The Teleporter. (4 page)

Chapter 3.1- Glory of Daybreak
“Mummy, look at that!” a little girl says to her mother as she point out of the small window of the Boeing 757 they’re currently on. “Oh yes darling, that’s a cloud, and it looks that pink colour as the sun is rising”.

They sit there and admire the glorious pink and orange skyline as the plane banks slightly to adjust course for final approach. The sea that has just come into view looks very calm, with only a few vessels gracing this glorious vista. The sun is glowing and emitting an amber colour which sends a warm sensation through even the hardest mans’ heart. It’s the sort of picture that makes you realise how lucky you are to witness it, partly because it is only pilots who witness this on such a regular basis, but mainly as it is breathtakingly beautiful.

Suddenly, the tranquillity is smashed by the intercom coming on, accidentally, for the passengers to hear “What the fuck are you doing? Don’t do… *BANG*”. The bang could only be a gunshot which seems to have come from the cockpit. The bullet goes straight through the co- pilot’s skull and through the aircrafts skin, causing a massive pressure drop inside the cabin. The amount of pressure trying to leave through this 9mm bullet hole at once is enormous and rips a hole in the aeroplane’s fuselage from just above the cockpit all the way back to the centre section of the 757 on the right hand side. This therefore takes the two remaining pilots and everyone who was not strapped into their seats with it. The Aircraft is still airborne but is dipping significantly to the right (as that’s the side with the hole in). ‘Warning, Warning, Pull Up, Pull up’ the Flight Management System says. ‘Warning, overspeed’ the FMS once again warns.
Confusion. Everyone else left on board is dumbfounded, except for one brave soul, called Harry, who at this stage unbuckles his seat belt with no hesitation and battles against gravity to attempt to get to the cockpit. Harry has realised that everyone on board is dead unless someone can control he plane, and being someone who has ‘had a few lessons’ decides to give it a shot. Harry’s feet are not touching the cabin floor as the gravity is making him almost weightless, mixed with the hole in the cabin trying to suck him out. He is grappling at the seats, pulling himself through just like he is swimming through wet concrete as he is determined to save these innocent lives.

He eventually reaches the cockpit, thankfully he likes sitting at the front of the aircraft so it didn’t take him long, and struggles his way to the first officers seat and buckles himself in. He battles with the control column with the defining pitch of the wind whilst travelling hundreds of miles per hour to try to stabilise the rapid decent in which the 757 is now in. The air is cold and Harry is having difficulty breathing, so he finds the oxygen mask whilst the big Rolls Royce engines are roaring as the airflow continues to increase. The wings are waging war against gravity to try to get out of the stall angle they are currently in, but the air being buffeted by the massive tear in the fuselage is making this near impossible. ‘Warning, Warning, Pull up, pull up’ the FMS again reports. The stricken 757 is running out of both time and altitude whilst every alarm is bellowing out in the cockpit. Harry needs to act fast. Very fast.

Harry then decides to ease off the power on the left engine in hope that it might force the right wing up. As the lift decreases on the left side, and the thrust and lift is increasing on the right, the plane starts shaking like it has hit bad turbulence.
He then panics as he realises this may overstress the airframe and turns both engines down to an idle speed, as the ground quickly approaches. This then enables Harry’s efforts to level the wings to be a success and he starts to pull up. At this point the then selects Max thrust on both engines as he notices the Altitude meter is only reading 1800ft. There is still much altitude to be gained before such event as a sudden termination into the ground occurs.

This does not look good.
The passengers at this point are screaming, shouting, grappling each other and praying to God, even if they didn’t believe in him before this moment. The ones that are brave enough to gaze through any part of the plane can now see every single car commuting to work on the streets below as day breaks.

Every alarm and warning sound is active in the cockpit, but Harry is calm and calculating, he realises that despite his best efforts, the plane isn’t going to make it. At this point, everything slows down. His gaze widens, breathing slows down to a calm rate, he listens to the screams and the pleading of the passengers behind him as Five last words exit his mouth “I Have done My Best”… it seems like he has given up and a single tear rolls down his cheek and lands on his right hand which remains on the column, still gripping tightly and still trying to pull the doomed aircraft up as gravity is increasing and pushing him further into his seat. The defining roar of the engines bellow out for the final few seconds as he notices the Altimeter reads 700ft and is falling fast.

