In 1988, in an effort to improve both network latencies and the geographical constraints of their services, Sierra On-Line embarked on a project of higher-dimensional routing. Prior to certain conceptual breakthroughs in geometry facilitated by megadoses of designer entheogens, Sierra On-Line's network topology was entirely linear, hence the name. Signals were routed from point A to point B through every subscriber computer, which meant that a netsplit would occur if an intervening machine dropped packets or was switched off. Users could only directly chat or send mail to their nearest neighbours on the line, with longer-range routing requiring cooperation between users to pass on messages. This could easily take weeks if users were slow in retyping the messages, and opened communications up to eavesdropping. In 1990 Sierra transitioned to a token-ring network. The cable was looped around the Rocky Mountains and up through the back (?!) of the United States. This move was felt by many to be more thematic than pragmatic, but added a modicum of redundancy to their service. The company was renamed Sierra On-Ring.

The real breakthrough was made some years later when Sierra engineers accidentally took hundreds or thousands of times the recommended dose of 3C-Bromo-Dragonfly whilst watching Cosmos (with Carl Sagan, not Neil Degrasse Tyson). This is to say that the series was presented by him, not that he was physically in the room with the engineers. Nevertheless, the engineers did claim that Sagan was physically present in the room despite having been dead for almost 3 years, and that he explained to them the second—and darkly hinted at the existence of the third—dimension.

This led to rapid advances in Sierra network topology, first in the form of a rectilinear grid of network cables (Sierra On-Grid) and then the revelation that cables could a) be overlaid one atop another without necessarily being in electrical contact and b) could be routed 'up' and 'down' in a selfsame grid so that network access could be delivered to the first and subsequent stories of a building, as well as basements, sub-basements, crabspaces, and so on (Sierra On-Cube). Some Sierra employees found this latter development disturbing, and left the company, their accumulated 2D expertise eventually recombining in the foundation of Squarespace.

It has been rumoured that Sierra eventually went on to attempt routing in the fourth and higher dimensions. Perhaps they used cables anomalously extruded along the w axis by inappropriately rotated machinery. Maybe they stabilised strange naturally-occurring portals affording access to the Earth's hidden interior, through which cables might be routed. Or did they forge metric osculations and syzygies which protrude across the interstices which make times and places distinguishable, achieving vaunted 'imaginary pings'? We are unlikely to ever know, principally due to a lack of interest.