My omniversal journeys (A World Hoping SI)

[TheDIrepack]

Chapter 1​

Earth Prime: Monday, August 11th​, 2025 4:00 AM​

The start of this morning was like any other morning. I woke up at 4 am, made breakfast, took a shower, put on clothes, put on my boots, and left for work at 5. When I arrived at the job site, I decided to take a short break before I had to start heading in. When I got to the doors to the work site, I fell into a portal. I heard a faint voice while I was falling, "Good luck!". I landed just as suddenly as the portal appeared, and my mind was pulled toward a glowing sticky note on my jacket, which said:

"Welcome, Max, to the world of Limitless. You now have Omniversal Portal Creation. With it, you can open a portal to pretty much any place or time in any world you have ever seen in fiction or reality. Interdimensional travel has no limits, but it takes 1.2 megaseconds or about 14 Earth solar days to recharge for omniversal travel. The ability comes with Blank, making you immune to omnipotent all-seeing beings, provided you do not draw their direct attention. The other rules and abilities you'll have to find out yourself. -Q&q".

As I finish reading, the note disintegrated, and I felt a stirring sensation appear in the back of my mind with a feeling that I can go between variants of this world. Then panic set in: where am I, when is it, am I injured, do I have my phone, and can I go home? I tried my best to calm down by focusing on taking deep breaths and trying to meditate some. After 30 minutes, I calmed myself enough to check on my situation. First, I checked myself for injuries, and fortunately, I was fine. Next, I looked to see if my stuff came with me, and I quickly found my phone, keys, wallet, tablet, water bottle, lunch box, and finally my bag of tools.

I turned on my phone, and unfortunately, it could not connect to cell service, though 911 was still available. The next thing I discovered was that my phone's time had updated; it was April 11th, 2015, at 6:35 AM; I was 10 years in the past. I felt an even greater panic attack coming as I looked around and found I was in an alleyway. I started looking for my location using my phone's GPS and found that I am in New York, in Manhattan. It took another 30 minutes for me to finish calming down.

Now let's think of a plan; I need more money to get a hotel room, I need to know what is happening, and if I am truly in the world of Limitless. I can get money from a pawnshop for today, but information is more important right now. So I headed for the nearest library; it took about 20 minutes to get there. Unfortunately it will be closed for another 35 minutes so I waited to be let in. Luckily, the library wasn't that strict with home addresses, so I easily gained a library card. Now I made my way towards the computers. I noticed I could read text in languages I had never learned, and I realized this could be an extremely useful ability if it also extended to speech or even programming. So, programming was the first thing I checked when I logged in. The easiest place to check was GitHub, and Git was one of the first repositories there. When I started looking at Git's source code, I realized I understood code much better than before.

With that side tangent over, I checked the downloaded copy of Wikipedia on my tablet for the TV show Limitless to find the most searchable person, and I found "Edward Morra," a Senator. Once I had the candidate, I wasted no time looking him up, and unsurprisingly, he was real. This was the world with NZT, the miracle drug that makes you a genius with perfect recall for 8 hours, but with terrible side effects like memory loss and extreme paranoia. Fortunately, there is an injectable drug called "The Booster Shot" that can prevent these side effects for 30 days, and even better, a permanent version is possible; annoyingly, Morra is the only source. After that, I figured that my first move had to be making enough money to gain some NZT. To get the money, bug bounties or translation work are my best bet, and my first step to take that is to open a bank account.

Unfortunately, I discovered that it was impossible for me, as I don't have a country of citizenship, to get an ITIN or SSN. The next most useful thing is to download a "new" map of the city to my tablet. While I was downloading the map, I used my tablet to look through what I could for this world. Next, I looked at a dictionary for a bunch of languages and listened to what I could for those languages. The languages I focused on are the ones that I think can be the easiest to consistently profit from, so I went through some of the most common languages, like Spanish and Mandarin. The last thing I did in the library was to find a good open pawnshop and a cheap hotel.

I quickly headed to the pawnshop I found with a good reputation. When I entered, I separated what I was willing to let go of, which was a fluke multi-meter and a couple of spare tools. By the end, I managed to argue for $175 to go with my $20 and gained a better hope for the future. Now I've got enough to get a hotel room.

When I arrived, I got a room for $65 a night and had dinner, and started to make more long-term plans before I went to sleep. My current plan is to find work and a group that I can share an apartment with and do my best to get some NZT pills.

I woke up the next morning, had breakfast, and started to look for work. To get work, I started asking around for people in need of electrical work or a translator. Fortunately, I found more people in need of a translator, so I made $75 from that and $25 to fix someone's receptacle before grabbing lunch. For the rest of the day, I went searching for a longer-term place to stay and found a group living in a 3-bedroom apartment that is looking for a roommate. The rent is $400 a month, and I paid them $100 up front with a promise that within the next 7 days, I will pay them the rest. After making that deal, I realized that I finally have a stable spot to relax, so I meditated on my power. It felt like it was a bit stronger than before, and felt like there was a limit on how strong it could be without exercising it. After meditating, I had dinner and then went to sleep.

