Transmission

The transmission lounge was small, and mostly deserted. It was, however, exquisitely tasteful in décor, and home to a very sophisticated coffee machine. Teleportation was a new business, and certainly not cheap. Only the richest people could hope to be clients.

Only the richest people, and Tucker Brophy. He had been through the teleporter dozens of times, and had all the funds he needed to go through for as long as he liked. It was his job. Industrial espionage wasn't exactly the word, but his employers at Versatech were rather agitated at having been beaten to it in the technology stakes. The operators, LyleCorp, had issued a few press statements of incomprehensible technobabble, but remained understandably tight-lipped about the precise methods by which the system worked. Brophy's employers had to catch up. Who knew how long it would be before LyleCorp developed the technology to the point where it could be made affordable to the masses? Versatech would be left dead in the water. So Brophy consulted various experts, and went travelling every time he thought he might have a breakthrough. So far, no luck. The whole thing seemed kind of smoke-and-mirrors. You go into the chamber, the technician tells you to look at the screen, everything goes hazy and there you are, on another continent.

Well, perhaps he would learn something soon. An old friend from college had offered to meet him about it. Bronson Green, or Professor Green as he was now, was a pretty big wheel in some kind of high-tech research. Brophy didn't know the details. Of course, it would have been easy to discuss matters over the phone rather than go all the way to the San Francisco institute, but why not incorporate a fact-finding trip?

"Okay, we're ready for you, Dr Brophy." The official signalled politely at the door. "It's transmission suite two."

How long would this attitude survive when the unwashed masses started teleporting? Brophy wondered. Probably not long. As it stood, the whole thing felt at odds with the clinical and scientific nature of the travel.

Observing from the read-out on the monitor that Brophy was a seasoned traveller, the technician simply motioned into the chamber. Brophy strolled in and positioned himself on the marker, in familiar territory now. It was like the dialling tones of a familiar number, or the startup procedure of his computer; he recognised every sound as it came. The hissing of the well-maintained servos as the scanner descended from the ceiling, the warm electronic voice instructing him to focus his attention on the target symbol on the screen before him. The beeps and whirring that, even now, he wasn't sure were authentic or merely for show. And then...

Nothing. The target replaced with a dialogue box. "Checksum complete." He was still there. What had gone wrong? This had never happened before. And he turned to ask the technician who was opening the door...

And then he saw the gun in the technician's hand, and thought, they know. They know why I'm here, what I'm trying to find out. And in the next instant he thought no, they can't do this. Even if they did know, they can't do this, it's illegal. And then his thoughts were interrupted by a feeling like he was being repeatedly punched in the torso, and he staggered back against the tiled wall. And then a very bright flash, and he didn't think anything after that.

---

The official thanked him airily as he strolled through into the reception lounge. Thank you for the money, more like, he mused. There were days when he got worried he was not worth the budget Versatech were expending on him. Certainly he hadn't been able to glean anything from this trip. Maybe he would learn something that might make the return journey more enlightening.

The taxi which conveyed him to the Institute seemed laughably archaic. He met Professor Green in the café which looked out over the grounds.

"I know something you don't know," said Green, after they had exchanged pleasantries.

"Go on."

"Do you remember Chris?"

Brophy considered. "Chris Jones or Chris Roberts?"

"Chris Roberts. Anyway, I bet you didn't know he used to work for LyleCorp."

"Really?"

"No kidding. Research division. I heard on the grapevine that he was on the team that developed the original prototype."

"Is that true?"

Green shrugged. "It's what I heard, is all. He doesn't work there any more. I saw him a few months back. Just one of those coincidences, we were both in London. You know the funny thing, though? The guy didn't recognise me! I had to remind him who I was, the idiot."

Brophy frowned. "Weird."

Another shrug. "Well, he did do a lot of drugs, as I recall."

"Was that what you wanted to tell me?"

"No, that was just gossip. I'll get to the point." He leaned back in his seat. "When you first told me you were on the LyleTech reconnaissance detail, I got to thinking. You know how I contributed to the work on the universal constructor?"

"Yes..?" Brophy knew no such thing; he had long lost track of Green's exploits, all of which had always seemed to take place in some theoretical alternate universe. "Remind me. That was the thing with the quantum, right?"

This earned him a strange look. "No... the universal constructor. You don't remember? Well, it was a machine for constructing and orientating organic matrices. I mostly contributed to the theoretical side of it, but by the time I left the project they were thinking it might actually be possible to build one. It's a machine for making any object out of its component elements."

"What, literally anything?"

"Yes! Well, no, in reality it would probably be much more limited. But the theory is sound. I won't try to explain the whole thing but you use electrical arcing through a heavily modulated overlay of magnetic fields... anyway, it brings the elements together and bonds them, so you get carbon and carbon, then you get carbon and oxygen, and so then you're getting basic alkyl structures. In theory, if you had a powerful enough computer to control the thing it could make any compound. And arranged into any spatial configuration, so then you can make any object."

Brophy took a sip from his drink. "Okay, I get it," he ventured. "So what does it have to do with me?"

"Well, it's an interesting thought, is all." Preempting Brophy's response, he continued. "It occured to me that if your technology was sophisticated enough, and you had all the necessary data, you could make a human being. You can make anything, you see? It's like... it's like a photocopier."

"Like a photocopier?"

"Yes."

Brophy sighed. "Why didn't you say that before? Anyway, carry on."

"Well, that's it, really. It was just an interesting thought. What if you made a copy of a person, and you had a universal constructor halfway around the world? You transmit the data, and then voila! Teleportation."

"It's a cute idea," Brophy admitted, "but it doesn't really work. For starters, you said there were no universal constructors."

"When did I say that? I didn't say that. There weren't when I left the project. Who knows where anyone might have taken the research since then?"

"Who were you working for?"

"It was publically funded. The material's all available if anyone wants to read it."

"Okay. But what about the person? You make a copy of them, okay. But you said it's like a photocopier. Suppose you make a... well, actually it's more like a fax. So you send a fax to another country... they get the fax, yes, but you didn't SEND the piece of paper. You've still got it. The analogy doesn't hold. How are they sending the actual person?"

"I don't know," Green admitted.

"Can you turn the person into data? Can you turn a person into data, like they go... into the wires, and..." Brophy waved his arms ineffectually. "That's stupid, isn't it?"

"You can't do it, to the best of my knowledge." Green yawned expansively. "Look, I admit I'm as much in the dark as you are. I just thought it might interest you, or inspire you, or something."

"Yeah, I know. It was good to see you. I'll have to come visit more now I've carte blanche to use the teleporters. Anyway, I'd better go report back. Enjoy the, uh, research."

Green nodded as Brophy got out of his seat. "Have a safe journey," he called after him.

---

He thought about what Green had said as he entered the chamber. You couldn't just transmit somebody like that. You'd end up with two people. It'd be an organisational nightmare. People aren't sheets of paper, they sleep and breathe and eat. He imagined, briefly, somebody faxing a message and then shredding the original, burning it. And then he cleared his mind as the voice instructed him to focus on the target.