Teleport This Read online

  Teleport This

  Christopher M. Daniels

  This is a fictional novel. Names, characters, places, incidents, etc, are a product of the author’s degenerate imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously and should not be taken seriously. Any resemblance to actual events, places or persons (living, dead or otherwise) is purely coincidental.

  Copyrighted Material © 2009

  V02.20.15

  ISBN: B00295R188

  All rights reserved

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner, stored in any type of retrieval system, transmitted by any means, electronic or otherwise without prior written permission from the author.

  Cover image is from the Hubble Space Telescope:

  Interacting Galaxies Group Arp 194

  The Small Universe series by Christopher Daniels:

  Teleport This

  Soul to Soul

  Geppetto’s Daughter

  .

  For My Family

  .

  1.

  So here we are at the beginning of the 21st century on Earth and, in all fairness, a pretty exciting time to be on the planet. The Boy Bands of the 90s no longer plague civilization and erectile dysfunction medication has surpassed feminine hygiene products as the most embarrassing television commercial to watch in a family setting. Truly, it was the dawn of a golden age.

  On the scientific front, technological discoveries and breakthroughs seem to be occurring faster than most people can keep up with. It was almost as if nature had planted its feet firmly in the ground and dared mankind to figure it all out. Science picked up the gauntlet and accepted the challenge, flinging it back at nature, religion, government, really anyone that would listen, with a ‘don’t tell us, we’ll tell you’ attitude and now mankind finds itself riding along the base of an exponential curve with the slope increasing every decade.

  Our story begins with two guys and a bit of luck. We can decide later if it was good luck or bad. This bit of luck takes our exponential curve and, in a matter of seconds, turns it into a vertical line.

  Simon Jensen and Gilbert Wilson are theoretical physicists that specialize in understanding what makes our universe tick and, over the past few months, they have made a series of discoveries that has, for want of a better term, put them in a tizzy. They have remained in this tizzy for quite a while since they first didn’t understand what they had discovered and second, how exactly they came upon it.

  Here’s a story: A group of friends go to the racetrack. One person is an expert on betting the ponies and employs a time-tested system that consistently produces winners. Another member of the group had never been to the track and seemed to be making random bets, but winning almost every race while, for some inexplicable reason, our expert was losing. Now, as is often the case, this run of bad luck infuriated our expert who demanded to know the secret system his friend was using. The friend replied that he was just betting the odds-on favorite for each race, but this only further enraged our expert since he knew that the favorites weren’t coming in, so he grabbed his friend’s racing book only to discover that he was indeed betting the favorites, however the racing book was open to the wrong day.

  Now this type of occurrence happens more often than sane people care to admit and usually cannot be substantiated due to the amount of alcohol involved or the altercations that follow.

  Simon and Gilbert’s discovery occurred in somewhat the same fashion as described above except that instead of a racetrack, it was the universe, instead of a racing form, it was a radio telescope and instead of looking at the wrong day, they were looking at the wrong reality.

  Smart people never try to figure out why they’re lucky, they just hope their luck holds out and then never talk about it again believing any mention of the occurrence will jinx its return. Unfortunately, good luck will stop intelligent people dead in their tracks, causing them to immediately stop what they are doing so they can try and figure out what just happened, ending their run of luck before the majority of them even realize it began. Simon and Gilbert are extremely intelligent so it’s not surprising that they never even considered that it was luck. In fact, the closest they came was when, for a short time, they believed that The Force was with them.

  Here’s what they discovered: Human life exists all over the universe and it is in fact so abundant that it doesn’t go out of its way to find more of itself. Instead, it sits back and waits for other cultures to reach a level of technology that enables them to discover everyone else. And it’s the massive hugeness of everything else that really staggers your imagination. This has to be what Tarzan felt like, living in the jungle for all those years, those other apes starting to look pretty damn good, then wham, he’s in England and he’s thinking to himself, “What the hell, where did all this come from?”

  “What the hell!”

  “Where did all that come from?”

  “Quick, turn it off! We’ve got to try and figure out what just happened,” was pretty much the way the conversation went that first time our boys did that thing that accidentally discovered everyone else in the universe. A few weeks later, they were ready to turn it all on again. They had analyzed what had transpired in their first attempt and figured out why they saw what they did.

  Here’s what they saw: Precise energy signals traveling millions of times faster than the speed of light, flooding our galaxy and connecting to others. Now they didn’t know exactly what they saw, to them it just looked like one of those elapsed time photographs with the exposure open so the trees and buildings are standing still, but the people and cars going by are just blurry streaks of color and light. Cool trick when you do it on the local street with your buddies, completely mind blowing when it happens to the universe. What they saw was the usual cosmic picture of galactic clusters and dust clouds, but with connections, almost like a child’s connect-the-dots game. Not every star had a connection, but thousands did, our system included.

