Dr. Jasmine Bashir stared at the computer screen, her brow furrowed in concentration. She was short, barely creeping over 5ft, which resulted in her lab coat almost brushing the floor. It was as wrinkle free as a military uniform, and was a dazzling bright white that contrasted with her light brown skin. Her dark hair was pulled back into a ponytail, to keep it out of her face. A pair of protective goggles on the top of her head completed the ensemble. She had been told to dress up, but there was no time for fashion statements. There was work to be done. There was always work to be done.
The shadowy figures stared intently. She did her best to ignore them, but they grumbled and whispered between themselves. In the centre of the group was her boss, Jason Davies. Technically, he was everyone’s boss. The CEO stood in sharp contrast to the other members of the board. He was barely older than Jas, his spiky blonde hair a shade lighter than all the grey hair present on the other board members, at least for those that still had hair. He was broad shouldered and square jawed. Everything about him looked chiseled. In a cheaper suit he might be mistaken for a bouncer, but even with her limited fashion sense Jas could tell that it likely cost more than she made in a year.
She was mistaken. It cost three times as much.
Jason said, “Thank you all for coming down here on such short notice. I’ve asked Dr. Bashir to demonstrate the process and answer questions. Within reason.”
A bulky gentleman with an impressive moustache said, “I have a question. Where’s Professor Jasper?”
The question was directed at Jas, but Jason jumped in before she could answer. “Truthfully, we don’t know. No-one has seen or heard from him in over a fortnight. The police are actively searching for him, but so far they haven’t found anything. The speculation is that he may have left the country.”
“Left the country? Do you have any idea what we’ve spent on this science experiment? Are you telling me that he could have just waltzed off with all our research, and taken it to the highest bidder?”
“I’m not concerned about that, and you shouldn’t be either,” Jason replied, his face calm and oozing confidence. “For three reasons. Firstly, Professor Jasper wasn’t well. Anyone working with him can attest to some of his more fantastical theories, and his behaviour was increasingly erratic. As such, we took precautions to limit his systems access, and monitor his communications. I reviewed those logs personally. There was no indication that he attempted to access or copy sensitive data. Which leads me to the next point. We segregate responsibilities here. Each team member only knows part of the process, so no single person can recreate it. Thirdly, this equipment is all custom built, using bespoke processors. Only three companies in the world have the fabrication equipment required to create the control chips, and we bought all three of them. So you see, there’s nothing to worry about.”
“Your Father wouldn’t have let something like this happen, god rest his soul,” mumbled Mustache.
Several of the other board members took a step away from him, clearly expecting an outburst, but Jason kept a lid on his temper. “Well I am not my Father, as I’m about to demonstrate. He spent years working on this, but never could get it functioning properly. I have. Now Dr. Bashir is going to show you how.”
The entire board turned to stare at Jas, and she felt herself shrinking under their gaze. She fought the urge to scream the truth, that she was out of her depth, that they never would have made it this far without Professor Jasper and his staggering breakthrough with the transfer formula. She couldn’t do that though. These people were sharks, if there was even a sniff of blood in the water this would turn into a feeding frenzy, and she would be the chum.
She took a deep breath to calm her nerves. What she was presenting was impressive enough that she could let the demonstration do the heavy lifting. All she had to do was point and talk. She cleared her throat and began. “Thank you Jason, and welcome esteemed members of the board. Please direct your attention to the small glass room over there, in particular, the table.”
The board did as asked, and stared at the small plate of cheese.
After a long pause someone said, “It’s cheese?”
“Yes. Watch carefully.”
They waited patiently. Several seconds went by. Jas shot a glance over at Miles, who was frantically typing away. Of course he’d messed something up, it was his default state.
Murmuring started from the board members. It was an awfully long way to bring someone down here to show them a block of cheese that they’d spent hundreds of millions of pounds on.
Jason was the only one that looked calm. He wasn’t the sort to ruffle easily. He jumped to Jas’ aid. “While we’re waiting for the system to warm up, I should remind you all that you have signed very thorough NDAs. You may be tempted to tell someone about what you see today, but please resist that urge. I hate to give the lawyers any more money than we already do. You’re the first people outside of our very small team to witness this, so any leaks will be easy to track down.”
“What exactly are we going to bursting to reveal, that we saw a nice plate of cheddar?” Moustache grumbled.
A few chuckles lightened the mood just long enough for the blue lasers to kick in. They swept back and forth over the block of cheese, bathing it in light. A detailed model of the cheese slowly started to render on a large monitor above, with each progressive pass adding more and more detail.
There was a flash of light, causing several of the board to gasp. Jas shot a glance at Miles, who said, “Small power spike, but within acceptable tolerances. Ok to proceed.”
Ok to proceed.
