Hi, everyone! This is my first time ever posting to reddit. I wanted to get some feedback on a short story I wrote, so I wanted to find a place where people would be able to read it, so I thought of reddit. I'm not even sure if we're allowed to post stories... or if there is a specific forum on here to do so.
It's the only "real" (if you can call it that) short story I've ever written. It was an idea bouncing around in my head for a while and I decided to just go ahead and do it.
Please, all the criticism you want! You won't offend me if it's bad because I'm not a writer, so I haven't put too much effort into learning how to write.
But, I enjoyed doing it, and want to see where I can go from here:
Please enjoy if possible...
TELEPORT
2025
"Looks like they were blindsided by those winds, Kevin. Makes you wonder about their local weather forecast. Back to you."
"I hear that, Shelly. We'll keep an eye on events as they unfold over in Stillwater, Kentucky. For those of you just joining, this storm nearly making national headlines, sweeping across the eastern portion of Kentucky, suspected to be adopted from the East Coast."
"We'll have more to report after this."
The newsanchor detached his earpiece from his head and walked off the set.
"Hey, Kevin!"
"Yea?" The newsanchor replied.
"Got a story for you, this one is crazy. Capital c, man."
"Oh yea?" The newsman grabbed the fold of papers from the coorespondent. He briefly glances over it, flipping the pages.
"Heh, is this a joke? It's April 3rd, you're a little late."
"I wish it was, Kevin. This... this is legit."
The newsanchor glanced back down at the newstory, headlined "GE Develops Teleportation Device? Can Teleport Objects Twice As Big As The Size Of An Average Person"
"This is ama..." The newsanchor stops short of his sentence. "B-but.. how? How does it work? I mean, what are the real limitations of this thing?"
The bearer of the newstory looked up at the newsman, appearing just as baffled as the other. "I don't know, Kevin. Strange, though. I've never felt my nerves act up like this before with a story."
Stillwater, Kentucky April 4th, 2025
"Ronald!" A voice exclaims, feeling quite a distance away from the barnhouse.
Ronald Loyer looks up from his activity, slicing up a lamb for the next months stew.
"Ronald!!!!!"
"Blasted, what do you WANT woman." He said not even beneath his breath, yet his wife Clarel, still not near the barn, didn't hear.
A few moments later his wife shows up at the barndoor.
"Did you not hear me? The boys are back from town, they got two whole sacks of potatas and three ears of corn."
"Woman, you came to tell me that? I been suspectin' them of bringin more and you come on like its good news. you just leave me to my slaughter."
"Whatever. Listen, you wanna be nice then I'll unlock the back door, hear? Or else you can just sleep out here tonight." Clarel slams the barndoor with an unlikely strength for even a southern woman. "This ain't the damn 1800s, you the one who broke the truck!" Clarel yelled through the door as she walked off huffing and sweating from working that day far too long outdoors.
**
After an argument later that evening, Ronald, Clarel and their children, two boys and a girl (Jeffrey, Susan, Tucker), sit down for a meal a bit later than usual.
"It's nearly dark, you know we can eat earlier if your father don't act like such a baby." Ronald slams his fist on the table. "Heh.. DAMNIT. Look, do we need to go back outside to finish this?" Clarel mumbles looking down at her food stirring her cauliflower soup with her fork. Jeffrey, 19 years old (and the second oldest) smirks. Susan is the youngest at 18, only a year apart from Jeffrey and Tucker the first born is 24 years old.
"Can't we at least watch the T.V. while we eat?" Jeffrey pauses for a moment everyone looking up at him for breaking the momentary silence. "Well? We usually do!" he concludes. Jeffrey forgets about it and goes back to eating. Ronald stands up and walks over to the T.V. and turns it on.
"What it be? that late night show? Weather?"
"I can't stand watchin the weather no more, it just makes me sad. How many dead is it so far?" Tucker pipes up.
"A dozen or more, not too far from here either." Susan continues, " 'say it's Kentucky's biggest disaster in ten years."
"Just terrible. I hope the parker family is ok, them winds hit hardest over in that area." Static blares from the T.V. as Ronald stares blankly at the floor with his hand on the T.V. knob. "... heck I agree.. let's watch somethin else." Ronald's face brightens up as he turns to one of the local entertainment channels.
