Chương 71: Chapter 70 - Ask Charlie

Elios carefully studied the latest data.

"I don't understand why this keeps happening," he whispered to himself, flipping through the pages.

"It defies logic. There is no scientific explanation. It defies even the most basic laws of physics." He walked to the teleport device, scratching his head.

"Life forms go through just fine, no changes to their genetics. Most organic items, same thing. But the minute we send a device through it reverts back to some primitive form," he muttered.

"What was that, sir?" Mikale Ravenswart, Elios' new lab assistant, asked, believing the question had been directed toward him. Elios looked over at the man.

"I wasn't talking to you, focus on your work and leave me to mine," he said, curtly waving him off. The young man looked back down at his work, watching Elios out of the corner of his eye.

"It just makes no freaking sense whatsoever." Elios huffed, running his hand through his hair and slightly pulling at it.

"Arrg!" he grumbled before kicking the teleport, only to regret the decision when the pain shot up from his foot. He hopped to the chair and sat quickly as the pain caused him to grimace.

"Sir," the lab assistant called out again.

"Are you alright?" he asked softly.

"Yes, Mikale, I am fine," he snapped.

"Don't you have anything better to do than bother me? Can't you see I'm working?" Mikale shrugged his shoulders.

"Whatever you say sir," he sighed.

"I just thought that maybe if you talked it out, you might…" he stopped speaking as Elios shot him an angry glance.

"Never mind. Sorry, sir. I'll just leave you alone," he said, before looking back into the microscope. Elios turned away and looked down at the report, then over at Mikale, then back at the report. He huffed loudly then tried to stand. Finding the pain in his foot intolerable when standing on it, he quickly sat back down, calling out to Mikale.

"Alright, maybe a pair of fresh eyes would be somewhat helpful." He sighed.

"Come here and look at these latest test results," he said, waving the young man over. Mikale jumped up from his workstation and hurriedly made his way over.

"What are we looking at?" Mikale asked excitedly.

"These are the latest data sets of items we have tried to send through the portal with agents," he said, handing Mikale the sheet.

"As you can see, organic materials seem to go through with little to no issues." He flipped the page.

"You can see here that the minute we start sending weapons or our own technology through they mysteriously morph into something else. Usually it's a far more primitive version of itself."

"More primitive?" Mikale asked.

"Yes, more primitive, for example we sent a repeating weapon and ammunition. When the agent arrived it became a crossbow and quiver. I mean they are not even similar. The components are completely different. There is no way that it just reassembled incorrectly after going through. It physically changed," Elios ranted.

"A high-powered tracking device became a freaking map. Can you believe it? A map." He sighed.

"I have been trying to figure this out for five years now and I don't seem to be making any headway in figuring out why! We were able to send the surveillance bugs for the most part intact." He ran a hand through his hair. Well, most of them went through without issues, anyway. If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

"Sir, did you consider the possibility that perhaps it may be part of the design?" Mikale asked.

"What do you mean?" Elios asked, annoyed.

"Of course it is a flaw in the design, if there wasn't a flaw in the design things would come out on the other side the way they went in."

"Sir, that is not what I meant," he said, looking for a way to explain.

"Whoever created the schematics for the teleport, included that little feature as part of the mechanism's design." He added.

"That perhaps it only impacts technology and weaponry because that was what it was designed to do." Elios thought about this, his face softening before changing to intrigue, "Go on." He coaxed.

"I know this is a remanufactured device using some schematics found at an archeological site. No one knows where it came from, who developed it, or why," he said, shrugging his shoulders.

"I know that despite having a basic understanding of the machine itself, there were a lot of things in the coding that made no sense. That some of the components seemed unnecessary. There were far more things about the machine that no one understood, than there were straightforward functionality connections. Enough for any of us to grasp, anyway. Isn't it possible that part of that could be what is responsible for the metamorphosis of particular items while traveling between realms?"

"That would explain why I have not been able to find the flaw or malfunction. If the machine is working as intended, then there would be no flaw or malfunction to find," Elios said, more to himself than Mikale.

"Question is how do we undo it?"

"Well sir, I'm not entirely sure we can undo it," Mikale said, standing up and walking to the machine.

"The only way we could perhaps do it would be to deconstruct the entire mechanism and figure out what each component actually does before putting it back together. Then we would have to figure out what each line of the code means before reprogramming it." He said, rubbing the side of the teleport.

"Even then, there is no guarantee that it would work, or work properly. It would be exceptionally risky to remove components. This is a very delicate machine and who's to say what would happen if we took even so much as one screw out." He sighed. Elios considered this.

"We don't know for certain that the end result would be bad, for all we know it could be a tremendous breakthrough allowing Mordak to achieve his goal of taking over that other world."

"Or it could very well mean our annihilation," Mikale said, sadly.

"When the site was discovered, you yourself said that there were remains of an ancient people seemingly stuck in time. Have you considered the possibility that they were not the creators of the technology, but discovered it themselves?" he asked, shaking his head.

"That perhaps in their quest to modify it or understand it they created some form of time loop that they are now currently stuck in?" Elios looked at Mikale skeptically.

"I don't know Mikale, the one thing I do know is that if we don't find a way to send weapons and technology through that damn thing, it will be our annihilation. It won't happen through some catastrophic event, it will, quite literally, be at Blackwood's hands." Mikale looked at Elios with doubt in his eyes.

"Come on, Elios, certainly you are exaggerating. He could fire us, but beyond that…"

"Tell that to Charlie." Elios said, his stomach clenching at the thought of the events of that horrible day.

"Who's Charlie?" Mikale asked.

"That's right, Charlie was before your time." He put his arm around Mikale.

"Let me tell you about Charlie and what happened to him."