didn’t have a flashlight on him, and he was now stuck in the basement of a house he was barely familiar with. It wasn’t the end of the world. He would blindly stumble his way in the direction of the staircase and feel his way up to the first floor. Once there, the ambient moonlight coming in through the windows should make it easier to find a flashlight or a candle.
Taking one tentative step forward followed by another, he was feeling for the edge of the platform with the toe of his sock. He felt the lip of the platform and stepped down onto the first stair.
As soon as he stepped onto the first stair, the room’s ceiling lights flickered and started coming to life. With the first flicker of light, Cyrus froze. He was off balance midway to the second step and he lost his footing, tripping to the hard tile floor. With what remained of his dexterity, he recovered before falling on his face. But he was shocked. It was all he could do to pull himself fully upright as he looked around the room slack-jawed. Was he dreaming? Had this all been a dream? Was he still upstairs asleep in bed?
Cyrus was standing in the middle of a small room, maybe fifteen feet square. The walls were drywalled and painted an institutional off-white. The tile floor was some sort of utilitarian gray. The lights over head were fluorescent and recessed into a tile drop ceiling. They hummed and flickered as they continued to warm-up. He turned around to discover that the platform he had been standing on was different as well. It was no longer bulky and clunky like a piece of 1960’s or 70’s technology. This device had similar characteristics but was finished in tight rounded corners of chrome and brushed steel. The platform surface was made of some sort of highly polished glass like composite material.
What the hell is going on?
Walking cautiously across the room, he felt the cold tile beneath his socks. He reached the sliding glass door separating this room from the next. The door was tinted with a smoke color that made visibility into the next room impossible. Beside the door was a light switch with a motion sensor built in. At least that explained the lights turning on when he began moving around. Now if someone could just explain what the hell had just happened. Cyrus was starting to wonder if he had experienced a stroke or an embolism. One minute he was stumbling around Walter Meade’s mountaintop home in the dark searching for the source of an alarm and the next he was standing…he didn’t know where he was standing! He didn’t know what was going on, and he was starting to get pissed. Why couldn’t Meade just come out and say what he wanted to say? What the hell had he done?
Cyrus slid the glass door slowly to the side and stepped into the next room. The lights were out here, too. There was enough ambient light to see he was standing in an office of some kind. He was looking out over a twenty by thirty room separated by the low walls of several office cubicles. Each cubicle was setup as an active workstation, deserted now in the middle of the night. The far end of the room was lined with windows that stretched from floor to ceiling.
Crossing the room to look out the windows, Cyrus realized he was several floors up in some kind of office building. It must have been eight or ten stories down to the large empty parking lot scattered with a few lonely streetlights.
Where the hell am I?
Chapter 7
Santa Barbara, California
Wednesday, 1:12 am (2:12 am Colorado Time)
Cyrus slowly paced the darkened office, deep in thought. The entire experience was unprecedented and more than a little disconcerting, but he had to admit it wasn’t entirely unexpected. More than a few of his conversations with Walter Meade hinted at the man’s pursuit of some sort of teleportation technology. It wasn’t like the concept was strictly the stuff of fiction anymore. A lab in Switzerland had managed to teleport a half-dozen photons a distance of several
Taking one tentative step forward followed by another, he was feeling for the edge of the platform with the toe of his sock. He felt the lip of the platform and stepped down onto the first stair.
As soon as he stepped onto the first stair, the room’s ceiling lights flickered and started coming to life. With the first flicker of light, Cyrus froze. He was off balance midway to the second step and he lost his footing, tripping to the hard tile floor. With what remained of his dexterity, he recovered before falling on his face. But he was shocked. It was all he could do to pull himself fully upright as he looked around the room slack-jawed. Was he dreaming? Had this all been a dream? Was he still upstairs asleep in bed?
Cyrus was standing in the middle of a small room, maybe fifteen feet square. The walls were drywalled and painted an institutional off-white. The tile floor was some sort of utilitarian gray. The lights over head were fluorescent and recessed into a tile drop ceiling. They hummed and flickered as they continued to warm-up. He turned around to discover that the platform he had been standing on was different as well. It was no longer bulky and clunky like a piece of 1960’s or 70’s technology. This device had similar characteristics but was finished in tight rounded corners of chrome and brushed steel. The platform surface was made of some sort of highly polished glass like composite material.
What the hell is going on?
Walking cautiously across the room, he felt the cold tile beneath his socks. He reached the sliding glass door separating this room from the next. The door was tinted with a smoke color that made visibility into the next room impossible. Beside the door was a light switch with a motion sensor built in. At least that explained the lights turning on when he began moving around. Now if someone could just explain what the hell had just happened. Cyrus was starting to wonder if he had experienced a stroke or an embolism. One minute he was stumbling around Walter Meade’s mountaintop home in the dark searching for the source of an alarm and the next he was standing…he didn’t know where he was standing! He didn’t know what was going on, and he was starting to get pissed. Why couldn’t Meade just come out and say what he wanted to say? What the hell had he done?
Cyrus slid the glass door slowly to the side and stepped into the next room. The lights were out here, too. There was enough ambient light to see he was standing in an office of some kind. He was looking out over a twenty by thirty room separated by the low walls of several office cubicles. Each cubicle was setup as an active workstation, deserted now in the middle of the night. The far end of the room was lined with windows that stretched from floor to ceiling.
Crossing the room to look out the windows, Cyrus realized he was several floors up in some kind of office building. It must have been eight or ten stories down to the large empty parking lot scattered with a few lonely streetlights.
Where the hell am I?
Chapter 7
Santa Barbara, California
Wednesday, 1:12 am (2:12 am Colorado Time)
Cyrus slowly paced the darkened office, deep in thought. The entire experience was unprecedented and more than a little disconcerting, but he had to admit it wasn’t entirely unexpected. More than a few of his conversations with Walter Meade hinted at the man’s pursuit of some sort of teleportation technology. It wasn’t like the concept was strictly the stuff of fiction anymore. A lab in Switzerland had managed to teleport a half-dozen photons a distance of several
Similar Books
