Inside a large, dark, underground room, a heavy machine occupied the entire back wall from floor to ceiling. An equally tall and impressive power source connected to the machine with thick diameter cables which snaked along the ground. The power source emitted an eerie, alien throbbing sound while it glowed an unnatural shade of green. A radiation symbol affixed to the front of this power source warned that it was nuclear. In front of the machine, two chambers, each large enough to hold a sofa or a refrigerator perhaps were labeled “source” for one and “target” for the other. Inside the source chamber hovering within a force field was a small, but perfect cube of pure, single-isotope gold weighing exactly 1 Kilogram. Each chamber was wound around and around by cables which threw off sparks of electricity causing shadows to flicker in and out of existence as the darkened room was illuminated by flashes of light.

Inside the source chamber, the gleaming, floating cube of gold waited for something to happen. Without warning, it began blurring and stretching. Then it started to break up and dissolve. In a final shower of golden glitter, it faded away and disappeared entirely! After disappearing, the source chamber de-energized and went dark, but then just a few seconds later, the insides of the target chamber began to glow with a soft, golden light. On a large, table-top, touch-screen control panel in front of the chambers, a status indicator with a bar graph that had reached 100%, the words below the graph read: “Entanglement complete.” Another bar below the first one crept upwards toward 100%. Below it was the words: “Transmission in progress.”

The light within the target chamber became brighter when a burst of yellow particles exploded from the center of the chamber. The yellow particles spun around but soon coalesced into a blurry six-sided shape. Not long after the six-sided shape came into focus, the object hovering inside the target chamber took on a cubic shape and it was clear that the same cube of gold from the source chamber had rematerialized and now floated in mid-air. The second bar on the graph reached its upper limit and the words below changed to: “Transmission complete.” The successful teleportation of a cube of gold across space without moving it completed.

The entire teleportation machine powered down after the successful transmission and the alien sounding nuclear power source beside it ceased making its unnatural noise and its glowing aura disappeared. The lights of the laboratory switched on now that there was sufficient power for them and a shapely figure with orange-sienna colored hair approached the target chamber wearing large, protective eye-goggles. She removed her goggles and revealed herself as Viviane Fox, the brainy and beautiful female researcher of the National Laboratory. As she examined the floating gold kilogram cube, another researcher joined her and also removed his safety goggles. It was Kylian who helped her with this experiment.

Viviane turned her attention to the table-top touch screen control panel and read the initial data collected.

“The scan of the gold sample has detected stray atoms of Platinum, Iridium and Lead in the teleported sample as well as a handful of missing gold atoms from the lattice. According to preliminary estimates, the teleportation of the sample was 99.999999999% accurate,” reported Viviane.

“Is that percentage better than before?” asked Kylian.

“Not really, but I’ll have to crunch the numbers some more to get a fully accurate count of all the atoms in the sample. Some of the atoms may be isotopes which we won’t know until later. I’ll stay up late tonight to get the answers,” offered Viviane. “When I start something interesting, I just keep working on it until it’s done.” Indeed, Viviane was dedicated to her research of quantum phenomena.

“Even though I’ve lived here for only a month, I’m still amazed that I was finally accepted for a position here at the National Laboratory to conduct my postdoc research. The Transportal in this lab is so much more capable than the simulations we used where I came from. Capital City is so urban, so modern, so beautiful, sophisticated and clean. It was a bit of a culture shock when I first arrived.”

Viviane shrugged her shoulders. “I’ve always lived here for as long as I can remember, so I don’t know anything else.” She smiled at Kylian as if to say “sorry” for not understanding how he felt.

Without any warning or making any noise at all, Dr. Leandre Renard appeared in the lab as if a phantom suddenly appeared out of thin air, startling both Viviane and Kylian.

“Yikes!” yelped Kylian. “Dr. Renard! I’m sorry, but I didn’t hear you come in.”

