“Don’t you guys think we should test it first?” asked Heather.

“Sure, and since you got me thinking about it in the first place, you should do the honours,” said Quinn, handing Heather the VURT.

“I only catalysed the development of thoughts you’d have had on your own anyway,” said Heather, “And that only because I’d been talking to your counterpart, who knew all this ahead of us.”

She pointed the VURT into the air in Quinn’s basement, as the evening got darker, and opened their first vortex. They stepped through and found themselves pulled along like small objects in a vacuum cleaner pipe, until they emerged on the lawn of the university.

“I guess we’ve still got more work to do on it,” said Heather, “Still, the ability to teleport several miles across our own world is nothing to be sneezed at.”

“I’m not so sure that’s what we did,” said Quinn, “Look at that parked car.”

“You’re right, man!” said Arturo, “There’s no car in our world that looks like that.”

“And the number plate,” said Quinn, “It’ll be years before we’re up to that sequence.”

“You’ve done it!” said Heather, “We’re actually here on a parallel earth!”

“Well, let’s take a walk and see what else is different,” said Arturo.

They walked around, noting all the subtle differences between the new world and their own.

“I think we’ve seen enough,” said Quinn at last, “Let’s get back and make the other three units.”

When the new VURTs were built, Arturo invited Heather Hanley and Quinn Malory over for lunch one Sunday, saying that he had made friends with two other scientists. When they had finished eating, they took out their VURTS and showed them to Mrs Christina Fox Arturo. (The Slider Maximillian Arturo had married the Christina Fox of his world, until she had died of a brain aneurism at the age of 27. On one of his first sliding journeys with Quinn and the others, Max had met the Christina of another earth, to learn that she was divorcing his double for cheating on her. He had left his double a cassette recorded message in his own voice, admonishing the man to treasure what he had and repair his damaged marriage. This Christina was in better health and would not die in her youth. Yet she was still somewhat cynical about her husband’s theories of parallel worlds.

“They’re not bad,” she said, “Maybe you can bring your TVs next time you come, if ours ever breaks down.”

“They’re not TV remote controls,” said Arturo, “Although they were built to resemble one in order to avoid their detection. My dear, these are the means by which I can prove to you (and perhaps one day to the whole world) that it is possible to cross the Einstein Rosen Podalski Bridge.”

For some reason the time phase differential of this world had made it harder for the Cromags to detect. They had never gotten to this world (one of a potentially infinite number of worlds) in the years before the Sliders had defeated them. To the people of this world, dimensional travel was still just a theory advanced by the likes of Stephen Hawking and Maximillian Arturo.

“Oh come on honey, we’ve talked about this. It’s just a hypothesis,” said Christina.

Maximillian pointed his VURT at the open doorway between the dining room and the lounge room and opened a vortex.

“My dear, would you care to take a stroll through my latest hypothesis?” asked Arturo.

“I can hardly believe this,” she said, “How long does it stay open?”

“About a minute. If we miss the jump, we can just open another one,” said Quinn.

“Try it,” said Heather, “It’s fun.”

Quinn and Heather held hands and jumped into the vortex. Arturo took his wife by the hand and led her to follow suit. They emerged in an alley in the town.

“Other worlds?” said Christina.

“That was our reaction the first time too. The VURT has a geographical displacement affect too. We’ve never arrived in exactly the same location. It seems to take us within 20 kilometres of our last position on the previous world,” said Quinn.

They walked around the block and looked at a hi-fi store window, to see a television screening news about the American President.

“Why’s George Bush  so young?” asked Christina, “He’s cuter than Ronald Reagan anyway.”

“He’s the son of the counterpart of the George Bush we know. He seems to be the president in most of the worlds we’ve visited,” said Arturo, “I don’t think he’ll have interdimensional relations with you though.”

“I was just teasing. You know I’ve never agreed with adultery. Honey, it’s amazing,” said Christina, “I’m sorry I doubted you.”

“Every world we’ve visited is 12 years out of phase with ours, 12 years ahead,” said Heather, “Somewhere on this very world, there are probably versions of ourselves who are 12 years older than we are.”

“I’m glad we can all come and go as we please,” said Quinn, “I’d hate to think of us caught in random vortex travelling, caught up in the wilder events of some of the stranger worlds out there.”

“Which reminds me,” said Arturo, taking a fourth VURT out of his trench coat pocket, “This is for you, Christina. I’ll teach you how to use it. Just in case anything ever happens to one of the VURTs, or we get separated, each of us can always get home with one of these. It may not drop you on our doorstep. In fact it’s most unlikely, but you won’t find it too hard to get to our place once you know how to program the coordinates of our world.”

“You’re on holidays from teaching for two or three months,” said Christina, “Maybe we could have an interdimensional vacation and make it a second honeymoon.”

“I thought you’d never ask,” said Maximillian, “If you young people are alright on your own, we’d like to leave now.”

“Go for it, Professor,” said Heather, and watched them vortex out of the parallel world, “I’m a teacher too, and you’re a university student. That puts both of us on holidays as well. Why don’t we see what other worlds are open to tourists from 12 years past.”

Quinn and Heather vortexed into another earth, and found themselves in a thick jungle.

“It’s the first time we haven’t come out in a spacious room, a lawn or an alley, I think,” said Quinn, “The VURT seems to position its openings away from traffic laden roads and other dangers, but it’s certainly picked an unusual place this time.”

They walked for half an hour and finally sat down in exhaustion.

They were talking, when a giant hand reached down and grasped Quinn. He looked up to see that he was being held by a woman with long dark hair. She was in her late thirties, and was gigantic in height. She brought her other hand down, picked up Heather Hanley and took them both over to a giant garden table, set them down and sat down.

They had reached the giant earth, which was one of the few other worlds either undetected or avoided by the Cromags during the invasion of 1995-1999. They had found the world quite early in the piece, but known that they could not prevail against the inhabitants. Just as a quirk of science had put young Quinn’s 1996 twelve years behind the times of the other worlds, some quirk of science had also made everyone and everything on this world gigantic. Yet none of this was known to the newer younger team of sliders composed of the Arturos, Quinn and Heather.

“Look what I’ve found in my garden,” she said.