Ari was busy calibrating the Quantum Transit Machine amidst the soft chatter of the lab's activity around him. His team, a collection of the brightest handpicked minds, worked caffeinated ants, each scrambling to complete their tasks. But the flow of work was interrupted by the sound of a vibrating phone. Ari’s attention shifted to Dr. Niklos Krylov, the project lead and his best friend.

  Usually a whirlwind of motion and fervor, Nik stood frozen. His eyes were locked on his phone. Concerned murmurs rippled around the lab.

  The tech working next to Ari leaned in. “What’s with Dr. K?” Ari knew the look on Nik’s face, it was the same expression he wore every time they had to stand before a congressional inquiry, only this time it seemed more serious.

  "What is it, Nik?" Ari called out.

  Nik's reply carried an uncharacteristic weight. "The Department of Energy has just shut us down. Effective immediately."

  The murmuring in the lab grew into outspoken disbelief. The noise was quelled by Nik’s next declaration.

  "We have to do the live test now."

  Ari was the first to protest. "Not happening. It’s not ready!"

  But Nik was already moving towards his console. The team, sensing the shift in momentum, could only wait helplessly while Nik sat at his keyboard. Ari paced toward Nik’s desk, trying to form a string of words that could stop his idiot of a friend.

  Nik typed a few commands, and before Ari could unclench his teeth, Nik turned his attention back toward the lab. “Initiate the Atlantic Leap Protocol and notify the team in Europe.”

  Ari felt his but clench as his slim frame loomed over Nik’s desk. “Absolutely not, we don’t even have an organic subject ready, how-”

  “Yes, we do,” Nik interrupted. Ari thought Nik’s glare was directed at his insubordination until he realized what Nik had meant.

  “You can’t be serious. You?”

  “Me,” Nik replied flatly before returning to his monitor.

  The atmosphere between them turned thick.

  Ari's voice quivered. "Nik, think about what you're doing! This is stupid!"

  Unabated, Nik finished entering the permission sequences. "It's our only chance. We either do this now or lose everything."

  Silence gripped the lab while everyone’s eyes fixed on the two scientists at the heart of the storm.

  “You've had some stupid ideas, but this one takes the cake!” Ari erupted. He had lost his patience with the stubborn asshole before him. “Just imagine for a second. One tiny mistake and you could end up disfigured, blown to bits, or worse… Vanish. Poof. Gone!”

  Nik slammed a fist onto his desk, jostling his keyboard. His attention fell to the phone on the desk, still displaying the project termination message.

  Ari felt his hands ball into tight fists. He had finally run out of words to stop that idiot from doing something unprecedented, world-changing, and dumb as hell.

  Nik's stubbornness made Ari want to spin that idiot in his chair and slap some sense into him. Deep down, he knew even that wouldn’t work.

  They had invested countless nights, meticulously refining every facet of their labor. Each line of code and flowchart on the whiteboard had been a stepping stone toward this pivotal moment.

  Their team of data analysts had run continuous simulations for months, seeking out and addressing any potential error. Despite all this, the Quantum Transit Project suddenly stood on the brink of receiving its first human subject. But, it was plagued by one gnawing truth: It still wasn't ready.

  Ari's frustrated gaze lowered toward the labyrinth of cables at his feet. To him, they looked like the tendrils of a mechanical dragon's nest, twisting their way up to the cylindrical machine that sat purring softly in the center of the room. This contraption, a product of their years of relentless work, struck him as both a marvel of engineering and a beast teetering on the edge of wild unpredictability.

  The process was simple in theory: scan, energize, transmit, receive, remake. However, its orchestration was far more complex than the word “teleportation” could ever encompass.

  The machine itself resembled a cylindrical container that a person could stand inside. Its interior was lined with a crystalline sheen formed by an unfathomable array of pico-sensors.

  Crudely bolted to the inner ceiling was the Rapid Compound Prototyper, responsible for converting mass to energy and vice versa. The menacing device looked like a forked disintegration gun ready to vaporize anything that dared to enter their machine’s tight pod.

