"Countless," he confirms tiredly. "Potentially part of a cohesive whole, though at that point we'd be making scientifically unsound assumptions regarding the nature of the multiverse."

Rush flexes the fingers of his right arm abruptly, reestablishing sensation in absence of numbness, a rapid clenching and unclenching of his fist with arrhythmic intensity before he drags the hand through his hair, brushing the disordered fringe again from his face.

"Essentially, what we know is this." His hand falls away to flick up one finger, wavering yet absolute. "One, that the multiverse is endless. Endless." He pauses to favor her with a searching look with more magnitude than is strictly conversationally appropriate, though given that Rush is ostensibly encountering a non-terrestrial - 'Earth' is a familiar title, though 'alarming' raises its own set of theories - it may be entirely warranted. "Two, the differences between universes are equally infinite. And three, there exists a Rift capable of circumventing the boundaries that would normally exist between separate branes, a spatial-temporal fracture in the chiral matter itself."