We had most of the theory of teleportation sorted out before we sent something through. Obviously, something inorganic first and then worked our way up. First with mice, always a chosen test subject, then a rabbit. You know the old song about the lady who swallowed a fly and then worked her way through the animal kingdom with jaws open wide enough to swallow anything. Think of the teleportation port capable of growing big enough to do that. Everything worked fine as we increased the distance. Getting the first human subject was tougher. A celebrity looking for publicity or just wanting to be the first? Someone in need of money? Above all, someone willing to risk their life and be the first human to be teleported knowing the didn’t come back as a mishappened hash and dead. A big risk. Even when it was proven safe, he’d still be the first. Remembered like the first man on the Moon, whoever that was. Long time ago. Always a need for a new hero and what better than be the first person teleported.
His name is unimportant right now. When he materialised, he wasn’t alone. A small piece of whatever came with him. We ran tests. An unusual piece of metal. A rare isotope on Earth. How did he get it? Wee doubled his fee and told him to go through the teleport vent again and grab anything he saw on the way back.
He also gets acknowledged as the second person teleported but his name became unimportant compared to what he brought back. There was nothing to grab. He went through in a split-second and didn’t have a chance to pick up anything, let alone see anything. That’s how he became incidental. He was just there as an outlet. However, there was another object with him. It looked like some kind of toy.
The theorists dismissed him moving through another dimension and focused on the idea that other people, read as aliens, had used their teleportation access as a means to dispose of waste. Somehow, it was still in there and we had brought something back. The most we could determined, based on isotopes, it was probably the same planet.
Our first teleporter was happy with the extra payments but wanted a life to spend some of the money we’d give his bank balance before going through again.
We gave some thought after that. We were lucky in some respects that it was just some junk so far. Bits of rare metal but not really much we could do anything with. Even so, sooner or later, there might be something a bit more valuable so we set up a contract. It would have to have some element of fairness or they could claim it was their property all alone. Quite why they would want what was obviously some junk beat us but, sooner or later, someone would strike lucky and we could have something that could be valuable and didn’t want to go to the courts over ownership. We needed some contract in place so we had a steady line of volunteers who could benefit as well. If we found some that could bring out something more valuable.
Something the scientists were in agreement with was there no interdimensional distance involved where people were dropped off and popped out of again. Even if there was amnesia and they forgot what happened or there was no time there at all. They tended to favour entanglement. All we really had to do is find someone with the right entanglement to bring out the right thing even if we don’t know what is the right thing.
We played with the perimeters and made the vent as big as we could. Different people. Size. Different sex. Everything to show different the teleporter device could handle everything. At the same time, we collected up the things that came out the other end. Getting bigger pieces. It needed something organic to bring it out. So we tried various animals but intellect seemed to be the main factor as well. Smaller people allowed bigger things through, which was a clue to getting bigger mass out. We worked on making the portal bigger, if only to change the ratio. There were some mathematical constraints but had to work on the formulas.
That was basically when I was called in. My speciality was looking through junk for a profit. Once upon a time we were called rag and bone men, now just ragpickers. There was even a TV comedy show about it. These days we just haunt the official recycling units looking for anything that we can make a profit from. We’re based around five words. All beginning with R: Recycle. Repair. Reconstitute. Rebuild. Recombine. Or just ditch it. We can’t do miracles. Well, not all the time.
I must have been pretty far down the line for them to come to me or the likes of me, considering the paperwork I had to sign before I got this far.
From the start, they didn’t really tell me much. They just introduced me to this well-lit warehouse and gave me the freedom to look at all the tat and told to divide them into cultures and anything I could make use of, which I could have directed into another warehouse. It was continually being added to. You would have thought that they would have experts of their own. Occasionally, I would go back to earlier item and find a match. The occasional natter revealed I had a lot more staying power than others they had tried. To my mind, that would explain the odd order they had in here.
How did I do it? Well, I was used to going through various discarded tat, looking for hidden gems. You needed patience to do this. In that respect, I wasn’t that concerned where it came from. Nothing I would call antique, but all felt odd. I looked in on the other warehouse from time to time. Occasionally, to move objects from one section to another when I noticed some similarities. Some ended up between two sections as if they belonged to both. I started adding my own signs. The unit came to watch occasionally but didn’t offer any comment. They talked a little but not about the job except being happy with my progress. Whether they were studying the order of things, I didn’t know. I did remind them that even when they were all sorted, I needed to look at the items in case I could combine anything or even repair some of them. I’m not stupid. I wanted to milk the job a bit than just dismissed at the end without knowing what I had been doing.
I looked at one of the sections and picked out what looked like a toy. I was later told it was the second item that had came through. It was one of the first things I spotted. It was built like a himitsu-bako, a Japanese puzzle box. That would make sense. No sense having children of whatever culture getting at the mechanism and damaging it. I sat down at a table and figured how to open it in a couple hours. Actually, I could have done it in half the time but needed to check there were no hidden traps or other access points. Once open the mechanism looked relatively easy. There was resemblances to terrestrial tech but this definitely wasn’t. It had a similar problem to what we have. The connection to the battery had come out. Easy to put right and shut. It had a wheel and not much else. I flicked the wheel which must have activated an internal switch and it floated at shoulder height. The wheel slowly revolved. I looked over some more of the junk before moving to another pile. Did some of those unusual rocks have a similar opening mechanism?
That’s when they came to see me, looking intently at the floating device, its wheel still spinning after an hour by my shoulder. I had made more progress than they had in months. They wondered what this toy could have been used for. I pointed out that there was a ring for a loop and probably some sort of perpetual motion machine. I was saying it pretty much as a joke but they attached a wire and agreed with me. So, I jokingly said does this get me a raise? Better than that, they offered me a permanent job and introduced me to the teleportation device and how the junk came out with anyone they teleported. I thought they wanted me to be teleported as well but they said I was too valuable for that. They increased the teleporter usage and for me to check over all the junk that came through. Anything I think I could repair, do so immediately. Oh, I was no longer on commission but regular employment with all the perks.
Should I tell them, I was just lucky with the first one? Well, I did and they assured me they needed someone with my kind of luck. They had a perpetual motion machine because of me and I showed them how to open it. I said it would run until the battery ran out. Its original makers threw it when it broke. They reminded me that if I’d lived on their planet, I would probably have been a repair man. Nah! I’d still be a rag and bone man, looking for anything I could make a profit from. All that litters…
end
© GF Willmetts 2026
All rights reserved
Ask before borrowing
Join the conversation (0)