Into The Stars

“My name is Sebastian McKnight, lead scientist of Project Atom. It is currently…4:32 am. I’d give the exact date but I’ve been in the labs for about three straight days and I’ve had enough coffee to rewrite time, so you’ll have to rely on what the recording tells you. And right now, we’re waiting for the interns to go home and stop peeking in the lab.”

I gave a short introduction for the recording as I fiddled with one of the cameras in the room, and kept passing glances in the direction of the small herd of interns working on this or that beyond the windows of my lab. They technically didn't have the clearance to come in here, but they were curious, and I wasn't some tyrannical douchebag, so I never chased them off if they had questions or wanted to say hello. I didn't mind the company most times.

I minded it now though, and I was doing my damnedest to look very busy in order to dissuade any interactions they might be considering. Because tonight was the night that my project was going to make its maiden voyage to the next level.

Project Atom. My magnum opus. No, it’s not about bombs, if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s the study and application of teleportation. It’s years of research and a thousand failed attempts, but finally, we made the first teleportation machine. It only moved things from one side of the room to the other, but let’s be realistic, that’s a hell of an achievement.

Teleportation was the first step in the direction of the future that was always promised by brilliant imaginations and hopeful thinkers. Teleportation, flying cars, floating cities. It was a future that wasn't totally impossible anymore just by this project existing and actually functioning.

We started with fruits, inanimate things like stuffed animals, and coffee mugs. It all worked out fine, though some things did come back on the other side a bit singed, or smelling like ozone. But nothing exploded or turned inside out, which was a massive step in itself. For the most part, we had mastered teleporting little things, little distances. We tweaked and adjusted, and eventually, things were transported wholly unharmed. I was thrilled. My big masterpiece was making headway, you know?

So…it’s natural for someone to get a little cocky. We’d had a few successful trials with mice and rabbits, and getting them to survive the trip through. I didn't like that we started with animals if I'm being honest. The critters didn't do anything or even understand what was happening, and there were more than enough awful people serving life sentences in prison who could do something to benefit mankind with their time by being test subjects. But that argument often led to a very long meeting about ethics that never went anywhere. I wanted to move on to human trials, and I was going to one way or another.

Just...in a manner that was barely toeing the line of legality. But I had good reason.

You would not believe the amount of red tape that needed to be gone through for that. Six years. Six years unless every animal trial from that point on was one hundred percent successful. Project Atom was already in its fourth year of running. I wasn’t about to wait another six just to see if I could go from one side of the lab to the other, at the cost of a hundred or so more fuzzy little critters.

Hell no.

As you no doubt have guessed, this created the dilemma I had been in. Abide by the boxy little laws in place, or strive to take that great step for mankind. It was a short-lived dilemma. Tonight was my chance to test fate. See, no one ever found it odd when I stayed late or worked through the night. I can be a nightmare to work with when I’m in the zone, so most of the other techs leave or go about business elsewhere. It wasn't that I was an asshole or anything. It was just like talking to a wall that nodded every few minutes, or turned the music up louder when you spoke. Not exactly ideal working company. Which is perfect for my current idiocy.

Bravery? It’s a fine line between the two.

Without anyone around, I was free to test my creation. Using myself in place of a monkey or a pig, which were the next 'planned' subjects. Just a few calibrations were all that was needed. Or so I thought.

We’d never done human trials before. Human bodies were complex, and more difficult to account for than the little body of a Capuchin or a bunny. But I wanted my human trials. I wanted to see my masterpiece a reality and out in the world. I’ll admit, I wanted the fame for it too.

So I set everything up and pulled on the phase suit. I was ready. I was going to be the first human to teleport, and I had it all on this little video camera sitting on the control panel.

“All systems go. The way I see it, this is either going to fail, and I’m going to wind up a pile of meat in the other pod that you can’t fire because I’ll already be toasted. Or, this works, and I walk out of that other pod unscathed, and you can’t fire me because I’m fucking brilliant. Either way, it's another step toward progress. So, I’ll see you on the other side….hopefully.”

I can’t tell you how much adrenaline went pumping through my veins. Closing the pod door, and just hearing the hiss of the airlock? I’m pretty sure my heart was beating so fast it had actually stopped.

