Those assembled sat patiently, if a little nervously, along one large, banked side of the Colosseum. Some were rubbing encouragement to the circulation in their fingers, and all were wishing that the weather that day had been set just a degree or two warmer. It was not their being part of such a huge throng that was making them nervous, but the anticipation of the event that had caused so many of them - dozens of them - to chose to come together. To see dozens of people in the course of a whole week was cause to raise an eyebrow; seeing so many others at once served only to indicate the magnitude of the occasion.
A murmur rose as the lighting fell, and when the sky over the Colosseum was fully dimmed, a flutter of applause greeted the delivery of the speaker to the floor of the arena. He left his conveyance several yards short of the centre and walked with exaggeratedly heavy, almost clumsy footsteps to the podium. He climbed the five steps equally ludicrously, lifting each foot with an effort worthy of wearing lead boots, and puffing and panting like an asthmatic. It looked comical, but the significance of the joke was lost on most of those present.
Leaning an elbow on the lectern, he smiled at and studied the audience, then spoke. His words were inaudible to all except those at the front though, so he shrugged, tapped his forehead in exasperation, then gave the carved stone column a sharp kick. Right on cue, the green of the light microphone glowed on his lips as though his boot had goaded some circuitry within the lectern into life. When the chuckles subsided and the microphone had refined its focus and disappeared, and he began to address them again.
"Friends, my thanks, my thanks." The crowd stilled and quieted.
"It pleases me greatly," he said brightly, "to be back to speak to you again. I am quite overwhelmed! I had no idea that my little trick would draw such a number of you from your units."
He shielded his eyes and pretended to peer as though the crowd stretched for miles. "So many of you! Some must have come a long way. My thanks to you. It would have been far easier for you to stay amongst that far larger crowd." He nodded a smile toward the monitor, and made it a good one; that smile would beam out from screens across the planet, and be recorded for posterity.
He turned back to the audience: "That larger and... shall we say relaxed crowd", then back to the monitor: "Yes, you out there. Those of you too lazy to travel!"
Another ripple of laughter came from the audience, which was suddenly cut short by one loud clap of the speaker's hands. "You laugh? Well, I admit that with the word 'lazy', I was jesting... a little," he smiled. "But travel, in a sense, is the reason that I have asked to come before you all today." He paused for several glances to be exchanged, for comments to be muttered, then continued.
"The term 'lazy' may be a trifle misplaced, as who can be blamed for remaining in the comfort of their units when travel is such a... distasteful labour?
"What need is there to travel? Why leave the contentment of your own rooms, why cross the bounds of your plots, when relatives of my friend over there," he said, nodding to the conveyance that had delivered him where it hovered some distance away, "will supply whatever you desire to your portals within minutes of its requisition?
"Why travel for any reason? You are within a button's touch of contact with your siblings, and dial's turn of any environmental setting you choose. And real environments? The worlds are littered with remote eyes, and you are within a monitor's choice of the full-dimensional imagery of desert, of tundra, of plains or forests. Why travel? Surely, there is not one reason to."
His smile faded and was replaced by a look of solemn wonder. But what if," he said slowly and quietly, leaning towards the monitor, "there were reasons to travel.... and you could travel... from place to place...
"...LIKE THAT!"
The second sharp slap of his palms jolted the audience from the spell of tension he was building, their gasps loud enough to be picked and echoed up by the light-mike.
"I am here to tell you that there most certainly is reason to travel. There are places not available to your units, vacant, almost forgotten zones where the monitors do not see. There are jungles that their gazes do not penetrate, caverns devoid of power and illumination, tundras whose snow has not suffered a human footfall for centuries.
"Imagine the feel of plant matter against your skin," he continued, clearly enthused. "Imagine the touch of atmospheric rain against your face, the scent of living fauna in your noses. To experience these marvels, one would have to... have to visit.
More murmurs from the crowd; the speaker knew that he had their attention, but felt that they were still more intrigued than excited. One face though, unnoticed, remained rigidly impassive.
