Teleport This (2 page)

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 where 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.”

“Sure, I already did. They sent me an application starter kit.”

Here’s what really happened while Gilbert was away visiting his parents; Simon, representing all mankind, passed the second intelligence test by decoding the communication signal layer just as he said he did. Decoding the communication layer is actually meant to be fairly straightforward since the hard part is usually detecting the signal in the first place. The basic thought is that if a civilization has the technology to detect the signal and communicate back, then it should be invited to the party, provided it meets certain requirements. The entire process is very similar to applying for a bank loan, but instead of running a check on your credit history, it runs a check on your actual history. A big focus is on a civilization’s aggressiveness, but there are over a thousand other cultural parameters taken into consideration. It uses all this to derive what is known as the Congeniality Index. The higher the CI, the better that world will fit in.

Once Simon figured out the math, developed the code for the interface and responded with “Hello, my name is Simon,” an automated process put itself in gear and began evaluating mankind. Undetectable probes zeroed in on Earth, picking up all terrestrial communications and tapping into the internet, as well as a lot of very secret intranets. The whole of human knowledge, history and culture was being analyzed. Unbeknownst to them, the human race was being weighed and measured.

Now you would think that this would be a lengthy process, what with the probes and all, but this is an established operation and it is driven by a technology that moves at millions of times the speed of light so it was only hours later that Simon received a response.

The response read, “Hello, Simon. Thank you for contacting us. We invite you to visit us and have sent you the manufacturing instructions for a teleportation portal. As you will see, it can be constructed and powered from readily available material. We estimate it will take you approximately four weeks to complete it. The destination is preset and will send you directly to our facility. We look forward to meeting you. No further communications are necessary.”

The Earth and mankind had been deemed acceptable.  

Gilbert reread the message for the umpteenth time. “Do you realize what this message means?” he asked.

“Oh sure,” said Simon. “They’re here, maybe not in person, but they’ve learned enough to communicate directly in English and with fairly good grammar. So either they got here and learned everything there is to learn super fast or they’ve been here all along waiting for someone to contact them. Either way, we’re in the hot seat.”

“What do you think we should do?” asked Gilbert. “Should we contact the government?”

“I’ve seen enough TV shows to know that in situations like these you never contact the government. They send out a super secret agency guy who takes everything you got and then makes it seem like you either disappeared or got hit by a truck or something where the body can’t be recognized. Then they keep you on ice in case they need you later. As soon as they don’t think you can give them any new information, you’re gone.”

“I never realized you watched so much TV,” said Gilbert. “Well, you did mention one important thing and that was ice, though I don’t want to be kept on it. Instead, I suggest we put some in a couple of glasses and surround it with alcohol to aid our thinking.”

“I was just waiting for you,” said Simon. “You know I hate to think alone.”

So it was just over an hour later that our boys convinced themselves to at least look at the teleport plans before making a decision to contact anyone; whether it be the government, the press or their colleagues. Gilbert didn’t want to admit it, but he’d seen those same TV shows.

Looking over the plans quickly turned into making a list of the necessary materials and in no time at all that turned into developing a detailed project plan. Before they knew what hit them, they had taken a leave of absence from their jobs and began working fulltime with Simon writing the code and Gilbert assembling the teleport station.

One night, after dinner, Gilbert brought up a topic that both of them had been avoiding, “Hey Simon, do you have any idea how any of this stuff we’re building actually teleports a person through space faster than the speed of light?”

“Nope, not one bit. Every so often I think I get a glimmer of understanding, but then I look at the next piece of the puzzle and it’s like what the heck are we doing.”

“Okay, I wanted to make sure it wasn’t just me. Makes you feel a bit apprehensive, doesn’t it? I mean, sooner or later one of us will have to get onto that thing and wave bye-bye while the other watches. And this thing generates enough power to fry someone all nice and toasty. Makes me just a tad nervous, getting in that thing with no idea of what makes it go.”

“Thousands of people travel on planes every day with absolutely no understanding of jet engines or the physics around lift or anything else that make them fly without any problem at all.”