  So back to our boys getting lucky. This was a new experience to them. If you ask Simon if he ever got lucky, he’ll tell you about his one special time during a calculus exam when he had no idea how to solve the problem, flipped a mental coin and wrote down ‘by inspection, the solution is infinity.’ He received full credit for that answer and maintained his perfect 4.0 GPA.

  If you ask Gilbert if he was ever lucky, he’ll tell you about his one special time with a girl named Debbie. Gilbert tends to be invited out more than Simon.

  Even though their equipment was only turned on for a few minutes that first day, they recorded enough data to keep themselves busy for weeks. They alternated between analyzing the data and analyzing the equipment configuration. Their equipment was programmed in such a way that it was impossible to determine if actual genius or plain stupidity was responsible. The boys had set up the equipment on the previous day, then just performed a cursory examination prior to powering up and didn’t notice the subtle changes to the remote components. Now, after a full review, neither of them could come up with a plausible explanation as to why or how it was changed. This did not stop either one of them from trying to claim credit for it. After all, our boys are scientists and stealing credit is half the fun.

  Gilbert tested the water, “Let’s see, we locked up for the night, left the lab, ate dinner and then split up. Did you return to the lab and change the setup?”

  “Sure did,” replied Simon.

  “When, before or after midnight?” asked Gilbert.

  “Oh, definitely after midnight,” Simon replied.

  “Then I’m surprised that I didn’t meet up with you when I went back,” countered Gilbert, “but by then the sun was coming up.”

  “You must have been to the lab in-between my two v
isits.”

  “You were only there twice? I was back and forth to the lab a few times.”

  They went on like this for a bit longer, but their hearts weren’t in it. They both knew they needed a reasonable explanation as to why the equipment had been configured in that precise manner to back up any claim and the discussion soon changed from who and when to why. This was a much shorter conversation since documented notes are the only things that stand up under scrutiny and neither had them. So an alliance was formed (oh yes, these are the kind of guys that considered it to be a rebel alliance) and they set out to do the only thing they could under the circumstances; reverse engineer their discovery and develop a plausible series of experimentation that leads to it. This will then become their starting point so that the whole thing looks like they actually knew what they were doing from the get go and the Nobel Prize in physics is then assured.

  Here’s how the equipment actually became reprogrammed: It is an unfortunate truth that the job of Security Guard doesn’t pay well, which always seems strange since you’re usually entrusting an extremely important responsibility to the very people you’re deliberately underpaying and instead of valuing their work and worrying about losing their job, they spend most of their time coming up with different ways of supplementing their income. Now when a local low budget movie producer wants a realistic background for a movie, it’s much easier, and a hell of a lot cheaper, just to bribe a security guard and use an actual lab rather than investing the time and expense of mocking up a full set.

  “Okay, Jimmy, here’s your hundred bucks,” said the low budget movie director.

  “Thanks, Mr. Smith,” said Jimmy the security guard. “Just make sure nobody touches anything.”

  “Sure thing, Jimmy,” replied the director and Jimmy the security guard returned to his desk.

  “Okay, Lilah,” said the director, “here’s the scene. You come into the lab to meet your father, but his assistant has him tied to the chair and is trying to get the location of the zombie army out of him. You’re mad and upset at first, but then you realize that you love him. Got it?”

  “Got it,” said Lilah. “I’m mad at my father, but then I realize I love him.”

  “Not your father,” corrected the director, “the assistant. You love the assistant. Your father raised the zombie army from the dead and tried to use it to kill you so you’re mad at him. Got it?”

  “Got it,” said Lilah. “Love the assistant, mad at Dad.”

  “Great, baby, now go get into your bikini and heels,” said the director. “Joey, how does the set look?”

  “Kind of dull since none of this electronic stuff is on. We can dub sounds in later, but it would look a hell of a lot more realistic if some of this junk was actually on and we had flashing lights or something.”

  “Right, got ya, flashing lights,” the director thought for a second. “Hey, Freddie, see if you can make these gizmos look interesting, will ya?”

  Now it turns out that Freddie is the team’s sound man and general purpose engineer and does in fact possess enough basic knowledge to actually find the master power switch, but switching it on only lit up a small percentage of the lights and gauges; it didn’t make things real interesting like the boss wanted it. Then he noticed a very inviting keypad labeled ‘SEQUENCER START’ so he entered in the lotto numbers he had been playing every week for the past year under the assumption that they must be good for something and, what do you know, not only did Freddie manage to get all the lights flashing in a real interesting sort of way, he also programmed the equipment’s imaging parameters in such a way that it now understood what the color blue tastes like. Freddie is a smart guy and knew he got lucky with the flashing lights. He was also smart enough to power everything back down when the shoot was done and wipe off his prints.

  2.

  Now, as previously mentioned, Simon and Gilbert spent a lot of very focused time reverse engineering their discovery and, a couple weeks into it, Gilbert received a call from his mother.

