"The source of the illegal stream," Sheldon replied. "It appears our universe has been compressed, re-encoded, and uploaded to a server in a jurisdiction that ignores the Berne Convention."

The temporal fold widened. The couch in Alexei’s apartment began to merge with Leonard and Sheldon’s couch. Alexei felt his feet sink into a fictional rug. For one horrifying second, he could smell Penny’s perfume from across the hall.

The lights in his apartment dimmed. The air smelled of burnt toast and ozone. A low hum started, not from his computer, but from the corner of the room—where the wall had become a window into a sun-drenched Pasadena apartment.

Alexei leaned closer. That wasn’t right. The file was an .mkv, not a quantum entanglement experiment. He hit ESC. Nothing. He hit Ctrl+C. The screen laughed at him—no, it didn’t laugh, but it typed:

Sheldon’s eyes narrowed. "That’s season two, you philistine."

"The real Big Bang wasn't the start of the universe. It was the moment you tried to watch it for free."