I wish my world were different because I feel as if I don’t belong. I live in a world of fantasy, magic, knights, kings, queens, fantastical monsters, yet I still feel so out of place. As a society, we’ve relied on magic more and more, to the point where we couldn’t survive without it. Magic is a very vital tool, yes, but it’s impossible to overlook the issue that may come with it. We aren’t prepared for a world without magic, and we don’t know if magic is an infinite resource or if it could run out. And those born without magic have to labor over tasks magic can’t fix, for almost our whole lives, we work in the hopes that maybe we’ll someday be given the power of magic and be free from our labors, but that’s sadly only a dream.
As the only one born with this magic in my large family, I have so many expectations put upon me. It feels like I carry the weight of their hopes and dreams on my back, and it’s suffocating. I’ve spent many years on something to help me escape my world, a magic mirror able to cross the realms. When it was finally finished, in the dead of night, I didn’t say goodbye to my family and just hoped that if this device worked, I’d come back for them to take them to a better place. As soon as I activated it, I saw something, it was an indescribable sight. It looked right at me, it looked just like me, it was me. We both stood there in shock before we reached out our hands, and we spent hours talking about our realms and how they weren’t too different from each other. The “other me” also wanted an escape from their world as well, for the complete opposite reasons as me; they felt like they didn’t have anything in their world, and all of their family was successful. Yet, they felt like the black sheep, so they used the one thing they knew they were good at and created a mirror to travel the realms just like me.
After a while, the sun started to go up, and we both knew our time would be coming to a close, so we decided to live a day in each other’s worlds. As we crossed, it felt like our souls had left our bodies. And as we opened our eyes, we saw reflections. The “other me’s” world was full of technology I had never seen before. Thighs were built from steel and glass, text was being displayed everywhere, almost flying around the room, and I could hear and feel the intense electric hum everywhere around me. We had both agreed to meet back at midnight and discuss our findings. We reopened our respective mirrors and talked about our experiences. We both were a bit homesick, but we were happy where we were. After a couple of months of living in each other’s worlds, traveling back and forth, we thought we were ready to let others know about the mirrors.
We publicly announced our mirrors in a large-scale display from both sides. Some people were ecstatic about this; the prospect of another world we could share sounded unimaginably amazing. But others, mostly the higher-ups in our worlds, despised this thought; they felt that combining would lead to war and bloodshed, and they ordered both of us to shut our projects down by the next day. But now that everyone knew about this other world, it couldn’t just be forgotten and shoved away. At midnight, we had gathered a large team on both sides of the mirror. I had some of the most magically inclined individuals on my side, and they had the most technically minded on theirs.
We had both agreed to merge the worlds, but now it wasn’t just going to be a selfish dream we both had, not just an escape anymore, it would be an amazing reality.
Just before daybreak, we had finished the mirrors on both sides. Before we activated the merge, we said our goodbyes. We didn’t know what would happen to us, but we just knew it had to happen. We activated the meager right as guards from both sides found out what we had done and planned to shut us down. When we first opened our eyes, we saw a destroyed building around us, a broken mirror on the ground, and a beautiful new world, one deeply entangled with magic and tech, as this near-perfect harmony. I wanted to congratulate my reflection, but I realized they weren’t there; in fact, none of the other reflections were there either.
It took a second before any of us realized that not only did our worlds merge, but our bodies and souls had merged as well, and we could both recall memories of the other’s life, now understanding we are one person. Now it’s been a full year, and we’ve been working out a lot of kinks with our new world, as you’d expect, combining two worlds and having every person merge body and soul would be a lot. But even with all of that, it was a better world than before. We, or I guess I should say I, hope this world continues to prosper, and I’m still working hard on connecting to more realms and hope to learn even more about the different realms. Finally, after so much time and work, I feel like I belong.
