That little fort in the apple tree took us kids on many adventures across the known — and unknown — galaxy.

It wasn’t much of a fort, really. But then, it wasn’t much of an apple tree, either.

With the help of Gordy, the big kid who lived across the road, we lugged a door that had fallen off one of the outbuildings on our farm, and wedged it into fingerlike limbs of the little apple tree.

The door became a floor not quite three feet off the ground. It wasn’t a very scary climb that way.

Our fort had no windows on account of us never getting around to building walls. We filled in whatever details we needed with our little boy imaginations, which were vast.

We defended our door-floor apple tree fort against pirates and dragons. Other days, the door floor became a race car or rocket ship to zoom across land or air. I think it even morphed into a submarine once.

The door floor held in the palm of the apple tree’s hand provided a world of fun.

As an adult, I learned how to surf this new thing called the information superhighway. This World Wide Web could transport us anywhere in the world.

The adventures weren’t nearly as fun as we had flying the galaxy in our door-floor fort, but the superhighway featured a world of imagination. Some of the facts we found were even true.

These days, as a James Bond movie title sums it up, the world is not enough. You’ve got to have a universe or you’re a nobody.

We used to have time warps and parallel dimensions.

Now we have universes and multiverses.

In comic books — pardon me, they’re called graphic novels now — you’ve got the Marvel Universe. Not to be outdone, the rival company created the DC Universe Infinite.

A plethora of Spider-Mans (Spider-Men?) inhabit the big screen in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, known as the MCU.

How can all these wallcrawlers navigate without tripping over each other’s webs?

Because they exist in different sectors of the Marvel Multiverse.

A December 2023 news release from McDonald’s Corp. boasted, “Our universe is growing this week as McDonald’s starts testing CosMc’s.”

McDonald’s already had McDonaldland, a fictional world where Ronald McDonald and friends lived. But again, the world was not enough. Now McDonald’s has its own universe.

Soon, basketball season will tip off. If I want to listen to my beloved Cleveland Cavaliers play when I’m out of state, I log into the Cavaliers AudioVerse. It used to be the Cleveland Cavaliers Radio Network. Now it’s an AudioVerse.

Wrestling has the WWE Universe.

Consultants are schooling businesses and industries on how to create a product universe, which they can sell with multiverse marketing.

I am becoming far more versed in universes and multiverses than I ever would have guessed back when I was in the university.

Question: Do my college days mean I’m part of the university universe multiverse? I put much effort into avoiding all classes dealing with poetry so that I wouldn’t bump into any verses at the university-verse.

I tell you, no universe, multiverse or just plain verse today beats exploring the galaxy aboard an old shed door wedged into a little apple tree.

That’s a universal truth.

Explore the Tribune Chronicle and Vindicator multiverses with Cole at burton.w.cole@gmail.com or the Burton W. Cole verse on the Facebook universe.