I waited, watching the little timer go down for the initiation. Lights blinking to life with the startup sequence. The whir of servos. The thrum of power ramping up. It was all crystal clear, and I was ready. At least, I thought I was ready.

Reality? I probably should have gotten out of that pod, said to hell with the six years of trials, and shut the project down to keep people from playing God, namely my idiot self. That’s what I should’ve done. But is that what I did? Absolutely not.

I gave the camera a thumbs up, and stood like a damn trooper in the middle of the pod, trying not to vibrate from my excitement as the sequence started.

Teleportation is a weird feeling, I’ll tell you that. That pins and needles feeling you get when your leg or something falls asleep? Yeah, it's like that, only everywhere. It’s tingly, and cold and hot at the same time. Sort of like being microwaved, I’d guess. And then suddenly you just...disappear. It feels like you’re going on a waterslide, or that’s the best way I can describe it. The motion of it. Just...being pulled and driven in a direction without much choice in stopping or slowing down.

I waited. I waited to see the inside of the other pod. I waited to see some little intern waiting outside the pod with a look of pure horror and shock. But I never got it. You know what I got to see?

The control panel for my machine explode. Sparks and smoke everywhere, the entire room blinking and twitching. And then..?

Nothing.

There was nothing for what felt like forever. Until there wasn’t. Until suddenly there was ground. There was me, all corporeal, all there. And somewhere very unfamiliar.

And god was it hard to breathe. Like there was too much oxygen, or not enough. Whatever it was, my chest felt like it was full of plastic bags, all wet and sticking together. That’s when I saw where I was. I had never seen anything like it. The structures, the materials. It was like something out of a sci-fi movie. I actually had to reach out and touch it to see that it was real and that I wasn’t dreaming or something because if I was, then this was starting like a nightmare.

That’s when I found a window. Just a tiny little thing, that looked an awful lot like a porthole. I thought maybe I had landed in some other area of the lab, or maybe someone somewhere else had made a machine like mine and I’d wound up there. I couldn't think of who my top competitors were in the moment, or if there were whispers of any other country working on teleportation. But there was a chance I had wound up there, right?

Nope.

When I looked out that window, I saw stars. Millions of stars and blackness. And one thing in particular stood out.

Earth.

Looking through that window I saw my own planet, and then suddenly, it blurred away, whizzing by until I could no longer see it. I did what any sane person would do in that instance.

I screamed.

I screamed and cried and panicked until I got so lightheaded, that I passed right the hell out. Guess the difficulty breathing should have been a warning to keep my cool. Not my proudest moment. But, well, I had just seen my home planet go by, and I wasn’t on it. I was shocked, it was jarring, and I was going to panic, goddammit.

When I came to, or more so, when someone had shaken me back to consciousness, I thought maybe all of that was a dream. That I had just been working too hard, too long, and with too much coffee. All perfectly plausible scenarios. Granted, none of them were the case, but I was content to think so until I came face to face with reality.

Literally.

When I woke up, it sounded like someone was trying to talk with a mouth full of marbles at me. None of it made sense, it was just...garbled mess.

Then I saw who was doing the talking. Or rather, what? Everyone thinks aliens are these little green men or these tall grey guys. Well, they’re wrong. I mean, they’re probably wrong, at least for this guy. Because I was met with the sight of a beast of a being. And I don’t mean furry looking, I mean this being was massive. Clearing my height by at least a foot, and could probably break me in half and not even break a sweat. But that wasn’t the weird part. That wasn’t the part that threw me into a second state of panic.

He was green.

And he was a lizard.

He was an honest-to-God lizard person.

Naturally, I freaked out. Wouldn’t you? Waking up thinking you just had some crazy caffeine dream only to see a lizard guy poking you like you were some funny-looking critter, you’d panic too.

However, I wasn’t expecting him to panic back. The moment I screamed he leaped back like I had just fired a gun, shouting in his...weird…marble gargling, waving his hands, and scrambled out of the room. I took that precious time to jump into action and look for some means of escape, or even an explanation to what the hell was going on. That lasted all of three seconds until I hit the floor.

I passed out again. Funny how quickly a whole lot of screaming and panicking could wear a person out when they were barely breathing.