"There are reasons to travel, and my illustration is but the merest of them. Once, we burned with the desire, the need to travel, and today, now, I wish to show you something that will surely rekindle that fire with a desire-rich oxygen."
During the long silence that followed, two pillar-like objects were floated into position one either side of the lectern from opposite sides of the arena. To the audience's surprise, they appeared to be constructed of an unusual-looking material that glistened with a sheen that suggested it could even have been metal!
The speaker's vigour was quickly shut off with a shrug and an idle point to each pillar. "My trick," he said, almost apologetically.
"Friends, I must confess that my little preamble on travel was, er - forgive me - wandering a little from my true course here today. I wish to demonstrate a new means of travel, a new method that is so self-explanatory that if I had spoken more directly," he said, "I would have needed to say little more than 'Watch this'," at which he smiled.
In front of him, the two columns slowly revolved to show that they were in fact open-fronted cylinders, empty, but with inner walls alive with the pale violet flux of some kind of fixed field. They continued to turn until the narrow vertical openings faced each other, and then were still. Those assembled muttered their curiosity for a few moments, then fell silent as the speaker stepped down from his podium. "Friends," he announced, producing a small handset from a pocket, "I give you... a tremendous advance in teleportation!"
He pressed a button, and with a low hum, purplish iridescence leapt from each cylinder, in an instant, crackling, rippling then settling into a thin sheet of opal energy suspended between the two. Standing behind this field, the speaker was picked out by the pale glow, perfectly spot-lit in the dark arena as he made the audience wait for his next words.
"The transportation of the future, my friends. In fact, not only of the future, but of all time!"
He heard a gasp rush around the arena; almost felt one rush round the globe. He did not, however, notice the one impassive face begin to scowl.
"In days long, long passed, my friends, teleportation was a popular postulation amongst physicists and fiction writers alike. Objects, people, even whole planets could or would be moved from one point to another in the blink of an eye, they said." He clasped his hands together and made a face of resigned weariness. "Of course, you will be aware of the history. There were successes, but successes of little value, other than to the theorists who proved their own mathematics correct.
"Who needed it? Who needed near-instantaneous transportation - of inanimate objects only, mark you - when the engine required to drive the process was the size of a small asteroid? Who needed light-speed teleportation across space when FTL had already been in use for a hundred years?
"But what if - what if - the obstacle of engine size could be overcome? What if living beings could pass through and emerge unscathed? And what if... even the marvel of Faster-Than-Light could be surpassed, if light speed transportation - which gives the illusion if being instantaneous only on a planetary scale - could become actual, literally instantaneous transportation, over any distance, even galactic distance?
"Friends, those things have come to pass."
Applause and gasping reached their loudest, lasting for almost a minute. The speaker soaked up the plaudits graciously, waiting for the noise to subside. Finally, he requested silence with a slow, palms-down gesture.
"You see before you a prototype, but one still a thousand times smaller than previous engines. You see a prototype that has the potential to be reduced a hundred times further, and the potential to reach the stars in only the blink of an eye!" He walked to one of the metal columns and patted it fondly. "This engine, this particular engine, has limits to its range. Off-planet is not included in the settings of this model, but the physics that spawned it imply - no, guarantee - that with only minor improvements, my extravagant claims will become realities."
He looked away from the monitor then, away from the expectant faces of the spectators, and down at his clenched hands for a moment of silent composure. Then, with a sharp intake of breath, he snapped his head up again, wide-eyed, and announced. "So now! Now, all I have to do is to demonstrate my faith in my discovery."
He sensed a trace of disquiet amongst those in the Colosseum, and so he quickly reassured them in a faster, quieter voice. "Friends, we will discuss the mechanics of my little trick here momentarily. You will be amazed at its simplicity, as you will all be familiar with the physical theories which I have... let us say 'combined' here to produce my effect. However, you will all surely admit to yourselves that, academics though you are, you are burning with the will to see my trick performed." He chuckled. "Are you not?"