That was Miles speak for whoops. His primary job was to smooth out the supply of electricity to the lasers. The power controlled the depth, a sudden jump like that could have unfortunate consequences.
Unfortunate consequences should be Miles’ family motto. He was at best useless, and at worst a danger to himself and others. It made Jas nervous just being in his general vicinity, incase the incompetence was contagious.
He wasn’t the first colleague she’d bumped heads with. Jas went through assistants faster than most people went through toilet paper. She told herself it was due to her high standards, but Jason had finally ran out of patience when she tried to fire Miles. Apparently there had been complaints. HR were apparently spending more money interviewing new assistants than they were paying the actual assistants. They made the convincing argument that the company would be better off financially if Jas learned to live with with an idiot assistant, rather than trying in vain to find one she liked.
The timing of this revelation was particularly unfortunate because, of all her assistants, Miles was easily the worst. He made the same basic mistakes, over and over and over. His errors were so consistent that Jas was starting to think he was doing it on purpose, just to wind her up. To make matters worse, he had the personality of a ham sandwich. Either HR had slept through the entire interview or Miles was related to someone high up in the company. Every time he was late to work, which was most days, Jas assumed he was standing in the lift, waiting for someone to teach him how the buttons worked. This was the guy responsible for millions of pounds of complicated equipment.
“How much longer?” she asked, doing her best to keep any hint of frustration out of her voice. It was her natural tone with Miles, and dialling it back was proving challenging.
“Ten more seconds until transfer complete,” he replied, completely oblivious.
Jas nodded, her face impassive. There was nothing to be concerned about. They had done this dozens of times. Even Miles could get it right every once in a while.
The blue light continued to intensify as the scans captured more and more detail. Soon they were at a level not visible to the naked eye. A few more seconds and they would reach maximum fidelity.
With a blinding blue flash the cheese disappeared from the glass room, and several of the board members audibly gasped. Someone said, “Where has it gone?”
Jas pulled up the image on the large TV next to them to show them the perfect render of the cheese, down to every minuscule imperfection. “It has been transferred to the digital world.”
Moustache said, “I don’t understand what you mean by transferred. You mean you scanned it?”
“No, I mean transferred. The cheese no longer exists in this reality. It has been moved to the virtual world.”
“It’s been destroyed?”
Jas sighed. It might take a while for the board members to understand the sheer magnitude of what they had just witnessed. She’d have to break it down for them. “Not destroyed. Destruction is a one way process. As I said, it has been transferred. The final stage of the scanning process is at the molecular level. To scan at that level of detail requires a large amount of power, and as such it destabilizes the molecules. In effect it captures the essence of the object and perfectly recreates it in the virtual world, at the same moment it is destroyed in our world.”
The old man’s moustache bristled. “What use is that? You had something of value that you could touch or eat, and now you don’t. Couldn’t you just create a virtual block of cheese without having to waste a real one?”
“Technically yes,” she replied. She looked over at Jason, and he nodded. It was time to pull out the big guns. “Perhaps things will become clearer after our next demonstration.”
Moustache huffed. “This better be good young lady, because right now I’m not impressed. I didn’t agree to spend all this money so you could build the world’s most expensive photocopier. We were promised something revolutionary.”
Jas moved over and grabbed the small metal cage that was tucked away under the cloth. She lifted it carefully and carried it over to the glass room. With a swipe of her key card the door slid open and she placed the cage in the centre. Then she quickly backed away, the door sliding back into place with the quiet hum of magnetic locks.
The board members stared at the small mouse in the cage. Its fur was bright white, the only imperfection a small dash of black at the tip of its tail, as if it had been dipped in ink. Before they could ask any questions the blue lasers started to scan it, and with a loud squeak and a puff of white fur, it was gone.
“You killed it!” bellowed moustache.
“Not exactly,” Jas said. She changed the view on the screen to show the digital mouse running around in its virtual cage. With a few clicks she opened the cage door, and the mouse immediately escaped. It ran over and took a bite of the cheese.
Their response was a mixture of awe and confusion. Jason Davies slowly nodded his approval, and turned to face the other board members. “As you can see, this is a little more advanced that a photocopier.” He threw a quick glance at moustache and continued. “Not only is the physical object scanned, its memories and behaviours are also transferred. Think of the R&D potential. This is next, next generation. We are at the forefront of this technology, at least a decade ahead of anyone else.”
“How is this possible?” asked a wispy haired lady at the back.
Jason smiled, revealing a line of perfect white teeth. “I can’t go into specific details, the technology is proprietary. As you can imagine there are a lot of people that would like to get their hands on something like this. The possibilities are quite literally endless.”
“So is it still alive in there?” she asked.
“In a matter of speaking, although it actually depends on your definition of alive. As you can imagine we’ve had some pretty deep philosophical debates as to the implications of something like this.”
