Chapter 2: Green Jello Should Have Pineapple

"H-hey, Beth, hand me that screwdriver, would ya?"

Rick held out his hand expectantly, unable to look away from the device he'd been working on, day and night, for over a month. Beth put down the equine anatomy textbook Rick had ordered for her shortly after their fight the day he discovered the potential of the crystal, and handed her father the Philips head screwdriver.

"Is it almost finished, Daddy?", Beth asked as she stood on her tip-toes to peer up at the workbench. Rick adjusted the final screw on the handle of the device, and nodded in the affirmative. A drop of sweat beaded off the tip of his nose under the heat of the lamp illuminating his creation.

"Aaaaand, YES! I think that's got 'er, kiddo!"

Rick stood up and held the portal gun in his hand, looking at the glowing crystal contained in the glass cylinder atop the gun. He turned the dial underneath to turn it on, punched in some coordinates into the keypad, and aimed the gun at the wall. Beth bounced on her heels in anticipation, and watched as the brilliant emerald flash washed out everything in the room for a split second.

The man-sized portal on their living room wall rippled like water, fascinating both Rick and Beth. After a few silent moments, Rick held up his hand.

The salt shaker he has tossed into the first portal over a month ago shot out of the portal and into Rick's hand; both closed immediately after.

"Here ya go, Beth, I'm sure it'll make that latest batch of Brain Grain taste a hell o-of a lot better", Rick said as he handed the glass shaker to Beth. She giggled, and set the salt on the workbench behind them.

"I think those portal things look like green jello, but without the pineapple. You think there's pineapple in the portals sometimes, Daddy?"

Rick dialed in a new destination into the portal gun, and shot at the wall again, opening another bright green oval.

"Beth, I can make it so there's a whole planet of sentient pineapples in these, in these babies. But we still gotta make sure stuff other than salt can m-make it through and back in one piece..."

He reached into his lab coat pocket, and produced a white rat with a length of twine tied around it's torso. Beth smiled and reached up to pet the rodent, but Rick quickly pulled it high above her head.

"No no, B-Beth, this little guy here isn't a pet, he's gonna make sure these things ar-aren't gonna kill us if we go th-URRRP-rough 'em. Wouldn't get attached to him if I were you."

Beth put her hands behind her back and nodded, not agreeing with her father's use of a test animal, but knowing it was better than risking their own lives.

Rick walked up close to the portal, and tossed the rat in, holding onto the other end of it's twine tether. He waited a second, then pulled back on it swiftly. The rat popped out just before the portal closed, agitated but alive. Rick brought the animal back to it's small cage on the floor, and shut it safely inside.

"Yay! So it's safe?"

Rick smiled and nodded to Beth, and shot another portal onto the wall. He grabbed her hand and stepped forward.

"W-well, you said you wanna go somewhere, kid, how about an entirely new dimension?"

Beth nervously nodded 'yes', and squeezed Rick's hand tightly.

Rick and Beth closed their eyes as they walked into the portal together, into the shimmering green void.

As the portal closed behind them, the rat in it's cage began to sprout scales, horns, and antenna, before it tripled in size. The mutated rat spread it's newly formed, bat-like wings, spewed acid at the cage wall, and flew away, out through a nearby open window.