No amount of genius guarantees success. Countless hours of painstaking checking and double-checking of equations and algorithms were no guarantee that this project would work. I thought back to the first true attempt with a mouse I'd bought down at Petsmart. I named him Scotty, and after wiring up the steel plate to the coax inverter coupling sequence, I placed him contentedly on it, his rear left leg leashed to a washer welded onto the plate. A flick of a switch and the turn of a knob started a whining hum, perceptible but not nerve-jangling. A duplicate plate at the other side of my garage laboratory waited to catch the first attempt at teleportation of a live animal.
Poor Scotty. He ended up inside-out, or at least that's how I've chosen to describe the grotesque meat-pile that appeared on the second plate. I photographed the mess and put a print on my wall for inspiration.
I made much better progress in subsequent attempts, managing to disfigure only a couple dozen assorted critters. Scotty II, III, IV, V, VI, and VII all came across with their fur on the outside, and by the time I teleported Scotty XXVII, a brown and white guinea pig, I was feeling quite sure of myself. All his outside parts were in their appropriate places, and an autopsy revealed that only some of his internal organs were scrambled. Excellent.
Winter melted into spring, and on May 28th, try number 134 put me in line for the Nobel Prize in Physics. I successfully teleported the neighbor's schnauzer 100 meters from my garage, through walls, trees and other obstructions to his own yard unscathed. He seemed to drool a little more after the transfer, but that was acceptable to me. He walked, barked, crapped and otherwise behaved as if nothing happened. Excellent. Only a few more experiments would guarantee my date with Destiny.
This whole project wasn't for the money, or the fame, though they certainly wouldn't hurt. It was for Destiny, simply the most gorgeous woman I'd ever seen. It's widely known that Swedish women are some of the most beautiful on the planet, but this Finnish prodigy puts them all to shame. An all-around masterpiece, a natural beauty, the kind of woman that inspires wars and epic poetry. Fair haired, fair skinned, fair minded, multilingual, compassionate, curvy, and a host of other complimentary features. She's out of my league to be sure, but thankfully doesn't realize it. Her parents, I learned, named her Destiny in a vodka-induced haze wherein they saw God who with his own forceful means of persuasion asked them politely to consider the name. Great things were planned for this wee lass, to be sure.
One of the neat things about my teleportation system is that it's portable. Basically, it consists of two sets of 1-meter diameter plates wired with coax inverter coupling sequences timed to match the other's quark inversion orbits. I won't go into the physics involved here, but it's less a teleporter and more a wormhole generator. The "subject," as I've through habit learned to call anything I transport, sits on one plate, and as the power threshold reaches the desired level, the subject more or less falls through a wormhole and lands on the other plate, no matter where in the world it may be. Of course, you need one HELL of a power generator. I customized a Honda VX3000 for the purpose, and let me tell you, stand too close and your hair WILL stand on end. Mr. Van de Graf would be proud. Fortunately, only a single huge power source is needed, since the quark inversion orbits are timed between the two plates. I can teleport a subject back and forth with just the power from your standard outlet at the opposite plate. But back to Destiny.
I don't know much about Finland except for the fact that it's either too hot or too cold, and they elect socialist witches to fuck up their parliament. The forests of North America are much more amenable, in my opinion. I have a little chunk of forest all my own, far away from the rest of the world. It's quiet. It's peaceful. It's nice. It's the perfect place for a date, assuming you can find a woman who likes the woods, and further assuming that you can actually get her there. Destiny had no problem with the former, but the latter was the rub. How does one visit North America from Finland for a weekend? Short of some sort of teleportation device, it can't be done. Hence I had a mission, and in 6 months solved the problem. Mostly.
You see, there were a couple more tests to be done before actually attempting the teleportation of a real person. I'd run down my checklist of experiments, and near the bottom of the list was the organic/inorganic mixture transfer. How would an inorganic material such as clothing, when mixed with an organic subject, handle the transfer? I had my doubts, so once again I borrowed the neighbor's pooch. I found an old, black "AC/DC" t-shirt, and after some forceful convincing, had the dog looking fairly badass. Up he goes onto the plate, I turn the dials and hit the button, and *poof.* Camera in hand, I hurriedly scamper off to the tool shed in the back yard where I'd set up the other plate. I opened the door, found what humor I could in the situation, took some pictures, jotted down some notes, and summarily verified my fears that organic and inorganic don't mix too well. Damn. Just to be sure, though, I borrowed the other neighbor's cat and stuffed it into one of my large sweatsocks. Yes, I cut a hole for it's head. Sheesh. In the end, though, it didn't matter. Organic and inorganic don't mix. I buried them both in the ravine late at night under a full moon. I felt slightly Frankensteinish.
