Outside, a server hummed somewhere in the digital ether, preserving a truth the old cartoons never aired: that even a cat and a mouse, given enough timelines, eventually choose to sit down.
Jerry sat back in the portal’s glow, his tiny heart pounding. He had seen the multiverse of his own existence. In hundreds of lost, forgotten, or unmade episodes, he and Tom weren’t enemies. They were explorers. Partners. Even, sometimes, friends.
Had Tom found his own portal? Jerry wondered. Had he seen the pirate ship? The cheese pond? The orchestra?
The year was 2024. The house, a creaking Victorian in a sleepy town, was new to Jerry, but its occupant, Tom, was an old problem. A lanky, blue-gray schemer with too much time on his paws. Their first week had been a greatest hits album of chases: a frying pan to the face for Tom, a firecracker to the tail for Jerry. Classic. Predictable.
A tiny, robotic voice chirped, “Welcome, Archival Rodent. You have accessed ‘Tom and Jerry Tales: The Complete Broadcast Anomalies.’ Please select a chapter.”
The last thing Jerry Mouse expected to find inside the wall of his new home was a portal. Not a mouse-hole, not a forgotten duct, but a shimmering, hexagonal window of light that smelled of old paper, ozone, and dust.