Capital City, being the largest and most populous city of the UEN, of course, had its own Transportal. In fact, it had more than its own Transportal. It had four of them! Around the outskirts of the city and spread apart more or less evenly, each Transportal was secured and guarded by armed military personnel who operated each Transportal and kept things running tight. Along with commercial vehicles, light armored tanks, personnel carriers, fortified barricades and soldiers with rifles were a normal sight at the Transportal. Nothing came in or went out of a Transportal without proper checks and inspections. Everyone who entered or left was logged and recorded.

The Transportal itself was large and bulky. About the size of an airplane hangar for jumbo jets, the housing was shaped like a giant arch. Under the arched roof was the Transportal’s very large teleportation chamber which held a capacity of three or four shipping containers, like the ones seen being pulled by semi trucks, on a platform. Above the platform hung an equally large hollowed out cylinder. Coils of fat electrical cables wrapped around and around the cylinder and cooling tubes wrapped on top of that. Under the arch next to the teleportation chamber stood an even larger nuclear generator which, in addition to emitting an alien sounding hum and an unnatural green glow, provided the enormous amount of electricity needed to operate the Transportal to teleport matter from here to any other Transportal in the world.

Today started off as a typical day at one of Capital City’s four Transportals, Voltaire. (The other three were named Camus, Hugo and Zola.) A container of luxury bathtubs just arrived having been teleported from a country within the CoC where they were manufactured, but before the container could be released to a truck, inspectors must inspect the cargo. Two men with the duty to inspect approached the closed container.

“What’s this supposed to be again?” One of the inspectors swiped through a tablet looking for the documentation that went along with this container. “Looks like it’s a container full of expensive bathtubs according to the manifest.”

“Geez, what rich people will pay for these days!” The other inspector had seen it all. “They better be gold plated tubs to be worth it if you ask me.”

“No kidding! Let’s open it up for inspection and get them out of here.”

The two inspectors found the door to the container and raised the handle. The door swung open. Inside was dark so the two inspectors went inside with their flashlights pointed in front of them to look at the contents of the container.

“Looks like bathtubs for the rich if you ask me!” One of the inspectors sounded sarcastic.

The other inspector’s flashlight shone on the side of a tub which reflected a yellow, metallic shine. “And look, this one actually is gold plated.”

They continued to swing their flashlights around inside the dark shipping container inspecting the load, but then, they spotted something which caused their stomachs to fall and their hearts to rise up into their throats. A terrible feeling of dread overtook them as the dark closed in on them as they pointed their flashlights straight back into the container at one of the farthest tubs.

“Oh my God. Do you see that?!” One of the inspectors pointed with his free hand while the other gripped his flashlight.

“It looks like a person’s fingers!” The other inspector gulped.

Their flashlight beams both pointed at the same tub at the back of the container. Hanging down from the edge of one of the tubs was the hand of man, limp and unmoving. Only the hand could be seen. If there was a person attached to the hand, he was hidden inside the tub below the edge.

“Oh no! Someone was in this tub when the container was teleported here,” surmised one of the inspectors.

“I’ll go for the investigators. You check out the victim.” The other inspector scrambled away leaving his colleague alone in the dark container.

The one left behind eased up to the lifeless hand. He extended his arm with the flashlight as far in front of him as he could reach. The beam of light trembled as he approached. He could hear only the loud sound of his breathing as he shielded his eyes with his other hand afraid of what he might see.

He crept up only enough to peer inside and once he had a look, he stumbled back in horror. Inside the tub and connected to the hand was the corpse of a dead man! His face expressionless and his eyes stuck open but unblinking. He did not move, but in his death, his stillness chilled the air and emanated a dread far worse than anything alive ever could. The inspector picked himself up and also scrambled out of the container.

His colleague who had generously volunteered to run off and alert the crime investigators of the local police returned. The detectives he came back with took control of the situation, labeled it a crime scene and began a formal investigation into the death of a CoC worker who slipped through the UEN’s security protocol to be teleported to his death.

It was as Viviane told Kylian on the first day she met him at the National Laboratory. Since teleportation technology is not 100% accurate, living organisms suffered some kind of degradation in the process so that they arrived dead after being teleported. Despite their best efforts to prevent it, this tragedy was exactly what happened.