Dr. Kessler waited until the excited voices died down and everyone made it back to their chairs. He smoothed his tie and placed both hands on the back of an empty chair in front of him as he leaned towards the student.

  “I imagine you all have questions,” he began. “That’s good. Curiosity is the lifeblood of discovery. But before we drown in questions, I’ll give you the story of how you came to be here. The short version as Valentina said.”

  Alex rolled the stones in his palm. Generally he preferred to learn by reading and doing, not listening to his teachers, but for once, he was grateful for a lecture. His eyes kept sliding to the room beyond the window and the dark outline of the portal that stood there.

  Kessler continued, “Two decades ago, this company began as a DARPA project. Defense research. The goal, officially, was secure communication across vast distances. Unofficially, the Pentagon dreamed of supply lines that could leap continents in an instant. Imagine an army in Afghanistan supplied directly from a warehouse in Kansas. That was the dream.”

  Mel raised her hand like they were in class. “Or… like Amazon Prime for tanks?”

  Valentina chuckled and gestured for Kessler to continue.

  “Precisely,” he said with a thin smile. “We had the basic theories, but for a long time we were nowhere close to any practical solution. What we built were field experiments – stable anomalies the size of coffee cups. They’d flicker, collapse, and sometimes… Well, it was dangerous, unstable work. Eventually DARPA grew impatient. Budgets shifted. And the project was abandoned.”

  Jay frowned. “But obviously you didn’t stop.”

  “No.” Kessler’s eyes gleamed. “Some of us believed we could do it with enough time and resources. We had already spent almost fifteen years on the research and initial applications. So, we secured private funding, rebuilt the team and stripped away the military oversight. For years we made little progress, but eventually free of the constant demand for weaponization, we were able to just step back and deal with the fundamental questions: not just how to control a spatial anomaly, but how to better understand it at its most fundamental levels. This is when our real breakthroughs occured.”

  He began to pace slowly, hands clasped behind his back.

  “Space, as you may know it, is like a sheet of paper. Flat. Very, very thick, but flat. We used to think the universe was expanding equally in all directions from a single point, but this is not really true. In theory, you can walk, or fly, across it from one edge to another, but the journey would take far too much time. What we were working on under DARPA was the ability to fold the ‘paper’ fabric of our universe so that two distant points could be made to touch. We call this folding a ‘transversal.’ It is not teleportation, although it may look a little like it. It is not wormholes in the science fiction sense. It is geometry. A trick of dimensions.”

  Danny tilted his head to the side. “So, portals.”

  Kessler nodded back. “Yes. Portals. If you like.”

  Alex could easily picture it. A sheet of paper, folded so its corners touched. A hole punched through, linking them. He’d seen the exact metaphor used in sci-fi movies, but hearing it from a man in a gray suit with wire-rimmed glasses and a whole laboratory behind him made it much more real and immediate.

  “But,” Kessler went on, “there was a complication. Our first stable transversal didn’t open onto a different place. It opened onto a different world.”

  A silence fell across the table. Even Mel’s pen froze mid-scribble.

  Jay opened his mouth, then closed it again before looking up and carefully saying, “Like, another planet?”

  Kessler considered. “Yes. But not in this solar system. Not even in this universe as you understand it. Another reality, separated from ours by a veil so thin you could reach through with your hand.”

  Valentina smiled and spread her arms to grab everyone’s attention. “To use the Dr.’s original metaphor, they weren’t actually able to fold the piece of paper like they originally intended. Instead of one piece of paper for our universe, what they found was a whole stack of papers. And on each sheet was a slightly different version of our universe, each with a slightly different version of our Earth.

  “When they finally punched through our own sheet of paper, it didn’t actually connect to another point on our sheet, it poked through to the same spot on the page and pages beneath.”

  There was silence in the room for a while while the students digested the information. Alex sat on the edge of his seat. Multiverse theory. But not theory at all. Multiverse Reality!

  Danny’s brow furrowed. “So… Do we exist there too? Other versions of us?”

  “Perhaps. Maybe. We don’t know.” Kessler said. “Some version of you likely does. Or did. Or maybe even, will exist. What we do know is that the planets on the other side of that portal are very-earth solar system.

  “And no matter where we try to open, we’re always on an ‘Earth’. An Earth variation anyway.

  “Some of these Earths are very similar to ours. Some wildly divergent. The world you are bound for – what we call Earth 3 – shares many similar flora and fauna, and many that are very, very different.”

  Valentina leaned forward, her smile bright, her voice sliding in with practiced timing. “Yes! Knights. Castles. Empires. Goblins. Trees as tall as skyscrapers, mountains that scrape the sky and a few plants that will actively try to eat you.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  “But more importantly, what we REALLY found was opportunity. A world that looks like something out of your favorite fantasy stories, games or movies. The ultimate greenscreen!”

  Jay whistled and leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling. Alex could only stare out at the darkened portal in the next room.

  Mel clapped her hands once. “Narnia!” Ravenna rolled her eyes.

  Kessler didn’t smile this time. “There is real danger. You have to understand that before you move forward. There are creatures unlike anything on Earth. Environments we barely understand.” His gaze swept over the students, making sure they understood the gravity of his words.

  “And despite what the world believes – this lab is not a television studio. It is a research facility. Everything you’ve seen today exists to study, safeguard, and carefully expand our work.”

  Valentina stepped in smoothly again. “And yes, to share it. Our board realized that the cost of keeping this project alive required funding beyond research grants. What better way than to create the most compelling reality show ever conceived? The adventurer’s dream. A fantasy world brought to life. You.” She spread her arms wide to encompass all the students, to draw them into her pitch.