**
The next day Ronald can be seen sitting in his truck attempting to start it up. "Damn technology, ruinin my damn truck, shoulda never hooked in that new battery." Ronald silently vows, as he did much of the time, to do without as much technology as he can manage to get by on. Always a disdain for technology, Ronald raises his kids as far away as he can from what the considers to be the modern treacheries of man. His buddies in town would always make fun of him, accusing him of being a southern Kentucky mennonite or just outright laughing at what they believed to be ignorance.
"Alright, fellas. Check this one out." Barry bellows out, startling all of the guys except Ronald. Ronald looks up from his beer to lock eyes with Barry, "The wife came home two nights ago, alright? This why I been a bit quiet. She downright smell of whiskey and straight up look'a damn shame, I tell by the look at her face she been seein that doctor. Willy? Billy? Willy Billy?" Barry bursts out laughing, "Billy with a little Willy!" Barry continues laughing and chortling profusely then stops suddenly, growing much quieter, "Ah.. damnit guys... just damnit.. I'm losin' her ain't I?" Barry's eyes begin to tear up a bit as the rest of the guys all stare modestly and silently down at the bar table.
After a few moments Paul speaks up, "Ya' know my dad is sellin his prize chickens at the auction this month. Didn't you say you wanted a shot at 'em, Barry?" Paul attemps to change the subject to comfort Barry. "Ah, I.. uh.. yea that sounds good. Just come get me whenever they do the shoutin'"
*
While Ronald was typically present during "the guy's" daily morning binge, today he sat in his truck, in his garage and a little more torn up than usual. Almost synchronistically with Barry's, Ronald's eyes tear up, but not over any wife. Ronald remembers back when he was a kid, in the 1980s, he daydreams of his mom and his dad as though they were still around. Ronald's parents were killed in an automatically piloted vehicle in 2021. The case was heard in many of Kentucky's most significant courtrooms and Ronald, though an incredbily futile effort, attempted to get AVRSs (Automatic Vehicle Redirection System) banned everywhere and removed from any and all pertaining vehicles permanently. After Ronald's failed plight, he took the settlement money and moved with his family into southern Kentucky just ouside Stillwater, where he would await unknowingly his fateful future.
Strangely, after a final twist of the key, the truck started. "I .. uh.. wait, what?" Ronald stuttered. He thought back on Jimmy Allems, his old High School buddy, working out the kinks in his truck the other day, while Ronald wasn't present during most of the operation, he was sure Jimmy hadn't fixed a "darn" thing. Little did Ronald know, however, that fate had started the truck that day. Not wires, not repairs, not a battery, not coincidence.. but hard, cold fate and the turn of events it offered.
Ronald decided to omit informing his family and to go ahead and attempt to drive the truck into town, the truck had nearly a full tank of gas. "They see my truck gone, they can figure what happened, I figure." Ronald murmured to himself as he drove away from the farm, up the hill and connected with the gravel road into town.
Ronald had a bit of a smile on his face as he bumped up and down on the bumpy road towards downtown. Not a great big smile, but enough of one. Ronald neared the bridge to town that crossed Obion Creek. A smaller vehicle, a blue sedan with chunks of paint taken off all the way to its' rust, roared past Ronald and his truck probably going 30 miles over the speed limit, or rather what Ronald deemed to be the speed limit had there been something official.
"What in the devil!" Ronald screamed as he slammed on his brakes. The blue sedan had nearly run him into a ditch. Ronald pulls to a screeching completely stop as he eyes the driver now up ahead of him. Ronald squints, because he can't believe his eyes. Ronald watches as the blue sedan drives over the bridge and straight into the rough old creek.
"Oh my dear sweet Lord in Heaven." Ronald shouts to himself. Stunned for a moment, Ronald tries hard to begin to figure out what to do he can do. The blue sedan at this point is being whisked away down the rapid creek.
Ronald pulls up and stops on the seemingly ancient wooden bridge. Ronald cups his hands over his eyes, shielding the sun. The blue sedan has been carried off too far, there's nothing he can do.
