Love Through Different Worlds

A New Discovery

Central City, 19th of March, 2024

Barry Allen was hard at work in his lab, just as he had been for the past year or so. He arrived early, stayed late, sometimes even spent the night there. He has spent more time in this one room in the past year than he had in his home. However, there was a perfectly valid reason for this. He was closer than anyone ever before, to mastering inter-dimensional travel. And he put this project before anything else. He was constantly getting calls from his family, who at this point were genuinely worried about him, but he refused to stop. He was so close, in fact, he was fairly certain that this would be his last ever test. This is the last formula he would ever have to write out on a board, break apart, make, and test. This was the one, that was going to work. 

There was a reason why he was looking into this. Apart from excelling in all sciences in his education, and his general interest in the impossible, the main reason he was doing this was because of his mother. His mother that had been murdered when Barry was young, murdered by something, at the time, deemed to be impossible. But now, he was about to open a wormhole that should, in theory, take him to the place where the man who murdered his mother is from. He had found some remaining matter from the wormhole that had opened when he was young, which he had discovered after re-visiting the crime scene. This project was highly kept a secret, only known by four people. Himself, his best friend Cisco Ramon, who was also a co-worker, Harrison Wells, a highly intelligent scientist who had helped Barry with the whole concept of inter-dimensional travel. And finally, Felicity Smoke, who alongside Cisco, had helped him with the computers and tech side of the project. A lot of work had gone into this, and today might be the day where it all went right. Finally, he could prove that what he saw on that night, wasn't just made up. And most importantly, to prove the innocence of his father.

Of course, with the possible invention of inter-dimensional travel, many new terms would have to be created. Barry had decided that if many new dimensions could open up, a naming system would have to come into place. The plan was to only open up one new dimension, but he had to prepare for everything. There was no way of coming up with a logical naming system until after the wormhole is opened, so that was that. 

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"Hey Barry, how is it all going?"

"It's all done Cisco. I'm activating it in an hour or two."

"Okay, awesome, call me in when you do that" Cisco replied with a smile, just before leaving the room.

Barry was aware that this could go wrong at any moment, so didn't want anyone in the room with him when it was activated. If anything was to go wrong, he was the one that should have to suffer the consequences, no one else. 

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And, this was it. Barry left a quick message for Joe, telling him that if he isn't home soon, then don't panic. He was fairly certain that this wouldn't go wrong, due to the endless amount of tests he had done. This was the moment his life was leading up to. 

Seconds away from activating his device, many thoughts kept popping into his head. What if he died? What is he never came back? No one would know what happened to him. No one would know where he went. He would have never found love, never found anyone to care for in that way. But he couldn't let this distract him. Not now, not after all this time. He reached out to his mouse clicking on 'execute'.

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And silence. 

He somewhat expected this, the device would take a moment to fully open a breach. He sat down, slowly breathing in and out. He was incredibly anxious, all of a sudden he realised what he was doing. He was about to open a breach to another dimension. That was big. 

Still silence.

Was he doing the right thing? He kept asking himself that question, and the answer was always yes. He heard the machine rumbling, possibly suggesting it would be any second until a full-on wormhole would be in the middle of his lab.

He took this time to think about the people he cared about, after all, he may never see them again.

Cisco Ramon.

His best friend for so many years. They had always laughed, related to one another, been there for each other.

Joe and Iris.

The closest people he had to a family, they had been his family for him ever since his mother was murdered and his father falsely accused of murder.

Harrison Wells and Felicity.

Two of his co-workers, but they had become much more of close friends, constantly supporting him and helping him with every decision he made.

Just at this moment, someone walked into the room. Dr Catilin Snow. She was another co-worker of Barry's. They didn't know each other through anything other than work, they only occasionally talked about their job. Apart from that, they had no other relationship to one another. However, she had just walked into a room that is, to put it simply, not safe. 

At this point everything was going, well as expected. The device was getting very loud. There were occasional sparks of energy appearing in the air. It was opening.

"Hey Barry, do you happen to ha.." She was immediately cut off by Barry, screaming at her to get out, startled by the current events happening around her in the room and by Barry telling her to leave, she turned to leave the room. 

At this moment, it all went wrong. The sparks got out of control. The energy was obtaining a physical form around them, flashes of lightning appearing in the room. The device was clearly unstable. It was roughly the size of a quarter of the room, and pieces were flying off from it, exploding. Barry ran over to follow Caitlin out of the door, but it was too late for both of them. Parts of the machine had flown and exploded in front of the door, proving unpassable. Caitlin had pure panic on her face, Barry too. They shared a look as if to say "What is going to happen?". Half the room was now a blue, swirling vortex. A wormhole had opened. But it was expanding. Faint shouts from other workers could be heard running over to the lab, but it was no use. Despite barely knowing each other, Caitlin grabbed hold of Barry, to uphold her balance, as the floor was being torn apart. Except it wasn't, it was just another breach opening underneath them. Unable to retain balance, they both fell through the portal that had opened beneath them, still grabbing on to each other, screaming from fear. 

This was not meant to happen. What have I done?

This was all that was going through Barry's mind as they fell. They just kept falling, as if they would be forever. 

He opened his eyes to see chaos around him. Blue, spinning flashes were all around him, falling through this vortex. Looking to his side, Caitlin had passed out in his arms. That was the last thing he saw before everything faded to black.