They’ll never persuade me into a teleporter, I once said. They’ll have to sedate me, and drag my reluctant dead weight to the antechamber. Except, that would not be desirable to the collective wisdom. One has to chose to cross the threshold. It’s a barrier that only gives way for total submission.
How does it function? First, step into the chamber. It will begin with trepidation, but subsequent journeys will erode the fear. The chamber appears similar to an “iron maiden”, the medieval period torture device. That is how I imagine it, at least. The inner workings cannot be discerned externally. It could be like the piercing of infinite flechettes, so many that you may drown in your own blood before internal injuries seize your life.
The conventional wisdom speaks of it as “like flying without wings”. The teleporter’s effect is apparently sharp enough to sever Earth’s bonds.
It has become more than a means of tranportation. The transferrance is a thing in itself that has eclipsed the initial purpose. It is now simply a new way of life.
In our contemporary society, laid down upon a solid concrete bed of lies, submission to the teleporter is analogous to driving a car or graduating college. It is a definition of capability and self worth. If you have teleported and returned, faced the trial, you are called Setra. Only one who is Setra may progress. All the rest are serfs and gutter poets, like me.
I could walk between cities, on blistered black feat, with sun scarred skin, but I would arrive as the same being that left it’s point of origin. I would not be Setra.
Someone told a lie about me. Setra are perfect liars. Their will is so strong and sure, whatever words emenate forth from their mouths simply rewrites whatever came before. The lie itself, or what came before, is no longer important.
As if all their awareness was linked by a router in the sky, a hand of authoritarial Blackclads closed on me. With gentle fingers restraining each of my limbs, they spoke: “Come, friend. We will relieve you of the barrier’s tension.” Their touch, so soothing as to assure submission. In the grip now, everything from before is over. Their relentless omnipresence made everything now as it should be. They dragged me to the teleporter, as limp as a ragdoll cat.
I beheld the chamber. Ovular cylinder at the base, rising to curve into suggestions of shoulders and a head. Somehow, it was exactly my height. The question of larger or taller men became irrelevant. Barely within it’s gate, every doubt and logistic was bent and folded into one true shape.
I knew the real truth, in the previous time. You cannot shatter and reconnect a purpose-bound lattice of matter, and hope to maintain the same line of consciousness. If you shatter a glass vase, and then glue the pieces back together with the utmost care and delicacy, it may still look and function exactly as it was. You could even reseal all the edges with a precision matter tool. I still don’t believe it would be the same vase after. That is the one critical difference of opinion between the Setra and I. Society and sircumstance have elevated this difference to a divide between life and death. Now, it is to be my true mind’s death. Is there really that much to miss, though?
The chamber door drew closed, completing my fate’s assembly. I breathed deep and relaxed every muscle in my body.
In a car crash, it is best not to stiffen your body. You will be tossed and crushed regardless, but potential damage can be reduced. I held on to this last thought, as it may be my final metaphor. Does a Setra even have use for metaphors, or is all communication turned to one simple unified function? Purpose arrives instantaneous, with no room for debate or interpretation? Then, I shattered.
The only thing I could feel was being permanently held in place. The concept of two eyes once possessed became a simple bisection of light, curves into waves into a tunnel straight down, straight into me. Now, one ray of light, threaded into all the others.
I beheld the chamber, now external. It’s outline, once evocative, now simply benign. Through the window of the antechamber. A glass and concrete rise, a towering pattern. I ascend, the building descends, two perspectives as one.
Many presences all around, reaching closer. They are warm and obscuring.