I got up at my new home, had breakfast, and looked for more work so I can live up to that promise. By lunch, I had earned $90; now it was time to start looking for my first source of NZT, so I used my tablet to look for the easiest source with the least risk. After looking for a while, I found Eli Whitford, who is the person the MC in the show gets his first pills from. Annoyingly, he gets shot in the first episode.

Now I just need to find if he is still alive, to do that, I went to the library to look him up. The best place to start is Manchester-Reid, as that is where he works. Unfortunately, Reid doesn't have a public list of employees, but they do have a link to their LinkedIn on the hiring page. After finding that, I started to look through their page for people named Eli Whitford. Luckily, I only got one match, and he is still alive; he just updated his Facebook. Now that I have found him, I started to look for where he lives and found 6 potential locations to check. When I finished looking him up, I noticed it was getting late, so I left, and I had dinner, then went back home and had a good night's sleep.

Over the next week, I managed to pay off the rest of my rent with a bit over $500 left over to get NZT. I spent most of my free time reading through C and JavaScript documentation and best practices to prepare for when I get NZT. The last thing I did that week was to go through the locations where Eli might live and eventually found him. Today I finally decided to get NZT. My plan was simple: get to where Eli lives and buy a few pills or where he is acquiring them. When I got there, I knocked on his door and waited.

After about 20 minutes of waiting, he finally came and opened the door and asked.

"What do you want?"

"Your NZT supplier or a couple of pills."

"How do you know that I have it? That's an extremely dangerous conversation to have publicly. Come in."

Going inside, "Your Manchester-Reid records made it obvious."

Mumbling under his breath, "I thought I was better at covering my tracks." "So, are you going to tell anyone about this?"

"I will if you don't give me a good deal also, as a warning; I'm not the only one who knows, but I'm certainly the most pleasant."

"I am not going to sell out my supplier. What are you going to give me to give some pills to you?"

"$400 for 3 pills sounds about right."

"That would be a loss. $500 for 3."

"Now, now, we wouldn't want your secret getting out, or tell Morra that you are skipping town. You wouldn't last long if I did. $425 for 3"

"$465 for 3 is my last offer."

"You can do lower $450 for 3."

"Deal."

 

[TheDIrepack]

Chapter 2
Earth Limitless: Tuesday, April 21st​, 2015 8:30 AM​

I gave him the money and left. I spent the rest of the day working and planning my next steps. My current inventory is 27 hours of NZT, $165, and a place to live. Now all I need is a computer with an internet connection, so I can utilize some exploits that I read about before. Using those exploits will make it easy too to get a birth certificate, SSN, and the rest of an identity to get a bank account; doing that is a problem for tomorrow.

The next day, I went back through the plan and then looked at the date. It's now April 22nd, and it's been 11 days since I fell through that portal, and that feeling in the back of my mind is nearly full. I realized that getting some things back from my original home instead of buying them here is a better option. This is because both the capabilities and the access to money are much better at home.

So, my new plan is to work for the next 3 days, go back home, and grab my laptop along with some other things. With that plan, I went back to work so I could have some extra money for when I come back.

On the 25th, I woke up at 6:30 am. I felt that the buildup in the back of my mind had peaked and coalesced into a feeling that I could go anywhere I could imagine. The first thing I thought of was to see if I could go to Star Trek: The Next Generation, but I felt the path was too confusing and too far to reach. Then I remembered my plan and tried to head back home. Thankfully, the path was simple and was well within my range, though more annoyingly, I could only target when I fell into that portal around the same spot. After feeling that I could go back, I started preparing. I took a shower, changed, brushed my teeth, grabbed the rest of the stuff I needed, and opened the portal.

I opened the portal further down the hall. I felt that I could change the portal's size dramatically, so I made it human-sized and walked through. Once I was through, I immediately used my phone to check when and found it was exactly when I left. So, I went straight to work. During my break time, I started looking at doing online translation work and software bug bounties, so I made an account on paid translation sites and on HackerOne. After work, I went to Micro Center to pick up a decent microphone, headset, and a 20 TB external hard drive before heading home. When I arrived, I wasted no time connecting the hard drive and downloading a complete CVE database dump and all the demos and reproduction code available. I did this so I could have a copy of vulnerabilities for 2015 tech so I can exploit them later. While that was downloading, I did some online translation work, trying to build up an excellent reputation for quality.

For the next 4 days, the schedule was simple: wake up at 4:00 AM, go to work, get home and translate things, exercise, shower, and go to sleep. I also downloaded the source code needed to have a complete Fedora install. I also pirated and copied the TV show, movie, and wiki for Limitless to take with me.

Over the weekend, I did bug bounties when I would have been working my day job. To do that, I looked for bugs and vulnerabilities in open source projects. By the end of the weekend, I submitted a bunch of bugs and a single security vulnerability; that one vulnerability was worth $600.

