Carmen stood at the primary control console. There was no tremor in the movement of her hands; rather, their restraint—almost ascetic—and mathematical exactitude revealed the tension more faithfully than any uncontrolled gesture could have done. Each motion had been decided in advance—computed, anticipated, stripped of contingency.

The laboratory operated at full operational readiness. All systems remained synchronized within a single, closed control loop, subordinated to a central quantum computer that did not so much manage the experiment as continuously reconstitute it—through successive approximations, each approaching the threshold of feasibility. Within its architecture functioned a model of a laboratory assistant: a computational entity that analysed incoming data and modified the course of the process faster than any biological mind could formulate a question.

The space was filled with the steady murmur of instrumentation and a deep, almost subliminal vibration of the energy core—the rhythm of a system whose stability was merely statistical. The light of the working panels diffused across metallic surfaces and semi-translucent displays, forming a layered, elusive depth—as though the laboratory itself were a projection of its own data.

Before Carmen, streams of information flowed without interruption: simulation models, parameter corrections, real-time readouts. The system did not calculate variants—it exhausted them, eliminating possibilities one after another until only those remained that had not yet failed.

On one of the screens, the record of the previous attempt persisted. A sequence of disintegration: first local structural perturbations, then a rapid loss of biological integrity, and finally the total dissolution of the system. She did not linger on it. The data required no interpretation—only correction.

She moved her hand across the interface. Adjustment of couplings. Compensation of phase deviations. Reduction of overloads at critical nodes.
Each movement followed from prior calculation. Each movement was exact. Each decision—derived.

— Field stability at ninety-two percent, the laboratory assistant reported. I recommend delaying the procedure by thirty seconds.

— No — she cut in at once — Correction, not delay. Reduce phase deviation along the third axis to zero point zero three and recalculate the coupling.

— Implementing changes… Deviation corrected. New coupling level: eighty-one percent.

— Not enough. Introduce compensation within the transition layer and limit overload at the entry node.

— Analysis… Stability may increase to eighty-four percent.

— Execute.

Her fingers moved rapidly across the interface, introducing parallel corrections of her own. On the display showing the results of the previous attempt, a new comparison emerged—this time the stability curves no longer collapsed abruptly, but declined more gradually.

— Difference relative to the previous test: biological integrity decay delayed by 2.7 seconds, the assistant reported.

— That will suffice — she said quietly — Reconstruction will take over from there.

For a moment, her hand hovered above the panel.

The gate technology still eluded complete comprehension, yet its models—those reduced, operational approximations — had reached a state of utility. Within their scope, transition could be described and reproduced: space was partitioned, then synchronised according to assumed parameters. The difficulty did not reside in the act of passage itself. Phenomena once regarded as boundary conditions within a single universe had ceased to constitute absolute limits. Superposition was no longer a mystery—the Dun technology permitted operations within its domain, but only inside the bounds of the same cosmological structure. There, everything remained consistent: physical constants, interaction relations, admissible configurations of matter. Even if a system underwent transient destabilisation, it returned to equilibrium; a restoring mechanism existed, inherent in the system’s own equations.

The boundary of the universe, however, was not a boundary of space — it was a boundary of description.

Beyond it, what changed was not location, but the conditions of existence. Each universe admitted its own set of solutions to its equations, its own values of constants—and thus its own forms of material stability. What in one was a stable configuration became, in another, a forbidden state.

The problem did not begin at the level of life, but far deeper—where matter itself first assumed form. Fundamental interaction relations shifted. Potentials that, in one universe, defined stable configurations, in another were displaced or vanished entirely.

At that level, predictability itself dissolved. Electrons no longer occupied the same orbitals—and the orbitals themselves lost meaning as solutions of the governing equations. Atomic bonds ceased to persist, for the conditions of their existence were no longer satisfied.

Only thereafter came the collapse of more complex structures. Molecules failed to maintain their form; chemical systems disintegrated before reaching equilibrium. In some models, even the notion of the atom lost coherence as a stable unit of matter.
Biological systems constituted merely the final stage of this degradation—the most visible, yet the least fundamental. Their disintegration was immediate, but derivative, resulting from the prior collapse of the structures upon which they were built.

Within this domain, Carmen had already reached a stage that, until recently, had been considered purely theoretical. Simple structures—elementary systems and constrained chemical configurations—had been stabilised under foreign parameters. Matter, suitably transformed, retained coherence after transition, though its properties diverged from the original.

Difficulties arose only at the level of complex structures. Biological systems, dependent not merely on chemistry but on the continuity of processes and the precise organisation of states, resisted the same methods. What could be corrected in simple configurations here led instead to loss of coherence—not instantaneous, but progressive, irreversible.

Thus, the passage itself posed no difficulty. The problem lay in the survival of matter on the other side. The body had to be prepared.

The process she had devised consisted of three stages: deconstruction, translation, and reconstruction.

In the first phase, the organism was reduced to the level of molecular and submolecular structure. This was not destruction, but total mapping—a complete encoding of every relation: chemical bonds, energy states, quantum configurations.

Then came translation.
The quantum computer, employing models of the target universe, recalculated each element of the structure into its counterpart admissible under the new conditions. This entailed altering bond energies, molecular geometries, and, in extreme cases, even the modes of matter organisation themselves. The body was not transferred in its original form — it was adapted.

Only then followed reconstruction.
The structure was reassembled in accordance with the local physical laws of the destination universe, preserving maximal functional equivalence with the original organism. Mathematically, the process was tractable. The models functioned. In most cases—successfully. But not always.

The greatest difficulty remained the nervous system.

Not the body. Consciousness.