Trans-Temporter by Christopher M Robinson - HTML preview

Chapter 12

Whatever Next?

I had been getting feelings that Chris had some news to impart but it was vague and I hadn’t bothered Valu with my twin telepathy ideas as it could make me seem a bit of a crackpot, especially if there is no basis for the suggestion so I don’t usually mention it. Besides, my most dominant experiences of twin telepathy have been associated with bad feelings like when he cracked his head open falling off his skateboard when we were kids. I had suddenly experienced a blinding headache. It was about half an hour later that mum had phoned me to say he was in hospital. But science has found no evidence to support the idea of telepathy, though one discredited study did appear to show human brains could emit ultra-low-frequency electromagnetic waves that form a coherent global “neural network” that can influence other brains up to 10,000 km away, suggesting human consciousness may be subtly interconnected across vast distances and older one had suggested it might require the brainwaves of the transmitter and receiver to be in total synchronicity with each other. The problem has been there is no easy way to research it. People have the wrong idea of telepathy. They seem to think telepaths can send and receive on demand and read each other’s minds. The real research should be whether some random event (usually traumatic) occurring in someone’s life can affect someone else who happens to be in tune with them and if so how? The “why” may be because it could be a means of calling for help that evolution has managed to make us forget.

Val and I took the train to my parents’ Welsh cottage where they were staying rather than taking a passenger trans-temporter. I don’t really see the attraction, apart from businessmen on transcontinental journeys not wishing to have jet-lag, but the transatlantic pipeway wasn’t quite completed yet. The pipeway was better suited to goods and utilising the trans-temporter for perishable goods.

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Eli appeared a typical Welsh girl: attractive with straw-coloured hair and piercing blue eyes. I could see why Chris had been drawn to her.

“So what do you do?” I asked.

“I’m a stonemason.” She answered and went on to explain that she had started off just carving slate and had moved on to different stones. She filled us in a bit on the history of Welsh slate.

Apparently, it has been mined since Roman times when it was prized for its use in providing weatherproof roofing and floor tiles. Because slate is formed in thin strata, it is easy to split into thin layers. The weight initially made it a problem to transport which had to be managed by packhorses led by women whilst their menfolk did the quarrying and cutting to workable sizes. Because the locations of the mines were too mountainous for canals, inferior English slate was more useful to be used elsewhere as it could be transported by canal to different parts of the country. However, the Welsh slate could be transported by sea and at the end of the eighteenth century, Lord Penrhyn, who owned the mine that produced the best slate, built a port at Bangor so he could sell his slate abroad. Initially he used a horse drawn tramway to take the slate to the port but in 1801 it was replaced with one of the narrow gauge “Great Little Trains of Wales” my dad was always keen to talk about. Welsh slate is quite easily worked and can take really fine detail but Eli had expanded to work on other stone, too, like limestone though slate is always the favourite.

She had set up a small studio which she had expanded with a grant from Feline Art Solutions to provide somewhere to work for other masters, “and mistresses,” she’d added with a cheeky wink, of traditional Welsh crafts. A number of small studios quickly accumulated to form a small artisanal village, “Valleys Artisanal Village,” which she now managed.

With similar goals, FAS and SSS always sort opportunities to work together and it was at a joint conference on “Seeking World Harmony” sponsored by the Global Union of Nations, that Chris and Eli had met.

Eleri handed us some glossy leaflets detailing the slate, and other, stone carving workshops offered by “Dyffryn Pentref Atisanal,” which I

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learned was the proper name, in Welsh, of her community. There were wood carvers who would teach you to make Welsh love spoons, weavers and embroiderers who utilised real wool from Welsh sheep. Although sheep shearing wasn’t one of the workshops they offered, it could be arranged through a local farm at the right time of year.

“I must try and bring a school party,” I ventured.

“We welcome school parties or we could organise a school visit and teach the children some of the skills,” she responded. “Just chose the topic.”

Mum and Dad (Frances and Dafydd) told us how SSS had been progressing with new developments from Ark Medical, that had developed from Grandpa Aled’s pharmaceutical company which had originated in these valleys. Dad handed over to Chris to tell us about Pipeway developments. He warned us that much of it was still secret and, although SSS preferred open access to secrecy, there was still some concern regarding some terrorist groups that still existed.

The first Transatlantic Pipeway running 2000 kilometres from Galway in Ireland to Port Hope, Nova Scotia in Canada, is due to open next year. Pipeways to the North American States had only really started now there was relative harmony between the NSNA and SSNA brought about largely by pipeway connections permitting easy trade. Indeed, it seems the ease of Trade-on-Demand by Pipeway, where it existed, was helping harmonise international relations.

There was also some intriguing “hush-hush” news regarding special shaped pipeways and disc-shaped transport pods for whatever usage no-one was actually actually at liberty to say at present. Hopefully we’ll learn more in the next couple of years.

However, everyone was keen to hear about our Thailand holiday and had we been caught up in the tsunami? So we filled them in and projected our photos from our devices to the wall screens.

Eleri showed she was just as cheeky and forthright as Valu by asking her outright, “Are you engaged?” to which she just smiled and winked.

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I said that it was a pity we hadn’t managed to explore Thailand and we’ve promised each other we will return, “Possibly for our honeymoon,” I added for Eli’s benefit.

However, at the moment the most pressing thing on my mind is Monday when I start my teaching job. I’ll have to update my account of what happens during my holidays but Mike tells me that if I am as determined to be as good a teacher as I make out, he doubts I’ll have the time.

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Books by this author.

Non-fiction, published under Chris Robinson:

Down With Acid encyclopaedia about acid reflux. Definitive work in layman’s language. Fully researched. No longer in print: superseded by enlarged and updated website –

www.DownWithAcid.org.uk

Apaga tu Ardor. Spanish translation of Down With Acid. Not available on line.

For printed copies, contact Asenbar charity:

www.asenbar.com/contacto

Down With Acid lite.

Summary of the most essential parts of the encyclopaedia in a handy pocket sized volume. For printed copies, go to:

sites.google.com/view/down-with-acid/dwa-lite

Fiction published under Christopher M. Robinson.

Temporter

Science Fiction. Awakening in hospital with Amnesia, a former teacher is arrested for causing the death of one of his colleagues and the suspicious disappearance of another. Trans-Temporter.

Part 2 of the Temporter trilogy.

Continuing the story.

Is making the temporter transportable a blessing or a curse? Tele-Temporter (provisional cover design shown). Expected late 2025.

The final part of the Temporter trilogy looking at problems of rapid transportation of a temporter.

2046 – A satire.

A tongue-in-cheek look at a parade to commemorate the 100th birthday of the self-styled "Divine Emperor of the Known Universe."

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