The shock had worn off, and moustache went back on the offensive. “You said its memories were transferred. How do you know that? It’s not like it can tell you.”
“We’ve run several tests where we conditioned the mouse on the outside, and they follow that conditioning in the virtual world, so we know that their memories remain intact. In addition, they continue to behave exactly as you would expect a mouse to behave, down to seeking food and shelter, despite hunger not being a thing in their new world. Their instincts are so ingrained that they cannot ignore them.”
“Would this same thing work on a person?” the wispy lady asked in a barely audible whisper.
Jason answered at full volume. “Alas we don’t know that yet. We’re a long way from human trials. We’ve only just started the rodent testing, but even at that level, this technology has the potential to be a game changer. We conservatively estimated this will add trillions to our annual revenue, and only go up from there.”
Jas was relieved to see that the board members all looked suitably impressed. Any moral concerns had been quietly washed away by the tsunami of money that they all saw on the horizon. Jason had them eating out of the palm of his hand. They had been building up to this day for months, and it had all gone off without a hitch, even without Professor Jasper here to lead the charge.
Jason beamed, radiating confidence. “I think that’s enough to demonstrate where the considerable investment has gone. Hopefully now we can stop the constant balance sheet nit-picking.”
There was a lot of nodding.It really couldn’t have gone any better. Now he just needed to stick the landing and get them all out of here as quickly as possible. He gestured towards the lift. “If you’ll follow me back to the board room we can finalize the Q3 budget and let everyone get home.”
The back row of board members turned to leave. Then moustache cleared his throat and ruined everything. “Can you bring it back out?”
The expression on Jason’s face didn’t change, but Jas had worked with him long enough to recognize the subtle shift in his body language. It wasn’t panic, because Jason never panicked, but he did have contingency plans he’d really hoped not to have to use. He spoke slowly, as if choosing each word carefully. “We’re in the process of fine tuning the retransmission back to this reality. The team is still working through some complications. We expect to have more to share about that in the next quarter. Rest assured, you’ll be the first to know. Now if you’ll follow me…”
“What happens?” said moustache. “I want to know what you mean by complications.”
The other members of the board started to murmur. This wasn’t good.
Jason sighed wearily and nodded at Jas. “Bring it back.”
“But Mr. Davies…”
“Bring it back.” He repeated more firmly, his eyes locked on hers. She had tried arguing with him before when he got like this. It rarely ended well for her. This wasn’t part of the demonstration, and for good reason.
Jas glanced over at Miles. He looked nervous. Actually, he looked more than nervous, he looked guilty. Like someone about to commit a crime. Which depending on your interpretation of certain laws may indeed be the case.
All eyes were on her again, but this time she didn’t have reason and scientific method to calm her nerves. Quite the opposite. All their experiments had ended the same way, and statistically speaking, there was a very good chance the board members were about to witness something that would require several rounds of therapy to forget.
“Start the transmission,” she said, meekly. She was barely audible over the hum of the equipment.
“You sure?” Miles said. It sounded like concern, but Jas knew exactly what it was. He wanted to make it very clear that this was her decision, that he was just following orders.
This was it, her last chance to turn back. Jas glanced over to Jason, hoping that he might have changed his mind, but he nodded.
“Begin transmission,” she said, accepting her fate.
Miles did as asked, and grid lines appeared on the mouse on the virtual display. The blue light in the glass box shifted to green, and shone just as brilliantly before, almost blinding the board members in the process. Jas instinctively pulled her protective goggles down over her eyes, but it wasn’t the light she was protecting her eyes from. She just didn’t want the board to see her closing her eyes.
The mouse briefly appeared, in one entire piece, which was a first. For a fleeting moment Jas let herself believe that this might be it, their one in a million chance, but it was dashed by the ear splitting sound of a small white rodent being forcibly turned inside out. That was quickly followed by an even worse smell. When the green light finally died down it revealed red smears on the inside of the glass box, with a handful of larger chunks. Jas noticed the presence of a fully intact perfect pink tail, which she chalked up as a small victory. It was the largest piece they had successfully transmitted, although it was highly doubtful the mouse would describe anything that had just happened as successful.
“Dear god, you killed it,” bellowed moustache, in a very deja vu kind of way.
“Yes, this time your statement is accurate. The mouse is indeed dead.” Jas said with a sigh. She avoided making eye contact with Jason, but she could feel his glare burning into her. She was starting to envy the mouse.
Jason attempted to turn things around. “As you can see, right now it’s a one way trip, but we’re working hard on the return journey. All the more reason why continued funding is so important.”
“But that mouse…” started the wispy lady.
“Has made a noble sacrifice in the name of science, like so many of its kind. You don’t get to live on the cutting edge without a few bumps and bruises along the way.”