However melancholy he is now, he can’t help but notice that the
horizon line has come into view on the nose, and that his arms are still battling with the control column. A glimpse of hope then penetrates his eyes and from nowhere he activates the flaps at 35 Degrees, instantly forcing the nose up even further. “C’MON, C’MON YOU BASTARD!” Harry jumps into life as he is trying to remember what he has learnt in doing a few lessons on his Private Pilots License. The altimeter now reads 400ft… 350ft… 200ft… 200ft…250ft…350ft…400ft… “FUCKING YES, YEAH!” Harry celebrates whilst remembering to close the flaps and ease off the throttle and puts it into a steady climb as the aircraft narrowly avoids treetops.

Harry then
takes a few seconds to regain his composure and presses the intercom button. He then says “Please be aware that you are all now safe, and I will get this bird down safely” and he is met by a cheer and a round of applause so great that he can hear it even over the noise of the engines as they pull the aircraft back into the beautiful pink sky.

As Harry puts on the First officer headphones all he can hear is cheering.
“God was with you today Captain Brown, excellent recovery flight five-zero-niner” the Tower says.
“Errm, this isn’t Mr. Brown, I am a passenger who had to take control as a gun was discharged in the cockpit” Harry replies.
“So that’ll explain the hole in the side of the plane then, but what happened to Chris, over?” the tower ask.
“It seems that one of the pilots killed the other pilot, then the bullet made a hole in the plane. Now please talk me down to land, I’ve only even flown a Cessna 152, this is a bit different…”  Harry demands.
“Ok hero, here goes, I’ll take you through how to set the autopilot for ILS”…
“ILS is?” “Instrument landing system, it’ll guide the plane down automatically, over”

The plane then arrives safely with Harry at the controls (and the tower talking him through every step) at Heathrow airport.

Harry is then hailed a hero and is to receive a knighthood from her Majesty the Queen for his bravery and the fact that he
single handedly saved 200+ lives.

“We’re going in hot Lads. Get Ready”

As the Chinook lands, the area fills with dust and sand being ejected into the air.

“GO, GO, GO” Captain James Ashcroft orders. For a few seconds, the unit cannot see anything and they proceed to nearest cover. It is good in a way, it makes it harder for any hostiles to take down the Chinook, and it also provides cover for the troops leaving the Chinook as they can scatter to cover and wait for the dust to settle before moving on. Kind of like a natural safety shield.

The dust settles enough to see, so they continue
. “Oscar one, we have received intelligence that you are approximately 2 clicks from a temporary enemy base where they are suspected to have a weapons cache. Divert to this new objective and Proceed with caution. Bravo Niner out”
“You heard them boys, lets hustle. Stay quiet, we’ll do this cloak and dagger for as long as possible” the Captain orders.

As they arrive at the walls to what looks like a
n old construction yard, they scout for a few minutes and then the captain decides on a plan. “Right, I want 3 on each door, all with breaching pads. On my go, you will all breach and take out anyone who moves. I’ll get up there and provide overwatch with Slim, Understand?”. “Yes Sir” the troops reply.

As the troops stealth up to every access point they signal that they are ready to breach.
“Sunny, Lofty, take em’ in, over”
“Understood” the lieutenants reply.

