1

I tasted the plastic of the screwdriver's handle and inhaled the metal everytime I tried to take small and careful breaths, afraid of disrupting my very delicate work. A song was stuck at the back of my mind and I wasn't aware that I was sublty humming it under my breath as I kept trying to piece everything together and make it work. I felt peaceful at these moments when my mind was blank and all I could see and think about was my device and its parts. The accuracy needed for this to go as planned didn't allow room for anything else and in these rare moments of almost complete emptiness I felt like I could finally breath and let my self relax, even if only a little bit.

I wasn't stupid nor arrogant. I was aware of my capabilities and their limits. I knew that there wasn't any way I, Akabe Kiyota, could actually invent a functionable teleportation device in my 25 years of life. That didn't stop me from trying though and I would a least have my mistakes to note down after this so that I knew not to repeat them and what to check out from my endless list of tools, materials and methods. I hadn't told anyone about this little project of mine. Most of them because there was no way I could trust them but my parents because there was no point in letting them know about something that would fail. I needed to have some solid proof and results before I even thought of mentioning it otherwise I would be met with the disappointment I had become accustomed to and the whole point of proving my worth would be pointless.

A spark zapped he fingertip of my index finger and I pulled away moving it to get away from the tingling feeling but unable to swallow my small smile. It was times like this that I felt alive and the small and vulnerable part I had in front of me felt like more of a heart than the main system of a computer. I made some more insignificant changes just to be sure and then returned the heart to its rightful place before getting ready to activate the device.

I had learned from my past mistakes so this time instead of button on top of the device, I had consructed a remote so that I could be far enough to avoid the grunt of the inevitable explosion that would follow. I hid behind my desk managing to keep my curiosity in check for now and finally pressed the small button. I closed my eyes tightly and waited. My hands were halfway towards my ears to cover them but there was no sound or any other indication that he device had failed. I decided to count down 20 seconds to be sure of the safety of the situation before I dared peak above the metallic surface of the table. I tried to calm myself. It wasn't anything unexpected, not all failures ended up in explosions and that was a good thing. Even if it meant that I hadn't managed to have even the slightest reaction out of the device. 

When he countdown reached zero, I took a breath and wetted my lips before slowly and hesitantly gripping the edge of the table and using it to push myself upwards. I looked towards the device without getting up from my position and let out a breath of relief and a hint of disappointment as I saw that indeed nothing had happened and everything was exactly as I had left it less than a minute ago. As I got up and neared the device, I hoped that there was a least some change in the inside of it so that I would have a slight idea of the problem behind the malfunction.

"What did you expect?" Even when I tried and was pretty sure that I had convinced myself this time to not get his hopes up, I still felt the defeat leave a bitter aftertaste on my tongue everytime I saw that it was leading nowhere. Thankfully, I had gotten used to that and I knew that my previous inventions had required at least ten to fifteen failures before working and since this was only my third try, the pain was bearable.

I moved my hand towards the small device and as a sense of dread started gathering on my stomach and I felt my finger tingling with the same sensation the spark had given me but with much more intensity, I had a thought.

Wait, did I push the button again to make sure it was clos-?

It was too late for that realization as a bigger white spark connected my hand and he device. I expected it to hurt, flinched out of instinct even when the pain didn't come, and to send me some meters away as a reaction but the bright light just engulfed my hand before hastily reaching for the rest of my body and swallowing me whole. My last thought before the brightness receded to darkness was the question and wonder if I had actually done it and I would find myself in another part of the Earth or if it would still be failure and I would die trying. For a weird, macabre moment that didn't sound like such a bad death at all.

My feet touched ground and the sudden gravity was too much for my body which started to instantly bend on itself and crumble. I had to brace myself on the first solid thing tha my hands could find to keep my balance. My head was pounding and there was a buzzing noise in my ears so it took me so moments to calm myself down and realise that I was no longer in my lab and I could only be hallucinating or my device had actually worked. The first sounded more probable. There had been a gas leak in the lab earlier in the week or my device might have actually exploded and my body was no laying unconcious on the floor until someone found me. My mind was only creating all this around me as a defense mechanism, a comfort system.

Still, when my senses sharpened again and stopped being overstimulated, I couldn't help but think all this felt too real. My eyes were closed from the moment I had set foot there. I could feel the beads of sweat that had gathered on my forehead due to my strain cascading my face. I took a deep breath inhaling the clear outside air. It was a mix of food and alcohol that I didn't recognize and the smell of trees as if they were near by, circulating the place I had landed on. There was something else too. Something charged. Not bad or uncomfortable but still there floating in the air underneath everything. The next thing that assaulted me were the sounds. Unfortunately, they came to me all at once and with my eyes closed, I felt disorientated.There was the hustle and bustle of a busy town but most of the sounds weren't things I was used to. I thought I heard a horse or some other type of animal, the vendors that tried to promote their products as far as I could tell, loud laughter and fighting and some far away music but more importantly, I couldn't understand a word that the people were saying.

"Could be the shock and overstimulation or...have I actually traveled to another country in seconds?" The wonder was palpable in my voice and even though I knew to be sceptic and think critically, I couldn't help but let some glimmer of hope course through me. I started smiling as I paid more attenion to my senses trying to figure out more and more, unwilling to open my eyes and dispel the positive emotions that were starting to gather inside me. I didn't want it to be proven false so I kept figuring things out bit by bit. My hands skimmed through the solid surface that was holding my weight as I was leaning to it and I felt the resistence of a hard rock that was most probably part of a wall. Before I could continue on this little game of exploring,I felt the ground vibrate underneath my feet and it took me some moments to realise that what I was sensing was a group of people running frantically towards where I was standing. 

I decided to let go of the wall only for my breath to be cut off as a weight came crashing on me and pulled me to the hard floor. I grunted and heard a higher voice groan and mumble something incorrigible before I confusedly blinked my eyes open only to lose my breath once again as  they locked onto the greenest chrolophyllic eyes I had ever seen.