Walt Science

Walter Smith wiped a streak of grease across his forehead, leaving a dark smudge that would likely haunt him during his wife’s dinner party later this evening. At fifty-sodden-one years old, Walter was technically in the prime of his life, according to most magazines, but his knees felt like they were filled with gravel and his latest inventions were enough to make a physicist weep.

He sat in his workshop—a converted garage that smelled perpetually of ozone, burnt toast, and expensive solder—carefully tightening a brass-plated bolt on his newest creation. The rhythmic clank-whir of heavy footsteps echoed near the tool rack as a metallic, bipedal robotic figure glided past his peripheral vision to fetch a tray of microchips, its optical sensors blinking in a steady, artificial rhythm.

The workshop was located exactly fifty feet from the main house, a distance carefully maintained by his wife and other family members. It wasn't because they didn't love him; it was because of the "incident" with the Instant-Travel Pad, which had successfully teleported Walter to his neighbor’s backyard but left his clothes three miles away in a different zip code. Or the "Time Portal," which allowed for time travel but only within a twelve-hour window, making it essentially just a very complicated way to go back to breakfast.

"Almost there," Walter muttered to himself. He squinted through his magnifying goggles at his newest invention.

To the untrained eye, it was an enigma. To Walter, it was his masterpiece. He had spent months calculating the variables, fine-tuning the sub-atomic frequencies, and ensuring that—theoretically—it wouldn't explode or cause a localized ripple in reality that would leave him scattered across several different dimensions at once.

Theoretically, he was as ready as any man could be; now, there was only one thing left to do: initiate the practical test.