Crossing the Synapse

Lena had always felt like an outsider, but this was most troublesome within the stuffy walls of a city high school. Not even the passion for science she inherited from her grandmother, a renowned neurobiologist, helped. So when her parents sent her to her grandmother's house in the suburbs for a few weeks, she was convinced that boredom and loneliness awaited her. But the reality turned out to be different. The old house was full of dusty books, eccentric inventions and strange glass vessels in which something occasionally glittered. Most interesting, however, was the laboratory in the attic, which had been abandoned for years. One afternoon, looking for her grandmother's favourite novel, Lena entered the laboratory. Light seeped through the stained-glass windows, spilling colourful patches across the walls. Amidst the cables and piles of notebooks, she noticed something strange: in the middle of the table lay a dust-covered notebook with the faded inscription "SYNAPSA Project". She opened it with trembling hands. Diagrams, descriptions of neurotransmitters and - on the last page - a handwritten drawing depicting something like a gate with a blue glow. Next to it, on the floor, hidden under the carpet, she found a metal plate. When pressed, it swung open slightly, revealing a panel with a row of buttons and a pulsating blue line. Lena couldn't resist the temptation. She typed in her grandmother's date of birth - 1926 - and suddenly everything around her swirled. Space shattered into billions of coloured fragments, and Lena felt her own thoughts stretch and twist before she abruptly fell into something that resembled a tunnel built of light. When she regained consciousness, she was floating in a space that resembled nothing she knew. She drifted between islands of fragmented memories and imaginings. Everything looked like an advanced computer game - only that each island was made of dreams, fears and desires. Nearby, she spotted a familiar figure: her grandmother in her youth, smiling and full of energy, was giving her a sign to follow her into the depths of this extraordinary world. Lena felt a thrill of excitement and anxiety. Who was this grandmother? How did she know that Lena would end up here? What was the SYNAPSA Project really hiding? Before she had time to react, the sound of someone's footsteps sharpened and someone else emerged from the misty island....