We came into the world like brother and brother, And now let's go hand in hand, not one before another.
- Shakespeare, The Comedy of Errors
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JC raised a toast. “Here’s to Livia’s big day tomorrow.”
Everyone around the wide dining table raised their glasses. Livia rose to her feet, toasting each of them in turn. “I feel like a bit of a fraud. I mean, it’s not a paradigm shift in the same way Bobson made teleportation possible.”
Rail and car travel had been virtually eradicated. Bobson was long dead – dead at 55, some say from overwork – but in the ensuing 33 years no one had ever cracked the one key constraint he had left on his legacy. 100 miles seemed like a long distance in daily life, but the reality was that air travel was still needed when hopping from one continent to another. With the astronomical rise in oil prices, that meant it was basically accessible to nobody.
“Don’t be so modest,” said Barnaby, her second in command. “When this works, it’ll send up ripples that we can’t even dream of.”
Livia took over the lead architect post three years ago. She had worked her way up all the way from junior analyst, hacking at the problem from all angles, but it had taken nine years of butting her head against the wall to finally have that one single stroke of inspiration. For a moment she thought she finally understood what it was like to be Bobson.
If this worked, then the 100-mile limit would be blown out of the water. The key constraint lifted, there was no way of telling how far they could go with this thing. Trans-Atlantic teleportation would be easily achievable (and getting cheaper by the day). Airlines and ship magnates would go out of business overnight. People could really live and work anywhere; wake up in Auckland, take the morning meeting in New York, the afternoon meeting in Geneva, and have dinner in Tokyo. Energy-efficient, zero emission, virtually no travel time.
That’s how they’d sell it to the moneyed classes, anyway. The rats of the middle class would have to settle for orderly queues at the local transporter hub, but hey, they were used to it by now. Even they will benefit by having more exotic holiday options. Some of the more remote areas could finally be developed for living quarters. If someone hopped on the wagon early enough, it was even possible they could escape the high-rises altogether. Imagine your own little cabin on your own little patch of land. Paradise.
And somewhere amongst all this sea-change would be Livia, the woman who made it possible. The Bobson of her generation. All that stood between her and that future was tomorrow, the first test with a human.
She couldn’t imagine what it was like to be Bobson, stepping inside a teleporter for the first time five decades ago. No matter how much of a materialist one claimed to be, there must have been a vestige of doubt that something would get lost along the way. Things had moved on since then. Sure, there were still the hardcore religiosos who plainly refused to teleport lest they lost their immortal soul somewhere between the origin and the destination. But the technology has pervaded the lives of ordinary people, so much so that roads have become a distant memory.
And no one had complained of a missing soul yet.
As for Livia's test tomorrow, it was more a victory lap than a real test; all the previous tests with rats and pigs and horses had been perfect. But there remained the final formality, the final ceremony – the first human journey from London to New York.
Livia met JC’s eyes across the table, feeling a surge of love. In the final days of the project she had given him short thrift. Everything would be different now. She could contemplate early (very early) retirement. Like Bobson they could move to a secluded area (how about a private island?) and live in blissful tranquillity for the rest of their days. Perhaps she could even carry on with Bobson’s unfinished work – how to refine teleporter technology to such a degree that it could remove tumours and perform microscopic surgery. The degree of finesse needed had been a pipe dream but perhaps another divine spark would alight upon her, the same way she finally smashed through the 100-mile limit.
Bobson would have been very proud of her.
***
It was late afternoon in London. Raining, the sky feeling like it was hovering concrete-solid two foot above their heads. A quick holovid with the New York office, and there was nothing else to do but the ceremonial journey. New York showed her the waiting champagne on ice. Livia let out a bray of laughter, already drunk on achievement and possibility. She kissed JC, took a deep breath, and stepped into the transporter. The door hissed shut behind her.
“Welcome to the Zenith transporter T300. Please state your Ident and destination code.”
She recited the codes and felt the familiar darkness descend. The lights were turned off during the process; the moment of complete blackness helped people psychologically adjust to the replication process. In a typical short-range teleport the moment would last no more than a couple of seconds, and then the doors would open, and out you popped.
Theoretically, there should be no difference in length of time between a short-range and a long-range teleport. Perhaps the darkness just felt longer because of the pounding of her heart.
***
Then the light snapped back on, the doors opened, and she stepped out into bright morning sunshine and rapturous applause.
***
Then the light snapped back on, the doors opened, and she stepped out into the grey light filtering through the rain-streaked windows, the quizzical faces of JC and her team, and the view of the Shard outside.
“What happened?” she asked, her heart sinking. “Did the replication fail?”
Barnaby frantically scanned through the logs. “I don’t know what I’m seeing here, Livia. You’re still here, but…”
“Of course I’m still here,” she snapped, striding to his side. “Someone holovid the New York office. So what was the problem?”
His eyes met hers. Mutely he pointed to the holo display.
According to the logs she ought to be in New York by now. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the replication.
“Hello?” Stacey ventured as the holovid connected with New York. “What’s going on, guys…?”
Images of wild celebration greeted them. Applause, cheering, a champagne cork popping. A small crowd had congregated around Livia, aglow with morning sunshine and victory.
Livia heard JC’s strangled intake of breath behind her.
The celebration that ought to be hers, it was somehow going on without her… except that it wasn’t. She was right there enjoying every minute of it. She was in New York the way it had been planned. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the replication.
At the moment of replication, the original was destroyed. The transmitter and receiver machines formed a perfect equilibrium system from which no new matter could be created, only reconfigured from what was available. That was the fundamental law of teleportation, the one inviolable truth from which all of the technology sprang.
As if in slow motion, the Livia in New York turned toward the holovid and met Livia's gaze. As they stared at each other they saw the panic rising in each other’s eyes, the tide of disbelief.
She was here and there at the same time. Where there was one of her, now there were two.
To be continued...
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