Cat Chaser part 2 has several epilogues, one of them set in Avengers Tower in New York, where Tony Stark receives a small present from another universe sent by Dick Grayson and Kara Zor-El (Supergirl). The first three paragraphs were in the original story, the rest was cut because it wasn't really essential to the story; I'm posting it now because it highlights a technological problem that doesn't seem to turn up as often as it should in parallel world stories.
Epilogue 3"Okay," said Tony Stark. "This stuff is gold. We need to make deals with all of the actors, writers and production companies. At least half of the Firefly episodes are completely new, about a third of Galactica, and I've never even heard of Wormhole X-Treme. We're sitting on a fortune."
"Methinks," said Thor, "they were intended as a gift for us, recompense for the trouble caused by the cat. They were meant for us to enjoy. To think only in terms of profit is..."
"Good business sense," Tony interrupted. "Don't worry, we'll get to watch them first. Can't wait to see how this version of Firefly handled the time travel and alien contact story arcs..."
He put the disk into a DVD player. It whirred for several seconds, then rejected the disc. Tony picked it up and looked at it more carefully, but it didn't seem to be damaged or defective. He had a sudden thought, and got out one of his own discs and compared them, then got out a laser pointer and shone it at the surface of one disc, then the other. Both of them reflected the laser light into a series of dots. "Notice anything different, Thor?"
"There were more dots for Kara's disc."
"Correct! Give the god a Kewpie doll! The surface of a DVD is a diffraction grating, the number of dots should be the same for any disk. If it's different, it means they probably use a different laser frequency to play the discs."
"And?"
"And that means their technology is different enough that they're probably using different disc rotation speeds, maybe a different algorithm to compress the data, probably a different encryption scheme."
"It is unfortunate, but I am sure that the gift was meant well."
"JARVIS can probably crack it." Tony put the disk into a workstation. "JARVIS, analyze this and try to figure out how to read it. Check the history of DVD development, any DVD patents that mention different frequencies, that sort of thing."
"Of course, sir." The drive light began to blink.
"We won't be watching it tonight, but give JARVIS a day or two and we'll be in business."
"You sound very sure."
"DVD is old technology here, probably is in Kara's world too. The fact that they even call it DVD probably means they followed a similar path to develop it, probably some of the same corporations and engineers worked on it. They couldn't make it too complicated because they couldn't build a powerful computer into a DVD player back then, it had to be slow and stupid, which means that we can probably crack it. Eventually, anyway."
"Very well," said Thor. "Let me know when it is done." He went off in search of Jane and Darcy.
Tony turned back to JARVIS. "Okay, let's see if we can get this cracked before the weekend, I feel like watching some TV..."
endPrompted by too many stories where someone from a parallel world has DVDs and other electronic records that instantly work with another universe's electronics.
