Free Porter by Laurence Dahners Page B

hang out at the pool. Her head was throbbing. Her mom got her a Tylenol and she curled up to sleep with Oscar , her cat.
    Her dad spent hours on the internet trying to find credible evidence of teleportation or whatever the hell this phenomenon was. Not even a “less than credible” report of the same phenomenon was to be found.
     
                  The next morning Allie’s dad got her up early to take her in to his lab in the physics department at the University. He ignored her protests about going swimming with Mindy. When her mother said something about it, he just told her to let Aunt Stella know that Allie was “busy.” At the lab, t hey did measurements until Allie’s head was splitting again. H er e yes would hardly stay open. They rested over lunch at Burger King and started over. Dr. Dans ’ m agnetic and electrical f ield measurements around Allie showed nothing different from those about his own head . Measurements around the ports found oddly “swirling” fields. Samples of distilled water and some organic solvents that had been through ports were put aside for assay by a frie nd in the chemistry department who later told them there were no changes from the control specimens that hadn’t been “ported.” Bacteria and yeast that had been ported continued to live. When Allie got too tired to make ports again her dad spent time on the phone with a friend at the medical school trying to arrange an MRI of her head “to see if there were any unusual structures.”
    Other than the fellow at the medical school who m her dad told that she had “an unusual ability,” no one else was told that Allie was the center of a new research program. When the MRI was done there was no recognizable difference between her brain and any other. Dr. Dans’ grad student kept working on Dans’ grant funded research project , getting barked at when he interrupted the “Allie research” with questions about their funded study. Everyone that came into the lab was told that Allie was there to “keep her out of her Mom’s hair” or to “see how science worked.” Her dad strictly forbid her to tell any of her friends or to do any tricks for anyone except for him. Video s he made of the effect in action carefully excluded Allie from the field of view. He was very pleasant to her, ordering out lunch from all her favorite restaurants and setting up a computer for her to use between tests. But nonetheless, she was there in the lab all day almost every day! Even most weekends!
                  The rest of Allie’s summer was ruined with 12 hour days at the lab and she began to look forward to the start of school simply because it would provide a break from the constant testing. Her mother and father had started to argue about it – out of her presence , but she could hear the m fighting through the walls.
                  At the end of her first day back at school Allie was dismayed to see her dad’s car parked in front of the school . She opened the door, “Dad, I’ve got homework!”
                  Distractedly he looked up from the paper he’d been reading and smiled at her, “ I know Kiddo. It’ll just be for an hour . Besides you can do your homework during my setup time between the first experiment and the second. You look great in your new outfit! ”
                  Sullenly, she got in the car. As she expected, one hour turned into two, then an angry call from her mother was needed to get them home for dinner.
                  Her dad became more and more frustrated as test after test demonstrate d odd but miniscule physical phenomena around the port area at both entrance and exit. There was a tiny rotating electrical field, fluctuating magnetic phenomena and a slight attractive force, possible gravitational, around the “ports.” The electromagnetic and possible gravitational fields were so tiny they were at the limits of detection for the