A Stone's Throw Away

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One

The professor's abrupt change in inflection snapped Brian out of his daze.

“This was done on a scale never before achieved by mankind. Today, it stands as a tribute to man’s undying commitment to survive. I never said it didn’t help.”

That Brian had only been half listening was something that happened more often than he would admit. As the morning progressed, this day was worse than usual. Earlier, although the professor did not stand in the sun, the reflection from the floor caught his white shirt. Bright, it left Brian little choice but to gaze out the windows. The view was green, rich, and earthy. It kept vying for his attention.

Prone to wait on what others said and did, Brian wasn’t comfortable participating; he’d rather observe than contribute. When given center stage, it made him very nervous.

Analogizing, hitting all the points, the professor went through his dissertation. Brian caught something about a group of people known as Polynesians. He missed the first half of the analogy, only caught that they were island hoppers. Once they discovered a new island, they would go fetch the rest of the clan, set up shop so to speak, and then consume what was available to survive before moving on. At least it went something along those lines.

As Brian gazed out the windows, he heard Danny ask trying to clarify, “So what you’re saying is we should have been planet hopping to maintain a steady supply of new resources?”

Danny was more or less the class leader or clown, depending on whether it was the teacher’s point of view or that of a peer. It was not because he was a dominant figure; it just gravitated to him. Willing to take the initiative, Danny always cracked the first joke or brought something unusual to the attention of the others during class. Unlike Brian, Danny didn’t mind the spotlight.

Almost noiselessly, a slight giggle escaped the small group.

“Obviously, we won’t be doing any planet hopping,” the professor stated. He acknowledged the groups understanding of man’s ability to apply the science necessary to make it so. “But once we were committed to doing just that. Survival was the motivating factor while the earth’s resources were depleted.”

“So what are you saying…?” Pete asked.

Between Brian and Danny, Pete was middle of the road. He was not an instigator, but more than willing to participate in anything Danny suggested. It fell to Brian to steer them clear of anything too outrageous.

“Simply this,” Ed said. “We ended up in the same position as one particular tribe of Polynesians who found an island which provided abundantly. Over the course of one hundred years their numbers grew to over ten thousand strong.”

It was a phenomenal number. Brian tried to imagine that many people standing outside of the window.

The professor droned on explaining something to the effect that they didn’t foresee the collapse of their civilization until after it had begun. By then, it was too late. There weren’t enough trees on the island to make canoes. Without canoes, those left behind starved. Unfortunately, most were left behind.

Not able to visualize, Brian gave up trying to picture that many people.

“That’s us in a nut shell,” the professor went on. “The Earth is just an island in space. We’ve consumed everything we understood how to make use of, and now, for the time being, this is where we’re stuck.”

Brian decided that had to be the professor’s analogy the Earth was an island in space.

“So we traveled here and missed our ride out?” Pete asked. “Because we didn’t recognize it was time to move on and go island hopping through space?”

“A very good question,” the professor observed. “The answer is no.” He then paused, more to draw everyone’s attention to make a point rather than any reservation on what he was about to say. “Nothing in our history suggests our ancestors traveled here. It does show a steady progression of gaining knowledge as we learned the sciences and then a continual improvement upon that knowledge as it was applied. Gentleman, I actually believe it all started right here, but so you know, there is no proof one way or the other. If we did travel here, then all knowledge as to how we did so has vanished completely.”

“Didn’t you tell us a while ago that there were manned flights into space generated from this planet?” Danny asked. “Were any of them looking for a new place?”

“No,” the professor said again, “those flights never ventured beyond Mars. It’s an age old problem: Space. The space between us and where we need to go is far too great. The time commitment for any one individual is far too long. We wouldn’t live to make even part of the trip there, let alone there and back.”

“So we wasted resources on something that didn’t help?” Pete asked.

Brian expected the professor to say yes and wished the class were over so he could go outside and enjoy what he saw through the windows. It continued to beckon to him and finally gained a foothold completely when he saw the plane.

He began to wonder what it would be like to fly, free to go over the fence.

As to why he was drawn to the outdoors--was elusive. There was no place to go and nothing to do except chores within the confines of the fence. Brian had lived inside of it all his life. He had walked, worked and seen just about every square inch of accessible space.

The fence, though, represented protection. Actually, more than represented it, it physically provided it. The thought of truly going beyond it enticed him, but at the same time scared him to death. The danger was all too real.

In the plane, he would be above the reach of any danger and free of the fence’s confines.

From within the safety of the fence, he had witnessed encounters between wild animals, which terrified him. Predators, which seemed numerous, were vicious. He recalled one instance that happened so close to him while doing chores…it was intense when it happened, and just the thought brought on an adrenaline rush.

