Terry Neale - Jo-el

No I guess not, I thought.

“Also,” Sally continued. “You need to be aware of your current situation.”

I think I understood what she was implying but I said. “meaning?”

“You would scare people just appearing suddenly.”

“Certainly would.” I said, mostly to myself. “So it’s sort of like Star Trek? ‘Beam me up, Scotty.’”

“Similar, but this is instant. You don’t materialize like the TV show. Effectively you bounce immediately, or so it will seem to you and anybody who happens to see you appear.”

Yeah, that would be a little disconcerting, I thought.

“Oh, another point is, you can bounce to a location inside a building. As long as it isn’t air-tight, you have a window in as it were.”

That threw me for a loop. Whambo! instant Dave in your bedroom. I was imagining the implications. I laughed. Sally was watching me and I could see the question on her face.

“Doesn’t matter,” I said.

There was a pause in the conversation. My mind was racing around in circles. On one hand, it scared me to death, but on the other Holy Moly, completely absurd.

“Do you want to give it a try?” Sally again, who else.

“In for a penny, in for a pound,” I muttered.

“What?” she enquired.

“Nothing,” I said. “Sure, let’s do it. Where shall I go?”

“I think the first run should be somewhere well away from civilization. That way you’re not worrying about somebody suddenly appearing out of nowhere. It’s eleven a.m. here, so two p.m. on the east coast.”

“You can’t change the time zone?”

Sally burst out a laugh. “Nope, we haven’t figured out time-travel, yet.”

Good to know, I guess.

“How about somewhere on a remote island in the Bahamas. Nice weather down there.” She was pensive.

“Whao! Does the weather affect the… you know bounce?”

“We don’t think so.”

“What’d you mean. You don’t think so?” My nervousness was building.

“We haven’t actually tried this out on earth,” she said, “but it should work just the same.”

My heart was getting a bit of a workout now. My eyes widened. I mean, tried and tested in another atmosphere, should be okay, I told myself. Thirty-million-year-old technology was going to mash me into electrons and spit me out three thousand miles away at the speed of light. Who wouldn’t sign up for that ride?

“The Abacos Islands, east of Florida. They are four hours ahead. How about Great Guana Cay, on the beach by the Atlantic. There’s a nice bar there, Nippers, you could get an early lunch. They take US dollars. There’s a few people on the beach, so we’ll go a little north, no one there right now.” My heads-up display was showing the location, it looked beautiful. “First, you need to change, go with thirty-something American, tanned, you know the beach-bum surfer look. Swimming shorts, t-shirt.”

I was staring at Sally. It was all moving too fast, if you know what I mean. I was feeling manipulated.

“Well?” She said.

I nearly said, are you coming? but quickly realized she was with me always. I couldn’t get rid of her. That felt unkind. I think it was all so ridiculous, here I was Dave Murphy, fifty-seven years old, widower, average guy, discussing beaming over to the Bahamas from San Francisco for lunch on the beach, looking like a beach-bum. Nuts! I needed time to get my mind around it. If you thought just two seconds it was simply mind-blowing and here I was, going along with it.

“You okay, Jo-el?” She asked.

Jo-el again. Forgot about him for a moment. “Just trying to accept this thing. It’s somewhat odd in my world. I have to let it sink in, get my mind around it.”

“Oh, okay, I guess.” I’m not sure she understood, really. Not one bit.

I stood up slowly and pictured this thirty-something hunk in my mind. Then told myself, to change and there I was standing in my family room, swim shorts and a t-shirt. I looked down, nothing on my feet and thought of flip-flops and they instantly appear, which gave me a start. Got to get used to this.

“Money,” I said, suddenly. Didn’t want to leave without being prepared, made a screw-up on that front already. I ran upstairs and picked up a hundred bucks, leaving my wallet where it was. I checked the full-length mirror on the closet door. I appeared bigger, it was the shoulders and chest area. I guess the hologram I was wearing had limitations. It had to fit over my body, so to achieve the right proportions it had to fill out more across my upper-body. Dave wasn’t overweight but middle-age spread was beginning to show. My Dave face was a smidgen round, but the hologram was perfect. I looked thirty and a lot better looking. Instant plastic surgery, that’s another industry going down the toilet. I laughed.

Back in the family-room, letting my mind roll. I was nervous, it just didn’t seem feasible.

“Ready?” she asked.

“Ready,” I said.

“Damn,” Sally suddenly blurted out. My heart hit my throat, I thought maybe that the booster rockets had failed and I was going up in smoke. I glared at Sally. “Betty’s coming to the door,” she explained.

“Crap!” Change to Dave. Whoosh I was Dave. The doorbell rang. I dealt with Betty quickly, telling her I was going out for lunch.

“Anywhere nice?” she asked.

My mouth quivered, oh how I wanted to tell her, but I lied. “Just into the City,” I said.

“Okay,” she said, but I could tell she didn’t believe me. Well you wouldn’t believe the truth, Betty, that’s for sure.

When I heard the front door of her house close I returned to Sally, waiting patiently against the wall. She is patient, I thought, but then again so is my laptop when I turn in off and leave it on the table. Hard to see Sally as a computer I could just turn off. I wonder how she felt about it? Did she have emotions. Don’t go there, Dave. Your brain will overheat.

I changed back to the hunk and waited for Sally to light the blue touch paper.

Nothing happened.

“You have to do it, Jo-el,” she said.

“Oh, right!” Made sense, I guess. I fired up the heads-up display and pictured the beach on Grand Guana Cay. I picked a place behind a sand dune and asked if I was in sight of anyone. Sally said no.

I shut my eyes, tightly. Not sure if I was supposed to or not but it seemed logical. Didn’t want to see all those miles rushing by even if I did have a window seat. I thought ‘bounce’ and pictured the place I wanted to be.

Next thing I knew I was on my knees in the sand. I instantly felt the warm sun against my skin, the sea air smelling of salt and I heard waves breaking against the shore. I had stumbled, but I was on a beach and I presumed it was Grand Guana Cay. Not the best Superman landing but I was in one piece. I checked myself, you know, both arms still attached, legs hanging from my ass, head roughly in the right place, then stood up slowly and took in my surroundings. It was spectacularly beautiful. The sea was as blue as a swimming pool; the sand flowed out in waves of yellow, there were some rocks in clusters along the seashore. The air was humid and hot. I was in the Bahamas, no jet-lag, no TSA at the airport, no bumpy flight and lines at immigration. Fucking A.

Then Sally appeared, Wow! She was clad in a teeny, red bikini, her blond hair dancing in the wind, her skin tanned a perfect brown. I smiled at her. She grinned heavily back at me.

“You look sensational,” I said. I could tell she loved the compliment. Her deep blue eyes widened and she slowly blinked twice.

“Shall we take a stroll?” she asked.

“Sure.”

We walked south along the beach. I carried my flip-flops and let the waves caress my feet. Sally looked as happy as I’d ever seen her. It was impossible to believe that she was just a holographic image created by a computer. She was as real to me as the few people we saw wondering aimlessly along the sand. I had to shake myself every few moments and remember who she was. I wanted to take her hand in mine, but I knew that it didn’t exist. And who was I, really. A middle-aged man clad in a young-man’s body. I too was an aberration. Make-believe, false. Was that the direction we were heading? I guess it was. Think of all the products we buy to make us into something else. This was simply the final extension of everyone’s dreams. We could look like the pictures in the glossy magazines, even if we couldn’t become those people. Maybe that was next.