The pace of technology part 2

Every house now had a portal that was soon developed into a manually operated cabinet. The operator dialled his destination, waited for the doorway to turn from silver to black and stepped through to the receiving portal at the desired point.

People now went to school, visited friends or went to church at the touch of a button. Fitness clubs sprang up like wild fire using multiple booths to accommodate all their customers, who by now were in desperate need of exercise. There were accidents of course, especially at first when quite a few people went missing, but then there’d always been accidents even when high-speed transport depended on the horse and cart.

All in all everybody was well satisfied. Not so Fred’s grandchildren, who were now trying to develop the next stage in the grand design. Space tourism!

Imagine packing your suitcase for a holiday on the moon. A scientific community already existed there, researching the origins and age of the planets. The equipment they used to survive had all been hauled up there by the increasingly efficient rocket systems, but equip them with a Transmat and the moon was literally on your doorstep. Not only the scientists but also the fare paying holiday maker could be accommodated with every luxury.

Once the moon trips had proved successful, the Transmat team turned their attentions to Mars. The only other habitable planet in the system was now ripe for development. The vast resources of the Smith organisation built a small fleet of spacecraft for their own use. The Transmat systems were built and installed in a suitable location on the planet, before the necessary goods to sustain human life were imported. One scientific fact proven during this exercise was that the time from despatch to receipt remained instantaneous whatever the distances involved. Physicists were still puzzling over this fact after many years, but empirically the Smith system had shown that it somehow managed to bypass time during transmission.

It would appear that this was be the peak of Transmat achievement, but as always technology was still accelerating and now the great grandchildren of the Founder were looking to make their mark in the company.