The award-winning novel, A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L'Engle, is based off a tesseract — in other words, a portal through space and time. The Murray family is very familiar with a tesseract; in fact, their father was doing government work on one before he disappeared. After their neighbour mentions it on a stormy night, Meg Murray decides it's time to find her father and bring him home.