It's taken years to work out the kinks, but I've finally done it; I've finally created a device capable of producing, on demand, the perfect breakfast.

They called me mad, and they were right. I was mad; mad with hunger, for the breakfast that got away.

It all started thirteen years ago, on the fateful day that I first achieved my dream. Just hours prior, I had flown in pheasant eggs from the Himalayan foothills (renowned for their delicacy and the ease with which they absorb and complement other flavors), and as they simmered in a delicate mixture of heavy cream, fresh oregano, and aged balsamic vinegar, I gently sliced wedges of perfectly ripe mango and carved delicate flowers from the flesh of oversized concord grapes. Delicately, delicately, I prepared two glasses; into one I pressed the juice of sweet red blood oranges (a variety bred for the exclusive use of myself and five other individuals) and then carefully chilled it, to better emphasize the sweet flavor. In the the other, I carefully brewed a hand-picked mixture of seventeen varieties of tea leaves, each selected to emphasize the subtle interplay between the tannins, fruit flavors, and gentle acids upon my most refined palate.

In a heavy, cast-iron pan said to have been used by Sir Francis himself, I quickly fried the meat, thick-sliced from the belly of a wild french boar and cured for five days in a blend of kosher salt, Moroccan mustard, and Corsican honey, then lightly smoked over a mixture of cedar, pine, and cypress. It crisped delicately, and I drained it on a chamois cloth, which I had personally purchased from the now-late Billy Mays.

I quickly arranged these delicacies on a warmed Ming dynasty plate, briefly basking in the satisfaction of a job well-performed before I began this long-anticipated meal. And then, I blinked.

In that instant, the meal was gone. It had been before me, and now, it was no longer.

At first I was convinced that the meal I had created was so perfect that it transcended this mortal realm. As I am nothing if not well-prepared, I had ingredients to spare, and so I laboriously recreated the entire dish. This time, I took care to introduce small errors into the cooking process, so that it would remain on this earthly plane where I could enjoy it. But no sooner did I blink after the dish was plated, and it disappeared again.

I raged, I screamed, I swore, I quickly cycled through the stages of grief. I cooked the dish again, determined not to blink, not to take my eyes off of it, until it was safely consumed. But no sooner did I plate it than a crash came from behind me. I started, my eyes strayed, and the dish was gone again.

A dozen times, I cooked the perfect breakfast, the result of years of careful planning and a hundred paychecks worth of sweat, blood, and tears. Each time, a brief stumble, a quick jolt, a brief burst of dust that made me sneeze, or some other minor coincidence made my eyes briefly dart away from the finished dish, and then it was gone.

I resolved that this would not be the end. I would have my breakfast, and the marshaled forces of heaven and hell themselves would not stop me.

The first real setback came three years later. Following a brief investigation into possible paranormal causes for the disappearance of my breakfast, I became certain that the most likely cause was time travel, and immediately set about creating such a machine. Surely, since my breakfast had disappeared, being the one to steal it from myself would not cause any kind of paradox.

My initial proofs, however, showed that such a machine would need to be cosmological in scale, and thus not feasible to construct. I quickly fell into a deep depression, and began drinking heavily.

Deeply drunk, I felt I should grieve for my lost breakfast, but I could not summon the tears. So, I took hold of an onion, and hacked it open roughly with the dull back edge of a cleaver, the better to aspirate the sulfenic acid.

And then, I saw it. The current model I had elucidated to produce a workable theory of time travel predicted that our universe was not present in four dimensions, but in fourteen, most of which were very thin. Our universe was simply a layer, like the onion that lay hewn open before me, but perhaps other layers coexisted beside it. Although I could not feasibly reach across time, I instantly grasped how I could make a device which would reach across into a neighboring dimensional membrane, and perhaps, just perhaps, transport unto me the breakfast which I so desired.

After numerous false starts, I arrived at a working theory. Correcting for the angular momentum of the earth, a single antiproton rotated along a circular path of any binary-exponential multiple of 412 millimeters should generate enough torque across the dimensional membrane to allow me to reach into a neighboring layer.

At no small expense to myself, I created such a device over the course of the next two years. My goal was still fresh in my mind; it was as though the grease still lingered in the air, the juice of the blood oranges still sticky upon my fingertips. I could taste success. I pierced the veil, and looked into the next membrane.

My first view into the neighboring dimension was a bit of a shock. I don't know why I expected it to act anything like our own; I suppose that I simply assumed, since my breakfast had been so clearly taken from me, that whatever force had taken it must obviously value fine dining as much as I do.

This dimension contained absolutely nothing, so far as I could tell, and operated under entirely different physical constants. This new realm was perfectly symmetrical, and so contained nothing.

After four years of studying the new realm, I felt I understood how it worked, and how to manipulate it to produce the changes I desired. Through careful control of the antiproton's spin, I managed to induce enough rotation along the third, seventh, and tenth dimensional axes to change the physical constants enough to introduce a basic asymmetry in matter-antimatter reactions. This produced a counter-torque in our dimension's second, fifth, eighth, and twelfth axes, but the net effect on our physical constants was zero, thanks to some exceedingly careful math.

In the next realm, over the course of the next year, a glittering sea of matter appeared, unlike anything possible in our dimension. I induced in it the formation of a self-replicating organism of my own design, a simple creation which would gradually grow in complexity and number, until it approached the complexity of the human intellect, or even surpassed it.

The beings which I had created in the neighboring realm had a completely alien intelligence, but my models had correctly predicted their development. After working out the details of their language, a process which took over three months, they agreed to aid me in my task.

In exchange for the technology which I had used to access their dimension, they realized a way to scan my entire being from their dimension, then create a virtual simulation of myself in their computing devices. Using some kind of temporal regression technique that I don't truly understand, they somehow managed to run the simulation of me backwards in time, back to the point where I had created the perfect breakfast.

I could almost taste victory. Was this the end? Had I reached my goal?

Although I had found a method of recreating the perfect breakfast in virtual form in a neighboring dimension, I now needed a way to materialize my breakfast in this dimension. And for that, I calculated that I would need a linear path 2^16 times the size I was using.

After two years of bureaucratic wrangling, minor changes to blueprints, and massive construction, the device was complete. True, the original purpose of the device - looking for the Higgs boson - would fail due to my changes, but I would have my breakfast, and that is all that really matters.

The initial run of the LHC produced for me a stable wormhole, through which the denizens of the neighboring dimension provide to me a careful stream of matter, which, when it adapts to this dimension's unique physical constants, stabilizes into the perfect breakfast which I initially made thirteen years ago. I can enjoy this treat whenever I like, whether morning or night.

It is, in my most seasoned opinion, the greatest joy possible in this or any other world.

I'm still unsure what took my breakfast originally. The thought sometimes drives me into an existential panic.

This breakfast is truly sublime.

Truly.

Sublime.

I want nothing more than to eat it forever, and I can.

Join me. Pull up a chair. Savor the delicate mix of flavors and aromas. Know perfection. You will not regret it.