without fully realizing it.

"I'm hungry," she says finally, feeling the pang of a rumble in her stomach.

The rest seem to come out of their reverie then, and gasp - for she speaks! One of the doctors shakes his head nervously, and says, "Oh, dear, that's not good."

"Isn't it?" she answers back. The crowd moves in a great throbbing mass, then, desperate to leave the room, and though she makes no move to follow, they seem afraid, very, very afraid, and even when the door has closed and locked behind them, they don't silence their words and cries of worry. There is a reason for this; there is a reason why, though the door is locked, they still scare, and this is further evidenced by the sudden switch of pure white-grey light to deep red, enriched by the rolling of lightbulbs that cast shadows and blink every now and then to signal, well, whatever badness that the color red symbolizes.

Byrd can feel the effect of this now. She can feel the stimuli in her fingers and the rush of chemicals from her brain to her bloodstream and the flow of carbon dioxide and oxygen through her body as she steadies her breathing. She can feel alone. But she can also feel the overwhelming mess of everything she's just come across, and to counteract that, she stands, and focuses on the stretch of unused muscles.

For a long moment, she simply sways on those two legs, the hospital gown falling around her knees. But then she's moved to action, not because someone else wants it, but because she acts of her own accord. With every step, her bare feet squelch against the sterile tile, and with every step, she is brought closer to the center between a door and a window on either side of her. She might set her hand on the handle, and turn, and leave, or she might go to the window and unlock it, shove it up, grab the sill.

But before she does, she looks into the possibilities of each, and waits to see what comes of them before she takes action. She will take action, no doubt.

Her name is Byrd and she stands alone in a room composed of panicked red and escape, letting the impassioned hues leech onto her own skin, eyes, hair, as she stares at two walls. It's just a door; it's just a window. And she's just Byrd. And this is all that life will ever be, she's sure.

But what if it isn't?

If it isn't, she will be free. So she reaches out, and flees.