Switcheroo by Robert Lewis Clark Page A

similar hole in another place or even another time.  Most advocates of
this method say that all points in space time touch each other or can be made
to touch. Like folding the corners of a piece of paper together, for example.
This concept is often used when talking about time travel as well. Oh, I must
be boring you, rattling on so.”  He waved his hand in apology.
    “No, no. Please continue,” I said,
still leaning forward. Drew’s old, thin lips started talking again.
    “Well, there is another theory
that states if quantum teleportation were used on humans what arrives at the
new location is actually be a replica, almost a clone.  If you were teleported
you might not be you when you arrived,” Drew laughed thinly at his own joke.
“To do this, a computer would need to be designed to digitize all the atoms in
the human body. That’s about ten to the twenty-eighth power, or a trillion
times a trillion atoms.  Some place in this digital map would be your ‘soul’.
Maybe too great a task even for future machines.”
    “What about hole teleportation?
Could a person teleport that way?”
    “They certainly could, Rust. But
opening and closing the ‘hole’ has never been done, except on Star Trek,” again
he laughed at his own joke, a real comedian.
    Well, here goes.  For the first
time I tried telling someone this whole story from the beginning, including two
mysterious trucks and their ability to switch places.   This took quite some
time and Mr. Chandler had a few questions. Finally, I brought him up to date
through Monday night’s meeting with Mr. Glasses.
    “Well, now I have confirmed that
these two trucks were formerly leased to ORNL and I had a close call with a man
driving a vehicle which is also leased to ORNL.  The key to this whole thing is
that lab. I need a name, someone out there that has access to their systems
that I can use to get my foot in the door.”
    “Oh dear,” Drew raised his
eyebrows, “I can do you one better than that.  I think I know who has your
truck.”
    “Who is that?”  I asked, hoping
this old man really knew.
    “A fellow named Kendrick, Randall
Kendrick,” he sounded pretty sure of himself.
    “Kendrick, huh?  Never heard of
him.  Is he dangerous?” I asked.
    Thoughtfully, a bit amused, he
said, “I think mostly to himself.”
    After a bit more awkward chitchat,
I got in my heap and split.  The rest of the day was a blur of mobile home
inspections and a bunch of smells that formed an olfactory blur of bacon
grease, cigarette smoke and poop.
     
     
     
     
     

 
     
    Chapter
12
     
     
    Randall Kendrick was a man who had
started life at the top and worked his way down.  I sympathized since I had
endured that slide myself. He seemed to have had everything going for him and
then over the last twenty years he had pissed it all away.  If he had an eye
patch and a bottle of rum he could have been a Buffet song.  Sadly, he had a
bottle of Tums and a nicotine patch.
    He was now fifty-five years old
and having a mid life crisis.  Kendrick lived in a large expensive house in a
suburb of Oakridge.  He had a short commute to his laboratory and office at
Oakridge National Labs (ORNL) where he was director of special research.  His
adoring wife was a society belle in Oakridge and Knoxville, heading committees
for charitable organizations and tending to their beautiful home.  Everything
was seemed rosy from the outside.
    On the inside, it stank. Some
days, Kendrick really questioned whether he wanted to go on living.  He was
deep in debt. The house payment and his wife’s maxed out credit cards were
killing him. He was paying college tuition for two daughters. His third
daughter was in a pricey private high school in Oakridge and he hadn’t been
laid in about two years. If he did not come through with a major scientific
break through by the end of the budget year in December, his department was
going to be dissolved, as dead and gone as an eight track cassette