Dr. Adrian Voss stood alone beneath the shimmering dome of the Earth's first stable hyperspace chamber. Blue light pulsed gently along the titanium walls, converging into the humming core where reality itself folded like origami. Years of clandestine research, late-night coding frenzies, and salvage runs to junkyards had finally culminated in this: a breakthrough that could collapse the boundaries between stars.
He smiled.
On the observation deck above, his so-called partners watched silently politicians, military men, corporate wolves wrapped in flesh and expensive suits. They didn't share his wonder. They saw only weapons. Trade routes. Profit.
Adrian raised his hand to activate the test sequence. A gleaming drone, embedded with his quantum-tether engine, hovered into the chamber's heart.
A single tap.
The chamber roared.
The air fractured like glass. The drone vanished no explosion, no distortion. Just gone.
Moments later, a signal pinged back from the outer edge of the solar system.
The silence in the room broke into chaos.
"Faster-than-light travel... my god."
"We own this tech now."
"We'll be kings."
Adrian barely heard them. He was weeping tears of joy. Of vindication.
But vindication was short-lived.
They came for him that night.
A single shot. Silenced. Quick. Clean. For them, at least.
His body was dumped in a river. His lab was seized. His life's work became classified under a black project known only to a few dozen world leaders and defense contractors.
The dreamer was dead.
But dreams are strange things.
Adrian awoke to heat. Not the comforting warmth of hospital sheets or the sterile chill of a laboratory, but the dry, metallic heat of a forge.
He gasped, instinctively reaching for his chest. No bullet wound. No blood. No river.
He was in a massive industrial facility, lined with spacecraft hulls and molten alloys. Overhead, banners fluttered Corellian Engineering Guild. Workers moved with purpose around grav-trains and ship blueprints.
And he was... smaller. Younger. A boy, no older than ten, wearing a high-collared engineer's tunic and gauntlets a size too big for his hands.
A voice echoed in his head.
[Multiversal Integration System initializing...]
Welcome, User: Cassian Voss.
Primary Objective: Advance Galactic Technology Through Multiversal Extraction.
Starting Bonus: Corellian Heritage - Shipwright's Legacy Unlocked.
His heart froze.
"Cassian?" A firm voice pulled him from the screen flashing in his mind's eye. A man with dark gray eyes and oil-streaked gloves approached, carrying a dataslate. "Stop daydreaming and calibrate the reactor couplings. We've got a corvette to finish by midday."
The man looked like an older version of him. Taller. Sterner. Familiar.
His father.
Memory foreign but now embedded flooded in. Cassian Voss, only son of Damar Voss, CEO of Voss Hypertech, Corellia's most advanced civilian shipwright company. Heir to billions of credits in contracts... and now, bearer of a system that could rip knowledge from entire universes.
Cassian blinked, gears already spinning.
"Sorry, Father. Just... thinking about propulsion ratios."
Damar barked a laugh. "Already obsessed with power curves? Good. You'll take over the line before you know it."
Cassian smiled faintly. If only you knew.
That night, alone in his quarters aboard the family's orbital design station, Cassian activated the system fully.
A sleek, holographic interface projected in front of his eyes.
[System Functions Unlocked:]— World Travel Interface: [LOCKED - Requires Calibration Energy]— Tech Assimilation Module: [READY]— Cognitive Overclocking: [LIMITED - Caution Advised]— Containment Matrix: [STABLE]
Multiversal Energy: 1/100
Next World Access: Pending first design innovation
Cassian's fingers trembled.
All right. First step: survive. Second step: build something revolutionary. Third step: plunder the multiverse.
He opened the design database and stared at the hull schematics of a Corellian light freighter. Functional. Ugly. Inefficient.
"I can do better," he whispered.
His mind raced Earth's stealth tech, Halo's slipspace understanding, the precision shielding from Star Trek's Defiant-class.
"Time to begin again."
Over the next few weeks, Cassian buried himself in his new life. He played the role of curious prodigy by day, but at night he worked in secret—altering existing ship blueprints, injecting concepts only he understood. Plasma channeling arrays. Overclocked capacitor banks. Narrow-beam tractor fields.
With every successful adjustment, the system awarded him points.
Innovation Recognized: +5 EnergyCumulative Multiversal Energy: 50/100
It was working.
Then, one night, the system pulsed again.
[Multiversal Travel Unlocked]
Available Destinations:— Rick and Morty Universe [Anomalous Priority Alert]— Halo Universe— Star Trek Universe— Mass Effect Universe [Locked]— Stellaris Timeline Fragment [Locked]
He didn't hesitate.
Selected: Rick and Morty Universe
Target Objective: Obtain advanced reality traversal technology.Sub-objective: Secure C-137 Cognitive Signature.
Initiating Rift Jump in 3... 2... 1...
The last thing he saw before the fabric of the universe split open was his reflection in the polished surface of a data pad young, unassuming, but with a flicker of purpose in his eyes.
They took everything from me. This time, I'll take it all back.