He took there amused sighs as acknowledgement, and moved slowly toward the field of
violet energy. He hesitated to only speak into the monitor: "No speech, no chosen words for
posterity. My deed, not my words, will carve my name in history." Then he spread his arms wide
and strode forward...
...And the scowling man threw himself out of the front of the crowd and hurtled towards the centre of the arena. Dodging around one of the machine's columns in two rapid steps, he launched himself headlong at the speaker, half wrestling him to the ground as he wrapped his arms around the startled man's neck. It took several seconds for the amazed onlookers to see that, seemingly from nowhere, the attacker had produced a long, curving, almost transparent blade, which now pressed heavily into the flesh below the speaker's Adam's apple.
There was a long, stunned silence: unsought physical contact was a bizarre enough sight, but violence? Violence was unheard of; an entry in historic dictionary files and nothing more. The look on the man's face stunned them further: the expressed emotions, the anger, the fear. Also alien were the emotions they themselves were experiencing, the shock and even, yes, the excitement, combining to freeze them into fascinated inaction.
The attacker shouted something abrupt and garbled, but as the light-mike was not on him, his command could only be guessed at. Several strangled panting noises were audible from the speaker, followed by a plea for calm.
"Friends - friend - let us all c-compose ourselves, p-please!"
A muted whirr came from the lectern as a second light-mike rose beside the one aimed at the speaker. "No!" the captive yelled, struggling to turn and direct the cry somewhere to his left. "No! Let him be, let him speak. He has broken convention to do this. He has risked his own existence. Hear what he has to say."
The speaker managed a nod and a wave of a partially free hand in the direction of whoever he had called, and almost immediately a second disc of green light centred itself on his assailant's lips. It focussed, but this time did not fade from view.
"They can hear you now," said the speaker calmly. But the man did not speak, not straight away. He held the speaker so tightly that his captive could feel him begin to tremble, and their heads were so close together that he could hear the faint squelch of his repeated, nervous swallows. Shortly though, he relaxed his grip slightly, cleared his throat, and unnecessarily leaned a little forward, closer to the microphone.
"I..." His first word was a squeak, terror over-tensing his vocal cords. He swallowed again and coughed. "I'm sorry," he began, "I'm sorry, but someone had to stop this."
His voice was gentler than the speaker had expected, and it was not clear whether he was addressing the man he held close or the greater audience, far and wide.
"Stop what, friend? This demonstration?"
"Ha! This demonstration! You must stop this work of Evil!" Even as his emotion rose, still his voice retained something of its softness.
"Evil, friend?"
"EVIL!" The audience shuffled, made more uneasy yet by the assailant's choice of words. The use of such an archaic word was causing concerns to grow: maybe this was not some simple stunt, maybe the man suffered mental sickness. But how? How could any sickness go undetected and uncured?
"Evil," the man continued. "This machine is the work of Satan."
"Satan...?" said the speaker. "Aah... 'Satan'! I see you are an educated man, friend. A student of the evolution of the mind."
The man slackened his hold on the speaker and whirled him around to look straight into his eyes, pressing the point of the blade in just below his breastbone. Despite his actions, the speaker could not quell a rush of sympathy for the man. Clearly, he was desperate, driven by something real to him, however bizarre he appeared to those watching. His face, skin slicked by sweat and eyes wide and pleading, was that of a desperate man, but not, thought the speaker, that of a madman.
"Evolution?" he said, then turned to address the monitor. "I tell you friends, Satan is not an artefact of the birth of human thinking, not a convenient, fictitious scapegoat upon which we blamed our evil deeds. Satan lived, and lives today. He works against us all, and we see his tools before us today!"
The speaker began to reassess his conclusions on the man's sanity. "Friend," he said, trying to sound as jovial and light-hearted as possible, "I think we left Satan in our wake when we first left our own solar system. I don't believe he ever really grasped the principles of Faster-Than-Light, so I think it's safe to say he gave up the chase long ago..."
