Synopsis: Crystalline

In 1875, the world gazed in awe at the opening of "Himmel." It was a vast city created using the most modern of technologies available to be closed from the world for 250 years. Many of the world's brightest minds and most talented artists and artisans opted to leave their current lives and live in Himmel for the sake of science.

While the rest of the world struggled through the next 250 years, Himmel became forgotten. Although some historians searched for the lost location of the city, others ignored it completely, claiming that it was a publicity stunt put on by the English and German governments as a spectacle for Victorian audiences. The idea that they had actually held the technology to create and prepare such a city was ridiculous.

In 2125, however, Himmel opened once again. The clockwork mechanisms that had kept generations of people locked within a pseudo-Victoriana, utopian time capsule. The residents of Himmel now had the choice of remaining in their home, the only one they had ever known, or of reaching their arms out to the new world they had never met.

Tess had spent the last five years training as the assistant for a Guide. She hoped to be able to become one herself, someday. Guides led spiritual journeys of the mind and psyche, sometimes to a single persona and sometimes to many at once. They could help you reach into your own past and pull up memories long forgotten or to reach into a world beyond and create a universe you didn't even know you had within you.

Like everyone else, Tess stood by the locking mechanisms as they unwound their beautifully elaborate clockwork, releasing them to the world above. At 19, she was both nervous and excited to meet a world she had only heard and read stories about. The great painters of the first age had painted pictures of what it would look like, what they remembered. Sadly, though, nobody from the first age could have survived this long and the residents of Himmel didn't truly know what to expect from the world above water.

This, is Tess' story.