Transmat World: Chapter 3, Episode 1
Banderas Bay, Mexico; November, 2137 A.D.
--
The last of their stuff arrived from California. The final leg of the journey was by electric truck, an eighteen-mile trek from Licenciado Gustavo Diaz Ordaz International. Lord Greystoke inspected boxes as the deliveryman put them on the living room floor and left.
“One of these days this kind of stuff will be sent using your transporter device,” offered Vince.
“Yeah,” said Hank, mechanically sorting items into groups on the living room floor.
“Dad, I’m sorry about your friends at JPL.”
“They haven’t found the bodies,” snapped Hank, still grasping at snippets of hope.
Vince pretended to be absorbed in the contents of a box he opened. He hardly noticed the tail Lord Greystoke landed up side his nose. Nancy was making iced tea in the kitchen.
“You never told Beasener about the working model. You think he buys the story about those assholes setting a bomb off in the basement?”
“Not if he read the forensics. They’ve determined overheated circuitry caused the damage. I told Patterson those goons shouldn’t have been messing around with equipment they knew nothing about. I also told him that, due to the circumstances, the agency should keep all information about the case under wraps. He agreed. The Board of Agreement has clout, but not the kind of clout required to take a look at a Western Central Enforcement report if they don’t want them to,” replied Hank.
“How come you’re keeping it from Beasener?”
“For one thing, I don’t want the Board offering to invest any more than the original agreement — too many political strings attached. I would rather seek out a venture capitalist to take this idea to market. Another thing, if the break-in is about the technology, for our safety, nobody but me needs to know how far along it is right now. Beasener will find out soon enough.”
Vince is getting used to the idea that his dad invented long-distance, instantaneous matter transportation. Hank Miller could well be the “Einstein” of his generation by manipulating quantum mechanics and the “strings” in string theory into a working device capable of miraculous things.
When you’re sixteen, getting over the sudden loss of your friends at school, and school itself, is difficult. His classmates talked about becoming nuclear physicists, planetary biologists, prophylactic geneticists, and robotic engineers. They never talked about taking over their father’s liquor store or being an actuary like mom. Vince, however, now saw an advantage to learning all he could about the family business. After all, the son of the guy that invented the wheel more than likely went into the wheel business. Besides, it was always in the back of his brain to apply the technology, somehow, to the exploration of space. Hank’s negative disposition to that subject kept Vince from bringing it up anymore.
Learning the intricacies and complexities of how the thing worked took a while, but the brain is very plastic at that age and accepts new concepts readily. Vince began to realize application of theory was what he excelled at, but the theory behind the device had not crystallized in his brain. Even Hank had a hard time explaining the goings on when matter is transmitted without filling up whiteboards of calculations. The circuits of a transmission booth took only take a fraction of a watt to operate, but the power to transmit solid matter over vast distances instantly required unimaginable amounts of energy.
Two scientific breakthroughs existed in the same device. Either one would put Henry Miller’s name in the Scientist’s Hall of Fame. One circuit switched energy sources from the battery to a flow of all-pervasive dark energy co-existing with normal matter. The other circuit used that energy to transmit matter from one place to another; what Hank called “… a certainty engine generating a gestaltic quantum switch of entangled elementary string particles.”
Vince’s head hurt when he tried to visualize that. Whatever the theory, they had to protect the practical application of the technology from copycats. Instead of patents, Hank declared the whole thing a trade secret and decided to build devices that could not be reverse-engineered. The circuits would be encased in nearly indestructible buckytube/titanium glass composite, and if someone managed to open the case, they would automatically fry beyond recognition.
“What are we going to call it, Dad?” asked Vince.
“Well, the whole ‘transporter’, ‘teleporter’ thing has been overdone, but it is a matter transmitter, so something like ‘mat-trans.’”
That sounded terrible to Vince. He had to figure out how to break it to his dad.
“Dad, that sounds terrible. How about if we transpose that and make it ‘transmat’?”
“Transmat,” said Hank, trying out the sound.
“Yeah, ‘transmat’. It’s not original. It was used in an old TV show called Dr. Who.”
“Is this going to be a ‘who’s on first’ joke?” said Hank.
“A what?”
“No, a ‘who’,” said Hank. “Never mind. It was a hundred and fifty years ago. Who cares?” Hank laughed while Vince looked at him blankly. “It was a good one, though. And you delivered it with such a straight face,” said Hank.
“I wasn’t … never mind.”
His thumb and forefinger on his chin, looking in the air, Hank tried it again, “Transmat.”
“Yeah, ‘transmat’,” said Vince.
Maria lay in the sand, emanating beauty like a form of radiation. Vince let it wash over him.
This is the way to be irradiated, thought Vince.
Flecks of sand and a white bikini contrasted with her skin’s incandescent bronze glow. Reddish-brown hair was pulled tight and bound in the back.
“Quit it,” said Vince.
“What?”
“Being so good looking. I’m afraid you’re disturbing a fundamental force in the universe.”
She smiled, “Look who’s talking.”
Vince’s smile closed on hers, and they embraced on the sand by orange, glowing embers of a morning fire. Her bikini bottom now lay draped over the end of bone-white driftwood jutting from the beach. Vince’s erection felt as hard as that branch. He began a docking maneuver when Maria’s tense face caused him to stop. Her eyes were wide.
“What?”
“Sandy twat, that’s what.”
They both laughed. Vince rolled off, and they headed for the water.
“Help!” a barely discernible, tremulous wail wafted on the morning breeze from a hundred yards down the beach. Digging in their heels, they glanced at each other.
“Hear that?” said Vince.
“Yes.”
Vince grabbed his swimsuit and stepped into it as he took off toward the cry. Maria already had her bikini bottom on and was adjusting her top as she ran after Vince. Fifty yards away he spotted the head in the surf. As the wave fell back, he saw fingers digging furrows in the sand fighting to keep from being dragged into the Pacific. Her face was frightened, and she was too exhausted to get up before the next wave washed over her prone body.