“True,” said Gilbert, “but many of those people take a valium before they board.”

“My point still stands. You don’t have to know how a thing works to use it. Millions of people use microwave ovens every day with absolutely no idea how they work other than it has something to do with microwaves and they only know that because it’s in the name. If they had been named Super-Speedy ovens, most people wouldn’t even know about the microwaves.”

“I’m not arguing your point,” said Gilbert. “I’m just trying to understand how it applies to our situation. Are you suggesting that we hire someone to hypnotize us into thinking we’re getting on a plane or heating up pizza instead of attempting to teleport across the universe?”

“Of course not,” said Simon. “I’m just saying that we shouldn’t be so worried just because it’s not our design and we don’t fully understand how it works.”

“Don’t fully understand it? Look, near as I can tell, we’re going to put ourselves inside a homemade, time varying, electro-magnetic quantum accelerator and blast ourselves into oblivion. I’m a little bit more than worried.”

“I can understand that,” said Simon. “We just need to take certain precautions.”

Now teleportation is in fact a fairly safe way of traveling. It allows practically instantaneous travel all over the universe, provided you have a reservation. Here’s how it works; think of an open map with a starting point, a destination and some distance in-between. Now fold up the map so the start and finish points are on top of each other, say the magic word and presto, you’re there. Now in reality, instead of a magic word there’s a space-time generator that takes the pristine logic of our universe, pours it into a meat grinder and combines points A and B while you pass through. Easy for you and me, tough on the universe. Fortunately the universe has been around for a while and it can take the abuse.

So a few weeks later, when the teleport station was completed and a few basic tests had been run, Simon brought home a guinea pig. A note was affixed to the guinea pig’s collar, power was applied and the guinea pig vanished. A few minutes later, it reappeared.

The original note had read, “Testing the apparatus, please return the animal to us as an indication of a successful transfer.”

The return note on the guinea pig simply read, “Come on in, the water’s fine.” 

“Now I don’t know if that makes me feel better or worse,” Gilbert said about the return message.

“I think it’s a very calculated response, just the right amount of nonchalance to put us at ease,” said Simon.

“So you think it’s some kind of trap?”

“No, I just think that every step of this is part of a well thought out plan. On their side, I mean.”

“How’s the guinea pig?” asked Gilbert.

“Seems fine,” said Simon. “No physical or mental side effects. He doesn’t even seem to have noticed that anything out of the ordinary has happened.”

“Good for him,” said Gilbert. “I, on the other hand, could use some reassurance.” The boys poured themselves some reassurance and continued their conversation. “Look, we’ve reached that big fork in the road, we have to decide whether we continue on our own or make a call,” Gilbert said, trying his hardest to sound like the voice of reason, but failing miserably. No scientist ever wants to turn over his work to someone else.

Simon thought about it and responded, “Let’s be honest with ourselves, not only do we have the intelligence to continue on, we’ve spent the last ten years of our lives analyzing each episode of Star Trek and Doctor Who and every other sci-fi show in preparation for just this opportunity. We can’t wimp out now. It’s fate. Or maybe destiny, I can’t keep those two straight.”

“You mean fate,” said Gilbert. “People don’t have a choice with fate. You can choose your destiny. I’m starting to think it was all just dumb luck and now we’re tangled up in it.”

“Synchronicity, man,” said Simon. “That’s what it’s all about.”

“Call it whatever you want, it doesn’t matter, we’re screwed.”

“So we’re going?”

“One of us,” said Gilbert. “The other stays put as backup.”

“Okay, who goes?” asked Simon.

“There’s only one way to decide, since we’re riding the fate train.” So after Gilbert won the coin toss, cut the high card and threw box cars, Simon agreed that he should be the one to go.

“Can’t argue with fate,” he said.

“No, you can’t,” said Gilbert, not wanting to correct Simon since it must have been destiny that gave him the foresight to carry that two-headed coin, stack the deck and palm the loaded dice.