‘It’s like being on an escalator. At the moment, confined to this universe, we’re stuck to this stair, this level; the possibility this artifact appears to offer is that of being able to step from one stair to another, so that before your stair on the escalator comes to the end of its travel - heat-death, big crunch, whatever - you just step off one level down to another. You could, in effect, live for ever . . . well, unless it’s discovered that cosmic fireball engines themselves have a life-cycle; as I understand it the metamath on that implies but does not guarantee perpetuity.’