  The contraption's rough outer casing masked its grand intent. Its success meant rupturing the fabric of possibility, heralding a quantum leap into uncharted territory, and making Ari one of the coolest scientists to ever walk the earth.

  As these thoughts lingered, the clock on Nik's monitor continued its unapologetic march.

  Nk’s voice broke through Ari’s mental tug-of-war. "We might only have a few minutes before those assholes cut the power completely. If we don't do this now, we may lose our only chance."

  Ari’s scowl slid back to Nik’s phone. The government had been threatening to slash their project's budget for a while now, which meant their precious power allocation was on the chopping block. The Quantum Transit Project required a gargantuan amount of energy – energy they would no longer have access to at any moment. Without executing the experiment now, they faced months, if not years, of setbacks, awaiting budget approvals and power reinstatement. It would mean the end of their dreams. Nik gave his screen a final nod.

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  "We're really doing this now?" Ari asked.

  "Damn right we are," Nik replied. He shuffled around Ari, ignoring his glare. Reckless bastard.

  Ari gripped the edge of Nik's desk, struggling to process the predicament at hand.

  The room sank into silence, broken only by the faint buzzing of fluorescent lights. Ari had gotten used to this sound over the years, working late into the night, pursuing a dream that felt more like a wild fantasy. But now, that sound felt like the eye of a storm.

  Seeing Nik clamber into the belly of their mechanical beast brought Ari back to his senses. Wasting no time, he rushed back to his desk, skidding into his roller chair. Ari had just enough time to steal a final glance as Nik turned back to face him one last time.

  With its sacrificial offering in place, the machine issued a faint hiss sealing its door. A glow pulsed from the opaque cylinder, and the chamber sensors whirred to life like the intricate dance of swarming insects.

  A rush of data began flooding into Ari's terminal. The European team came online, but Ari wasted no time greeting them on the live feed.

  His eyes flickered rapidly between screens while his fingers typed away in sync. Cross-referenced. Verified and double-checked. He worked through the cascading data with the grace of a figure skater. All the while, the machine’s relentless pulsing echoed the pounding heartbeat within his chest.

  Ari's final set of keystrokes echoed through the quiet room as the deluge of digital figures on his screen came to a halt. His hand trembled over the initiate button.

  Ari's gaze flitted to the live feed monitors, capturing the anticipatory expressions of their European colleagues. To them, Nik was simply the project director. But their burden seemed to pale compared to the weight that he bore. Over the years of slogging through their work, Nik had become more like a brother than a colleague. If he made a single error… No, Ari didn’t have time to dwell on that.

  Nik’s voice crackled over the intercom. "Ari, are we good to go?"

  "Everything is green on my end,” Ari replied. “The transit chamber is fully operational, and the save-state is complete. Are you ready?"

  There was a momentary silence before Nik's voice crackled through the speaker, "I'm ready. Engage the sequence."

  Inhaling sharply, Ari's finger gingerly pressed the button. Their machine spring to life, filling the lab with the choir of a thousand trilling frequencies. Pulsing in a steady rhythm, its song amplified with each passing moment.

  Screens came alive with flickering activity as data streams flowed in from sensors meticulously monitoring the upcoming transit. Unable to resist, Ari shot a glance at the live feed.

  Their machine’s counterpart across the Atlantic loomed like a monstrous totem. In previous runs, the data files of their test subjects would often become corrupted during transmission. Whenever that happened, the subject would never rematerialize.

  However, blinking out of existence forever seemed preferable to the alternative errors. Organic materials tended to come out hideously malformed. Sometimes, they would explode into scorching hot chunks. Now, the pod stood like a gaping maw, poised to regurgitate whatever remained of his best friend.

  With a final crescendo, the machine reached full power. There was a brilliant flash of light from the chamber. Ari blinked, his eyes struggling to adjust after the blinding glow.

  The pod door slid open. Nik had vanished. Now, they had to wait and watch the feed from Europe. Ari tensed as if he were the one who had just been atomically dismantled.

