It's Beautiful Here

She's out there, somewhere.

I tell myself I had no choice, but the remorse is too hard to bear. Perhaps it wouldn't have been as catastrophic as I thought. Maybe there was another way to avoid being found out. Though my mind reels and my heart aches, I know there was no alternative.

If only she'd been more trusting. I'd had that workshop in the basement when we met, and she'd laughed off most of my “cockamamie” ideas. Just silly flights of fancy and a waste of time and money, creating all these fancy gadgets.

Okay, so I took down the local electrical substation a few times. All it took was a simple reset of the massive breakers by the service technicians to put everything back online. Honestly, the neighbors probably benefited from the outages. We've become too spoiled to the convenience of our lifestyle and a lesson in survival certainly didn't do any of them any harm.

Although the ungrateful bastards pointed fingers, it was never traced back to me. One of the advantages of my breakthrough was the capability to hide the evidence with the push of a button. Fortunately, the short-range transfers were easy to retrieve. As it turned out, greater distances were problematic and I was trying to resolve the issue.

A few workshop tools had to be replaced, but that wasn't of major consequence. Her little Pomeranian might have been fine, if it had only stayed where it materialized. I made the trip, but never found it. To be honest, I never liked the vicious little monster, anyway, and the feeling was clearly mutual. The development of world-changing technology has often required sacrifice.

After that incident, I set side animal testing and took the risks myself. And what did I get for my effort? Accusations. I was “sneaking out” and probably seeing someone else, when she found my side of the bed and my workshop empty for a few days at a time. Regardless of my denials, the fact that I couldn't tell her what I was doing left her in doubt. I didn't dare risk the world finding out before I'd perfected the process, and I was so close...

It was during that time that I came to realize I was simply trying to give humanity another convenience, and in the long run, one that would be shamelessly abused. We really aren't ready for teleportation, and probably never will be.

Imagine the cost of collapsing the transportation industry. Why take a flight or a cruise, when we can just “zap” ourselves over to Aunt Sadie's for a few days, or a month, or..? Want to climb Kilimanjaro? Teleport to the base. Better yet, just jump right to the summit. When the view became tiresome or the cold was too much, just press the button on the remote and “ZAP,” you were home!

I finally made my decision when my thoughts turned to military applications. No need to waste money and our own troops' lives. Just activate the bomb and send it. Our government would either pay a fortune for my technology, or just “disappear” me and take it. Once it was in their hands, we'd be doomed.

So, I had decided that, for the sake of my marriage, I'd show her just exactly what the mystery was, explain what I'd decided to do, and then we'd jump back home and destroy it, for the good of our world. I'd be vindicated, and we'd live out our lives happily, and no one else would ever know.

She'd always wanted to visit Ireland. I'd been charging the massive capacitors for the trip of a lifetime for us both, and was dialing in the coordinates when she noticed the lights flickering. Before I realized what was happening, she barged into the workshop, screaming that she'd go meet “the other woman” herself, slammed her fist on the flashing button and ran into the chamber, slamming the door shut behind her. The capacitors discharged after the required 15 seconds, while I stood, frozen in shock.

It took me another moment to realize she knew nothing about the remote, and quickly looked up the location. I'd managed to get Ireland dialed in, but not quite Dublin, as planned. No, the destination she'd activated was in the marsh, somewhere east of the road where I now stand.

The remote, along with everything else in the workshop will be incinerated in the next few seconds by the self-destruct mechanism I activated. I will not allow it to be the destruction of our kind and the ruin of our world.

I step off the edge of the road into the dense growth and the mire, calling her name. If she yet survives, we will live out our lives on the grand island she so wanted to see. If not, I will let the marsh take me, too. Either way, the secret will perish with us.

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Created for Belle's "On This Street" unofficial challenge, which I found out about on the deadline date. (Whew!) Thanks for the fun prompt, Belle!