All the work I've done has earned me a bit more than $2k. With some of that money, I bought new boots, a full face mask, a lock pick set, an RFID card cloner, and some nice, durable clothes. I also got some things to make living more comfortable when I go, like a good sleeping bag and a long-range Wi-Fi receiver.

For the last week before I left, I worked and got another $2.4k, so I got another 20TB hard drive, an 8TB external SSD, a bunch of bags and long-lasting food, and a set of wireless headphones. As I was working, I was downloading a bunch of research papers that were neuroscience related. I also downloaded the Tor browser and source code, and the availability of various chemicals. For research, I started to go through the CVE database for CVEs after 2015 that would still apply to software in 2015 and are decently capable. The day before I left, I converted $800 to cash and ensured they were printed before 2015. To prepare for me coming back, I ordered the parts for a NAS/VM host. On the last day, I went to work, and after worked ended, I went home and grabbed what I was taking with me and hopped into the portal back to the world of Limitless right where I left.

The path for portal to the world of limitless was more complicated and further out than going to Earth, but still within my capabilities. Unfortunately, I can only make the portal where I left if I want to keep what left. Now that I am back, I need to get to making an identity and acquiring the recipe for NZT and "Booster Shot". First thing is to put away the things I brought with me and connect the hard drives to my laptop. Next is to do is to set up the Wi-Fi receiver and connect to some public internet; luckily, there was a Starbucks nearby. I spent the rest of the day putting away my stuff I brought with me.

Today I got up at 3:00 AM and got ready for the day; it's now time to take my first pill of NZT. For the first minute, nothing happens, but then, a feeling that my eyes are opened for the first time, my mind expands, and I remember everything. The next step is to try to find where Morra keeps the records for the NZT research that he funds. The best source for NZT immunity research is Piper, as she has nearly figured out how to make it permanent, but she is hard to find. So the next best thing is to find the warehouse that Morra uses to administer the booster shots and hope that some of his research is there. The show just showed the inside and a bit of the outside through some glass but didn't show an outside shot. The show did also have where the FBI is getting NZT for Brian, the MC of the show, and one of Morra's NZT producers. I also know where Piper will be in a few months, so I can check there, but I am unlikely to find much. Now that I have a couple of targets, now I just need to decide on what order I will hit them.

After thinking about I decided to go in this order: Piper, Morra's NZT producers, FBI, and Morra's Warehouse. I spent the next 2 hours researching the first 3 target locations, interspersed with writing a virus to access government computers. One problem that I noticed was that my computer and internet can't keep up with my improved mind. Annoyingly, there isn't anything that I can easily do to fix this. After researching the locations, I got my tools and left home, and went to where Piper hid. Once I got there, I found that it was still a construction site, so she hadn't moved in yet, so I hid a note for her to find me. After hiding the note in a way that I think only someone with NZT will notice, I left and went to my next stop, a small pharmacy.
When I got to my next stop, it was luckily closed, so I could try to sneak in the back. The lock on the back door was quick to pick, and the security panel was nearby with a 30-second timer before the alarm goes off. Fortunately, his code was relatively simple; it was the day, month, and year of when the pharmacy opened. Now that I can search more freely, I started looking for the documents on making NZT. As I was searching, I found a hidden safe in the room where NZT is being made; now I just need to figure out its code.

I looked around for clues and found his birthday on some documents, so I tried that and it worked. Inside was an external hard drive, a stack of papers, and a bag with 50 NZT pills. The first thing I did was to look at the drive and saw it was just a 1TB unencrypted NTFS partition, so I started to image the drive with my laptop. As that was happening, I took photos of the documents one by one on each side. As I was doing that, I noticed that some of them had the recipe for NZT; the FBI lab is no longer needed. Once I was done taking photos, I checked on my laptop, and the imaging was complete. I put the documents and the drive back and took 10 NZT pills with me. I locked everything back up, put everything back, rearmed the security system, and left to go home to look over what I acquired.

When I got home, the first thing I did was copy the images from my phone and run OCR on them, then I mounted the drive image. As I looked around the drive, I found a folder named NZT inside that was a PDF with the recipe for NZT, but missing any notes for actually making it. I looked around some more and found a folder named audio notes, and the drive was filled with hundreds of audio and video recordings; they were either the production itself or his theories on how to produce NZT better. That was the last interesting thing on that drive. I even tried to look for deleted files and only found failed recordings that didn't have anything new. For the files I found were filled with notes on how not to make NZT and then some about how to with printouts of the PDF on the drive. The rest of the documents were production statistics and sales numbers.

Now that I have the recipe for NZT, I just need the recipe for the booster shot, so I do a bit more research on Morra's warehouse. Just before my dose of NZT faded, I found the last target and made plans to break in. For the first hour, I was fine with no side effects, then I started to have blurred vision and difficulty hearing. The worst part of these side effects is that I know that they are only going to get worse as I take more NZT without the booster. While my vision is impaired, I still did my best to look through his notes. By the end of the day, I managed to get through half his notes and then went to sleep.