Proceed With The Procedure
From the novel "Infinity"
By Areaze Jiuare
He was in a hurry!
He was really in a hurry. He had an appointment in a city more than two thousand kilometers away in half an hour, and he was still stuck in traffic near the main square. The taxi stood stubbornly in the middle of the continuous line. He had a feeling that the traffic lights hated him. Whenever they got close to the next one, the piece of shit would turn red.
The morning started off completely wrong. First he had bad luck in the dining room. While packing the papers for the meeting, in his haste he knocked over a cup of freshly prepared coffee from the bar and spilled it on himself, making a stain on the sleeve of his carefully ironed shirt. He didn't have time to change, so he just put the dirty cup in the sink and left the apartment. And now he missed that coffee so much. Not the stain on the shirt. There she was, quite unnecessarily occupying the completely wrong piece of space in the universe.
He decided to get out of the taxi. He paid, clumsily pulling money out of his wallet, went outside and ran towards the new "Teletransport" building.
In addition to the coffee mishap, an additional reason for nervousness was the teleportation. He always had some nagging feeling after each procedure, and for his work he often had to travel to distant cities.
Airplanes, as a mass means of transportation, were discontinued a long time ago.
It all started quite naively, he recalled, an experiment led by the famous physicist Sebastian Brown. Several atoms that were in one room were scanned with the new technology, and then in another, adjacent room, several other atoms were arranged in space in the same way that the scanned atoms were arranged.
After that, as usually happens with new breakthroughs in science, the device with which the first experiment was performed was improved and not long after the first atoms, the first molecule was teleported. Then the first DNA. Then the first bacteria. Just one month after the first bacteria, the first insect was teleported. The path of progress has formed its clear outlines. The distance between rooms increased, as did the size of the teleported objects or beings. The scientist worked their buts out to optimize energy consumption.
Not long after, the device was tested on a human. After the successful teleportation of man, nothing could remain the same in the field of transport and traffic. Soon after the conquest of that step in the development of science, enormous changes followed in all segments of people's lives.
He remembered the tour of the teleportation museum. In one of the first rooms of the museum, they were shown a glass container in which two insects were exhibited. The first was marked as the original, while below the second was a triumphant inscription: "The first teleported version of a multicellular living organism." Both were sadly pierced with pins and attached to the base. As he looked at them, the image of the first dog sent into space flashed through his mind. Her fate was no better. The only thing that was not clear to him was how they preserved the original insect, when they had already teleported it. When he asked the guide that question, the guide was momentarily confused, then turned and led the group to the next exhibit, leaving him without an answer.
This is what you get when they employ poorly trained ignoramuses. What amateurism, he thought.
One of the juicy tidbits the guide shared with them at the museum was that none of the people who developed the teleportation process, unfortunately, could personally use a system based on that process as a means of travel. It turned out that during the work on the development of the device, they caused certain anomalies in their own tissue, and thus prevented themselves from using the benefits of the invention that they gave to the rest of humanity.
What an irony of fate! They gave the world the greatest discovery in the history of human civilization, after fire and the wheel, and they themselves were denied its use.
To make matters worse, the owner of the company "Teletransport", Sebastian Brown, personally attended the experiments, so he too was forced to travel exclusively on his private plane, one of the few that still draw whitish streaks in the sky.
What a sad limitation for a man who changed the way of life for people all over the planet!
"At least it's not crowded at the airport!", was Sebastian Brown's answer when he was asked how he felt about the unfortunate situation in which he found himself.
When teleportation became commercially available, within a year almost all airlines experienced the inevitable demise – the fate of technological progress. Teleportation was safer, faster and cheaper. Airplanes could not cope with such powerful competition.
He was nervous as always before teleportation but, on the other hand, a car was out of the question for such distances. He had to swallow that frog and go.
What if something goes wrong, if my atoms rearrange themselves in the wrong way?
Despite so many successful teleportations, he still felt uneasy when he had to travel again. He repeated to himself one and the same, officially confirmed fact: "Until now, no one has been killed during teleportation, and over a billion teleportation have been carried out!" Why should it be any different now?
He reached the entrance of "Teletransport". As he passed through the door that slid quietly to the side, he heard the trained pleasant voice of the telehostess: “Teletransport is the fastest and most pleasant way to travel. Welcome, your cabin is ready. How do you feel?”
He looked at the pleasant and smiling face of the telehostess. Behind the artificial facade cold eyes were lurking, which did not lessen his nervousness before the trip.
"And how do you feel when you teleport?", he responded with a question.
"The Telehostesses are not allowed to travel by teleport, that's the rule!", she answered firmly, but with a perfectly trained smile on her face.
Teleportation was a really fast way to travel, but not exactly cheap. That's why they choose the best professionals as telehostesses. They were adorned with a perfect tone of voice, trained facial expressions, a pleasant appearance, but also absolute determination in their work.
Although she had said that as a rule they were not allowed to use teleportation, he believed that, with their salary, they could not even afford such a trip. He felt a little sorry for them, as well as many other people who are thus limited in their travels to closer destinations, within a few hundred kilometers, which they can reach by car.
A morning on the beach, an afternoon on top of a mountain, and an evening in a space station... these were just some of the possibilities of teleportation. "Cabins on the moon soon!", advertisements popped up on all websites. He was saving the money for the event, he couldn't afford everything that was on offer. He mostly traveled on business, when the corporation paid.
