“We didn't find a new world,” he whispered, as the last of the barriers fell and the Great Convergence began. “We just learned to pick our own pocket.”

The Consortium tried to shut the gates. But you cannot un-ring a bell made of infinity. The more gates they closed, the more the pressure built. The other realities, sensing the thinning, began to press back. Doppelgangers didn't just appear in reflections anymore; they stepped out of them. Whole city blocks began to flicker, superimposing with their counterparts from dying timelines—a medieval square in the middle of Manhattan, a glass-domed arcology over a Brazilian favela.

The first traveler was a drone—a titanium sphere packed with sensors. It drifted into the pearl-white membrane and vanished. For three agonizing seconds, nothing. Then, the sphere returned, but it wasn't the same. Its surface was etched with unfamiliar constellations, and it hummed a tune that sounded like a lullaby sung by a dying star. The data feed was a flood of impossibility: a sky with three suns, a forest where gravity worked sideways, a city built from solidified sound.

“It’s not a door to another dimension, Aris,” the project director had said six years ago. “It’s a door to every dimension.”

It was the silence of the other worlds. They never pushed back. The lithium planet had no life, the sound-city world had no inhabitants, the painkiller reef had no predators. Every world they accessed was a pristine, empty cornucopia. It was as if the multiverse was a hotel with an infinite number of rooms, and humanity was the only guest.

Portal Globalia wasn't just a discovery; it was a revolution. Cities grew around the Nexus hub. Gateways were opened in Tokyo, Lagos, and Buenos Aires, each a shimmering window to a specific, exploited world. The price of energy plummeted. Hunger became a historical footnote. Humanity, for the first time, wanted for nothing.