Toni picked up the package sitting on her front step, suspecting what it contained but not wanting to get her hopes up. Even though she lived a fair distance from any neighbors, she couldn't help giving a quick sideways glance to make sure no one was watching her. Not that something like that would guarantee anything in this day and age; for all she knew she was being monitored by satellite.
Hurriedly closing the door behind her and setting the package on the table, she grabbed a pair of scissors and sliced off the tape, confirming her theory. It was, in fact, a Chronivac. At least, that was what it said. Who knows what a Chronivac really was, but the rumors that had been floating around the internet piqued her interest. Of course, everyone dismissed them as fantasy, but she had managed to confirm that there was a company hidden under layer after layer of shell companies that went by the name of TransDem Labs.
Rumor had it that TransDem had sent out "Chronivacs" to random people, who proceeded to use them to get into all sorts of trouble, becoming unwitting guinea pigs for the company in the process. Toni didn't really care about the company's ethics, but the theory of what the Chronivac could do sparked her curiosity. Using all sorts of shady connections no one would believe she knew, she finally managed to get her hands on a - supposedly - used Chronivac. Although she wasn't sure what happened to the previous owner, she was fairly certain it had not been pretty.
Why did she go to all this trouble? Was she determined to change the world? No, no grandiose plan. She was just bored. Same job, day after day. Same people, day after day. Same house, day after day. And the Chronivac? Well, it was just something to kill time.
Could it change the world? Toni had her own theory on that. If it could really change the world, then why wasn't the world perfect? I mean, if someone got their hands on something that could change the entire world, even if they used it for their own benefit, eventually they would want to make the world better, right? Less disease, pollution, war, and disasters, since those things would only be distractions. So maybe it wasn't the world that the Chronivac was changing.
There was a theory out there that every choice resulted in a branching parallel universe, one where each available option came to pass. Since there are so many variables that exist in the world, it would mean that there existed a parallel universe for every conceivable possibility. Even though the Chronivac might be nothing more than an urban myth, Toni had a theory. Maybe what the Chronivac did was not change the user, or the world, but rather, placed the user's consciousness in a world where the possibilities they selected existed.
What better way to stave off boredom than to jump from parallel universe to parallel universe? Plugging in the emitter, Toni quickly installed the software onto her computer and began scrolling through the options.