Worlds Apart - Hiatus Over Finally!

Greetings all! I'm finally back with a new caption, after half a year. So sorry for this long hiatus, I never expected to be gone so long. I should've posted something way before now, I just didn't want to post without a new caption or story, and I haven't been able to write in ages now.

My health issues have been one and off again, my kidney infections keep coming back as soon as I run out of antibiotics, and I've had some other real-life issues these past few months (I just rebuilt a roof for my parents' house during June and July, still have a bit left on that project) that have also been massive distractions. I've barely been online this whole year now.

But enough of my excuses, here's the new caption, a weird little sci-fi idea I had ages ago during a rewatch of some old tv shows (Sliders and Stargate, specifically):

If it's too hard to read, let me know and I'll add the full text here.

A huge thanks to everyone for being patient with me this year, and to all the people who have contacted me over the last several months asking how I'm doing. I appreciate it greatly. I have probably missed a few emails, so if I haven't responded, please don't take it personally, I've been terrible at keeping up with people the past ten months.

- B-Rex

Edit: As requested, the full text, after the break:

Professor Barbara Lipschitz took a deep breath as she finished dialing in her machine, the brainchild of her multi-billion dollar research grant. If it worked as she theorized, the device would tear a hole in Space-Time that would lead to a parallel universe, similar to our own world but fundamentally different in unknown ways. Taking a deep breath, she finally hit the last switch, activating the machine.

After a few heart-stopping seconds of silence, a shimmering sphere began to form above the machine's projection platform. Adjusting the dials, Barbara grew the sphere until it was as large as a shed. Her audience of military and government officials watched the display, nodding in approval as she made history....

Ten minutes later, Barbara narrowed her eyes as the four-man team of military volunteers was ushered away to begin suiting up to enter the Einstein-Bose bridge to another reality, and felt her heart lurch yet again. Nearly a decade of her life had been spent on the amazing discovery, and now she'd been entirely denied even the chance to take that first step through the portal. The military officials funding her work had refused to even consider the idea.

She adjusted some other dials, reading the displays on her machine. The atmosphere on the other side was Earth-normal, gravity was the same, samples of DNA in the air matched up with known species. Every indication said the world beyond the portal was virtually identical to Earth, just a different version, probably differing only along small changes in historical events.

"Fuck it," she mumbled under her breath, making up her mind. Grabbing a small bag of supplies she'd carefully squirreled away behind a vent panel in her machine, she took off running full speed at the portal, before the guards could react to block her.

"This is one small step for woman! One giant--" she screamed as she leapt into the portal... and flew out the other side of the shimmering sphere, falling to her knees. "--Stupid fucking tits!!!"

Barbie winced as she looked around the room, shocked to see dozens of armed guards rushing at her, guns raised even as she struggled to get her own guns back into her top.

Two hours later, she sighed into the quarantine-room's camera. "Dammit, I already explained all this!!" She stomped her foot impulsively, sending her giant breasts bouncing again.

"I understand you're frustrated. Please, just walk me through it one more time, Miss Lipschitz," said the General on the screen.

"That's Doctor Dikli--er, Lipschitz!" she snapped, wincing as she instinctively started to say her other name. "Look, time works differently on the other side of the portal, okay? That's the only explanation. Like, I've spent the last decade there trying to reopen that stupid portal! And I just, like, finally got enough money to rebuild my machine, and stuff, okay? But, like, only a few hours passed here."

The general nodded. "And what can you tell us of the world beyond the portal, Doctor?"

She sighed, arching her back and posing akimbo before the cameras. "Like, it's mostly the sameas our Earth, but, like, history went a bit different, okay? I mean, I never found the branching off point, maybe there were several small differences, but, like, history education isn't a huge priority over there..." She shook her head. "Anyway, porn become the main form of entertainment sometime around the start of Holly's Wood, sort of kickstarting the sexual revolution half a century early, and with, like, way more focus on hardcore sex. Like, everyone's at least a part-time pornstar over there." She gestured at her hugely augmented chest. "I had to make some adjustments just to fund rebuilding my machine."

"And who are you?" The General asked, a slight smirk on his face. The dozen or so soldiers behind him on the screen were grinning.

"I told you, I'm Doctor Diklipz--no, dammit! I'm Doctor Barbie Dik--errr! Barbara Lipschitz!" She glared at the general as he chuckled into the microphone. After a decade of using her porn name, it was hard to break the habit, and the bastard chauvinists kept taking advantage of her slips of the tongue. "Look, can we end this stupid interrogation? Like, you totz know who I am! I need a surgeon, these damned fuckballoons are super fucking heavy and I'm--"

"No can do, Mis--er, Doctor Lipschitz," the general interrupted. "Your little stunt has convinced the Pentagon that it's too dangerous to send our volunteers through the portal. So you'll be going back through, just as soon as we've gotten the go-ahead from the Commander-in-Chief."

She gasped in horror! "Wait, what?! I can't go back there, like, I just spent a decade on my knees trying to get back here!!!"

"And the nation appreciates your sacrifice," he replied, clearly more interested in his phone screen. "Okay, we just go approval. Suit her up boys, she's going back in!"

"Wait!" Barbie Diklipz shouted, as the quarantine room door burst open, hazmat-suited soldiers entering to usher her back to the still shimmering sphere. "I already told you everything, there's no need to go back!!!"

"Incorrect," said the General through the warehouse intercom. She glanced up at the glass window where he and rest of the officials watched the warehouse floor below. "This is no longer a fact-finding mission; this has become a First-Contact mission. You are to return to the alternative Earth, now redesignated as PORN-0, and establish contact with the government there. They are to be given this treaty--" A soldier shoved a wad of paper into her left hand, and a complicated-looking radio into her right. "--which will establish you as our official inter-dimensional ambassador. With this modified radio, we should even be able to communicate through the portal with you and that world's government officials."

"But, it'll be a decade before I can even reestablish contact!!! I can't spend another ten years like this--" Doctor Diklipz screamed as she was tossed back through the portal.....