"What about teleportation?" asked Madison.
"Huff, Huff, What?" asked Jack between wheezes. Madison had complained that she wanted to go for a jog, but didn't want to run on a treadmill and didn't want to run through his, unfamiliar to her, neighborhood. So, Jack made a small simulation that included a local nature preserve that had running trails. He had also configured it so that the simulation boundary projected a fake sky, so it still looked like they were outdoors instead inside a glowing white dome.
He had neglected physical fitness while Fran was dying so he could spend more time with her, but now he had no excuses, so he joined Madison for a jog. And while he wasn't completely out of shape, he wasn't exactly in shape either. But Madison was in shape, very fine shape indeed, and the pace they were maintaining was difficult for him, but a breeze for her. She was literally running circles around him.
As she circled him again, she said, "What about teleportation? You said the pen ink stayed next to the pen if you only exported the pen changes, but stayed on the paper if you exported both the pen and paper changes. So, would that also work if you, I don't know, moved a ball from one box to another? If it works, it would effectively be teleportation."
Jack came to a wheezing stop. She'd done it again. It was an obvious possibility, given what he had already discovered. He just hadn't thought of it. But Madison did.
Still out of breath, he paused the simulation and pulled both of them out to the real world. He wasn't using parallel self because he wanted to export the effects of the run out to his physical body.
The transition from winded to normal wasn't as jarring as he had expected. When he'd left the lottery simulation after that first encounter with the cops, he'd been shaken, even in his soul space. So, maybe emotional state was included when Genesis Heart was maintaining his continuity of mind, but didn't include other physiological state.
He got up from his bed, walked out to the kitchen, grabbed a glass and two plastic containers, then walked out to the living room and sat on the couch. As he sat, Madison came out of her room and sat next to him, while giving him a look that said, "Really? Now?"
He just shrugged his shoulders, then pulled them into his soul space.
"You have to do this now? Why not wait until we finished with our run? I don't want to get cold and have to warm up again."
Her mind was truly a mystery. She could think of teleportation, but didn't remember that the simulation was paused.
"The simulation is paused. Our physical state there is still preserved. When we resume the sim, it'll be like it never stopped, at least for our bodies."
"Oh, yeah. Right. I forgot."
He made templates of the bowl of mixed nuts on his coffee table, the glass and the two plastic containers. Then he instantiated and linked the bowl of nut and the glass. The bowl of mixed nuts and the glass appeared on the wood table in his white room.
He walked over, grabbed a cashew from the bowl, dropped it into the glass, then exported the changes to both.
Madison said, "It'll be amazing if this works."
"We'll know in a moment," he replied, then pulled them out to the physical world.
When they looked, they saw that there was one cashew nut sitting in the class on the coffee table. It had worked! He had effectively teleported a cashew from the bowl to the glass.
"Holy shit! That worked!" exclaimed Madison. "What if you just moved the whole bowl?"
"I don't think that would do anything, since moving the bowl doesn't actually change the bowl. But, since I can create a template that includes both the bowl and the nuts, maybe..."
He pulled them both back into his soul space. Then he deleted the templates he had just created and created a new template that contained the coffee table and everything on it. When the new coffee table appeared, after he linked the template to the physical original, he rearranged the items sitting on it so they were arranged in a line going from smallest to largest. After exporting the changes and exiting his soul space, they found that the items on the coffee table had been arranged just like they were in his soul space.
"How did you do that?" asked Madison.
"I made a single template that included the coffee table and everything on it."
"Wait, you can do that?"
"Yes? I did it with the bowl of nuts just a moment ago, so I figured I should also be able to do it with the table and everything on it."
"Oh, Right. That makes sense."
"Now, I have one more test."
Then he jumped up and ran into the kitchen, grabbed a bucket from under the sink and brought it out and set it on the coffee table. He pulled them back into his soul space, deleted the coffee table template, created two separate templates, one for the glass, the other for the bucket. After linking the two templates, he put the glass into the bucket and exported the changes to both. Back in the physical world, they found the glass sitting inside the bucket.
"This is amazing!" said Madison. "What about-"
Realizing she had a question she couldn't ask outside his soul space, he pulled them back in.
"What about if the source and destination are not containers? What if you just move something from on top of one piece of paper to another?"
"Let's try it and find out."
He left his soul space, grabbed a piece of notepaper, and put it on the coffee table. Then he removed the glass from the bucket and set it on the coffee table next to the piece of paper. Back in his soul space, he created a template for the piece of paper, put the glass on top of the piece of paper, and then exported the changes. When they exited his soul space, they found that the glass had not moved.
"Huh," said Madison. "Why do you think it didn't work?"
"Putting something in the bucket could, conceptually, be considered a modification to the bucket, but putting something on top of the piece of paper is not a modification. At least that's my guess."
"Makes sense."
Then she gave him a look.
He pulled them back into his soul space.
"If you can move the glass into the bucket, can you move one of us into another room?"
"No. To get the glass to move into the bucket, I had to connect, or synchronize, the two linked templates, so that the changes for both templates get exported together. But I can't connect you with a linked template. So, it won't work."
"Damn," she said, disappointed.
"Yeah. Still, what we've discovered is amazing."
"I know," she said. "And hey, if this lottery thing doesn't work out, we could always rob a bank."
"What?! Why?" exclaimed Jack.
"Sure. You can edit simulations, so all you'd need to do is take a snapshot during the day, while the bank vault is open, edit out the people, load up the money, then drive back and dump it into one of those tubs. Then export and shazam, perfect crime. The money just disappears."
"That's nice, except you're forgetting about the serial numbers. We'd have to launder all that cash somehow, and I have no interest in getting involved with organized crime."
"Oh, oh! You could just take the cash from drug dealers."
"Hmm, that's better, but it still leaves the issue of laundering the cash. I don't know about you, but I really don't want to have to explain to the feds why I have tons of cash, all of it with traces of drugs on it."
"Damn, you're right."
"If this lottery plan doesn't work, I can always try playing poker in a casino. With snapshots, it would be easy to see everyone's cards. The hard part would be making sure I don't win too much, too often."
"Ooh, you're right. And you wouldn't have to launder the money. I like it."
They both got lost in thought for a while, contemplating other money-making schemes, but eventually Madison said, "So, um, can we finish our run now? We can talk about what we can do with this while we run."
"You mean you can talk and I can wheeze."
"Sure, but it's good for you."
"Fine."
He pulled them back into the simulation, resumed it, and immediately felt winded again. They still had a mile to go, so he started jogging again while Madison pranced around him like a sexy gazelle. Watching of her toned form as she pranced around him served as a pleasant distraction from the unpleasant task of dragging his tired body towards the end of the trail.