Beep beep beep beep beep beep beep, the alarm's annoying buzzing sound filled the room and eventually woke me up. I slammed the snooze button on my alarm clock to temporarily mute the alarm. I lay in my warm bed praying that this was a dream and that it was actually Sunday instead of Monday. Although Monday was the day we are supposed to test a prototype of the new short ranged teleportation device, so maybe its a good thing that today is Monday. I untangled myself out of my warm blankets and sat myself on the edge of the bed and switched my alarm off so that it wouldn't sound off again. I sat there for a couple of minutes thinking about how the test will go and how long it took us to get this far. Its been a long time since 2045 which was the year we started this project or Project SRTD as I like to call it. The year is now 2061 it I am happy that the time has finally come to test this. If this test is successful it would be a huge leap in technological advancement even though its supposed to be short ranged it can still have a ton of benefits to society from military and medical uses down to practical uses and convenient uses. I snap out of my thoughts and I look at the clock to see how many minutes has passed by since I first got up. 8 minutes. I walk myself out of the room and began to get ready for my big day.
I arrive at ASCI Technologies which is the place I spend most of my time, its pretty much my second home. "Hey Chris! Ready for the test run?" Jim said it a gleeful tone of voice. Jim is a good friend of mine and we worked together a lot on the teleportation device me and him are the brains behind this whole project. "Sure am I am very excited that we finally get to test this thing." I replied. "Well lets find out whether this device works or not, meet me down in the lab when you get your gear on. "Sure thing." I said waving back at him as he walked towards the stairs that lead to the underground lab. I put on my gear and meet Jim downstairs in the lab. "I got here early to make sure everything was setup when you arrived so that we could minimize the wait." he said as I walked in the lab. "Try hard." I teased. "So it should be setup and ready to test right?" I asked while looking at this amazing piece of technology, studying its spaghetti lie cables and wires trailing up 2 6 feet tall boxes next to each other. "If all goes according plan it should work fine." Jim says in a confident voice. The teleportation range is about 10 feet before the item or person its teleporting starts to dissemble at an atomic level the longer the distance the more dissembled the object or person will be. At least that was it says in theory for all we know it could have a huge teleportation range, or the 2 teleporters may not even be linked and the object will end up it the depths of space, there are millions of things that could go wrong with this type of technology. "Then lets put this 16 years of work to use." I said.
Jim places a small plastic box in the center of the teleportation box labeled "Import". "The object is in place and ready to be teleported at the push of a button." Jim said. Jim flips up a small glass boxes protecting the button that activates the teleportation device and pushes the button and an electronic voice from above says "Teleportation will commence in 5..." Jim and I rush into a protective room that can shrug off radiation and immense heat and even bullets if things get nasty. "...4...3...2...1 teleportation is in progress." A loud rumble started to emanate from the device and a bright flash of light blue light then a low pitch noise fading out into quietness. "Do you think it worked?" I asked impatiently. "Lets wait a few minutes in here then we will find out." Jim said. A few minuets past and we cautiously peek out of the small rectangular window to see if it worked. And there it was the small plastic box was now under the teleportation box labeled "Export". "HAHAHA, it worked! it worked!" I cheered. Jim was lost for words just staring at that box that had traveled a distance of 5 feet without any human or push-pull physical force acting upon it was amazing to him, that each atom was taken apart and resembled 5 feet from its original position is truly astonishing. "We have to do a few more tests on various objects before we get to living creatures. " I said to jim shaking him out of his day-dream like state. "Yes, lets." He replied.
We ran several objects and certain metals through the teleporter and they were all a success. It was not time to move onto live animal trials. Jim placed a small lab rat in a plastic box inside of the teleporter box labeled "Import" and pushed the button once again and ran into the protective room. Another rumble followed by a bright light blue flash and a low-pitched noise that fades out into quite. We both look at the small window and stare in disbelief, I too was now speechless I cant believe it actually works on live animals, maybe it will work with humans, it's worked so far why not one more time? "Hey Jim do you think it will work with humans to?" I asked him curiously. "I'm not sure but it's worked with live animals so far, but I cant just let you climb in there, that would break a ton of safety regulations and get us both fired." Jim protested. "Yeah, but somebody has to do it otherwise nobody will know whether it works on humans or not." I replied. "I cant just put you in there and hope it works. I don't want to risk anything bad happening." Jim said. "Oh come on it will work trust me." I pleaded. "Fine, but only once and after your done I refuse to teleport myself ." Jim said "Ok." I replied. I step into the teleportation box labeled "Import" and Jim pushes the button. My heart rate jumped as the rumbling began and a tugging feeling all over body began to take over, it almost hurt but didn't at the same time its hard to explain, after that my vision went black and I woke up in a dark forest.
My eyes shot open. I found myself starring at a dark cloudy sky shrouded by thick leaves and branches. Some moonlight trickled in between passing clouds. I noticed that I was laying on my back which should not happen. "Jim?" I call out into the darkness but to no avail. I look around and start to process my surroundings. I was in a forest, but the trees didn't look like normal jungle trees like in pictures and from what I have seen in some adventure movies? But I didn't know much about jungles so I thought that the trees were just uncommon or something like that. I was still waking up and it hit me like I had been hit like a freight train. I'm in the middle of god knows where and all I have is my clothing and... My phone, I reached in my pocket to pull out my phone and see if it worked but the screen was just black and completely unresponsive. I'm such an idiot when I get back... If I get back I am so fired. it must have been my phone that got me into this mess the electronics or the signal that could have been affecting the teleporter range or something. I couldn't think straight I needed to rest until morning but I am not laying down on the ground I got to build some shelter before I sleep.
