Disclaimer: I do not own the big bang theory. In the world of emoticons, I am colon opening bracket : (

Hey! So it's been a while since I wrote any fanfiction but this idea struck me today and I just had to write it down. This prologue is exceedingly far-fetched, but please bear with me because the next chapters will be better, and more realistic, and more in-character, even if they are, quite literally, alternate universe.

Prologue

He comes home from work on Tuesday night exhausted. It's been a long day, fraught with contradictory ideas and mistakes in his working. Normally, the beautiful mind of Sheldon Cooper doesn't get tired, but today...

He drops his messenger bag on his desk chair. Leonard's gone to get dinner and he's glad to have the apartment to himself. Peace and quiet. Yes. He sits down in his spot, sinking into the chair with a kind of grateful ease. But the pleasant feeling doesn't last long. The Project is niggling at the back of his mind. He just has to work on it. It's too important just to leave lying there, hidden at the bottom of his wardrobe.

He gets up and, with a furtive, paranoid glance around the room, he hurries to his bedroom and unearths the mass of metal, plastic and wires that comprise The Project. It's a matter transporter. A real one. Alright, it's small and not quite finished, and it will only be able to transport small inanimate objects or simple life forms like, say, an ant when it's done, but the scientific ramifications are astonishing...if it works.

He has thought about bringing Howard in on The Project. He may always say that engineering is "the slow younger brother of physics", but he will privately admit that Howard has a steadier hand and a better way with a screwdriver than he does himself. He finally decided not to though – The Project has to be kept a secret. He's seen enough Sci-fi movies to know that it's the kind of technology people would, quite literally, kill for.

A few fine tunings here and there and it should be ready for its first test. He slides his old toolbox out from under his bed and removes a pair of pliers. Battling with the lengths of wires, he succeeds finally in connecting the final length, securing it with his partially-rusted old screwdriver. With the USB cable he installed, he connects the device to the computer and checks the code, adding a few more safety cut-outs to the many pages of high-level language. Sheldon smiles a little – he thought he was passed experimenting in his bedroom, but there you go. He's a better scientist now, smarter, more experienced – he's confident he won't kill any hamsters with this one. Another half hour of work, tops, and this thing will be finished. He estimates that Leonard won't be home for another forty-five minutes, giving him plenty of time to check over his calculations and his code before actually testing the thing out.

Exactly forty-five minutes of tense, quick, tired work later, Sheldon hears the door open and close. A set of keys are thrown into the key bowl with a clink.

"Sheldon? I've got food!"

"I'll be there in a minute!" Sheldon calls back, holding up the small-but-magnificent mass of shining metal. It's finished. He's got to test it. Now. He stands up and, trying and failing at assuming a nonchalant demeanour, goes out into the hall and stops himself from running to the kitchen. Leonard is standing there, unpacking burning food in polystyrene boxes from a brown paper bag.

"Oh, there you are," the short physicist smiles, "that's yours there." He points at one of the boxes. Sheldon is about to quiz him on his order, to check he got it right, but remembers the other, and far more important, matter at hand.

"I'll eat in a moment," he says calmly, "I just need to...get something from my bedroom."

"Ok," Leonard raises an eyebrow at his roommate, but he's used to Sheldon's quirks, eccentricities and general oddball-ness, and doesn't pursue the matter. What he does find strange, even for Sheldon, is when the taller man lifts an orange from the fruit bowl and carries it away with him.

Back in his bedroom, Sheldon wedges the orange between two metal tubes and closes the spherical construction with a clang, locking it closed with a series of clasps. He types a few commands through his laptop, and then disconnects the two machines. It will begin the moment he presses the button on the sphere's surface...

This is it. This is his destiny.

He presses the button, and jumps backwards for safety.

Nothing happens.

He waits a while. Still, the sphere sits, immobile. It's not steaming, it's not emitting loud bangs, it hasn't caught on fire, and it hasn't exploded. In fact, it doesn't seem to have done anything at all. Could it really have happened? Could he really have transported the orange?

The problem with the transporter is that Sheldon doesn't know where the transported objects go. He just has to open the sphere and see, however unthinkable it is, if the orange has gone. Cautiously, he steps towards the sphere, and reaches out long, spiderlike fingers to touch it...

"Sheldon?" Leonard calls from the kitchen, impatiently. He's been in that room a long time. Leonard hopes he's not going to send out another robotic representation of himself. "Sheldon!" He calls again. There's no reply. With a sigh, he puts down his food and heads down the corridor. "The food's going to get cold!" He says, opening the door, but...but there's no one there. Sheldon isn't in his room – there's only a small metal sphere in the middle of his bed, his open laptop with a mysterious program running, and a pile of clothes on the carpet.

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