Dr. Renard just finished relaying the incredible story of what happened to his twin daughters Anaelle and Marielle thirteen years ago when they were not yet three years old. The jaw-dropping secrets he revealed to Viviane stunned her. The first secret was that the process of teleportation did NOT always result in the death of a living organism. The second secret was that Marielle returned from the dead by copying a “template” of her identical twin sister, Anaelle, and then merging this template with Marielle’s body during the process of teleportation and reconstituting the resulting Marielle as a living “copy” of her sister. Viviane, who had just listened to this fantastic and far-fetched story, tried to absorb it but she was unable to wrap her head around it. Many questions in her head vied to be the first out of her mouth. She was tongue-tied.

“How is any of this possible??? Marielle actually came back to life??? What about the low accuracy? Why have we all been working for better and better teleportation accuracy then?”

Since the beginning of the UEN’s use of teleportation technology, there were strict laws enacted prohibiting the teleportation of living organisms. It was believed as axiomatic that the process of teleportation killed all living things. To be told otherwise was mind-blowing. Dr. Renard, however, knew the secret.

“The reason living organisms are killed during the process of teleportation is not necessarily due to imperfect replication of the organism’s information during transmission and reconstitution. The real reason is due to the tremendous amount of entropy generated during decoherence when objects are reconstituted.”

“Entropy?” Viviane never considered it. “But the thermodynamic laws say that entropy can only increase.”

“Yes, but the process of life appears to decrease entropy by making the organism more organized and less chaotic and less disordered. It is an illusion, of course, while the entropy of the living organism decreases, the overall entropy of the surrounding environment ultimately increases. During teleportation, the entire process occurs in a closed system. So much entropy is created that it reverses the decreasing entropy of the life process. Once reversed, it cannot be righted, thus causing the death of the living organism. Teleportation accuracy only needs to be ‘good enough’.”

Dr. Renard continued. “So during the process of teleportation, the ‘trick’ is to maintain the living organism’s change in local entropy at zero and make the outside universe accept all the created entropy. Then the organism will survive.”

“Then why have all our research efforts for the past thirteen years been focused only on increasing teleportation accuracy to 99.999999999% with a goal of attaining 100%?” Viviane still was not ready to accept Dr. Renard’s explanation.

“Once the Ruling Party of the UEN learned of my discovery of teleportation technology, they nationalized it and seized all of my research. They setup the National Laboratory here on the campus of the University where I invented it and installed me as Director of the lab. I realized that any new discoveries I made would belong to the state and that the UEN government would use and possibly abuse this technology for their own benefit. When I discovered how to teleport animate objects such as plants and simple organisms without killing them in the process, I kept these discoveries secret from the government because this knowledge is TOO powerful. To wield such technology would ultimately corrupt any UEN leader and allow any less disciplined officials to play God with this technology. It has the potential to destroy humanity.

“Instead, I’ve told the members of the Ruling Party that support us that we need funding to continue research into teleportation technology so that we can continually improve accuracy and achieve 100% perfect replication. Once we attain 100% perfect teleportation accuracy, then the leaders of the UEN will be able to exploit this technology for everything it can do for them for good or for evil.

“I intended to keep this ruse up forever since 100% teleportation accuracy can never be attained. The best we can ever do is to keep adding more nines to the accuracy percentage. When I reflect on the fact that we’ve gone from 99.9999% a mere thirteen years ago to 99.999999999% now, it truly boggles my mind. I never expected to achieve so much progress in that amount of time. At this accuracy rate, it is practically 100% perfect already.”

Even after hearing Dr. Renard’s full explanation, Viviane was still unwilling to accept everything as the complete truth yet. However, something more important than technology was on her mind.

“What eventually happened with Anaelle and Marielle?”

Dr. Renard sighed and recollected his memories. “At first, it did seem as if Marielle had come back from the dead. But as the days wore on, it became clear that the twins were not entirely the same as before.”

Thirteen Years Ago

In the days after Marielle was reanimated, she and her identical twin sister Anaelle started to move in synchronicity with each other. They started dressing alike, but as mirror images of each other. They walked in parallel whenever they went somewhere. When they ate meals at the table, they ate in sync, chewed and swallowed at the same time. One time they played the hand clapping game pat-a-cake and they played perfectly being mirror images of each other. Even when they watched TV together, they leaned forward with the same blank expression on their faces.

It was eerie how connected they were to each other. They were inseparable and cried whenever they were apart for more than a few minutes. They were no longer identical twins. They had become something even more identical. They were somehow connected at some deep level, maybe even at a quantum level.

What really happened to Marielle when she was brought back to life? Was it really Marielle that returned from the dead or was this “new Marielle” in fact the same person as Anaelle just split into two separate bodies? Children who were not yet three years old, how much do they really remember? How much life have they really lived? To those who study them, it is believed that the bond between identical twins is an especially close bond like no other between two humans. What did it really mean to be one of an identical pair of twins? These questions have yet to be answered and no attempt will be made here to answer them either.

Present Day

Dr. Renard continued to have his talk with Viviane, revealing what he knew about the awesome power of teleportation he invented. His mind was anguished to have to face the fact that the power of teleportation may have leaked beyond his ability to contain it.

“The Order of One Justice knows about Anaelle and Marielle. They’ve seen my unpublished research results and they have the data from the Laboratory’s Tranportal logs. They know that teleportation of living organisms, even humans, is possible even without 100% perfect accuracy. That is why they kidnapped my girls. They will try to study Marielle’s cellular makeup to see the effects of successful teleportation of a living human being.

“If they can recreate the conditions of that experiment I conducted on the twins, they could create technology that would allow them to teleport living, animate objects and leapfrog the UEN and use that technology for their own, evil purpose of taking over the world.”

Viviane had been speechless for most of these fantastic stories, but on hearing this, she was compelled to make a comment.

“You’re saying that the whole world may be at stake because of this?”

“Maybe not overnight,” answered Dr. Renard, “but there will be war. Whenever there is a sudden, large shift or imbalance of power between nations, there is always violent conflict and this time, it will involve the UEN for certain and affect all our lives.”

Although Viviane was glad to know the secrets of teleportation, she still cared more about Anaelle and Marielle.

“Why are you telling me all this? How will I be able to help get Anaelle and Marielle back?”

“To answer that,” said Dr. Renand, “I’ll have to start at the very beginning, even before I invented the technology of teleportation.”