Alice Express Transrift Travel (company)

Alice Express Transrift Travel, also known as Rabbithole Express, was one of the first providers of commercial, semi-affordable travel through the Rift, and is notable in being central to the invention of the Rift Bridge.

Origins
Rabbithole Express was first founded in the year 109 P.R.E., when a group of enterprising students- Michael Hatoyama, and Miyuki Lehrer, as well as a Thranx, Ryu'zen'zu'zex, decided to make travel between timelines easier. Previously, travel between timelines involved actually moving the Terraside Rift mouth into a launching station. Requiring absolutely astronomical events of energy and machinery to do, a single Jaunt cost nearly as much as a trip on the Pre-Rift Space Shuttle. Rift travel for the common person was thus nigh-imposible unless he was lucky (or unlucky) enough to run across the eternally-wandering Terraside mouth. As a result, Terran exploration was very limited, and Terraprime population remained largely human, with nonhumans like the Thranx being very rare indeed. This all changed when the group, which had dubbed themselves the "Rabbithole Club" stumbled across a scrapped military prototype of a Rift Bridge, part of the failed Project Omnipresence. The thing was being auctioned off as an abstract sculpture, but Ryu was able to recognize it as some form of. The sculpture was bought, and the group managed to reverse-engineer some of the principles. Realizing it as the solution to their problems, they designed the first practical, truly fuctioning Rift Bridge. Due to the vast cheapening of the process, a single Jaunt down the Rift now cost only thousands of dollars instead of millions. Although precisely where in the Multiversal continuum the Contra-Terraside mouth would spit you out was still uncontrollable, they realized the importance of their discovery and made the blueprints of the device open-source. The resulting wave of Rift Jaunting expeditions, known as the Great Riftway Boom laid much of the Rift Bridge architechture we use today. At the forefront of the huge wave of exploration was Rabbithole Express, founded by the three students who invented the device.

=Later Days=

Although Rabbithole Express stood at the forefront of the Riftway Boom, the company suffered largely in the eventual Great Riftway Bust. The company, like the Web companies in the Pre-Rift Web Bust, took a major hit, and nearly bankrupted itself. It survived on it's own for nearly 5 years, until it was overtaken by companies with better technology, marketing, or sometimes with just better luck. Rabbithole was eventually bought by Tachyon Enterprises in 129 P.R.E., who renamed the company to Alice Express. The company, after being lost, sold, and rebought still survives today, although it is nowhere near its former importance. The company remains largely obscure, a little-used holding in the megaconglomerate K'tapfh-Jones Incorporated.

CITATIONS: Rift Bridge, Project Omnipresence, Great Riftway Boom