Doorport

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Janet Thompson stepped through the doorport and gasped. This isn't San Diego! What went wrong? she wondered, jostled by a passerby, overwhelmed by the noise, offended by the stench, chilled by the cold, and half-blinded by the light.

Blinking, she turned to read the sign above the doorport that she'd just come through.

"Downtown Sacramento Transit Plaza," it said on the lintel.

But I just came from Denver! Janet thought. She pulled her collar tight against the cold and looked around, wondering where she was. The cold was a wet, soggy rag, so unlike the crisp, dry cold of Denver. The classical cathedral dominating the square looked oddly familiar, but the steep pyramid piercing the sky behind it was the landmark she needed. The Transamerica Pyramid, San Francisco.

I step into a doorport in Denver headed for San Diego, and I end up in San Francisco, stepping out of a doorport that says I came from Sacramento.

The system's gone haywire, Janet thought, pulling her comcard from her purse. With a few thumbpresses, she dialed central California dispatch, the back line to the supervisor, her old friend Charlie Goodrich.

She looked around as her call went through. Doorports lined the square, people popping in and out of them every few seconds, the ports shimmering as they bent the fabric of space-time to bring two points together. The mid-morning doorport traffic heavy, all the people looked as if they belonged, none of them disoriented, as she was sure she looked. The usual knot of protesters stood down the street, waving signs predicting the apocalypse. Supercilious sacrilege! she thought, disliking their inflexible intolerance.

"Charlie here," the voice said. "Janet, wonderful to hear from you."

Janet held up her comcard so he could see her. "Hey, Charlie, how are you, old friend?"

Charlie was in his fifties, a bit overweight, balding and red-faced, a competent troubleshooter and Janet's typical go-to when anomalies like this cropped up. "What can I do for you, young lady?"

"I got a bad one, Charlie," Janet said, the wind whipping her hair into her face. At least it blows away the urine smell, she thought. "I was in Denver, stepped into a port for San Diego, found myself here, stepping out of a port from Sacramento."

"Uh-oh," Charlie said. "Let me get a trace on that one. That the doorport behind you?"

"Yeah, sure is." She'd made sure he could see it over her shoulder.

"Quite a snafu, that one. I hope Old Man Douglas doesn't get word about this. He'll give birth to extraterrestrials." Charlie looked at something off screen, his hands moving across his tactile interface, the tactiface beeping at his every touch. "Say, you weren't playing with that prototype you and the boys are developing at Corporate, were you?"

"The recalibrator? I wouldn't dare; Old Man Jackson would excoriate me for using untested equipment. You know how careful he gets about R&D."

"You mean, 'anal.'" Charlie smirked.

Janet smiled. "Exactly what I meant." Charlie always knew what she meant. They'd worked together for ten years on system maintenance and troubleshooting on the west coast before her promotion last year to VP of R&D.

"Nothin's comin' up, Janet," Charlie said. "All systems read normal; those two doorports both pass a self-check. I'll do a reset for both and then recheck. It'll inconvenience our customers for about thirty seconds, so if you hear complaints, that'll be me. But you know what I'm not finding ..."

"The record of my going through, right?"

"Right," Charlie replied, frowning.

All ports were tracked and billed accordingly. A port from LA to SF was $35 one way. Wave your comcard at the sensor, wait for the green, step on through, pay your bill each month.

Great. No record. "Look, Charlie, I'm freezing, where's the nearest doorport to San Diego? The rest can wait."

"Yeah, let's get you going." He waved at his tactiface. "Forty feet west of you."

"Left, right, up, down. I don't know west or east," she protested.

"Sorry, to your right."

Janet spotted it, headed that way. "Thanks, Charlie. I owe you one."

"Pleasure to be of service. Say 'hi' to the family."

"Likewise on your end. Bye." She thumbed off the call, and his face was replaced with an alert. One new voicemail, three new emails, four new vidmails. Probably all of them wondering where I am, Janet thought, sighing and stepping to the right doorport.

She waved her comcard across the sensor, the light turned green, the doorport shimmered, and she stepped on through to San Diego—four doorports down from where she should have emerged fifteen minutes ago.

With a sigh, she headed through the Transit Center toward the local doorports, dodging a protestor and wondering what had gone wrong.