After part 27 where Shine told Shinso and Mei how her portaling works, I realized the explanation just didn't cover it fully. Though Shine explains more throughout the story, I thought I'd put it all here so people don't have to piece it together over time, like the students do. 😉

Also so they can refer back to this any time the rules of DJ-ing are brought up.

So, I've spent years developing my version of portals and dimensional travel theory, and I'm still working on it, but what I've worked out so far is as follows:

WHAT ARE PORTALS?

I've made the comparison between a portal and a tesseract. In most sci-fi, they are pretty much the same thing, but a tesseract tends to be more unstable. Think of the one in the Avengers.

I first learned about Tesseracts from Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle In Time, but the term was coined by C. H. Hinton in his book about the Fourth Dimension.

A Tesseract is a cube that has been squared, like you could take a number to the 4th power. The theory is a solid object could be squared too, if we followed mathematical logic.

The reason that creates a portal is a little more complicated.

In Abbott's Flatland, a 2D person is transported by a 3D person into the world of solids, and the 3D person can reach into the 2D world and go through what are walls and solid objects to them, because it's all laid out like a flat diagram. Just like we could look at the blueprint of a house and put a pencil into any room of the house. To us there is no roof. 

Because all the roofs in Flatland point north, like on a map, they are not roofs to the solid object but lines. We would get the same effect if we pointed to a map hanging on the wall.

Other scientists have applied this logic to the 4th dimensions: that a 4D being could move through solid objects the way we can move through flat ones. Our walls would not be walls to them. Our doors would not be doors. They would be as useless as flat lines are for keeping us out. Just like a parking line doesn't actually keep us from physically parking over it-- you have to choose to park inside it. But if you hit a wall, you will be stopped from parking inside it. A wall is 3D so it can stop you, a 3D person, but a 2D line is not a barrier to us. We can step over it or on it like nothing.

A 4D being would be as unlimited as we are, but in our world, with our rules.

From this scientific hypothesis (which now is starting to be proven by Quantum Physics to be at least partially grounded in fact, by the way) people have created the idea of the tesseract.

If a solid object, a square in this case, could be raised to another power physically, it could move through our world freely. It could got through a wall or fly or be outside of time.

In the Avengers Movies, this concept is very on the nose because the tesseract is actually shaped like a cube that can teleport people. However, you could not actually see a real tesseract as an ordinary cube with our eyes. People can imagine it but that's all. It's not possible to create it in the physical world...yet. As far as we know.

But for the purpose of sci-fi world travel, authors have taken it a different way.

HOW DO PEOPLE USE A TESSERACT/PORTAL

In A Wrinkle In Time, we find a tesseract is combined with the idea of  spiritual beings able to transcend our reality. In that story, humans are able to use a tesseract but very clumsily, and it's out of control, and they end up getting hurt doing it.  Because humans are not 4D beings.

But a being who is a 4D can transport the 3 kids in the story, safely, through other dimensions, just like the 3D being in flatland can lift the Square up into the 3rd dimension. Once we are outside of it, we can pull someone else up into it.

The process is dangerous for humans to attempt, but it's perfectly natural to the 4th dimensional beings in the story, and it's easier for them than staying 3D is.

In that story, it's hinted that they might be angels or something like angels. But it's not specified. However, many spiritual people think that the Spiritual Realm is the 4th Dimension, and that is why we get stories of ghosts that can pass through walls but can also interact with our physical world-- it's just a choice to do so. Unlike us, they do not have to.

Some Scientific Christians also believe that Angels and Demons live in the 4th dimension, and that God Himself must operate in it,  or, in other theories, that God is in an infinite amount of dimensions, and the 4th is just the last one we can comprehend at all. It's plausible that if that theory is true, angels and demons might still be bound to the 4th dimensions, because they are lesser than God, but of course, there is not way to test such a theory.

So, people use tesseracts either through some imperfect science, like in most sci-fi stories, or they use it with the aid of a being that is not bound by our world themselves. The second way is much safer and the only way in fiction that has not had side effects. Authors generally write tears in space time, messed up history, and physical injury as the result of humans doing it alone. Spiderman: Into the Spider Verse is one of the most recent popular examples of a this in cinema.

HOW MY WORLD WALKER PORTALS WORK

Keeping all this in mind, I wrote my portals to follow these rules.

