You know how it goes: mad scientists plus impressive sci-fi tech equals disaster. In this case, the scientists in question discovered the existence of multiple realities and acquired, tampered, and perfected technology which allowed them to abduct individuals from different realities. All the nuanced morality of their existing human experiments - first on volunteers, then on abductees, from their own reality - was no longer a concern.

What's the harm in using people who shouldn't exist in this realm as the fodder for experiments to test the limits of human (and inhuman) psyche and endurance?

Thus, The Heads - as the egomaniacal group of meddling scientists called themselves - took over a remote island and created special barriers around it to isolate the inhabitants from the rest of the world. One by one, they gathered people from different realities and placed them into housing on the island with only a simple note on a bedside table to explain the situation and a Blackberry or iPhone to connect them exclusively to the on-island network.

Most residents were from worlds where they hadn't much left to lose. Many thought, perhaps foolishly, that it wasn't a big deal. Until the experiments began. It started small: rats in the walls, a sudden blizzard, annoying children's music pumped over loudspeakers 24/7, personal belongings going missing and reappearing in places they'd definitely already looked, private conversations recorded and played back to the whole community. And then it got worse. Reavers were unleashed on the island, videos of residents' deaths in their home worlds were shown to new friends, people were electrocuted for trying to escape, gunshots rang out in the night claiming lives of people just looking for food... This was no luxury retreat on an exclusive island. It was a cruel cage, and the residents had to fight for survival and sanity alike.