“Hmph,” grunted Dr. Renard.

“Oh! You scared me!” said Viviane. “I didn’t think anyone would be popping in on us.”

“I’m sorry for interrupting you, Viviane,” Dr. Renard said in a much gentler tone of voice. “What are the results of your latest experiment?”

Hearing his softer voice and realizing that he was not being grumpy at this moment put Viviane more at ease. She reported her results.

“I’ll have to examine the data further tonight, but my preliminary findings are that the statistics have not changed much since my last experiment. The accuracy has not improved, I’m afraid.”

“All right. That’s good,” replied Dr. Renard.

Dr. Renard then muttered something unintelligible to himself as he turned and walked away, but before he got too far, Kylian stopped him to ask a question. “Excuse me, Dr. Renard? How can you say the results are good when the accuracy hasn’t improved at all? It seems that we may have reached an upper limit on teleportation accuracy and we may never reach 100%.”

“I’m not worried about scientific results right now!” a gruff and loud Dr. Renard replied. Kylian recoiled slightly in fear of Dr. Renard’s vociferous admonition.

“The UEN government is going through its 10-year transition,” explained Dr. Renard, “and by the looks of it, the likely leaders of the new administration may not be as generous as the current one in funding our research or the STS force which protects us.”

“What will happen if they cut our funding?” asked Kylian.

“I don’t know!” said Dr. Renard clearly exasperated with the possibility of new political leadership coming up. “Maybe I’ll have to let a few postdoc researchers go. Aren’t you a postdoc researcher we hired earlier this year?”

Kylian smiled a crooked smile before answering. “Let’s hope that doesn’t happen.”

“I’ll be in my office,” was Dr. Renard’s curt reply. “Good day, um…whatever your name is?”

“Kylian, sir! Kylian Bouche.”

“Yes, of course, Mr. Bouche. I’ll try to remember that when I submit my budget request to the new administration.”

Dr. Renard turned to leave again, but before he exited the room, he softened his stern expression and, with his back still turned to Viviane, he said to her, “And good day to you, Viviane. Don’t be overly worried with your results. You’re a good scientist and I need sharp mathematical minds like yours working here with me.”

Viviane was used to getting compliments about her looks, but compliments about her work were few and far between so whenever she got them, she took them to heart.

“Thank you for taking an interest in my work, Dr. Renard!” Viviane was full of enthusiasm. She liked to work in the lab.

Dr. Renard walked off back to his office and left the laboratory.

Back in his large, spacious office with the blinds he always kept closed even during the day, Dr. Renard approached one of the walls which was really a large, touch screen monitor that stretched from floor to ceiling. On one section of the wall, a video feed from a security camera played. Room location, date and time overlaid the security camera video feed. The person in the security camera image turned around and revealed her face. It was Viviane! She was still in the laboratory where Dr. Renard had left her.

Dr. Renard stepped up to this monitor and stared at Viviane in the security camera video feed. After studying her for a few long seconds, he reached out his arm and touched a folder icon on the wall-monitor. The folder spilled its contents onto the wall. They were all pictures of Viviane! And they were all taken from recent security camera footage with room location, date and time stamp information displayed in the corners.

He reached out to one of the pictures and zoomed in on it. Looking side to side at the enlarged picture of Viviane, he studied it thoughtfully for some time before setting it aside and continued doing the same with another one. Again, he studied the next picture carefully, almost searching for some minute detail that eluded him.

As Dr. Renard worked on this important task of sorting through pictures of Viviane, another picture which did not have his attention at the moment sat on his desk. This picture was not displayed on a screen, but was printed on paper and mounted inside a frame and for that reason, it appeared quite old-fashioned as a way to display a picture. Inside the frame was a picture of two very little girls. They appeared to be no more than three years old and as best as anyone could tell, they appeared to be identical twins. They were identical in every way except for their clothes and that one tried to smile for the camera while the other tried to distract her twin sister.