Down to the final experiment: human transfer. I was quite concerned, actually, because of the sheer mass of a typical human. I'd never tried anything so large. I'm sure I could have found a volunteer somewhere if I had searched long enough, but this whole project was unknown to virtually everyone, and I didn't need the world beating down my door asking questions, putting me on magazine covers, forcing me into television interviews, etc. At least not yet. So in the end, I decided on the only subject I could trust – me. I spent a few hours in my office putting my affairs in order, filling out patent applications, whipping up a quick enchiridion of instructions and explanation, dotting some i's and crossing some t's in my Last Will and Testament, and I emailed Destiny informing her of my next experiment, not waiting for a reply. After a quick meal and several deep breaths, I teleported a box of fresh clothes to the tool shed. After walking out and confirming that all was in order at the other plate (the clothes still smelled clean, even), I walked back to the garage and disrobed.
The plate was cold on my bare feet, which I found surprising. I made a mental note of it and suddenly caught a mildly warped reflection of myself in a large piece of sheet metal on the wall. Here I was, naked, standing 3 inches off the ground on a funny looking contraption, scared out of my pants.. err.. skin. I held out my arms straight from the sides, flexed everything I could, thinking I looked a bit like that model of Man famously sketched out be Leonardo DaVinci. My body does look pretty good, really, and I smiled even as I contemplated the scope of my own mortality. All for you, Destiny... here we go..
I flipped the switch and looked down as the plate ignited, and I felt the distinct feeling of falling. In what seemed like 30 seconds but was more like three, I found myself standing in the tool shed. Excellent. After a quick systems check to make sure that all my bits and pieces were still in their correct spots and functional, I was swept up by sudden giddiness. It worked! My whole world was about to change. I quickly redressed and made my way back into the house to email Destiny. Subject: It worked! Yayy!
She and I have chatted and emailed for a long time. In fact, it was she who first lamented the non-existence of a teleporting device. I couldn't help wondering if she was more excited or scared about my creation. The proof is in the pudding, it is often said, so I formulated my proposal. I packaged up the second plate securely, and a $37.50 trip to the post office later, it was on it's way to Finland. Sangen hyvä.
Who knows what really goes through a woman's mind when she decides something. All one can do is hope, really. So I hoped. I hoped she would put her ok on the plan. I'm not sure I would have if I were in here shoes. Flee the city and run off to my parent's barn with a silly electronic contraption? Stand stark naked on the aforementioned contraption at precisely 7:00 p.m. local time? Trust an American mad scientist that my giblets wouldn't end up in a scrambled pile of goo 8,000 miles away in a surprise location? Never mind the feat of actually believing that I was who I said I was and not some psycho-retardo-stalker-sicko type. It was too much to ask, really, but in some twisted corridor within her synaptic coils, everything aligned and clicked into place, and she said "yes."
After a quick little freakout session, I went about setting the plan in motion. I loaded the generator, teleport plate, camping gear and anything else I think I might have needed into my 4x4 pickup and headed off to my secluded mountain property. Oh, this was going to be good. If it worked.
We kept in touch via my satellite modem and laptop, and it worked like a charm. The plate arrived in timely fashion (I'd sent it before revealing my plan to her on a gamble), and she lugged it along with some luggage on the train to her parent's house. They were away on holiday, so she had the place to herself. It couldn't have worked out better.
Early the next morning, I fired up the generator and found a flat, stable location for the teleport plate. With everything in place, I sent her an instant message: Plug in the plate, and put your gear on it, then stand back! Teleportation in 1 minute!
My heart thumped out the seconds as the minute went slowly by, and when the second hand reached its zenith, I flipped the switch. Three seconds later, a red backpack materialized on the plate, the blue sparks of static discharge melting off into the air. I grinned broadly, and put a pre-made card on the plate, hit the switch, watched it vanished, and then turned back to my laptop. Instant message: You're next! Reply: Got the card saying the same thing! Teleport in exactly 3 minutes.
I checked my watch, and tried to put myself in her shoes, or her bare feet as the case would soon be. She didn't even know where she was teleporting to, never mind being naked. Now THAT is trust. For the sake of what modesty she might have, I placed the teleport plate behind a tree, next to which I placed her backpack. I never need see her naked skin if she didn't want me to. Two minutes.