As the rounds pop off, and the radio contact fa
lls silent for a few seconds, Captain James Ashcroft is discharging his magazine, at quite a rapid rate. “Man down, Man down, Watch your fire”. Slim, who is spotting for the Captain says “That was Lofty, you hit Lofty! Watch your fucking fire!”
James then draws his knife from his leg holster and thrusts it into Slim’s neck, killing him instantly.
“Bravo Niner, we have multiple Blue on Blue, It appears James is…” Sunny is then rudely interrupted by a round piercing his chest and falls to the floor. However, James isn’t just targeting just his friends, he is shooting anything that moves. His facial expression is demonic as he is firing rounds into anything that breathes.  A few troops notice this, and pull back. They attempt to contact him on the radio “James, What the fuck are you doing?! You’re killing your own men!”
James is not responding, and where they have pulled back to they can see his reaction, or lack of. As James continues to fire, one of them says “He gone fucking mad, Jimmy, we have to take him down before he kills the others” as the newly appointed squad leader orders.
Jimmy then raises his barrel to his once respected captain- a man who once saved all of their lives, on many occasions, with his unparalleled split second decision making skill. He slows his breathing down to a relaxed pace and takes one long and deep breath after lining the red dot with his captain. He then gently squeezes the trigger of his LA-85 rifle as he exhales. It lands right between his eyes.
“Kill confirmed”

A week later,
it’s just another day at the lab when the team once again turn the volume up on the TV that is near John’s desk. They see the news about the Captain that went mad in started killing his own in Afghanistan, and the Pilot that nearly took hundreds of lives if it wasn’t for a hero named Harry. This is of course amongst other smaller events that have been over shadowed by the top stories that nobody has noticed yet.
John then hears the names of the culprits of the two stories and, at first, thinks nothing of it. That day, Alex has agreed to go to see her family, so she said if John wants to stay behind for an hour or so after work then she can pick him up from work on the way back. John agreed to this, and is sitting at this desk after hours. Naturally, he is bored and decides to have one last look at the weight loss subject.

The weather turns dark, dark grey clouds form,
seemingly from absolutely nowhere and water droplets begin gracing the window to John’s lab. He gets up to close the window as there is quite a breeze coming through the office now, but knocks a few items on the floor as he reaches for the window.
John is comparing the data, on a microscopic scale, to try to find the smallest detail to look for any patterns. All of a sudden, a flash lights the room, filling every inch of the room and startling john for a second, followed by a defining roar from the thunderbolt that had just struck nearby: but this time John is composed- he does not react to the noise. His gaze widens, jaw drops a little as he starts staring at the newspaper that is lying open on the floor, which has just captured his eye. As he looks closer at the names and photographs, he recognises them to be some of the test subjects from the week before. He sees ‘Captain James Ashcroft’ under a familiar photo and recognises him to be the captain that was teleported, then he looks at the picture of the mad pilot ‘Captain Chris Brown’, and recognises him too. He says to himself “It can’t be…” as he sits there trying to prove himself incorrect in his head. The seemingly irrational theory, the very thing that he is trying to prove incorrect has just been suggested otherwise.
It then dawns on him… the 21 grams lighter that the subjects become seems to affect their conscious ability to decide what’s wrong and what’s right… It seems to make the subject more volatile and more likely to ‘explode’. The storyline of the film 21 Grams and the evidence found online, the irrational theory then floods his mind and absolutely infects his conclusion that he has just came to. He feels cold, His hairs at the back of his neck are standing up and his body is tense as he makes his final conclusion…

…
They have all lost their souls.

Upon realisation, another flash of lightning fills the room as John is scrambling for his mobile phone to call Alex.
“Alex, babe, sorry to interrupt- It’s very important… Every test subject, all 13 of them… they have all committed some form of murder in the past week. That 21 grams lighter they have become absolutely has to be their soul.”
“What? Really?... Oh my god I really don’t believe this… We need to put a stop to this now” Alex replies. “But how do we go about stopping it? Mike is an asshole…”
Then John interrupts Alex “Don’t worry, hold the line two secs I’m going to add Paul and Cat into our conversation”
Alex then patiently waits whilst John is adding the calls. John and Alex then give their ‘radical’ opinions to Paul and cat, but regardless of this the worst news possible then exits Pauls mouth… “… Guys, I found out from Mike today…whilst we’ve been developing, another 40+ people have been watching our every move on CCTV and they have fabricated 5 teleportation units already, based on our current design… FTR is going commercial on Friday and have over 500 units on order…. We have to act now if it is having any detrimental side effects”.
As the team fall silent as the realisation of the scale of mortality, the chaos, the confusion that is about to occur if John and Alex are correct. The elite 4 now know that they have to stop the commercialisation at all costs.
This has gone from a science project to better peoples’ lives to, possibly, the worst discovery since the splitting of the nuclei.