"Do not take me for a fool, for a primitive!" The speaker felt the point of the weapon press harder, press upwards, and had to stand on his toes to avoid it breaking his skin. He felt perspiration begin to speckle his own forehead, and nervously shot a glance to those controlling the equipment.
"Enough debate," his attacker continued. "I cannot expect to trade logic with such high minds as those present." Silence, briefly, then he emphasised the sarcasm in his previous remark with "High minds, but minds so closed that anything contradicting their own 'truths' can never be confronted, only mocked."
A rumble of comment welled from the audience, the speaker began to respond, but the man silenced him with a jab of the blade. "Enough, I said. Now, tell them how this... this diabolic contraption works," he ordered.
"Wha...?"
"Describe the process," he said, at once calmer and more straightforward in his manner. "Speak simply, so that the simplest of these high minds may understand. Tell them how it works. That is all I ask."
"That is... all?"
"All. Enlightened, they will understand."
The speaker felt a rush of guarded relief, even managed a nervous smile to the monitor, and simply said "I will."
The man withdrew the blade, roughly manoeuvred the speaker back to lectern, then stood behind him, resting his knife hand on his captive's shoulder. The beam of his mike followed his mouth, illuminating the nervous licking of lips, the short, panting breaths.
"Well... where do I begin?" The speaker gave a loud sigh. "The principles involved are basic, almost identical to those of light-speed teleportation. The subject matter is scanned with a full range of frequency and particle beams, and a complex and extremely accurate map of its makeup at an atomic or molecular level is calculated. This map, as I call it, has until now been transmitted electromagnetically - ie, at light speed - and then received, decoded and the subject is regenerated. That is, or always has been the basis of all teleport theory since the idea was first postulated so very many years ago."
He paused. The man said nothing, only shook his shoulder once, roughly, urging him o continue. "Three flaws," the speaker went on, "apart from speed limitations. One: the vast energy input needed to physically create the new matter at the point of receipt. Two: the gargantuan machinery required. Three: anything living sent arrives dead.
"My little trick uses similar systems of scanning, but at an almost infinitely higher resolution. The 'map' this machine produces goes way, way beyond the atomic level," he said, his enthusiasm rising despite the danger of his situation. "This system produces a map that details the very position and energy of every subatomic particle, even recording the position of each electron in their orbits around the nucleus at the instant of scanning!"
Also pushing thoughts of his danger aside, those assembled gave muted exclamations of awe. "And the energy required?" the speaker continued. "It is but a pittance of the light-speed teleport's consumption. The critical, vital energy in this process comes directly from the subject's disassembling, and is transmitted as an integral part of the data stream. This is how the problem of transporting living material has been solved.
"Then, combine that with the incorporation of gravity channel theory so successfully employed in FTL engines, and you have near instantaneous--"
"Enough. What becomes of the subject?" The attacker's voice was cold, quiet, but clearly audible.
"I... Why, the subject is transported."
Behind him, the man repeated some of the speaker's words. "The vital energy comes from the disassembling of the subject."
"Yes, but the subject is reassembled in absolute, infinitesimally perfect detail. And you cannot transmit matter itself, only energy."
"Near instantaneous transportation," the man said flatly, then lifted his voice as he raised his head toward the monitor again. "Near instantaneous. So there is a moment in time, however brief, when the subject has been torn apart but not stuck back together."
The speaker seemed confused. "Well, I... I wouldn't call it being 'torn apart', but... I suppose--"
"They are dead."
Silence. Then: "No, no, no, they're not dead, friend. They are merely... Listen, the subject is reassembled before they are even aware--"
"...That they are dead," the man finished. "All that arrives is a duplicate, a copy. Kill one, create another in its image."
"B-but... the subject is... is perfect in every detail. Every detail, down to the unimaginable minutiae, is exactly as it was in the original! Every chemical process, every memory, every thought and experience is there. The subject has lost nothing of his mind, his body, his very essence!"
