March 15th, 2062, 2:33 PM, in a warehouse on the outskirts of Nova City.

The cavernous warehouse lay beneath him. Tall rafters rose high, carrying an arched ceiling of steel and alloy over the rough concrete floor. Hissing chambers of cryogenic gas lined the sides, hooked up to thickly sealed and insulated pipes, leading to the enormous device in the center.

It looked almost like an enormous octopus, hidden in the vast shadow of the deep sea. Trailing tendrils of steel and graphene wire, it sat huge and hulking and heavy. LED lights flickered in its shadows like the moon-lit eyes of a beast in a dark forest. The fluorescent lights high above illuminated its twisted form, of arcane engineering and physics so complex that the very sight of the symbols and mathematics that backed it almost made his head hurt.

He preferred to simply think of it as magic. It was... simpler.

Below, engineers and scientists in white coats scurried to and fro, checking various instruments and flipping switches. Occasionally one tightened a valve or linked in a tablet into the vast computing banks beneath the warehouse, constantly calculating new variables according to the position of celestial bodies and their gravity wells.

Just a few final checks before the first and most important step of Man and men.

His gaze roamed the cavernous space, and found something. A logo, painted in black against the far wall, proclaiming in broad, dark letters: Prometheus Labs. Beneath it, the sigil he knew all too well—one hand held high, a torch burning gently within its grasp.

"How long until it's ready?" he asked, turning to the man by his side.

The man wore a white coat and sharp glasses, a cold, hawk-like gaze in his focused eyes. "An hour. Just... one hour," he said in a faintly foreign accent.

He smiled, a faint, long-forgotten apprehension awakening in his stomach. It was an emotion he hadn't felt in a long, long time--years, perhaps--but in this momentous moment, this time of incredible change and awe-inspiring vision, who wouldn't feel nervous?

Who wouldn't feel at least something before the greatest work of engineering and science since the LUNAR city, a collaboration between dozens of governments?

It was stranger than art and more incredible than fiction. Prometheus Labs stood at the cutting-edge of technology--and ahead of it.

The door to the control room slid open, hissing a faint whisper of air as pressure imbalances settled themselves. He threw a glance at the man who walked in, noting his stiff, straight-backed posture and the dull, army-green color of his coat. Badges, gold and blue and violet, glimmered, pinned to his chest. He nodded to the man--the general--and turned back to the machine.

"THRESHER," the general said in his gruff, collected voice."Twenty billion credits of budget down the drain. Tell me. Was it worth it?"

The man smiled. "Was it worth it? Was the light bulb 'worth it' when first invented? Was iron 'worth it' when first smelted? Hardly. But they laid the foundations for skyscrapers, for great empires and technological revolutions. So, no. No, general, it was not worth it. Not yet."

The general scowled. "I'm no short-sighted man."

"But you're no visionary," the man who fancied himself the Fire-bringer said.

"And you are?" the military man asked, a sneer on his face.

The man looked at him and shrugged, hands reaching up to flip out the collar on his stylish suit. "Naturally."

"Then tell me, good sir, how does this machine benefit the United States?" the general asked him, a dangerous glint in his eyes.

The visionary looked at the engineer by his side and smiled, taking no notice of the general's attitude. "I wouldn't expect a military man to understand. After all, it doesn't blow anything up. It doesn't make guns. And it doesn't move troops. But... I suppose we can try."

The engineer gestured to himself, one eyebrow arched. After a silent confirmation from the man, he shrugged. "The device... it is a... what do you know of quantum mechanics and its interpretations?"

"He is a military man. Treat him gently," the owner and founder of Prometheus Labs said drily.

The general threw him a cold look. "Little."

The engineer sighed. "Then this will make little sense. Since the development of quantum mechanics in the... er... 1950s? Forgive my history. Since the development of quantum theory, countless interpretations have been proposed to make sense of and correlate the mathematical designs of quantum physics to reality. One of these is the Many Worlds Theory."

The fire-bringer took over, stepping into the conversation with his own, usual flair. "The Many Worlds Theory describes our universe as split into countless parallel universes, each with its own possible timeline, thereby removing the 'probabilistic' elements from quantum mechanics as all possibilities are in fact true, all at once. Thus the universe is whole again, deterministic and clear, a grand machine of unfathomable clockwork writ in the hand of the divine."

The general eyed them in silence for a long moment. "And what does THRESHER have to do with this?"

"THRESHER is designed to breach the boundaries between these parallel worlds, dear general. THRESHER is designed to advance science and technology far beyond the third dimension." The man who spoke held a fire in his eyes, not unlike the fire he imagined himself bringing to the hearts and minds of men. He was not excited. Excitement was a child's emotion, an emotion hardly remembered in the grand scheme of things. Instead, a strange fervor laced his words and twisted his smile into something subtler, yet grander than excitement. Perhaps... ambition?

"Ninety-nine years ago, dear general," the man who would be remembered said with his twisted smile, "Ninety-nine years ago. Do you know what happened ninety-nine years ago?"

The general slowly shook his head.

The man smiled wider, somehow. "Mankind took his first step off of Earth. Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin left this world and found himself above it. That is what happened ninety-nine years ago in 1961. And now, just shy of a century later, Mankind takes His first steps into the Fourth Dimension. So, general. Do you think it's worth it?"

The general was silent.

Time passed swiftly after that, the general and the engineer and the visionary all falling into an uneasy quiet, watching the scientists and workers scurry around below, performing their final checks before the world changed.

At last, the final light lit up green on the control panel.

At last, the final scientist hid away in his personal, specialized control room, watching data flow across dozens of monitors.

At last, the machine was ready.

He checked the time and smiled. 3:46:23 PM, March 15th, 2062.

This moment would go down in history, he thought, as he shared a glance with the engineer and stretched out a hand for the black lever in the center of a shimmering array of green lights.

"Are you ready for this, general?" he paused to say.

Then, without waiting for a response, he pulled the lever.

THRESHER-01-X STARTING. TIME: 3:46:37, 15/03/2062.