The Accident- 2/2

This is the final part of this article...

The Experiment

Marie turned on the machine. It glowed with power and hummed with intension. Ben took one of his harps and placed it in front of the machine. He activated the machine's teleportation sequence and its emitters started to glow a subtle blue. The buildup in power was easily audible. and a sort of bubble began to form in front of the machine, around the harp. It looked similar to the visual distortion hot air creates as it rises and light passes through, only with an additional blueish tint. The "bubble" seemed to envelop the harp and then, quite suddenly, it was simply gone. But just where to, we all wondered.

Ben called up a friend of his at another university some three thousand kilometers away. His image appeared in the room. They exchanged short greetings and then our guest took Ben's harp in his hand, confirming that it had indeed been teleported there without the aid of a receiving station.

Ben revealed that he had set up a dampening field around the room which would render a regular teleporter useless. We tested Ben's claim, and confirmed it when none of us were able to connect to the grid and teleport outside the room. If there was any doubt in anyone then, it was soon quelled when Ben clearly teleported the harp back from our guest into his laboratory using the same process.

It was a success! We then decided to attempt a teleportation using the machine beyond the North American continent. We decided to teleport a big potted plant from Ben's office to one of our friends in Australia. It was about the biggest thing in the room we could move onto the platform. In retrospect, perhaps it was not the most prudent thing to do, but the excitement and curiosity got the better of all of us.

The Accident

This time we all huddled around the machine, giving it just enough space to complete its function. Ben activated the machine's teleportation sequence once again. It hummed and glowed as before, but it could not form a "bubble" big enough to encompass the plant. Ben raised the power level. The machine hummed more intensely and glowed more radiantly now.

Strangely, it was still not enough. At this point it is now abundantly clear that we should have shut down the machine then and there, but at the time I don't think anyone even considered it. Instead, Marie changed some settings on the machine and upped the power level again. The frequency of the hum and radiance of the glow began to climb at an increasingly alarming rate. Still the bubble did not form as expected. It was only then that the danger registered. Ben and Marie tried to shut it down. Marie cut off the power to the machine, but it was no use. The machine had absorbed too much power and had started some sort of internal chain reaction.

The humming was now almost unbearable and the glow made it impossible to look directly at the emitters. Everyone backed away from the machine. Ben activated the forcefield around the innermost ring, enclosing the machine, and then he activated the powerful forcefield around the entire platform. He didn't have time for much else.

I saw the the blue-ish "bubble" expand from the machine and beyond the innermost ring without any apparent resistance. It was as if there had been no barrier there in the first place. Then it passed through the much more powerful platform forcefield without any apparent change. The expansion of the bubble appeared to accelerate exponentially, and there was little space to cover. I saw a few of my colleagues trying to teleport out, but it was no use. The dampening field was still in effect.

Aaron was closest to the platform, then Ben and then myself. I saw both Aaron and Ben disappear in front of me as the bubble enveloped them. Then, just as suddenly, the world around me disappeared...

That's it for this article, but the story continues...