"NO!" the man bellowed. "No. The copy has the memory of the man you have just killed. The copy is a creation of science, a conversion of energy into ordered matter, nothing more." The speaker tried to turn to him, but the blade was quickly raised to his cheek. "If you are right though, friend, who is to know? Who can say that the 'copy' as you put it is not the original? Not even that 'copy' himself! If you yourself, friend, were transported in this way without your foreknowledge - let us say in your sleep, or only moved by some fractional distance - you would have no idea that anything had occurred! Would you not be, to all intents and purposes, still you?"
"No, I would not. And intents and purposes? This goes against God's purpose."
"Oh, God's purpose!" the speaker exclaimed, unable to contain his exasperation. "Friend, freedom dictates that you are allowed whatever ideas you chose, even something as primitive as gods. But really, can you honestly believe that a doctrine dead for centuries should halt our progress, especially when it was that very progress that gave the lie to 'gods' and such, made such fancies obsolete?"
"Life is for God only to give, and God only to take away," the man said flatly. "If you send people through that... that abomination, you will kill them, and create Godless imitations to replace them. They will be empty vessels; hollow, soulless beings," he said, pausing to scan the faces of the audience, "and mark this: Satan will rush in to fill the void!"
The crowd was restless and increasingly anxious now, convinced now that the man was a maniac. Some began to edge forward, leaving the banks of the Colosseum and stepping onto the floor of the arena. The man was distracted by this for a moment, allowing the speaker to turn slowly, still within his grasp, and talk directly to him unheard by his own microphone.
"Friend, you must cease this. You must stop, or you will be stopped. Do you understand me? They," - he nodded towards the equipment managers in the wings - "will stop you."
The man seemed to think for a moment, then his eyes widened and he shrieked "NO! It is YOU that must be stopped!" at the same time raising his arm, holding the wavering blade high above his hostage.
The speaker remained calm, and was even about to close his eyes in acceptance of whatever was to come. But he glimpsed something; it stopped him cold.
In the centre of the dim green glow of the light-mike, which had tracked the man's mouth since the beginning, another, smaller light had appeared. Red and slightly brighter than the green, the disk was about the size of a man's fingernail, and as the speaker watched, it began to move. It rose, briefly highlighting the tip of the man's nose, then on up its bridge and, undetected, between his eyes.
"Let me go. Walk away. Return to your thoughts about gods."
The red dot settled in the centre of the man's forehead.
"God, not gods," said the man distantly.
"Friend...!"
His assailant's arm tensed, the blade steadied. "Oh, my God..." the man said.
It could have been the opening of a prayer, or perhaps an exclamation of realisation; the speaker would never know.
Maybe he had flinched, caught a glimpse of the red sighting beam, or even heard the order being given, but he never had a chance to finish the sentence. A short, loud 'clunk' had sounded from within the lectern, and immediately the spot of red on the man's brow had disappeared, free to shine unhindered straight through his head along the dry, smoking hole that the laser which it had targeted had burned.
It was as if the man had simply been 'switched off'. He did not cry out, flinch, or even blink as his life went out; just swayed for an instant before buckling at the knee, then the waist, and toppling silently into his hostage's arms.
The crowd was aghast. Wails of "Death, a death!" and even some mournful cries rang across the arena, clearly audible to the monitors, still transmitting. The speaker held the dead man for a long time, then half dragged, half carried him down from the podium before laying him gently on the ground. Those assembled and those watching from their units joined him in his grief as he knelt over him, gently stroking his hair once before mouthing a few words of comfort. To historians, it could have looked as though he was praying, but even amongst the historians watching, very few would have been familiar with such an antiquated and obscure practise.
When the speaker returned to the podium, the world saw tears in his eyes. He did not care. He stared back out at the world through the monitor, but it was a long time before he could speak.