The very next day is a cold and rainy one
. The air is fresh and gently tickles your lungs, the breeze is cold and strangely refreshing. After getting not much sleep and trying their upmost to comprehend exactly what is happening in their own ways, they arrive in work. Cat and Alex have barely removed their coats before Paul has started listing what needs to be done. “Ok, Girls, I need you both to read this” Paul then hands them hand written notes. The notes read;

*
You both have to go into the main server room- I don’t care how you get in there just don’t get detected- and I need you to unplug the cable from port 433 and plug what I’m about to give you in to that port. Tell no one. Not even me. They’re watching us.*

The girls then screw the note up
as Paul hands them the laptop bag, half open, and Cat says “Ok, it looks like it’s out of warranty; I’ll take it to the scrap skip outside… Alex, want to get the doors for me?”

“
Of course” Alex says with an understanding smile. The girls then go off on their mission. John then says to Paul “Right. Now, how do we …”
             “... We’ll discuss later, just wait for the girls to get back before we talk any more” Paul interrupts with a wink. “Oh, Oh, okay, Yeah seems reasonable” John realises.

Paul has sent them off with what looks like a laptop bag
. Inside the bag is a laptop with some very special video software on it and a cat 5e network cable. Port 433 happens to be the video feed from the elite 4’s lab to the main control room where the elite 4 get monitored from. The girls are on a mission to sweet talk their way into the server room and link the network cable from port 433 to the laptop and the cable that was going into 433 is now in the laptop also. This will then intercept the video feed, and allow Paul to remotely switch between Live/ recorded when needed. This will allow the laptop to take over which then gives the software enough time to loop the past 28 days security camera feed. How did Paul manage this? Let us just say he has a few friends who work with computers…

Alex and Cat
return 25 minutes later, after Paul is eagerly awaiting the result and contemplating the outcome to be of the mission. Alex announces “Ok, it’s been done- what was it anyway?”

Paul then
presses a button on his special remote control and replies “that laptop has some special software on it which plays the last 28 days security feed on. It will then tally up with the monthly checks so that it will fool even the sharpest guard.”
“Very clever indeed” Replies Cat with a wink as Paul’s smile is now ear to ear.

“So,
what’s the plan?” Asks John.

Paul then begins to explain that the idea is to gather as much information on this subject as possible, and use it as evidence in a legal case to bring FTR down. John disagrees, he thinks that’s wasting time and that we need to walk the evidence to the CEO’s office with as many people standing behind us as possible, then confront him and make him stop. Alex agrees with John but
thinks that she should get everyone to strike, therefore slowing down production.
Cat however, with her ability to ‘see’ possible solutions with her very logical ability thinks they’re all wrong. She goes on “Guys, all of those ideas may work, but personally I don’t think any of them will. Paul, FTR has money and money can buy any judge or jury’s decision… Alex, that might work in a smaller company but they’ll fire them and hire more workers as they have our designs now… John, I think you’re closer to the solution but the CEO won’t listen and he has too many delegated to convince him otherwise...”

“So what are you suggesting?” Paul asks
“We need brute force. We need to go to the media, then win the nations support, or even the worlds support. We need to spill the secret and make FTR realise that they have no choice but to listen. The evidence is compelling and will grab anyone’s attention” Cat explains. The E4 then agree that they need to let the cat out of the bag, big time.

The elite 4 then spend all day gathering evidence, researching on the internet and racking their very clever brains t
o attempt to think of a way of telling the world. John and Alex are convinced that the weight loss is actually linked to the soul but Paul and Cat are sceptical. They’re both from non- religious, well-educated and wealthy backgrounds which seems to make the thought of something like this to be far-fetched for them to comprehend, so they are trying to disprove John and Alex’s theory.

As another flash lights the room, 4 objects appear on the te
leporter receiver pad. A half-eaten banana, a ham and mustard sandwich on brown bread, an unopened can of diet coke and a small green rucksack with various items in. These are the 4 objects that the team have ‘scientifically’ chosen to be teleported to see if any weight is lost on these very different items.

