There is now no limit to space or resources, and so the global economy, no longer able to base itself on the scarcity value of commodities like gold and food, is smashed. Skip forward a decade or so, and society has been rocked by the new ability to Step. On the same day, a single police officer also learns how to Step and becomes a sort of police liaison for Stepping-related crimes. He gathers the other teens and helps them back to their Earth. In Madison, Wisconsin, one boy named Joshua Valiente Steps along with the others, but unlike the rest does not experience nausea or disorientation. 'Step Day' involved a large number of teens vanishing into the next Earth in the line, many injuring themselves. The issue being, nobody knew that was what a Stepper did that first day. After the schematics for an easy-to-construct device called a Stepper, a key component of which being a potato, are leaked onto the internet, most of humanity gains the ability to 'step' to parallel Earths.

A science fiction series co-written by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter.

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