Personal Project

Unsure what else to do with it, she placed the finger down on the table. That was a bizarre sensation, and even weirder to look at. The index finger from her left hand simply lay there. Controlling it just as she would if it were attached to her properly, she told it to move, and it did, but it mostly just flopped about like some ghastly thing. There was no purchase for it to actually move properly, after all. The metal of the table was cold. Again, further proof that tactile sensation was uncompromised. It seemed the only problem was with the lowest knuckle, but that made sense. It was still in her hand, and the finger's orientation was no longer dictated by the position of the knuckle, but rather by how the base of the finger was held. As she bent the knuckle in her hand, she saw skin and muscle in the finger move, but the digit itself, being separate from the hand, was not otherwise affected by the motion.

The experiment was a success, but the oddity of the moment was getting to her. She picked her finger back up, and lined it up with the blank spot on her hand. The stub on her hand was ended in a very slim metal ring, and the lowest part of her finger had its counterpart. Lining up the groves in the rings, she twisted them together, locking her finger back onto her hand, in the proper orientation. She then gingerly pulled the ring, now one piece, off. Her finger remained in place, unmarred by the unnatural occurrence. Solid flesh, muscle, and bone. She ran a fingertip across the rejoined section. Everything felt normal, both the the feel of her finger, and coming from the nerve endings on the reattached appendage.

She began giggling. She had done it. A low mass, low power portal!

The idea had gained popularity ever since that silly game had come out. Much like how superhero movies seemed to spur some in the military complex into wondering whether exo-suits were actually possible, fiction had sparked curiosity in the masses about other pursuits where actually as impossible as it was assumed. Serious scientists wanted to scoff at this, some finding the questions asked down right insulting. That was, until, the funding came in. People actually wanted to know, and were willing to fund studies, research, and development, despite what conventional wisdom said. Universities and technological institutes, always eager for sponsorship money, agreed to take on the work.

That was nearly sixty years ago. Funding waxed and waned in that time, but maths and computer models were slowly showing that it was not, in fact, as unrealistic as originally thought. By 2026 a model was proposed to be built that would open a portal to another point in space. Specifically, as it was designed in a joint venture from Oxford and Harvard, it would connect those two places. Work began, and by 2030, the multi-billion dollar technology was completed. Almost a full third of the worlds population watched, from TV or internet news sources, as the portal was opened, and the worlds first instantly transmitted solid object, a soccer ball, was kicked through.

As technology improved, building replicas became cheaper, parts smaller, and more energy efficient, portals came to replace much of the long distance travel market. Ships and planes still operated, largely in case of emergency, or to nations who were excluded from this new technology for one reason or another, but most transport, freight and civilian alike, went through portals. People lived in New York City and performed a forty minute commute to their office in Tokyo. Middle and even lower class families could afford to vacation half a world away. It revolutionized everything. Even space travel. Though even the best portals had a limit of just a few thousand miles, it was more than enough to establish a spaceport. Ships were assembled and sent on their way, without the fuel or weight concerns to lifting the parts to orbit. The biggest thing that had prevented colonies of worlds like Mars were fears that once you left Earth, you were gone forever. This was no longer the case, and

... more on the forums ...