Thus began my first relationship with a hallucination. Which in turn led to a number of things.

Over the years I struggled, wrestled and grappled with the idea of my true identity. What defined me? Was is my mental illness? My sexual orientation? Both? If so, how was I supposed to act? Did I have to change my lifestyle? My religion? My behavior?

Repeatedly, I asked God, "Why me? Why do I have to go through this? Can't you take it away?" The heavens seemed to be silent. I was frustrated and hurt by my Father in Heaven's seeming indifference. Having no answers was like being trapped in a fog, and inside that fog nothing about God's plan made sense.

If only I had known then that knowing the exact answers isn't as critical as knowing that the answers, do, in fact, exist. That God is at the helm, that he reigns. That His Son's atonement is real and available to everyone.

Fortunately, He never abandoned me during the trials that were to come.

At my lowest points, I confess I felt life was no longer worth living. My memory is a bit hazy on this subject. Perhaps it is for the best, since the resulting trauma left me with PTSD. At least four separate times, I attempted to take my own life. Two or more of these attempts landed me in the psyche ward.

Someone has said that you don't know how well your standards hold up until they are tested, just like you don't know the quality of a rope until you are dangling off a cliff by it. I metaphorically dangled off proverbial cliffs during those endeavors to take my own life, and I learned a few things. Namely, that the ropes of faith and personal testimony hold up pretty well.

To this day, I have a firm and solid conviction that I never would have survived those trips to the hospital without my Heavenly Father's sustaining power. Faith is really all you have left when you are taken to the psyche ward; your personal possessions are taken from you, down to your last scrap of clothing, and family is only allowed to visit on certain days during specific hours. I would pray constantly for comfort, for the companionship of the Spirit, for the courage to remain strong.

But once out of the psyche ward and back to the grind of daily life, I simply lacked motivation to keep clinging to that same faith. I'd go back to that question of Why? like a dog to a bone. And since I couldn't figure out why, I'd ask, Who am I? What defines me?

Since God seemed to be silent, I turned elsewhere for answers.

Rose, falling deeper into depression, suffered the same fate as I did at BYU. She was forced to quit school and move back home to Germany to live with her parents.

So I sought out friends in different places- mostly online, as my hometown didn't offer many options (at approximately 280 residents, it wasn't exactly the height of civilization). Most, if not all, were non-Mormons. That's not to say they were bad people, I actually learned a lot from them. But ultimately straying from my convictions was a bad idea.

These people offered me answers to my questions. A few were surprising, some upsetting, and quite a few intriguing. Some of these people became good friends, some adversaries, but the majority fell through when I needed them most.

Lucca turned out to be my most faithful and trusted companion. Every time I would insist that I couldn't go on like I was, she would interrupt, "Because it's not normal. Because it somehow makes you flawed. And that diminishes your already low self-worth." Then, she would sigh and admonish me, "This is NOT a flaw. You didn't ask for it, and you can't do anything about it. It's just a new part of you that you're not used to. You need to accept who you are. And you are my beautiful, wonderful Mels. Definitely worth more than you're thinking."

She would always end her speech with a hug and a kiss, and a promise to see me in bed that night, where she would ward away the nightmares from the PTSD. I came to depend on that comfort, that solidarity; the feeling that someone was always watching and had my back. I had confronted death before- that held no terror for me. If I was afraid of anything, it was of being alone.

I was very possessive of Mels- she was MY discovery, MY girlfriend, MY dirty little secret.

So what in the name of Science possessed me to tell Belthasar about her?

I started working at Chronopolis soon after met Melody. It was an facility dedicated to the research of different timelines and dimensions, and was staffed by people from different eras of time. Belthasar was the director, a man renowned throughout history as the "Guru of Reason" from the ancient kingdom of Zeal. His motives in establishing Chronopolis may have bordered on megalomaniacal- he claimed that he wanted to control time itself!- but I still couldn't deny that it was a fascinating institution.

So there it was again- that captivating little conundrum of different timelines and different dimensions. Belthasar hypothesised that it was possible to make contact with people outside known timelines and dimensions. Like I said, I had meant to keep it a secret... but when Belthasar had told me he had found ways of recording human thoughts and memories as "brain scans," I thought it safe to divulge.

"Last year," I had admitted, "I did make contact with someone. Her name is Melody. If I could find a way to make brain scans from her memories, Belthasar, the knowledge could prove to be invaluable!"

And it was invaluable. The brain scans allowed me to become even closer to Melody. It wasn't so much the work I was doing as the subject of my work which fascinated me. She had a thirst for knowledge which rivaled my own, and envied my own apparent ease for acquiring and applying it. I'd never exactly been admired for being an egghead, you know? But something about it was alluring to her.

Absolutely no one in their right mind found me alluring in any way, shape or form. No one in this world, at least. I wore a goofy padded helmet, thick glasses, my hair was lank and unkempt, and my hands were worn and calloused from countless hours of tinkering with various gadgets. Not to mention that I didn't have much of a figure...but none of that mattered to her. She gave her heart fully and without reservations. To her I was a guardian, a protector, a comrade. A partner. It was flattering, really (not that it takes much to stroke my ego) but I did it for more than that. She'd been there for me first, after all.

That wasn't the only equation that was adding up, though. Ancient Zealian texts often mentioned the "Origin of all Dreams," the "Beginning of all Stories" or the "Ultimate Reality" as the place from which the multiverse was formed. Belthasar was certain that if we could locate this dimension, it would greatly enhance their understanding of the multiverse and how to better defend against threats like Lavos, the alien parasite that my friends and I had defeated in our previous adventures. I felt fairly certain that Melody was from this "Origin."

Having revealed that to Belthasar, he peered closely at me. "You haven't been trying to directly influence her, have you?" he asked.

"I- I…" I stammered.

"Lucca, we must never let our feelings get in the way of our work, especially in regard to the Origin. If you were to influence your Contact's affect on this dimension-"

"Her NAME is Melody!" I snapped.

Belthasar looked even more keenly at me. "You have feelings for her?" When I dropped my gaze, he went on, agitated, "Lucca, people from the Origin shape and direct the fate of other dimensions. If you have contaminated her sphere of influence in any way, we have no way of telling what the effects on our world could be. You must separate yourself from your work. Do you understand?"

"Perfectly," I seethed. And I did.

I sobbed and raged around my laboratory, shattering beakers against the walls, but it didn't matter: Belthasar was right. I should know as well as anyone that meddling with timelines and dimensions could bring unforeseen consequences. Crono's death had been proof enough of that. Beyond that, there were countless millions of others we had doomed to die by altering the future. I wasn't fit to play God. No one was.

But I wasn't willing to give up Melody entirely. There had to be a way around this- didn't there?

I began searching for loopholes, for anything that might allow me to preserve our relationship, combing through her brain scan data relentlessly for clues. As it turned out, Melody was about to lead me straight to the answer I was looking for.

It was time to start thinking with portals.