In the United States of America, there happened to be a little state going by the name of Georgia, which, much like all the other united states across the nation, was filled with Americans(not to be confused with the South Americans living in South America, or the North Americans living in Canada; but could be properly confused with the really, really North Americans living in Alaska). Now, these Americans, like most of the people living on planet Earth, came in all shapes and sizes, and liked to do things that were evil, like crime; as well as good, like crime(but in different contexts). 

In the state of Georgia, there happened to be a small town called Ciudad. The town of Ciudad was particularly special in that it happened to be where one particular physicist lived. Now, this aforementioned physicist was perfectly ordinary, and she liked it that way. She hadn’t published in a few years, but that was because she had been working on a huge project - a project that she was certain would blow the scientific community in Ciudad off their feet, because she made up the entirety of that community - and she told herself that would make it all worth it.

And indeed, despite the remoteness of her location and the bleakness of her surroundings, her project really was quite groundbreaking. In fact, it might even be compared to the discovery of sliced bread - although in a few years, a great scientific debate would begin over the relative impacts of sliced bread, the wheel, air conditioning, and this physicist’s project. For after years of work, alone in her lab in the city of Ciudad, our esteemed physicist had opened a wormhole to an alternate dimension inside of her dryer.

In the following years, her discovery rippled through the scientific community like a big ripple, spreading through not only Ciudad, not only the state of Georgia, not only the U.S. of A, but worldwide - and that’s when it stopped spreading.

But what the world would come to find was that what made her discovery so special wasn’t the wormhole itself(though most thought it was still pretty rad), but what they found on the other side. For this newfound majestical world held everything one could possibly desire - great wealth; food more delicious than could be imagined; beautiful, untouched land stretching as far as the eye could see. There was fame to be won as well, for those who managed to make the leap became akin to celebrities among those on Earth - though there weren’t many. In fact, Earth statisticians found that only around 0.001% of those who entered the wormhole were seen on the other side. Nobody knew what happened to the rest; most of the townsfolk assumed they were dead, or at least dead to them.

Now, also in the city of Ciudad lived another perfectly ordinary man; a man whose name was rather difficult to pronounce, so he decided some time ago to be known as Walter. He picked the name Walter because he thought it sounded the most ordinary out of those he came up with. In fact, there were twenty-three Walters in CIudad, and Walter was the twenty-second. Walter number twenty-three was still learning to talk, having just been born to newlyweds Steve and Mary. 

Ciudad was an ordinary city, almost to the point of being mundane. It had a single train station going into and out of the city, and most of its residents lived there their entire lives, and were for the most part content with living out their days in a considerable amount of boredom. 

Walter had always felt a little out of place growing up in Ciudad, even among all the other Walters. See, in Ciudad, people were generally more similar than not. In fact, they mostly did, said and thought all the same things. Most tourists who visited the city(there were none before the discovery, but if there were,) left unable to tell Ciudad-ians apart.

But one thing in particular almost everyone in Ciudad absolutely despised was anybody who was different from them. And Walter was quite different. He never did like the way his fellow Ciudad-ians generally went about their day, or the boring and mundane things they liked to talk about. And the rest of the city hated Water, too, at least for a while. But like most would, Walter got tired of being the odd one out and made an effort to fit in, since he felt it was easier that way. And for a long time, this made Walter quite unhappy, and perhaps this was why Walter was so strongly drawn to Big Nancy. 

Big Nancy is the name the residents of Ciudad gave to the portal the physicist(you know the one) discovered. In pursuit of greater city-wide fame, the physicist had managed to enlarge it a little, and transport it to a display in the town square. It was surrounded by big yellow signs with blinking lights with the words ‘YOUR LIFE STARTS HERE,’ which was a cruel joke by the physicist considering the number of people whose lives ended there.

Now, Big Nancy was quite special in that despite its death toll, people were continually drawn to it. You see, when people on Earth know something causes harm, like expired food and mean schoolyard children, they tend to avoid it. Within the academic community, this was known as the “Eyewhannohurty” rule, named after the scientist who managed to publish the first paper explaining this phenomenon in words nobody but they could pronounce. Big Nancy was one of the sole exceptions to this rule. In fact, people did quite the opposite with Big Nancy: the more people tried and failed to enter Big Nancy’s gaping hole, the more desirable and sought after those treasures lying on the other side seemed. 