  “So when are you coming home for a visit?” Mrs. Wilson asked.

  “I’m in the middle of something, Mom,” said Gilbert.

  “So? Are you too busy for a weekend visit with your mother and father?”

  “Yes, Mom, I am.”

  “So what’s keeping you so busy? Did you meet a nice girl?”

  “No, Mom, I haven’t.”

  “Are you hooked on online poker? Your father and I saw a show about it, how it can take over your life and how some people lose all their money. Did you lose all your money?”

  “No, Mom, I haven’t lost any money and I’m not hooked on online poker.”

  “What about internet porn? Your father and I saw another show about how internet porn can be like a drug addiction. Some people get so hooked that they spend all their time looking at internet porn. Is that what you’re doing, are you spending all your time surfing internet porn?”

  “No, Mom, I’m not hooked on internet porn either.”

  “I don’t know which would be worse, online poker or an internet porn addiction. At least I could tell my friends about it if it was online poker. I’d probably tell them it was online poker even if it was internet porn. Especially if it was that kinky stuff, you know, with all the extra people and those crazy gadgets.”

  “Come on, Mom, I’d rather not have a conversation with you about sex, kinky or otherwise, and how do you know so much about internet porn?”

  “You just have to google one naughty word and all types of stuff pops up. I was online looking for hair tints and had a typo and you wouldn’t believe what came up. Kept your father busy for days. Now are you coming over Friday night or are we coming out there on Saturday?”

  So while trying to erase all thoughts of his parents and internet porn from his mind, Gilbert informed Simon that he will be away for the weekend.

  “That’s why I’m glad my family is on the east coast,” responded Simon.

  “I’ll be back on Sunday. You can call my cell if anything interesting happens.”

  It was early on Sunday afternoon that Gilbert sent Simon a text message, letting him know that he had done his penance in purgatory, a.k.a. Irvine, California, and was returning to the land of the living. They planned to meet up in their lab later that day.

  Gilbert and Simon lived and worked in Pasadena, California, and their lab was actually rented space in a nearby industrial complex. Though the lab contained a wide variety of equipment necessary to their extracurricular activity, much of it homemade, the major components, such as the various telescopes and supercomputers they used were tens, hundreds and sometimes thousands of miles away. As previously stated, Simon and Gilbert were theoretical physicists, at least that’s what it said on their business cards. In actuality, they were more of a combination of theoretical and experimental physicists, which meant that not only did they think up some pretty incredible stuff, they also had the technical ability to prove or disprove their theories. They had degrees in physics, astrophysics, mathematics, computer science, engineering – the list goes on for a bit, and they both worked in the physics department at the California Institute of Technology. You may think that their jobs provided them with access to all sorts of neat things either at Caltech or next door at JPL, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, for them to play around with, but they didn’t. With thousands of people from all over the globe vying to use the same equipment, Simon and Gilbert found their access to be quite limited.

  What their jobs did do, or more directly, what their boss did in an effort to reduce spending and stay within his budget, was to assign them the task of writing an equipment timesharing program instead of hiring an outside consulting company to do the job. This program would allow people with the proper clearance to register and schedule time on the multitude of equipment owned or managed by Caltech. Simon and Gilbert shamelessly took advantage of this opportunity, as well as their newly acquired network authorization, and created a remote link to their private lab w
here they could analyze the heavens at their leisure, piggybacked on whatever data stream was coming in or commanding the equipment themselves unnoticed during many of the calibration or diagnostic routines they had inserted into the schedule.

  “Hey, Simon, miss me?” Gilbert asked as he met Simon at their lab

  “Not likely, but Gil, I think I figured out how to interpret these signals.”

  “Impossible.”

  “I’m serious. I was analyzing the way the top layer seems to pulsate and repeat so I calculated some threshold levels and shoved the whole thing into a binary filter. I took the output of that and ran it through a decryption algorithm I got from a friend at Langley. Then I ran the output of that through a series of translation programs”

  “What in the world made you do all that?”

  “Boredom, mostly,” replied Simon.

  “Ah, so you did miss me. What did you come up with?”

  “This,” said Simon, handing Gilbert a stack of papers. “Read the top sheet.”

  Gilbert glanced down and began to read the short, simple decoded message, “Greetings. Do not be alarmed. You have discovered us. We do not care. We send instructions to access.” Gilbert leafed through the rest of the pages. They looked like gibberish.

  “Very funny.”

  “Dead serious. Those other hundred pages are some of the most kick ass programming scripts that use the craziest functions and transforms I’ve ever seen. I don’t understand a tenth of it, but I figured out how to program it into the system.”

  “Still not believing.”

  “Check this out,” Simon pointed to his computer monitor. “I followed their instructions and built a signal interface program. I can communicate with them.”

  “Not one word am I currently believing. Not only is your entire premise beyond belief, but not even you would be presumptuous enough to contact extraterrestrial life as the sole representative of all mankind.”