His point was punctuated by a wet plop as the tail rolled off the table and onto the floor of the glass box.
Even Moustache was speechless, and Jason saw his opportunity. “Now please, let’s continue this conversation upstairs and leave the technicians to troubleshoot.”
He ushered the still stunned board members from the room and threw a glance at Jas to let her know just how much trouble she was in.
When the lift doors shut Jas finally exhaled and fought the urge to vomit. She only held on because she really didn’t want anything else to clean up. She glanced over at Miles, who looked considerably less traumatized. He grinned. “I think that went pretty well, until the end.”
“Until the end? You mean the part where we exploded a living creature in a small transparent box, in front of the entire board of directors?”
“Yeah. That part wasn’t great, but they seemed happy about everything else.”
An idiot. She was working with an idiot. He wasn’t qualified to operate a laser printer, yet they let him play with high powered lasers that could make your insides your outsides.
It was times like this she really missed Professor Jasper. He was the brilliant mind that had guided them through every bump in the road. After their initial rocky start, he was the one with the huge breakthrough, the simplification of the formula that allowed seamless scanning and transfer. He’d completely flipped their world upside down, and then vanished. No-one had seen or heard from him since.
Which left her stuck with Miles.
“Run a full diagnostic. Jason’s going to want to know what happened here, and we better have a damn good answer.”
“Already running,” he replied, in a demonstration of almost competence. It was telling that the part of the process he had the most practice with was the part why they tried to determine what went wrong.
Once, just once, why couldn’t Miles have done something right?
Jas paused. Perhaps some good might come of this, a silver lining in her stormy horizon. If she could prove unequivocally that this was Miles’ fault, then maybe, just maybe, she could break the spell and get Jason to fire him. She’d settle for no assistant over this walking catastrophe. At least that would give her one less thing to worry about.
* * *
Jason Davies closed the door behind the last board member and slumped into a chair. Those people were exhausting. How did anyone get to such a powerful position whilst simultaneously being too afraid to do anything at all? It was an utter mystery. He promised he would never end up like that, terrified of every new technology that dared to peek its head over the horizon.
He didn’t need them for too much longer. If his mysterious benefactor came good on his promise, he wouldn’t need anyone. He’d have more than enough money to run whatever experiments he wanted. There was just the pesky matter of ironing out the last little kinks in the process.
Right on cue his phone rang. Not his normal phone, the one he’d been given. Only one person had the number, and he only had one instruction. Answer when it rang, no matter what.
He cleared his throat and answered the phone. Before he could speak the heavily synthesized voice on the other end said, “State your timeline.”
Straight to business as always. Whoever they were, they certainly weren’t a fan of small talk.
Jason cleared his throat. “We’re close. Very close. We just need another month to….”
“You have 48 hours.”
“But 48 hours isn’t going to be…”
There was a sound as the other end disconnected.
He had two days.
A volatile mixture of emotions completed for his attention. Anger, frustration, panic and regret. He’d sacrificed too much for this to go wrong now. He would be ready in time, no matter what it took.
Jason was walking back through the lobby when he noticed the solitary light on in the offices. He could easily guess who it belonged to. He strolled down the hallway and knocked on the door.
A woman’s voice said, “Who is it?”
“It’s Jason.”
The door swung open to reveal a bedraggled woman in a gaming t-shirt that was in serious need of a wash. She brushed her strawberry blonde hair out of her face and said, “I know what you’re going to say.”
He smiled. “I’m going to say it anyway. Go home Sarah!”
“I can’t. I’m close. I’ve almost cracked the problem.”
“Look, I’ve been working hard to change the corporate culture around here. The industry still jokes that DAS will only employ insomniacs. It’s not helping when everyone sees you still working at 11pm. I know you’re still working through your break up, but take it from me, this isn’t the answer. If the CEO is telling you that you work too much, you might have a problem.”
She laughed. “Point taken. I promise I’ll leave just as soon as…”
“Now Sarah. Whatever you are working on will still be here tomorrow.”
She hung her head, defeated. “You’re right. I’m going.”
He reached out and placed his hand on her shoulder. “It’s all going to be ok. You know where I am if you ever need to talk. I worry about you, I don’t want you to burn out. You’re one of our most important team members.”
“Thanks Jason. I really appreciate your support through all this. Most CEOs wouldn’t even know my name, let alone care that I’m working late.”
“Well I care Sarah, I really do. Now GO HOME!” He emphasized the last two words playfully.
“I will. I promise. I’m shutting down now.”
Jason nodded and left. He made a note to have a chat with his head of security. They were under strict instructions to let him know that an employee was still in the building after 10pm. Things could have gone horribly wrong.
He made his way back to the lift. He still had more employees to kick out before the real work could begin.
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