Walter saw himself in Big Nancy. Except on the other side, he wasn’t Walter. People called him by his real name, and he didn’t get confused with twenty-two other people. Not only that, but he was somebody over there. He saw himself out all over the world, traveling from one city to the next, doing important things like curing cancer and flying to Mars and slicing bread. 

Oftentimes, Walter would sit in front of her, staring at her hole, wishing - longing - for what he saw to come true. And although he knew that he had the chance to make it a reality by walking just a few steps forward, never in the years he’d lived in Ciudad had he actually entertained the idea of following through.

It wasn’t worth the risk, he told himself. He was perfectly happy living without having everything he could possibly ever want, he thought. He had no problem settling for the mind-numbing charade that was his life at the moment. 

Except Walter did have a problem. He had a huge problem. But since it was harder and more complicated to admit he wasn’t happy than to laugh and pretend he was, settling for his pointless facade of a life seemed like the better option, he thought. After all, all the world’s a stage, and Walter was but the umpteenth extra.

A day in this aforementioned mundane charade went as follows: 

At 6:00 AM, Walter awoke from bed. This wasn’t unique to Walter; every single person in Ciudad woke up at 6:00 AM every day. The reason for this was threefold.

One, all work shifts in Ciudad started in the early morning. This was because the local bureaucracy wanted everyone in town going to work at around the same time. That way, labor logistics were simpler for thos incompetent government clerks without the capacity to comprehend complex matters, like different shift times. The rule included everyone from construction workers to late-night comedians, who were aptly renamed middle-of-the-day comics and who never had an audience, since everyone was at work.

The second reason was that, since everyone’s work shifts were the same, naturally everyone in town woke up at similar times as well. The same time, in fact. Indeed, the townsfolks’ wake-up times were so in sync that at 6:00 AM sharp, the combined sounds of morning alarms woke up the entire town, even if some of the residents were planning to sleep in.

Lastly, Walter was the type of person who liked waking up early in the morning, anyway. After all, the early bird got the worm, and although Walter never particularly liked worms, it was okay since the worm in this case is a metaphor for the benefits of waking up early. He loved morning showers and morning breakfast and morning coffee, and he especially loved the excitement and anticipation of starting a brand new day, full of potential for adventure and discovery. 

From 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, Walter managed spreadsheets.

6:00 PM was when Walter made his daily trip to Big Nancy. He never was the only one there. At any given day, Walter had to wade through what seemed like half the town to even get a good view of Big Nancy. And for hours he would sit and stare, mesmerized by what he saw. God knows how he longed to be on the other side, to be living the life he was shown day after day. But still he stayed still, whether unwilling or unable to take action. For did not even angels themselves swallow their pride and jealousy of His glory, only to be trapped in that land of endless ice, immobile and impotent once they refused to do so any longer? And all because they had forgotten their place in pursuit of a dream they did not deserve to realize. Or that foolish boy who so desperately wanted to fly ever higher, did he not fall? Seduced by the bright light above him, yet blinded by the object of his affection to the advent of his own demise. 

But in spite of their suffering, who can say whether they viewed their fateful decisions with regret? Perhaps they were great fools, but they were the greatest fools of all, for even their most severe wounds served as irrefutable evidence of their pursuit of happiness. Even as the mightiest sinner of them all, subdued as he is at the hands of his creator, stood with his back straight and his head held high. And as for the child who flew too close to the sun, did he not reach the pinnacle of his flight at the moment before his fall? 

And before Big Nancy sat a crowd of those fools, though compared to their predecessors, they had far less courage and a rather pathetic resolve. Too frightened to take action, yet unable to look away, they sat cursed by their own aversion to the ordinary to inaction when faced with the extraordinary. 

Only later at night did Walter normally return home. It was an empty home, and he liked it that way, or so he told himself. The only mirror he owned was in his bathroom, and that was because Walter tried to avoid looking in mirrors if he could. In the mirror he saw the face of a coward and a fraud whose eyes seemed to judge him, and whose mouth only mocked him. Yet all of his jabs and insults were tolerable if not for a single question which the Man in the Mirror asked night after night, for he loved seeing Walter unhappy. He would let out a big sigh, and look Walter straight in the eye, and ask: 

‘How will tomorrow be any different?’

Walter never had an answer.