I Don't Care About Your Stupid Space Plants

Three

Maddie's heart was racing after what Chloe did. Why wait until now? She's been afraid to tell Chloe her feelings for a few months, but she never had the nerve to do it. If she had, Maddie could've been dating her best friend this whole time. As the elevator let out a soft ding, the metal door slid open and Maddie had to force herself to stop thinking about kissing Chloe and start thinking about the insane adventure ahead of her. Teleportation had been a common thing in most places for quite a few years now, but Maddie still had no idea how it worked. 

Directly in front of her was a hallway that reminded her of a hospital. The bottom half of the walls were beige and the top half was white, with white, rectangular led lights imbedded in the ceiling, giving the hallway a very sterile vibe. The hallway wasn't very long, and it ended in another room with another wooden desk against the back wall, this one smaller than the first. The desk was pushed against the left wall to make room for the door to the right of it. There were small paintings on the wall that looked like cheap hotel art, but aside from that, the room was pretty empty, save for the company's logo in backlit metal letters on the wall behind the desk. 

There was nobody at the desk, so Maddie walked up and stood there awkwardly. God, could they make this ANY less comfortable? Finally, the door opened and a short man in a suit with a large wart beside his nose walked out, holding a clipboard and smiling.

"Hello there, I'm Dr. Ian Edwards, and I'll be your Personal Displacement liaison. I assume you're Madison Evans?" His smile looked forced, yet still warm and welcoming, and his voice was very nasally and high pitched.

"I go by Maddie, but yeah." Something about this guy weirded Maddie out, but she couldn't quite figure out what it was. "So, what's 'Personal Displacement' mean? Isn't that just teleporting?"

She could tell he was slightly offended by that question, and was trying his hardest to maintain that weird ass smile of his. "In a nutshell, yes. Teleporting is just the transference of data from one point to another, whereas our Personal Displacement process was created specifically by our team in Dubai, with the intention of sending and receiving biological data." Something about Dr. Edwards' tone indicated she'd accidentally struck a nerve. He sounded like someone made fun of his favorite TV show and he was trying to defend it with his life.

"Okay...so, how does it work?" She tried not to offend him any farther, but at the same time, she didn't really care.

"If you'll follow me, I'll take you to the pidcal and explain everything there." He started to turn to walk back into the door he came out of, but Maddie stayed where she was, adding to the silent agitation she was causing this poor little man.

She put her hands in her jean pockets and cleared her throat. "Um, follow you to the what now?"

He turned back around, his fake smile slightly waning. "Ah, my apologies. The P-D-C-L, or the Personal Displacement Computing Laboratory, is where all the magic happens!" At the word "magic", he held his hands up and wiggled his fingers. He waited for Maddie to acknowledge his explanation and take a step forward before trying for the door again. Past the door was a large area that looked a bit like a TSA checkpoint at an airport; something else to remind her of Chloe. There was a male security guard standing by a tall, cylinder-shaped machine. Once they got to the guard, he motioned to the machine and said to Maddie "if you could please step inside and place your feet on the markers, we'll just do a quick security scan."

"Alright then." Doing as he said, she stepped into the glass cylinder and placed her feet on the yellow footprints that had been painted onto the floor. 

The security guard walked up to the outside of the machine and said in a monotone voice "please raise your hands above your head and be as still as possible." Once Maddie did what the guard said, he pressed a button on the outside, and two vertical strips on either side of her begun to emit a green glow. With a mechanical whirring, they spun around the cylinder a couple of times before going back to their original position and turning their green lights off. The guard said "come through the scanner to the other side." Maddie lowered her arms and walked through. The security guard walked around the outside of the scanner and met her there, holding a small flashlight, which he then proceeded to shine into her eye and get uncomfortably close with. "Just look into this light for me." He checked both eyes and then said "open your mouth, please." When she did, he shone the light into her mouth, looking at her throat. He backed away and turned the light off, so Maddie closed her mouth. The guard looked at Dr. Edwards and said "everything seems normal, doc."