I get up off the cold ground and began to slowly walk towards a good sized stick for the spine of my shelter. I want to lean it up against a tree and set it up like a tent, I don't know what they are called but I seen it on a TV show once and it worked. I propped my big stick up against a sturdy looking tree and began to collect smaller sticks to lean on the big stick. Just as I thought it couldn't get any worse I heard the distance noise of Thunder. "Great, just what I needed to be cold and wet." I cursed under my breath. I picked up some large fallen leaves and hastily set them up over the smaller sticks to create some make shift shingles. I also put some large leaves along the ground to make it some what comfortable, but it wasn't much help. I tried to fall asleep but I couldn't my mind was to busy processing information and thinking of plans for tomorrow. I decided it would be best to think what I would do tomorrow and the next day to stay a step ahead and possible increase my chances of making it out of this forest alive and back to my nice home. "Home..." I said softly. I now know how much I took my home for granted and wish I wouldn't have been so blind. Maybe this is God's way of telling me that I should not take things for granted, if there is a God. I start to hear the rain beat down on my shelter and I was afraid that the structure would fall apart and I would get drenched. I lay my head down on the damp cold ground and began to drift into the sweet embrace of sleep.
I sat up in my bed staring into my bedroom, I took note that it was a lot darker than before, normally I have a computer monitor that it constantly on and I never shut it off. It probably performed a few updates and shut itself off, I couldn't even see my desk from my bed it was so dark. I stood up on the floor and I got a sudden feeling like I was being watched by a silent killer, the ones that learn your every move and wait for the right moment instead of just killing you on the spot. Always watch out for the quiet ones I noted. I had no idea why I thought that it must have been my subconscious thinking. I walked towards the door of my room and from the other side I hear a very strange noise emanating from the outside of my door then it stopped. I opened the door only to find absolutely nothing. Darkness everywhere everything was black, I couldn't even tell if there was a ground or not. I stepped back and grabbed some metal disks that I had from work that was laying on my desk. I tossed one disk into the darkness and sure enough it hit some kind of floor, it was the same level as the floor in my bedroom so that was a plus. "This must be a dream." I say to myself. I tossed a few more disks out into the darkness and the same result for each one. I concluded that there was a solid base there and It was safe to walk on, I decide to take a step into the darkness and I land one foot and sure enough it hits the same surfaces the disks did, I take the other foot and plant it next to the other. Big mistake as soon as I landed the other foot on the surface the floor just fell out from beneath me and I felt that weird feeling you get when you go down a steep slope on a roller coaster and I hit water, despite falling for a good second or two hitting the water did not hurt, it was as if you jumped off a small diving board. I tried to swim to the top but I couldn't it was like the water didn't exist but I was still drowning in something.
I snapped back from my nightmare only to find my shelter had failed and I was now soaking wet in cold rain water. By now the storm was going pretty hard and it was pouring rain. "UGH!" I shouted in anger. "Nice, just what I need to start my new jungle life!" I yelled sarcastically. I decided that I would just cover myself up in a bunch of wet leaves to prevent my from getting any more wet than I already was.
I slowly rose to consciousness. I opened my eyes and was assaulted by green light shining through the leaves. I throw the leaves off of me and took in my surroundings for a second time. It looked way different that it did in the night, in the night I couldn't see very many details about the trees and other plant life. But in the daylight it was a whole different place, the trees where completely different, I never seen trees like this at all. There were some similarities but it was almost like I was on a different planet. I strayed my attention from the trees to the sky, it wasn't much different so I assumed that it was my lack of knowledge on jungles that was confusing me.
I begin to start on my journey deeper or hopefully out of the jungle, I had no idea what direction I was heading but I decided that I would head towards the sunrise. As I was walking through the jungle I noticed that there was not a single tree, bush, plant that I knew, I might not know much about jungles but I certainly know that there has to be some familiar plant life in a jungle. Many things could've happened during teleportation but being teleportated to a whole new planet that cant be right. I continued walking until the sun reached its highest point in the sky. I decided to take a break and sat next to a tree and thought for several minutes about my life. I thought about if I would die here, or if this is even the right planet, I didn't recognize anything here. I thought about how I never really did anything with my life. I worked, went home maybe played some games with the spare time I had. I never got married never had kids I was just a guy who had a job and played games and did nothing. I was just "living" drifting through life as if it were a lazy river only I was just floating doing nothing exciting or having any fun life experience. Now I am here to live out the rest of my mundane life, I regretted not doing anything with my life and I began to cry.
I wiped my tears from my eyes and got up and began walking "I am not going to die like that." I reassured myself. I walked for hours the sun had begun to set and the moon was starting to rise. I looked at the moon for a few seconds and noticed it didn't look quite the same as the one on earth maybe I was on a different planet but if so, which one I had no clue where I was. All I know is that I am stuck in this jungle on some planet or maybe I am crazy and I was on earth, or I was in a coma and this was all some weird dream. I was so confused and I had no idea what to do. I heard a branch crack just off to the left of me, I jumped away from the sound and looked in the general direction of where it was coming form. I focused on a pair of sharp yellow shapes in a bush nearby around them was a silhouette of some kind of animal. I started to back up and ran the other direction If this was a different planet I did not want to encounter any kind of creature that could harm me, even if it meant no harm I still didn't want to see it. I ran as fast as I could the other direction I looked behind my shoulder to see if it was chasing me, it wasn't there. I stopped to catch my breath. I heard a deep growl coming from behind me, I froze in place decided whether I should turn around and face whatever is behind me or run again. I slowly turned around and found the same pair of glowing yellow eyes that were staring at me before. We both locked eyes for at least 30 seconds. The wooden beast turned away and headed the other way. "Definitely not on earth." I said to myself. I turned around and began senselessly walking.