Shine often says that portals are not her power, she just uses it. This makes no sense, until you consider how impossible it would be for a human, a 3D being, to portal at all without help. Even if she could, like some characters in MHA, it would be very limited and possibly destructive. After all, Kurogiri can't even fully form his body (at least easily), no doubt a side effect of his power. How inconvenient would that be?

So, Shine is no doubt telling the truth. A human could not use portals with  the amount of control she does and do it safety. Especially to leave the world. Even if were possible to do it, surely staying on the same world would be easier, not leaving reality altogether. That's a lot more of a jump.

So, following the lore laid out by other people, Shine must be using the help of  a being outside her world in order to transcend reality as we see it. 

Which is exactly what she claims is true.

Now, an intelligent person may ask, if that's true, why does it take energy from her to portal?

The answer is simple.

Religious people believe that prayer does certain things in the spiritual realm. Universalists believe that if we manifest positively to the universe, we can create positive events. Science has started to back up these claims.

Clearly how we interact with the world in thought and words does effect things outside our sphere of physical control.

So it would not be a real leap in logic to think a human could activate portals by thinking about it. It's basically calling upon the other power to help you. Like a prayer-- or like positive thinking, if that explanation makes more sense.

Shine's bond with a Being outside her dimension enables to her to harness its power in a way, though briefly, but it still takes energy for her to call upon it and can have side effects if she overdoes it, just like we can burn ourselves out mentally an emotionally.

The idea of world walking by this means is very old and can be found in all kinds of stories. The Chronicles of Narnia is a famous example, but it's all over anime, science fiction, romance fictions, and fairy-tales also. Even some mythology has a kind of resemblance to it, like in Greek Myths where mortals are caught up to heaven by gods.

COMBINING SCIENCE and MYSTICISM

What makes my combination unique, at least mostly, is taking these two elements and bringing them together, instead of just relying on one.

For example, the reason Shine's portal looks like  a door could be a scientific reference. Maybe the door is really a square, and the door shape is just what people think because it's  a rectangle (squares are considered part of the rectangle family, if you don't know). Does that mean her door is really a tesseract...or that a tesseract is really a door, conversely?

There are also biblical references in it. Jesus calls himself THE DOOR, and we know Shine is religious.

Not every portal is shaped like a door, though it's simply easier to picture it that way. I initially got the idea from Prince Caspian, by C. S. Lewis-- the door in the air.

In other version, the tesseract is not even visible. Humans can't see what's happening, like in L'Engle's. 

It all depends on what you want to do with it. I preferred a visible force because it has more intrigue that way.

The main point of Shine's Portals is that they are the only "safe" method to dimension travel. Any other method is erratic and damaging.

Also her method removes the need for her to be able to understand where she's going. She alludes to the fact that she could end up in a wall, and if we go back to the 2D-3D comparison, we see why. If a person is not in complete control and can't see where they are, then when they re-enter their dimension, the could end up in a wall.  The wall is permeable to them as long as they are out, but that reentry point is the hard part to nail.

[Like Lemillion's quirk, only his is just becoming permeable, not dimension travel, but some of the properties are similar.]

Shine's allusion to this actually is another clue to how her portals function. Clearly they lift her out of the dimension only while she is inside them, like a tunnel over a chasm. If she were to exit to a location she didn't know, since she herself is 3D and can't see it like a 4D person could, she could end up in wall, a chasm, a fire pit, anywhere. If we push it, she could even end up in another person, but the nature of her gift makes that unlikely.

But that tells us why Shine prefers not to control where she is going herself, but to let her 4D friend do it for her. They can see through the 3D world, and she can't.

When she does use the power of her own volition, we now can see why it's imperative she has an idea where she is going and who she is going to, so she can aim. She only needs a picture of it, unlike the others, but she still needs something to go off.

Later in the story, Shine tells people who know she's going to portal to them to stand at least a few feet away from any wall, so she doesn't miss them and go into that by accident.

Shine still sometimes uses the power even if she's not sure where the person is, because it's an emergency, but she's risking her well being every time she does it. She can hope her 4D guide will keep her from blundering like that, but when it's her taking a shot in the dark, she has no guarantee from a scientific angle that she will be safe.

Much like other powers that risk the holder's life, it's not to be trifled with.

Anyway, I hope this made things more clear to you about how the use of portals will operate in this story, and why many times during the conflicts coming in the future, it will seem like a portal could solve it, but the rules expressed above will be referred to as to why it's not that simple.

It's not actually a Deus Ex Machina, as much as it seem like it is.

See you in the next chapter

Worldwalkerdj

[Cover art designed by Julianna Gardner]