All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts.

William Shakespeare

Chanyeol entered the laboratory with lazy eyes. He’d just woken up from the closet and he couldn’t recall how he got there to begin with. It was too much effort to remember, he decided, and he just let it slide. It wasn’t the first time he slept in the closet, but it would probably be the last.

His eyes flinched. The metallic utensils were an eyesore as they reflected the blazing sun. He quickly rushed over to close the blinds. It was dark and quiet in the laboratory. The air got colder and he could almost hear his heartbeat synchronising with the ticking clock.

His eyes widened at the thought of ‘clock’, quickly snapping his head around to see the time.

8:43 A.M.

His colleague was going to come in two minutes. A smile pasted between his lips as he put on his lab coat and went over to the windows to open the blinds again. His colleague didn’t like the dark.

“Today is the day,” he told himself, laying out everything on the table as if to prepare for a show. He sat on a stool whilst he counted the seconds down.

‘5, 4, 3, 2, 1.’

His colleague stepped into the laboratory the moment Chanyeol finished his countdown, as though everything was rehearsed beforehand.

“Good morning!” Chanyeol jumped up from his seat, rushing over to greet her with a hug.

His colleague eyed him weirdly. It was unusual, even for Chanyeol. “Good morning,” she said. “You’re rather energetic today.”

He released her to show his baffled expression. “Aren’t I always like this?”

“You seem even more energetic today.” She went over to put her lab coat on.

He giggled. “Oh, I can’t hide anything from you!”

Her right eyebrow rose. He had something up his sleeve; she could sense it. She slowly backed away from him, but he was too quick.

“You see this map? This is Exeria. It’s right here, but in a different dimension.” The enthusiastic scientist adjusted his thick-rimmed glasses as he pulled his colleague over.

“Chanyeol, you said that last time,” she told him, brushing his hands off her shoulder.

Chanyeol rolled his eyes. “I know, but hear me out. Over here, the far east, this is the Water Sound Kingdom.” The scientist pointed to what looked like a completely random spot on a completely ordinary Earth map.

“Right. And how do you know this?” his colleague questioned sceptically, stepping away towards the cupboards as if to hint that she was about to get to work.

“God told me,” he replied blatantly, as if all scientists got their answers and discoveries from God.

His colleague stopped, turned her head around and just blinked at him. “I think you need to rest.”

“Oh, come on, Huiyin! Not you too!” Chanyeol frowned, but smiled again almost instantly. “Let’s go there together!”

The girl named Huiyin was on the verge of ridiculing his idea, but decided to be merciful on him.

“Find someone else.”

“Please! This could be an amazing discovery! If it is true, then the people there having special powers is also true!” Chanyeol almost shouted, jumping up and down like a little child wanting ice-cream.

“Look, it’s not that I don’t want to help you. You don’t even know how to get there.”

Chanyeol cackled mischievously as he pulled her across the laboratory.

“My latest invention!” He exclaimed whilst he flung his arms out to show two large machines sitting in the corner.

“We’re…rats for your new invention.”

“It’s very safe. We don’t actually go there. Our minds go there, but we also take a solid form in the other dimension.”

“I-I think…I need…some time to consider this,” she stammered.

“No you don’t! You still owe me 4 months’ worth of rent! Repay by going into the machine.”

She opened to say something, but shut it again when she realised she had no reason to retaliate. She had chosen this career on her own and as a scientist, it was necessary for her to take the first step to embrace new discoveries. She just never thought she would use her own life to embrace it.

“Being poor .” She sighed inwardly as she stepped into the machine.

Chanyeol clapped and wiped a fake tear off his eye. “I’m…so proud of you.”

Huiyin huffed, watching her taller colleague mess around with the buttons and dials on the side of her machine before going around to do the same with his. Crossing her arms over her chest (she swore the temperature dropped a few degrees as soon as she stepped into the machine) she looked around the invention and found that it was rather plain on the inside.

How did Chanyeol even come up with this machine anyway? She never saw him working on any kind of blueprint and he never confided in her about the science of it all. It just appeared out of nowhere, really. She sighed and wondered what kind of response she’d get if she asked. Maybe he’d say that God told him the specifics.

A soft whirring brought Huiyin from her thoughts, and she peered out of the machine to see Chanyeol stepping into the machine beside hers. “What did you do?” she asked, making sure her voice was loud enough to be heard over the sound of the machine.

“I turned it on,” Chanyeol replied, sounding almost proud of himself and Huiyin resisted the urge to roll her eyes even though she knew he couldn’t see her, pulling back into her own machine. “This is so exciting!”

“What happens if this doesn’t work?”

“What?”

“What happens if this doesn’t work?” Huiyin asked again, this time louder. The whirring was starting to get louder and she was beginning to become nervous. Had this at least been tested with an apple or whatever other geniuses like Chanyeol used to test their crazy devices?

There was a pause and Huiyin blinked nervously at the thought that perhaps he didn’t know the answer himself.

“It’ll work! Trust me!” Chanyeol bit the inside of his mouth. He knew her well; too well, in fact. She wasn’t the type that would trust someone so easily. ‘Trust should be earned,’ he recalled her saying. He patiently waited for her to shout something back, probably along the lines of ‘how can I possibly trust you?’ or ‘this is ridiculous’ and step out of the machine. He prayed hard that the second scenario wouldn’t become a reality.

He felt like he was taking a rather risky gamble.

To his surprise, she remained silent. ‘Perhaps she’d changed,’ he thought. ‘Or perhaps the heart knew better than the mind.’

But then he figured that she probably was feeling the effect of the machine pulling her into Exeria, since he was starting to feel it too. All of a sudden he was seeing doubles and he couldn’t stand straight, having to throw an arm out to press against the side of his machine to steady himself. His head was pounding with a headache but at the same time he felt light headed, almost as if he was about to pass out.

Chanyeol sort of wanted to throw up.

He knew well enough that it was the machine trying to dislodge their minds from the ‘real world’ in order to send them to the other dimension, though he didn’t plan on the clash of symptoms. At least he’d feel better in Exeria.