Theo wasn't sure what to make of it. He was just exploring around the sparse trees behind his neighborhood, holding his walking stick/sword in hand. Sure, he was an adult, technically, but no one was around, and swinging the thing causing bushes to explode was still quite fun.

A swift stab later, and half of his stick was gone. He was startled and dropped the stick, which sort of bounced out of wherever it was. He squinted his eyes, and there was a sort of shimmer in the air, like heat off of a road.

Cautiously he picked up the stick again and poked the sort of mist. It disappeared again, but the stick didn't feel like it hit anything, so he pulled it back out again.

"Whoa..."

He swung the stick, but it passed through like nothing was there, in all directions of swinging it, but when he took a stabbing motion to it, the stick would... become invisible? Disappear?

The misty line was about twice as tall as he was, but his stick was pretty much his only way of measurement, and looking at what looked like mist in a forest it was hard to look at. He'd decided then and there he needed to study it. Leaving a trail of sticks on the way back, he grabbed all manner of measurements; A notebook, measuring tape, thermometer, extendy hand (For safety), compass, and a digital camera. He grabbed some chalk from a playground set, but he felt it would be easier to mark the trees than to make another stick trail.

Right as he was about to leave, his eyes caught the two stopwatches on his desk. It would be ludicrous to think the haze was a time travel device... but he grabbed it anyway. His main theory at this point was just a phenomenon that some mist had perfectly reflected around an area making a small area invisible. An equally improbable thing, but it was some thing that made the most sense, with the amount of physics that Theo knew.

The mist looked exactly the same, except in the waning sun it might have been a bit hazy-er. He didn't really have a measure for "hazy" so he took a picture at the best angle he could get and continued onwards closer. He had a three step system in mind. Measure the outside to the best of his ability, before attempting to stick anything inside. Start to push the measuring tape through the haze to see how much it spread, (if it was mist) and lastly check the temperature. He could also try to check with the stopwatches out of curiosity.

"Height: 3 and a half meters, Width... a millimeter to a centimeter in size. Doesn't have a magnetic field change. Temperature near anomaly is slightly cooler than surroundings by... 10 degrees." He muttered as he wrote down in the notebook.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

"Time for an inside test." He spoke out loud psyching himself up, since the mystery of it all was a little frightening. Pinning one end of the measuring tape to the ground with a stick he began to walk backwards in a straight line until the tape read '10' and he locked it, jogging back over and begun to feed the tape measure into the mist. Like with the stick, the end simply disappeared he kept pushing it in slowly, right until he got to the end, noting down it was at least 10 meters of depth. He pulled back 5 more meters and started to push again, stopping at the 15 meter mark. This tape measure was only 20 meters long so he fully extended it and stuck it in again, the tape measure looked like it wasn't even fully extended at all as he held the instrument in the extendy hand. Pushing the hand in further and meeting no resistance, he pulled the measure back out, and flicked the button, causing the roll to come spinning back.

"20+ meter depth. A secret base of some sort? Alien technology fallen to earth?" He couldn't help but speculate feeling like he discovered ancient treasure.

Time for the last test, He grabbed the stopwatches, clicking them on at the same time, and stuck it through. He waited for it to hit the 30 second mark, and pulled it back out again, stopping both at the same time.

"30.89 and... 30.73." Well time wasn't effected, the off times were probably user error since he'd have to do multiple trials for accuracy. His eyes glanced towards his camera. He grabbed it, set a delay to it, and stuck that through the mist, pointing at him. It had been set to burst mode, but he was waiting for one of three things. Either the other side would be completely dark, meaning it was invisible and no light was capable to come through; It would be see through so he'd see an image of himself; or it would show a different location. If it was a different location, this could be a test at teleportation, which was another ridiculous fantasy, but Theo had read enough sci-fi books to believe it was theoretically possible.

He waited for the delay, and pulled the camera back out. He checked the photo's and couldn't breathe.

It looked edited. All three things had happened, there was 3 photos of him holding the extendy hand, a photo of blurry photo of him, a photo of darkness, and the rest were pictures of a golden field. It was a bit blurry anyway, but it looked to be wheat fields or something. There was something in the distance but it was too low quality to make out. Still, it was sunny, and where he was the sun was setting so it must have been somewhere esle in the world, or even another planet!

"I should probably report this somewhere, like a NASA or the government." He stared at the mist, trying to peak inside for himself. In a probably stupid move, he stuck his hand in.

He didn't feel pain, or discomfort... but he felt a cool wind brush by his hand. He packed up his things, his hand out of the mist. There was that inherint caution that maybe this thing wasn't stable, and would be more dangerous in the long run, but Theo didn't care. This felt like an honest to god adventure, and what else did he have to do this summer? Okay he did have to study for college, but the expectation of adventure was calling him.

Marking the trees on his way back he began to list things in his notebook. What interesting thing would he find through the rift?