EMERALD CITY

BEFORE THE BEGINNING OF THE BEGINNING

Two young scientists were bent over a machine in a tiny research & development laboratory of the FizzyPop Soda Corporation. They made their calculations, and adjusted the controls. They pressed all the right buttons... but their only reward was a slight whirring noise, a pop, and a small puff of smoke that rose from the machine. Shoulders in raggedy, white lab coats slumped, but only momentarily. Failure had become familiar. Their faces determined, they pushed up their sleeves and recalculated and readjusted the controls. Once again, they pushed the buttons.

The machine shook and rumbled. Then there was a flash; a searing white light that briefly blinded the two scientists. They listened to the gentle hum of the machinery as their eyes readjusted to the light. Hanging in the air, not supported from below, yet not suspended from above, hovered a sheet of purple-hued liquid. It was nearly clear like glass, yet swirled and flowed like a river. Light danced off and through, casting rainbows around the room. As they approached closer, they realized that when they peered through the liquid, what they saw on the other side was not their laboratory, but a meadow of lush, green grass, myriad with flowers of every color with their petals open to the sun and a few butterflies flitting to and fro. Cautiously, curiously, one of the scientists raised his hand to the liquid. “It tingles,” is all he had time to say before he disappeared.

The machine began to smoke, and the humming turned into a roar as fire began to consume the machine. The second scientist saw his partner trying to say something, but sound, it seemed, would not travel through this portal as easily as matter. He barely had time to register a horse near some trees in the far background before the vision disappeared and the entire room became an inferno. Quickly, he abandoned the lab. Then, as he fled down the smoke-filled corridor, it struck him: the horse had a horn protruding from its head…