Chapter 1

The Incident in Science

Thian Ulrich was always late – late to class, late to doctor's appointments; he even missed the first 15 minutes of movies after the 10 minutes of trailers that preceded the film.
Until he learned he could teleport.
Thian stumbled into class just as the door opened behind him. It appeared as if he had just come through the open door in front of Tamora Moon to the class; only Tamora gave him any indication of having thought differently – her lips were parted slightly, as if to utter something. She quickly shut her mouth and sat at her desk.
Thian felt a pang of angst at her for only finally acknowledging him after almost a year of her pretending he didn't exist.
But that didn't matter to him anymore. While he might've tried to get her attention and confront her in the past, he suddenly realized that he had something over her and everyone. He could teleport.
Thian had only teleported twice in his life, today being his second time.
He'd woken up to the sound of his iPod alarm clock (Airbag, Radiohead) this morning with about 10 minutes before his class started. He vaguely remembered watching Family Guy at 3 AM, and falling asleep during the following show as it had not interested him in the least.
The sounds of the rain in the morning lulled him from his bed while the urging tones from Thom Yorke's voice surged him with adrenaline. Today, he thought, rising from the bed, he might take on the day.
And he wasn't looking forward to walking into Mr. Miller's class 20 minutes late for the second consecutive class in a row.
He straightened his hair while managing to maneuver the toothbrush in his mouth with his tongue, rolled deodorant under his arms, and then stole away with his leather jacket, his black Castro hat, and his new messenger bag from H&M.
Halfway down the stairs, he'd missed the next step in his leather combat boots and somehow ended up in his class, completely dry unlike the rest of the class, including Tamora Moon, whose hair was dripping wet as if she'd just been through a shower, despite clutching an umbrella.
He looked up at the clock behind Mr. Miller's desk – he was two minutes early.
Marcus Keller, who was wearing a thick jacket, baggy cargo pants and boots, made an obscene sexual gesture at Thian, who reciprocated the same gesture.
"You're actually early to class?" Marcus asked as Thian approached the lab table where he was sitting at.
"Am I intruding on something?" Thian asked.
"Well, no, I'm just glad to see you are sorting your act together," said Marcus, mixing up his words.
"Yeah, I guess it sort of just came to me as I slept," said Thian. "You mean you didn't see what happened when I came in?"
"Did something happen outside?" asked Marcus.
"No, I never was outside," said Thian. "At least not in that sense…"
"Well?"
"I teleported into the class," said Thian, "when I tripped on the stairs – that or I fell on my head and am in a coma right now." Marcus considered him for a long moment. There had always been an unspoken bond between the two that he did not have with anyone else.
"Well, I don't know if this matters to you," said Marcus, "but I feel pretty damn real, and wouldn't have any reason to believe I was a figment of your imagination."
"Okay, so I should just figure that I teleported here," said Thian. "Great, so I didn't sleepwalk to the park 2 miles from my house last weekend."
"Wait, so you slept-teleported?"
"That's what I guess was what happened," said Thian. He looked up to Mr. Miller who was walking among the desks and asked, "What can you tell us about teleportation?"
Thian knew that Mr. Miller would sometimes go on rants about topics that were mentioned in the classroom, especially if the matter was theoretical.
"Teleportation," said Mr. Miller. "Yes, teleportation, the instantaneous transportation of matter from two distant places, well they – that is to say, some scientists – have already been doing teleportation of items. In this case, the teleportation is merely creating a copy, while in effect killing the original.
"This is obviously why we couldn't teleport a human at this point, as it would obviously amount to the murder of a human being."
Thian felt very well as if he had not been killed prior to teleporting into the room, so this didn't make any sense to him at all.
"So, what kind of teleportation might there be that wouldn't lead to killing someone?"
"Why, are you trying to figure out a way of getting to class on time?" asked Mr. Miller.
"Something of the sort," said Thian evasively.
"Well, theoretically, if wormholes existed," said Mr. Miller, "wormholes being gateways to a different place in the universe then where they started, they could allow someone to travel from, say our solar system to one at the other side of the universe. But I don't see how you're going to create a wormhole from your house to this classroom."
"What about parallel dimensions?"
Thian looked to see Tamora Moon, just as interested as Thian was, raise her hand and rephrase the question, as Mr. Miller hadn't heard. So had Tamora caught on about what had happened earlier?
"Well, that certainly would be very unlikely," said Mr. Miller, "because who heard of anyone crawling through parallel universes?"
Thian looked at Tamora, who gave him a "What gives?" look, before returning her presently steel-gray eyes to her Physics textbook, far ahead of the class in the reading material. He took out his own textbook and opened it. It seemed as if the section she was in was discussing black holes and wormholes.
Why was she so interested?
"Thian," hissed Marcus, as Thian looked at Tamora again. "Do you think Tamora saw you teleport when you came in?"
"I wouldn't doubt it," said Thian. "What should I do about it?"
"Figure out if you have a more destructive power you could threaten her with, and fast," said Marcus.
"Do you have any other ideas?"
"No, but I'm a war hawk, you see," Marcus declared.
"I'll figure something out," said Thian dismissively.