  Each tick of the lab’s clock reverberated in the room, stretching the seconds into slow, heavy footsteps. The palpable weight of anticipation swelled with each passing moment.

  Ari watched their machine's twin across the Atlantic as if it were a bomb. The eerie stillness emanated from his monitor.

  Would Nik make it safely? Ari’s confidence in their calculations wavered under the weight of uncertainty. Unanswered questions surged like relentless waves, consuming his thoughts and leaving him adrift in a sea of doubt.

  A flurry of motion engulfed the European feed. Alarms blared, and the screen flashed. Ari squinted. Had something gone wrong?

  "Damn, come on!" Ari's pursed lips grew pale, his face riveted to the screen.

  "Standby, Ari," a voice cut through his earpiece. It was the team leader in Europe. Her quaking voice made Ari's teeth clench. "We're checking the chamber."

  A technician in a protective suit cautiously approached the machine as its chamber door slid open. Ari squashed his hand to his earpiece, listening intently.

  Before the safety tech could report, a familiar voice rang out.

  "Check the save-state results for corruption," Nik ordered as he promptly stepped out of the machine.

  A fresh wave of blood rushed through Ari’s body when he finally relaxed his muscles. He felt the rush of tingles across his skin but couldn’t tell if it was from a return of circulation or the magnitude of excitement that threatened to unravel him. Their reckless gambit had paid off. Teleportation, once a thing of science fiction, was now a reality.

  The lights in the lab dimmed momentarily. Ari swiveled in his chair to see the energy consumption meter teetering dangerously close to the red line. Their experiment would have been noticed. Ari imagined engineers at the nearby power station scrambling to shut off their lab’s supply.

  "Nik, power is about to go out. You nee-"

  "Start the return sequence, now!" Nik said, his voice echoing over the intercom. Technicians scrambled to comply in a flurry of activity against the dimming lights.

  "Nik, Stop!" Ari yelled. Why wasn't Nik listening? Ari's gaze darted to the ticking clock. Seconds were all they had before the power cut. "Nik, just stay over there. We don't have time!"

  Ari's plea died in the air as the door hissed closed, sealing Nik inside once again. The technician gave the camera a thumbs-up before swiftly exiting the frame.

  "Initiating return protocol," the Atlantic team lead announced. Ari's eyes darted to the escalating energy consumption levels. Each tick of the meter struck his heart with a surge of trepidation. They were cutting it too close.

  If they didn't act now, the power cut would erase Nik's save-state data, a death sentence. If that happened, not only would their project be abandoned and labeled an expensive failure, but Ari would also lose his best friend.

  He imagined a nightmare scenario of having the power suddenly cut off mid-sequence. After the backup generators kicked on, their machine would finally open, unleashing a wave of stench. Waiting inside, a smoldering mass of flesh with Nik’s spectacles neatly propped on top.

  Ari swallowed hard as he watched Nik's vitals on the screen. They had never done back-to-back jumps.

  His eyes locked on to a crossed-out microphone icon. His mute button was on. No wonder Nik didn’t seem to hear him. Ari’s hand scrambled frantically to his earpiece, but it was too late to undo his mistake.

  "Initiate," Ari's European counterpart commanded.

  Moments later, a blinding light filled the lab as the teleportation module engaged. Ari shielded his eyes, praying the power would hold just long enough.

  The light faded. The energy meter plummeted, and darkness engulfed the lab. A deafening silence filled the room, interrupted only by the quiet hum of a solitary backup generator whirring to life.

  Everyone waited, the darkness offering an unwelcome calm. All eyes were on the teleportation chamber.

  "Is he...?" The unfinished question hung in the air like a specter too terrifying to name.

  The machine’s door slid open, revealing a faint silhouette. As the lights flickered back to life, Nik's illuminated figure emerged. As he scanned the lab, his calmness was betrayed by a mischievous grin on the edge of breaking loose.

  "He's back." Ari's voice came out as scarcely more than a whisper amid the eruption of celebration. He sank into his chair.