LEAP

LEAP

Of course, teleportation isn’t real (as far as we know!). However, I had a lot of fun with my version of it, particularly imagining how it might work. My research led me down many paths and inevitably into the realms of quantum physics which, as a non-scientist, I don’t profess to understand. I’m not sure many people do – it’s an impenetrable field of study but was a fertile ground for a new author, throwing up a melange of philosophical and ethical conundrums which I’ve tried to explore in LEAP. Everything Uma discusses in her lecture are real world challenges that prevent teleportation becoming a reality. However! What I realised very quickly studying Quantum Mechanics is that the classical laws of physics don’t apply and this was very liberating as a writer. It allowed me to imagine some real world solutions to the challenge of transporting a human being from A to B; for instance, the fact that at an atomic level we are constantly shedding atoms forced me to reassess the concept of self. But it also gave me licence to, firstly, destroy a person’s body at the point of teleportation and, secondly, to only transfer what had changed in subsequent LEAPs. It didn’t really matter if the original ‘you’ was destroyed since we are constantly reforming at an atomic level anywhere. All LEAP was doing was accelerating the process. The other benefit of my solution was that we didn’t have to get into the challenge of transporting the entire person from point A to point B. Instead, the system scanned the atomic structure of each person, disassembled the original and rebuilt the person at their destination using the scanned information. Similarly, the uniqueness of DNA gave me a really useful and fitting security apparatus for the LEAP system but, more importantly, introduced the opportunity to make Uma and Eva exact copies. Why they are copies is covered in MAD, my free story which you can download here if you’re interested in finding out.

One final word on LEAP for those of you who have discovered innumerable holes in my version of a teleportation system. This is the fiction bit. If it really worked, I wouldn’t be sitting here writing about it!

Flight

All I’ve written is true – the Wright brothers were the first to make a controlled, sustained flight of a powered, heavier-than-air aircraft with the Wright Flyer on December 17, 1903, four miles south of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Despite that incredible achievement, the brothers faced a whole plethora of challenges from that day onwards, not least the patent suits they prosecuted against other companies who were copying elements of their designs. This was an invitation for Samuel Reynolds I to make an appearance as a fictional member of their team and eventual nemesis of the brothers. It is well documented that the pressure of defending these patent suits led to the early death of Wilbur Wright from Typhoid Fever at the tender age of 45 in 1912.

Putting aside teleportation for one second, I still find it fascinating that within 100 years of the invention of flight, mankind had broken the sound barrier, put a man on the moon and built all the planes that are on show at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center museum in Virginia. It was a fitting example of the speed at which technology has allowed us to move.

Reynolds Air

I modelled RA’s troubles on an actual American airline from 2002. To help me, I used its 10-K, a legal document that all US publicly traded companies have to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission. They provide an in-depth overview (running to over 100 pages) of the company’s financial performance, including risks factors, current legal proceedings against the business and the management’s discussion and analysis of how the firm is doing. As you can imagine, for an author wanting to blend fact with fiction, they are a treasure trove of information and all the issues covered in the initial boardroom meeting and subsequent chapters were affecting airlines back then. It was just after 9/11 so the airline industry globally was struggling mightily. Many fell into Chapter 11 bankruptcy, an American initiative named after the US bankruptcy code 11 and designed to allow a company time to stay afloat whilst it restructures its debts and emerges from the experience as a viable business. Any company entering Chapter 11 would, like RA, have to propose a solution to the bankruptcy courts that protected its creditors and, in the process, the original shareholders would either lose all their equity or have it heavily diluted.

Airliner Graveyard

There is an airliner graveyard in the Mojave Desert located at Mojave Airport, a three thousand acre facility near Edwards Air Force Base. Here, there are thousands of aircraft baking in the midday sun. The reason they are sent there is down to its dry low humidity desert conditions which reduces the likelihood of damage due to corrosion of the airframe and other aircraft components. The other reasons are, firstly, space and the terrain; it’s ideal, offering a dry, hard surface that doesn’t need paving and won’t subside beneath the weight of heavy aircraft. These facilities tend to fill up on a cyclical basis. So, after World War II when the military downsized and converted to jet engines. Then another wave arrived in the 60s and 70s when propeller aircraft gave way to jet passenger planes. And so on, until 9/11 when entire fleets were grounded and sent to the desert for storage, including planes coming straight off the assembly line. They were flown directly to Mojave Airport without ever carrying a single passenger. It seems fitting that Reynolds chose to build his LEAP labs there, given the struggles Reynolds Air was having and the possibilities offered by the new technology.

Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center

The same can be said for Reynolds choosing the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center to launch his version of LEAP – symbolically, it was the perfect venue, not only for its location but also because of the date. It is the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum and, of course, December 17, 2003, was the centenary date of the Wright Brothers’ first flight. As Reynolds imagines, all the exhibits in the museum were shortly to be ‘supersonic dinosaurs’. It’s well worth a visit, and all the planes I mention are housed in the Boeing Aviation Hangar which was actually built to celebrate the Centennial of Flight in 2003.

The 9/11 attacks

Like many people, I was traumatised by the events of 9/11 back in 2001. We’d just had our first child and I remember clearly, sitting in our TV room, with a small baby in my lap as I watched the TV loop of American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 repeatedly crash into the North and South Towers of the World Trade Centre. Given the proximity to when my story was set, the consequences of the attacks are evident across LEAP, from the demise of RA, Ethan falling foul of the Department of Homeland Security, right down to having Uma’s HQ overlook the site of the fallen towers. One Liberty Plaza does exist and sustained extensive damage to its western façade as the Twin Towers fell, including losing most of its windows.

Blue Lagoon

The Blue Lagoon is the most famous tourist attraction in Iceland and a fitting setting for the battle between Uma, Ethan and Andreus Grond. I’ve been four times across my two visits to Iceland and knew immediately it would play a role in LEAP, given its location in a barren wasteland of solidified lava flows. Its setting is reminiscent of another world where sharp and savage rock formations surround the small man-made basin, which is dominated by two structures – one natural, the other artificial – Mount Thorbjorn and the steaming Svartsengi power plant, the source of its distinct azure water. The lake is not a natural phenomenon but owes its existence to man, scraped out of the unforgiving magma by the Suðurnes Regional Heating Corporation, the original owners of the nearby power plant. Nor is its raison d’etre anything to do with the much-heralded powers of its 104° centigrade brine. Its origins were driven by far more practical concerns. Namely, the need for a holding pit in which to pump the excess geothermal seawater used by the power plant to generate both its heat and electricity. Ten years passed before curious locals started bathing in the pool, and a public bathing facility was built to house the increasing number of psoriasis and eczema sufferers drawn to the unusual setting by the restorative effect of its waters.

Dates and Times

The action is set across the months of November and December in 2003, a time span of just 34 days within which I wanted to create a sense of how Uma’s teleportation played with both space but also time. Hence, my, on occasions, regretful, decision to frame each chapter on a minute-by-minute time frame. Little did I realise the consequences of that fateful decision as I broadened the story out across different time zones. By the end, I had to build a huge spread sheet to track what the time would be in each jurisdiction and ensure I had my timings right. However, I think it was worth the work; readers have remarked that it builds a real urgency into the story, particularly in the last two thirds as the action jumps between New York, Iceland, London, Nevada and San Francisco.