Chapter 180: Teleportation
"Jack, we’re ready!"
Jack flinched at the sudden, unexpected sound, then looked up from his mass-spectrometer. He was in his lab, in his soul space.
Rina, Nora, and Madison were all looking at him expectantly.
"Ready for what?"
"The human teleportation test!" said Rina. The other two nodded.
After doing their first test on Tuesday, Rina had rushed outside and captured a beetle and used it to confirm that they could teleport living things using the container-in-container teleportation method.
For human teleportation, they needed a container that weighed more than the human. He had wanted to do the first human trial on Gerald, a person he considered disposable, but Gerald was already in jail and didn’t have access to an appropriate container.
"So what did you do for containers?" he asked.
"We went with a thirty-gallon plastic barrel, then epoxied two twenty-five kilogram weightlifting plates to the bottom," said Nora.
"I have it sitting in my bathroom shower stall," said Rina. "And we want to try teleporting me to Nora’s bathroom shower stall."
They’d initially thought about gluing lead weights to the bottom of a plastic tub, but this worked as well. And shower stalls had doors, so they qualified as a container.
Looking at Rina, he asked, "And you’re sure you want to do this?"
"Yes. The beetle was fine. I don’t think there’s any risk."
"Alright, let’s do this."
He headed towards the lab exit, and the girls followed. As he walked, he created a temporary room off the same hallway as his lab.
Once in the temporary room, he templatized and instantiated Nora’s shower stall.
As soon as it appeared, it fell over, and the glass door shattered.
It was made of fiberglass and was designed to be placed inside a wood enclosure.
He used a Wall from his template catalog to create an appropriate sized enclosure, then tried again, this time instantiating the Nora’s shower stall inside the Wall enclosure.
This time, it remained standing.
"I think you need to put some support under the floor or it will crack," said Madison.
As soon as she said it, he realized she was correct. He adjusted the Wall so it would support the bottom of the fiberglass shower stall.
He repeated this process for the shower stall in Rina’s apartment.
Then he templatized and instantiated the plastic barrel, placing it inside the copy of Rina’s shower stall.
He turned to Rina. "Okay, let me know when you are ready."
She nodded. Then, a few moments later, she said, "Okay. I’m inside. Hurry up. With the lid closed, the smell of plastic and epoxy is really strong."
He linked and synched all three templates, then, with Nora’s help, lifted the plastic barrel out of the copy of Rina’s shower stall and carried it over to the copy of Nora’s shower stall.
"Okay," he said as he closed the door of Nora’s shower stall. "Export in three, two, one, export!"
As soon as he exported the changes, Nora exclaimed, "Holy shit!"
Then Rina shouted, "It worked!"
"Oh wow, this is so... I don’t have the words. The barrel just ’poof’ appeared in my shower stall. Then Rina opened the lid and popped out. It, it’s just... I’ve got goose bumps."
She rubbed her arms.
Rina was grinning like a mad scientist.
He understood, intellectually, why they were excited, but he didn’t feel it. It was more like seeing it on a video. Maybe when he experienced it for himself.
Still, it presented possibilities they didn’t have before. The first thing he thought of was using it for emergency escape.
While they couldn’t carry folded mylar bags, he could put "escape pods" in his home and his car.
They’d need to test it, but he suspected they could just glue weights to the bottom of a large canvas sack. Then he could just put it in the back of his Land cruiser or the trunk of the GR Supra.
As for his house. He could either use the weighted sack idea, or add steel boxes that could masquerade as a coat closet or something.
"Can you send me back, please?" asked Rina.
"Are you ready?" he asked.
She nodded, so he and Nora carried the barrel back to the copy of Rina’s shower stall.
"Okay. Export in three, two, one, export!"
"Rina?" asked Nora. "You okay?"
"Yes, I’m fine."
"Okay, good. It’s just disturbing to see you disappear like that."
Rina rushed over to Jack and hugged him before looking up at him and saying, "I want a secret base on Mars!"
Madison laughed, and Nora said, "Mars?"
"Sure!" said Rina. "We just need to send one metal box to Mars, then we can teleport everything else we need."
He didn’t know exactly how much EP the other teleportation tests had cost other than that it was probably under a thousand EP; too small to cause a blip on his EP balance.
But when he checked his EP balance this time, it seemed noticeably smaller.
He summoned Jeeves and asked, "How much did those last two linked template exports cost?"
"Each cost three million five hundred and twelve thousand six hundred and thirty-seven EP."
"That much?!" exclaimed Rina.
"Can you tell me what factors contributed to the cost?" he asked. "Was it the mass, the fact that it included Rina, or the distance?"
"It was a combination of mass and distance," replied Jeeves.
"Can you give me the per-kilometer cost?"
"Yes, sir. The per-kilometer cost for your last two exports was approximately one million EP."
He dismissed Jeeves, then looked at Rina. "Sorry, no Mars secret base for you. Not in the near future, anyway."
"Drats!" she said disappointedly.
He was a little disappointed as well. Emergency teleportation was still on the table, but he’d need to make sure he had enough EP in reserve to pay for it. And he’d want emergency bunkers or safe houses nearby to keep the EP cost down.
He checked Madison’s emotions and noticed she was feeling a little desperate.
Beckoning to her, he said, "Come here."
She walked over, and he hugged her while saying, "I know. You want to figure out a way to teleport out of the jail."
She nodded, rubbing her face against his chest.
"Just a few more days. Besides, more days in soul space are helping, right?"
Besides a second Tuesday, they’d had a third and fourth Tuesday.
She nodded again. "Yes," she said, subdued. "It does. I just..."
"I know. Just remember that if you escaped, you really would be a criminal, and then you’d have to go on the run for the rest of your life. It’s just not worth it."
He knew she knew this. But he also knew she needed to be reminded. She’d start obsessing about escape and forget the consequences.
She huffed. "A girl can dream, can’t she?"
"Well, instead of dreaming about escape and the resulting perpetual fugitivity, dream of android sheep or something."
She huffed in amusement. She wasn’t alright, and wouldn’t be until she was out of jail. But he had at least interrupted her downward spiral.