Then Brian heard Ed’s voice change where it caught his attention, and he quickly quieted the need to respond. The rush was slight; he was safe in the classroom with the professor.

“Those efforts, though, produced unmanned flights which are traveling to other planets. Think about it, gentleman; spaceships built here traveling within our galaxy.”

For the first time, the professor had everybody’s attention. Brian moved to the edge of his seat and leaned forward. What he heard was impossible, especially compared to their finite existence within the fence.

“What was the point of doing that if there’s no one on board?” Danny asked. He looked around at the rest of the class. He had stated what should have been apparent to whoever launched those spaceships. He wanted to know why they had bothered.

“Personally, it won’t do us any good,” the professor admitted. “Those ships have a long way to go before they’ll reach their destinations.” He then bestowed upon them some incredible knowledge. “We have the capability to man those flights any time we wish.”

A deep silence spread within Brian’s mind as he abandoned the senses of hearing and sight to digest this information.

The whole class was there; the professor took them there, as he had others before them. Brian caught the professor’s reaction, and intuitively knew he was waiting on them with bemusement. Ed was an excellent professor, who over the years had taken many a student down this path of realization, and then appreciation of man’s ability to accomplish the impossible.

“How can we do that?” Brian asked.

“The science that makes this possible is the Dupe. It’s what gives us hope,” Ed said, starting to smile. Everyone smiled then. It lightened the atmosphere; he was making a joke. “The time we get on is totally discretionary. We choose when.” The professor still smiled, though his tone never strayed from serious.

“We’re depending on a food processor to zip us through space to these ships that are hundreds of years old?” Pete yelled out, and the room erupted with laughter.

“Hey, sounds like we’re toast,” Danny shouted, wanting in on the act. It worked too; the professor waited, until they were silent.

“It’s more than a food processor,” Ed said. “The first ships won’t be arriving for a long time. They’ll be a lot older when they get there and none of you guys will be getting on.”

“No joke?” Brian asked.

“No joke.”

“Well,” Brian said, prompting for further information, “are you going to tell us how it works?”

“Sure. Dupe is slang for duplicator. You already know that, fine. Zero plus zero equals zero. You know that too, fine. This translates into: You can’t make something from nothing.” The professor paused. “Okay, that must have sunk in. When you’re at the cafeteria, after you select your food items, the platform holding your selection glides down to the dispensing doors just like an elevator. It has just left a chamber containing a cloud of every known element on the earth. It assembled your food from that cloud.”

“That basic, huh,” Danny said, feigning boredom. They ate three squares a day at the cafeteria. A previous teacher had already given them the tour. It was pretty familiar stuff.

“The men who maintain the Dupe go to great lengths to ensure they keep enough of every molecule suspended in that cloud to duplicate more than just food. That’s all you guys ever get to use it for. If a bearing has to be replaced on a motor, as long as the monitor on the Dupe has a selection for it, presto, it comes out from behind the same doors.”

They knew that, but Danny asked, “Will it do a solar panel?”

“It’s a selection.”

“Will it do a computer terminal?” Pete asked, with something just as complicated but larger.

“It’s in there,” The professor said. “Look, you guys aren’t going to keep me here all day trying to outdo each other with things that can or cannot be duped. Let me say this. When someone here dies--we use the Dupe to replace them. Every one of you came out from behind those doors.”

And for the second time in one day, the room went totally silent, this time, for much longer.

***

“Food’s good,” Danny commented to no one in particular. Brian and Pete were seated with him around a small table. Danny was just mading conversation; no one ever talked about the food.

As they ate, they now understood fully what the Dupe could do. They stared at the dispensing doors while others used it. This room for them was the cafeteria, and it was hard to fathom that they were just another item on the menu it had spat out.

They all had chosen the same lunch of gourmet fish. Spiced to perfection, fall-apart tender; it came with an array of different dips and garnishes to complement it.

For them, the cafeteria had transformed into something much more than a place to eat.

“I’ll never be able to look at that thing the same way,” Brian said, his mouth full. “What it is--is amazing. If we had access to more than the food menu, anything we want is ours. It’s a wish come true.”

“The genie is out of the bottle,” Danny said, with a grin. “Go ahead, wish for something.”

“Something,” Pete said, taking it a step further. “This is much better than a genie. We just call it dad and it gives us what we want. That’s a whole lot better than the three wish thing.”

“It’s too bad it didn’t work as it was intended,” Brian said.

“Yeah, an accident,” Pete said, “Anything we want instead.”

