> Buildin' A Friendship
>  by Ratchex
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> Teleporter Goin' Up
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	Dell Connahger was not an ordinary kid. In fact, if there was anything that could be said about him, it's that he was probably the smartest person on the planet, despite being barely a day over twenty. As the only person in history to have achieved a PhD in applied physics in less than three years, he's more than earned that title. Hardly anyone would guess that he came from a small town in eastern Texas called Bee Hive and spoke with an accent that sounded straight off a farm. Which, in fact, it was. 

Despite everything, he had managed to spend nearly all of his college days studying, and had made tragically few friends. He never really let this bother him, though. After all, what could friends do that cbooks and circuits couldn't?

"Dell, did ya happin' ta finish plowing the fields t'day?" called a voice from up the stairs.

"Yes, ma. I finished it this mornin' after lunch. When's supper?" Dell called back from the depths of the tornado shelter he had converted into a workshop in the two short weeks he had been home from college.

There was no immediate answer, so Dell simply went back to work. It was a favorite pastime of his to modify firearms, and his favorite shotgun sat splayed out in front of him, wires and bits of circuitry woven through the action of the firearm, and a small display mounted to the stock. After about an hour Ma came back and told him to some to supper.

After dinner, he was about to head back down into the tornado shelter to continue working when his father stopped him.

"You know, if ya love tinkerin' with all them fancy wires, you should look in mah pappy's old chest. He was real into all that there electricity nonsense," Pa said.

Dell didn't actually know much about his grandfather. Pa hardly ever spoke of him, and the rest of the family didn't respect him much, him being the city type and all. But he was a genius, that much is known. Even of it was old family crap, it was still worth a look.

After cleaning the dishes and putting his parents to bed at no later than 7:30, Dell climbed up the ladder to the attic of the small farm house. As expected, the attic was absolutely filthy, with spiders and mice everywhere. But Dell didn't let that dissuade him. After all, he grew up on this farm.

Making his way to the back of the attic,  he spotted a large metal chest witha padlock the size of his fist. Rather than wake his parents up, which he knew wouldn't remember where the key was, he pulled out a large wrench from his back pocket and proceded to hit the padlock several times. After a few hits, the lock simply disentigrated into a rusty heap.

Slipping the wrench back into his pocket, he gingerly opened the chest, revealing a mound of papers. As to be expected, many were nothing more than dental and banking records, many detailing contracts with various groups and organizations. After sorting through a file of contracts, tax returns, and patent claims for his many inventions, Dell was about to dismiss it all as useless crap. That was until he spotted a 100 ounce solid gold brick gleaming up at him beneath several portfolios.

He couldn't believe his luck! A whole gold brick, just for using in science! But something seemed off about the gold brick, it seemed to almost glow all on its own. Upon closer inspection, he found a symbol of Australia on the back and a stamp reading, '100 oz pure Australium.'

Dell felt like crying he was so happy. 

Australium was the rarest element on earth, found only in the Australian outback, and possessed extaordinary properties unlike any other metal on earth. In fact, his five thousand dollar bar of gold just turned into a five billion dollar bar of Australium.

Australium had the unique property of making anything that came in contact with it behave like a superfluid, accelerating it instantly to any speed relative to the amount of current flowing through it. In layman's terms, the more electricity you put through it, the faster whatever you put on it went when you applied a force to it.

With a schoolgirl's squeak of delight, Dell rushed downstairs to try out a multitude of experiments on the bar of metal, barely able to control his excitement.

After taking the battery out of his truck and attaching it to the bar of Australium using a pair of jumper cables, he was ready to begin his first experiment. He placed a penny on the smooth surface of the metal brick, then flicked it as hard as he could with his middle finger. The penny proceeded to shoot through the solid foot of concrete that made up the walls of the tornado shelter, not even cracking it. The sound, however startled Dell to the point where he jumped onto his workbench, knocking over the multitude of tools in the process. Realizing that the danger had passed, he grabbed a long length of wire and began feeding it into the hole the penny had created on its way through the wall. After thirty feet of wire, he decided to call it quits and move onto the next experiment.

After an entire night of testing and fiddling, Dell had perfected a makeshift one-way teleporter out of four ounces of Australium, a lawnmower, and his truck's battery. He was rapidly beginning to get tired, but forced himself to go on; "just one more test" he kept telling himself. 

Finally, after attaching the Australium to the ends of the lawmower blades and feeding alternating currents through each blade, Dell had determined how to accurately transport objects from place to place in the blink of an eye. After doing it with another penny, a watermelon, and even the old family hound across the open field in front of his family's farm, Dell decided it was time for him to try it out.

A quick double check of his sleep-deprived math to compensate for his size, and he stepped onto the top of the lawnmower and pulled the ripcord to start the tiny engine. After a minute of adjusting the choke on the mower, he decided it was the moment of truth. He leaned over and attached the ends of the jumper cable to his trucks battery, and vanished.


--- --- ---


A blink of an eye and a bright flash later, Dell found himself embedded in a brick wall, upside down. After sliding down a good foot or two and landing on his head, he opened his eyes and identified the place where he was as the bustling metropolis of Manhatten at around four in the morning.

Something seemed off about the city, though. Even st this time of night, there should be people walking around and cars whizzing by, but the streets were eerily silent. Dell didn't like this at all.

After a good minute of rubbing his head and coaxing his body to stop hurting like he had just been thrown into a wall, Dell stood up and began dusting himself off, but immediately lost his balance and landed flat on his stomach. Putting his hands underneath him to lift himself up, he noticed something very wrong.

Now, Dell generally considers himself a southern gentlemen, and rarely curses. Only the occasional "damnit" escapes his mouth. However, under extreme circumstances, that can change. This was one of those times.

"What the FUCK happened to my hands!?" Dell yelled into the empty streets, his words echoing off the brick walls of the high buildings surrounding him.

He looked down in horror at the stumps where his hands used to be. He took this chance to look the rest of his body and found that he was covered from head to toe in dark brown fur, and a short, tan tail sticking out of the back of his pants, which he now noticed were horribly oversized. His body proportions were now horribly wrong as well, making him look like some sort of mutated quadruped. 

Dell promptly began screaming and attempting to run in circles. I say attempting because very time he tried to stand up on his back legs, he immediately fell over.

Before he could wake the entirety of the city, the door of the building Dell had crashed into opened, revealing a creature that looked like a horribly distorted equine. Dell immediately noticed its dark blue coloring and what appeared to be a tattoo of a crescent moon encompassing a smaller crescent moon on its ass.

"Sweet Celestia, dude. What the hell's your problem?" the creature asked.

Talking pastel colored horses, Dell thought to himself. A'right world, you win this round.

Sleep deprivation and the shock of teleporting to wherever the hell he was now finally caught up with him, and he collapsed in a heap in front of the dark blue pony.