"There are no words," he began eventually. His whisper was so low that his own mike reappeared briefly, adjusting its levels to compensate. "There are no words to explain this tragedy, to console those who have witnessed it or to compensate for the death of this poor man." He stopped, wiping his eyes with the back of a wrist. "There may be lessons to be learnt, but we already know how very many deaths that beliefs in various beings of supernature have caused. Perhaps his life, his death,"he said, indicating the body of the man, "should serve as a reminder of this." He wiped one eye again. "I wish him peace."
"We wish him peace," the low response rose from the audience. The speaker turned away from the lectern, away from the people and the monitor, and for some moments buried his face in his hands. Finally, he returned.
"Friends, I have decided to continue. I will conduct the demonstration, let you see what you have come to see, and then we will return to our units. I have considered a postponement, out of respect to our troubled friend, but I do not believe that his misguided actions should be seen to cause delay. I hope that I still have your support."
He did not wait to hear any dissenting voices, but stepped smartly down from the podium.
All that came from the audience though was a sense of tacit, considered approval.
The speaker checked quickly over his two metallic columns, making small adjustments to unseen panels near each base which caused the wall of purple iridescence between them to grow steadily in intensity. When it was approaching the point where the audience began to shield their eyes from its brilliance, with an eerie sound somewhere between a buzz and a chime, it seemed to condense itself somehow, thinning to a bright violet plane of no apparent depth but with the appearance of semi-solidity. The machinery fell quiet again, and dark patterns of interference coursed and pulsed on the surface of the energy field.
The speaker strode to within a yard or two of the light, standing to look through it at his audience, hands clasped in front of his waist. Those assembled listened expectantly - perhaps there would be a speech after all - but the speaker said only "With this process, distance is irrelevant. I am no longer in the mood for extravagance. From this day, parsecs will become as yards; today, yards will suffice."
And with that, he closed his eyes and stepped forward.
There was no sound from the machine, no flash of light or even disturbance to the patterns on the surface of the field; the speaker simply vanished. Had he been viewed side on, he would have appeared to have disappeared behind something, albeit something that was not there, vanishing in vertical slices as his body entered the plane of light. However, his audience was in front of him; he was there, walking, and then he was not. There was no sound from the audience either, no applause or gasps of amazement. There was only stunned silence.
The silence held for several seconds, until the audience began to notice the figure striding purposefully towards the centre of the arena. Necks were craned and questions were whispered until finally, they recognised that it was the speaker himself! Then, there was applause; then, there were gasps.
The speaker said nothing, just continued to walk until he reached the rear of the field once more. Without hesitation, he passed through it again, immediately, instantaneously reappearing at the same point on the far side of the Colosseum. He repeated the process for a third time, then a fourth, and as those watching knew where to pick him out, applause and acclaim grew louder every time he reappeared.
After his sixth pass, the speaker returned to his lectern. The world watched him, the monitors zoomed in.
"Here I am," he said cheerily, and visibly relaxed having succeeded in his demonstration, "still me!"
Immediate and enthusiastic applause burst out, peppered with whoops and whistles uncharacteristic of the normally restrained people. They stood for the ovation, many stepping down from the bank and onto the arena floor. The speaker, unashamedly revelling in the adulation, spread his arms wide, accepting and encouraging them, and soon the happy and excited throng were closing in on him. Becoming uneasy at the prospect of physical contact, even the possibility of being jostled, the speaker quickly headed back to the podium.
He paused at the body of the man who had tried to stop him, and looked over to the equipment managers' station. With his boot, he turned the man's face towards him, and smiled blackly. "Get this waste out of here," he ordered, flicking the dead man's head away with sharp jab of his toe.
He climbed back to the lectern. The people assembled at its base, gazing up in awe at the discoverer of this most wondrous new science. To them, close up, he seemed more commanding than he had from a distance, almost awe-inspiring. Under the dimmed sky, a red glow flickered in his eyes; reflections from the lights on top of the nearby transporter columns, surely.
The speaker spread his arms again, and grinned.
"It pleases me greatly..." he said darkly,