“You heard the professor,” Brian protested. “It wasn’t an accident. It’s an invention being used for something other than what it was intended. It will send you to any one of those ships.”

“It was an accident,” Danny pounded the point home. “They didn’t make it to produce food or anything else. They wanted a transporter. But it’ll dupe you instead and one of you will be here with us and on the other one will be on the ship, but soon dead, as you starve. In case you weren’t listening, there’s no one on board to take care of you.”

***

In the afternoon session, the professor continued. He wasn’t just teaching this, he was adamant about it. He told them that Dr. Stan Swanson was the Dupe’s inventor. Stan’s problems began when he succeeded in transporting a live monkey from point A to point B.

Though the monkey died within minutes of transporting, Stan was elated. Clearly, the monkey was alive upon arriving at point B.

It worked!

Selecting another monkey, Stan’s team put it in at point A. There, it was digitalized, vaporized, and transmitted to point B, where it reassembled within the chamber now called the Dupe.

Autopsies showed both monkeys suffered the same fate--heart failure.

Three days later, after recalibrating and testing the equipment, the third monkey lay on the descending platform, dying, like its predecessors. A quick thinking team member, back from vacation, ran out of the room and into the hall. He grabbed a portable defibrillator, tearing open the package as he ran back. He cleared everyone and zapped the darned little thing with it. When he did, it jerked horrifically in response.

Its heart began to beat.

It lived.

Soon, the champagne was flowing.

Cameras recorded history.

Later, someone noticed the monkey. The poor thing was still lying on the platform. After the pictures, the Doctor must have set him down. Obviously, enduring the aftereffects of transporting, the monkey was gently picked up and placed back in its cage where it was left to rest.

This moved the party to an exclusive club.

By the next morning, newspapers around the world printed exclusive front-page articles with pictures taken at the lab, of the doctor--who loved to smile for the camera--with the history-making monkey. The following day their celebration continued. No one reported to work. They basked in the attention, and would do so for as long as they could. Only those who cleaned cages and fed monkeys let themselves in that day.

The morning after that, Stan was first to arrive at the lab. He went directly to see the monkey, who was now famous, and certainly had Stan destined for the history books. It was lying in its own excrement; its food and water were left untouched.

A day later, it too died.

The doctor who performed the autopsy said the cause of death was the result of dehydration.

Stan personally visited those responsible for maintaining the suspended element cloud in the chamber. He wanted to know if sufficient oxygen and hydrogen levels had been maintained. He was assured they were, and they had done so as well for the previous two monkeys.

A few days later, Stan and his team were ready. Another history-making monkey was vaporized. Its heart restarted. IVs inserted. This time, there was a medical staff. They would provide care around the clock. Stan brought in several primatologists, experts in monkey behavior. They were at his beck and call. They would observe and record everything.

He vowed to the press, “This monkey will not die.”

He was correct.

Ten days later, the medical staff left. There was nothing for them to do. There never had been, except for the first day. They told Stan that the monkey was doing fine. They assured him it was just as fit physically as it had been before transporting.

The primatologists didn’t draw the same conclusion. Physically fit, yes. But they told Stan it was as if the monkey was learning everything anew. Monkeys learn quickly so it was hard for the experts to say for sure how the experience affected it but to them it acted like a newborn.

This analysis led Stan to believe that the transporter project was a failure. If it transported you without your memory intact, it was useless. From the beginning, they knew this might be a possibility. The prevailing theory said it wouldn’t be a problem. If the equipment worked as it was designed, and it did, it read and reassembled every atom to its correct position. The memory was there.

The primatologists suggested they could be interpreting recuperation as learning. They really didn’t know and that darned monkey couldn’t communicate what it had gone through.

The next morning, Stan’s staff found him lying on the platform. He had rigged a timer to the defibrillator and had an empty IV bag above him. He had donned those before going in. Stan’s eyes didn’t quite focus on them when they talked, although it was as if he tried. His pants were wet and urine dripped onto the floor from the platform.

His brain functioned as a blank slate.

From birth, until two years of age, the brain develops to eighty percent of its adult weight. During this time, the brain generates millions of neurons; those make thousands of new connections while motor and language skills develop. Unfortunately, at Stan’s age, his brain was fully developed. He would be capable of learning, but neurons would not make nearly as many new connections; therefore, it would take him a lot longer.

***

“Can you believe what the Doc did to himself?” Pete asked. “He just invented a gold mine. Why didn’t he realize he didn’t have to vaporize himself to be duped?”

“He was thinking transporter all the way,” Brian reminded him.

© C. Lee

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For part two: Click here to read

Update 9-12-09: I have completed this work. (now in for editing)

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