As he passed the row of cabins and looked for a free one, he looked at the telehostesses in light blue uniforms. One of the telehostesses was standing in front of each cabin, looking at the transparent screen in front of her, following information about the teleportation of the passengers. A text flashed on one of the screens: "Transport confirmed!" The telehostess, who had been vigilantly following the events on that monitor, routinely said loudly: "Proceed with the procedure!", and with a light touch reset the entire screen. After that, a soft "hsssss..." was heard from the cabin, which lasted for a second, and then everything went silent. The color of the light above the cabin changed slightly from red to yellow. This meant decontamination of the cabin, which takes about ten minutes. After that, the light color would change to green, and the cabin would open, ready for the next passenger.
He got straight into the cab with the green light on. He has fifteen minutes left, if he catches a taxi right away as soon as he gets out of the cab at his destination - he will be on time.
The heavy door closed behind him. They had to be massive because during the teleportation, a very strong pressure was created in the cabin, while the atoms were scanned and sent to where they needed to go, then reassembled... or whatever, he thought. He never really understood how this miracle worked, that's why he had this stage fright.
On the inside wall of the cabin there was a small monitor with a speaker from which soft ambient music could be heard, when the countdown began on the screen. When it reaches zero, it will simply appear in the "Teletransport" cabin in the center, not far from the meeting point. All he has to do is call a taxi.
He picked up the phone and dialed the taxi number. He placed his thumb over the icon of the handset on the screen, ready to touch it as soon as it materialized at its destination.
The numbers changed slowly. Ten, nine... He looked at them impatiently, holding the phone in his hand.
… one, zero.
Zero!
Nothing!
Nothing happened! He was still there. Is it possible that he is the first unfortunate one for whom the process has failed? Over a billion teleportations and now something had to be stuck.
All his life he felt he was being followed by some kind of bad luck, bad karma, or something... but this was way too much. Whenever donuts were handed out at school, he always got the one with less chocolate.
He rolled his eyes. I guess they're going to open the damn door now, he thought. He was anxious to see the telehostess's face now that their device had failed. Will she continue to be so calm and confident?
"Proceed with the procedure", the cold, routine voice of his telehostess reached him from the monitor. Proceed what? He is still there! Something is not right. What does it mean to proceed with the procedure?
“STOP THE PROCEDURE!” he began to roar at the top of his voice, but the sound was trapped in the metal booth behind the massive door. What is the procedure? Are they going to open it now to check what's left in the cabin? Maybe they are recording him on camera?
He was looking at the monitor, the only source of light in the dark cabin, trying to find the eye of the camera. As he tried to make out the details around the monitor, a barely visible hole opened above the screen. With a soft hiss, something flew out of it, causing a sharp stabbing pain in his chest. He writhed in excruciating pain for a moment, then began to shake. He felt he is dying. His whole body was dying, every cell was saying goodbye. The heart began to beat uncontrollably.
Tingling stars flashed in the darkness before his eyes as his muscles weakened. He tried to grab onto something before collapsing, but he had nothing to grab onto, so he fell with all his weight onto the cabin floor. His phone fell out of his hand and shattered into hundred pieces. As this world slowly abandoned him, the image of those two insects appeared before his eyes. Finally, there is an answer as to how they saved both. By not destroying the first one.
They got a copy and kept the original. Not in his case. The original has now become redundant. The image blurred and disappeared before his frozen eyes, while some muscles still twitched uncontrollably. He felt his spirit lost touch with this world.
And then - darkness.
The floor of the cabin opened and the limp corpse fell into the pipe below. The resulting vacuum pulled all the remaining things out of the cabin creating a loud hissing sound. After that, a sprinkler was lowered into the cabin to wash the walls, and then the process of drying with warm air was carried out. In a few minutes the cabin was ready for the next passenger.
A young man in a suit, with disheveled hair, entered and looked around in disbelief. From the suit, it was obvious at first glance that he was an apprentice. The corporation had sent him on a business trip, and this was his first teleportation – a completely new experience. He didn't want to make any mistakes, so he showed up in the teleportation room an hour early.
The countdown has begun.
***
He got out of the "Teletransport" cabin. His finger was already on the taxi number, and he called it as soon as he walked through the cabin door. He glanced at his watch, realizing it was awkwardly positioned just below the coffee stain on his sleeve, which he owed to his morning clumsiness. When he gets back, he will have to clean the furniture that also suffered the consequences of the unfortunate event - he didn't have time to deal with that this morning. The taxi arrives in two minutes, which means he will arrive even a bit earlier to prepare the coffee. This thought cheered him up.
Great , he thought, until an hour ago I was rolling on the bed in my apartment, and now I'm ready for a meeting, in an office two thousand kilometers away. He was fascinated by the idea of traveling by teleportation. But even so, he felt a slight anxiety every time he thought about the teleport. More than a billion trips and no incidents... more than a billion and... this one more.
A yellow vehicle with a taxi sign stopped in front of the entrance. He opened the door and sat in it. After the meeting, he will go to dinner with his colleagues and then back home. He had already booked the telecabin for the return trip. Tomorrow he has another meeting scheduled at a hotel on a tropical island in the Middle Belt, on the other side of the planet.
And by the end of the year... maybe a walk on the moon. That would be an experience.
Infiniti
Areaze Jiuare, 2020
Formats: epub, mobi(Kindle), pdf, pdb, Online Reader
ISBN: 9780463582275 -- Say: 89050 -- 14.05.2020
Copyright 2020 Areaze Jiuare
Lecturer: Anđela Pendić
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