  Despite the theatrics, Alex felt his pulse quicken.

  Kessler spread his hands. “We understand that you are not soldiers. At heart, you have signed up to become explorers. Explorers and Adventurers in a new land. But rest assured, if you choose to enter the portal, you will not go unprepared. You will have the full support of our advanced science teams, labs and tech at your disposal. And this help is not insubstantial.”

  He glanced at Valentina, who took the cue with a practiced nod.

  “Which brings us,” she said brightly, “to your upgrades.” That got everyone’s attention. Even Ravenna’s hood shifted as she sat forward.

  Valentina tapped her tablet and the conference screen lit up with sleek graphics of swirling nanoscopic diagrams beside glowing silhouettes of human bodies.

  “We call it ANIP. Adaptive Nanobot Integration Protocol. In short, a cutting-edge infusion of programmable nanotechnology that lives in your bloodstream. Think of them as your personal support crew. They’ll keep you healthy, heal you faster, make you stronger and faster, and filter out minor toxins. They can even help you sustain activity longer without fatigue.”

  Danny’s eyes widened. “Like… super soldiers?”

  “More like super survivors,” Valentina said. “You’ll still get tired. Still get hurt. But your recovery time will be faster. Cuts will close in hours instead of days. Broken bones will mend in days instead of weeks. In short, they will help keep you alive when you encounter one of the nastier inhabitants over there.”

  Jay whistled low. “That’s… insane.”

  “Insanely useful,” Valentina corrected. “We’re not sending you in blind or helpless. We’re giving you tools. Tools no adventurer in human history has ever had.”

  Alex’s mind reeled. Nanobots. Portals. Another world. It was like every rule he’d ever lived by had been quietly rewritten when he wasn’t looking.

  Danny raised a hand hesitantly. “How do they… work? I mean, aren’t nanobots that integrate with the body, sort of science fiction?”

  Kessler interjected smoothly. “Not really. Technology has come a long way in the past few decades and we have acquired the top researchers in the field. This is real. Cutting edge certainly, but real. They are not miracle machines, nor tiny robots with arms and legs. Think of them as programmable dust. Each one smaller than a single red blood cell, assigned to perform very specific tasks. On their own, they’re useless. But in the millions? They can create remarkable effects. They respond to chemical triggers, electrical signals, and – in your case – a neural interface calibrated during the infusion.”

  Mel blinked and looked slightly nauseous. “Interface infusion? Um… little robots living in our brains?”

  Kessler smiled. “No, not in your brains. Not exclusively anyhow. In your blood. But yes, connected to your nervous system. In fact, they will construct a secondary, parallel nervous system inside your body which they can use to enhance and upgrade your abilities.”

  Valentina clapped her hands once, lightening the mood. “Don’t overthink it. Just know you’ll be healthier, stronger, and a lot harder to kill. Not only that, over time you will get even MORE healthy, strong and harder to kill because the system will continuously work towards enhancing you and your abilities!

  “All the better to become huge stars of Dungeon Inc.!”

  Ravenna finally spoke, her voice dry, “Sounds less like television and more like guinea pigs.”

  Valentina’s smile didn’t falter. “Guinea pigs don’t get sponsorship deals.”

  Jay barked a laugh. Danny didn’t.

  Alex just sat stunned. If this was a scam, it was the most elaborate one in history. But if it wasn’t… if this was real... The portal. The world beyond. And now the possibility of nanotech running through his veins?

  He was going to be a freaking Superhero!

  Kessler gave a small bow. “You’ll have time to read your contracts and consent forms. But know this: every safety measure we can provide, we have provided. The risks are real. But so are the rewards. Also, you are far from the first to get this upgrade; we have roughly…” he thought for a moment then scowled and looked to Valentina for help.

  “More than 70 adventurers on Dungeon Inc. with the upgrade, plus more than two hundred staff and their families,” she supplied. "So, nearly one thousand at this point."

  A murmur ran through the gathered students as they all began talking to each other at once.

  Valentina stood, her tone bright and commanding again. “Now, enough of the briefing stage. You’ve been patient. You’ve been educated, and now it’s time for the main event.”

  Nanoscopic machines are not experimental. They are infrastructural. By the time of Dungeon Inc.’s founding in 2063, nanites were already as commonplace as antibiotics had been a century earlier—embedded in medicine, manufacturing, and long-term health maintenance. For most users, their role is passive: correcting deficiencies, accelerating recovery and preserving baseline function.

  The Adaptive Neural Interface Platform represents a departure from passive maintenance by introducing directed adaptation. Users may allocate emphasis—strength, endurance, coordination, cognitive throughput—and the system biases its reinforcement accordingly. Even without deliberate training, measurable improvement occurs over time.

  Additionally, ANIP compounds effort. Tissue stressed through exertion rebuilds faster and denser. Microtrauma that would otherwise accumulate is resolved continuously. Neural pathways engaged under pressure stabilize sooner and persist longer. Recovery windows collapse. Attrition slows.

  ‘Adventuring’ on this new world has become possible only under these conditions.

  ANIP does not precisely create super soldiers, but it does increase survivability, reduce what may otherwise be fatal, and amplifies whatever the user chooses to become.

  HEX Research Memorandum

  Adaptive Systems Overview — Internal Distribution

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  Dungeon Inc. // RECRUIT DIV.

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  ? ━━━? THE STORY CONTINUES… ?━━━ ?