After the experiment, a
s the team is focused on very accurately weighing the objects, they are all gathered around the workbench scales when Mike, on the prowl as usual, stops on his way past the lab as this strange activity takes his eye. He thinks to himself, to try to find a logical reason why they are all so interested in the weight of these random items so he investigates. As usual he is very quiet on the approach until just as he is behind them he hears Alex shout “They haven’t lost a gram!”

Mike then asks in a very suspicious voic
e “… What hasn’t lost a gram?”

As the team jump and all
attempt to think of a reason to quickly tell Mike, It is in fact Cat who comes to the rescue. “Oh, we had a bet to see if any of these objects lost any weight through Hyper-Photosynthesis of Fractional Distillation” Cat cleverly tells.

Mike, absolutely baffled and un-interested says “Oh, ok” and
strolls off.
As the Elite 4 then snigger and laugh under their breath John bursts out “a super-efficient plant that can make fuel from crude oil is
more than welcome
in my back garden haha!”

As the team have a quick laugh they are quickly brought down to reality when they all fall silent.

“We had organic material, fabrics and metal objects put through… and no weight loss. This has just made our theory even more possible Paul” says John.

As the team are prepping to send a box, with all of the copies of the reports and the video and photographic evidence in to the BBC news headquarters they realise that they need to make it look like they haven’t done it. They need a
good distraction.

“W
e need an explosion” says John

“Something that will take out the power so that they don’t think of looking at the CCTV that we have just fucked with” says Cat.

“Something that will grab everyone’s attention and preferably set the fire alarms off” Says Alex.

“Something like this…” says
Paul as he checks that the hacked CCTV is still playing the looped video. He turns the labs generators’ power output to 100%. He then puts a generous amount of hydrochloric acid from the chemical cabernet into a makeshift bowl made from layers of filter paper, and he quickly places it on top of the generator, placing it on the air holes that are cut near the back of the unit. He then raids the COSHH cupboard and finds a few lumps of magnesium and posts them through the air vents. “That should do it. Stand back team, all go into the cloak room” Paul says as he switched the laptop to resume normal feed and retreats to a safe distance.

The
team then anticipate the pending destruction. They are all getting impatient as they have now been waiting 5 or so minutes. “Oh C’mon!” says John, just as he says that the generator starts smoking, therefore setting off the fire alarm. A split second later, the generator makes a very low pitched grunt at it starts sparking and fizzling- no doubt the hydrochloric acid has found its way to the magnesium.

The generator appears to now be on fire as the status light on the front of it goes red, then the lab goes dark and the generator completely stops with a couple of loud bangs.
By chance, this has disabled the RCD of the generator, forcing too much power through FTR’s main ring circuit for that floor. “That’s it, the power is out, lets evacuate”.

As the te
am are running through the hall carrying the box, the team then run down the southernmost fire exit, as this one is closer to the car park. Now obviously their FTR assigned bodyguards are trying to find them, so John grabs the box, and peels off from the pack with it. The other 3 then spot the bodyguards and Alex, who is trying to buy John some time, pretends to trip up and hurt her ankle, which the bodyguards stop to help her with.

John at this point has just exited by a
seldomly used exit and is making a bee line for the 6ft concrete wall. He notices that there are a few bins further down. He then runs for this, jumps onto the bin then in one movement jumps off the bin and over the wall even with this box in hand- He didn’t know he was capable of such ninja like skill and turns around, glances at the height of the wall and smiles as he resumes his mission. John then arrives at his car and for a moment, thinks “Shit, where are my keys!?” before he checks his back pocket with success.

John arrives at the BBC headquarters and proceeds to put a hoodie on and zip
s it up. He then enters the building, opens the box and leaves it on reception, unattended, for anyone to find. With a suspicious look, one reporter notices the open box and goes to have a look. Tom, the reporter, quickly sifts through the box and finds the first bit of evidence. Upon realisation of what has just fell into his hands, he then closes the box very quickly, and promptly takes the box and makes his way to his desk. John is looking through the window from outside, sees this and sends a text message to Alex, saying “It is done”.