Just then.. Ronald jumps as he hears the roar of yet another engine. A black, much longer sedan this time, with tinted windows pulls up next to Ronald's car on the bridge.
Three men step out of the car, "There, how about that one?" points one of the men in nice black suits and sunglasses. "Looks good, prep the razor." Ronald stares at the men, mystified and completely curious as to the events unfolding right in front of him. Ronald watches as one of the mysterious men in black suits grabs some device out of the trunk of the car. The man then proceeds, or so it seems, to aim the device down the wiley river, in the direction of the blue sedan!?!? Ronald shakes his head subconsciously testing his state of alertness.
"Alright, do it." One of the men stated, right before the man with the device began to.. glow? The man with the device was now glowing a bright greenish-blue and it seemed as though at least 100 mph of winds were blowing through his clothes. Yet, Ronald nor any of the other men standing near the man with the device were covered in this glow OR any sort of fierce wind. It seemed to be strangely isolated to that man with the device alone.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, a large blue beam shot straight out of the device and seemed to instantly stretch for what seemed to be miles and miles into the horizon over the river. Only mere seconds later, a horrible screech seemed to pierce over the entire landscape of Kentucky as a large blue cloud-like bubble appeared over the bridge. Then SLAM! The blue sedan which drifted down the river appeared out of nowhere over the bridge and slammed down on the gravel road next to it.
"What... in the... f..." Before Ronald could finish, the three men rushed to the driver side door of the blue sedan, nearly ripping the door off its handles as they pull the driver violently out of the car.
"Cuff him, wipe him." Said one of the suited men to another. One of the men put the driver, who was a man apparently in his mid-40s who Ronald had never seen before, in handcuffs and lowered him into the back seat of the sleek black car.
As the last man gets in the drivers side of the black sedan, he glances at Ronald, seeming to notice him for the first time.
"Looks like you have quite a story for the locals here, eh?" Ronald acknowledges the strike up in conversation, but the man quickly gets in the car, abruptly ending any possible continuation of it.
**
April 8th, 2025 New York, New York
"Welcome back, folks!" Lenny Williams, host of America's favorite late night talk show, welcomes his audience back from a commercial break. "So, how about these diseased whales off the coast of Acapulco? I wonder if MacDonalds has any plans to invest in any of this for part of their livestock." The audience bursts into heavy laughter. "Now here's a story..." the talk show host picks up a card off the table and holds it up to the audience, "Local Kentucky man reports seeing a government top-secret experiment regarding teleportation. He is currently being held in custody for questioning and may be handed over to mental officials" the talk show host pauses for a few seconds, then continues, "Just hope they don't use that teleporter to handover whales to the McDonald officials." The audience bursts into laughter again.
the morning of April 9th, 2025 Cincinnati, Ohio
"... the search for eastern Texan Jenny Brooks is on tonight as an avalanche near Wellsprings, Colorado sent her and three of her friends off the side of a mountain highway early Tuesday morning." the newswoman pauses to take a breath, gulping unnoticeably. Inwardly arguing with herself how much more of her boss and his advances she can take before quitting and taking out another school loan.
"The two missing boys and one girl have been found, but the search does still continue for 23 year old Jenny Brooks. Her family, devastated, was interviewed late last night, her father's presence, however, could not be obtained for the press."
"... An update with the Kentucky man who reportedly witnessed what he claimed to be the top secret Federal Government performing an experiment near his hometown. Apparently, 45 year old Ronald Loyer has now told doctors that it was not a top secret division of the government, or the FBI, as he previously had stated, but in fact.. aliens. Lead team specialist of the mental health facility informed an as of now anonymous journalist that, in fact, Mr. Loyer would be remaining under their care at the hospital for days to come."
The nightly 30 minute news segment ends, the newswoman walks off into the dim lights of the set.
** afternoon of April 9th, 2025 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
"Alright, I'll make you another bet." a preteen boy says to another preteen boy at Devil's Pool. "I can skip this rock across the lake five times. If I do, you gotta go kiss that girl over there and then stick your hand up her shirt and run off."
"You're kidding, right? You can't skip that rock five times, it's a deal."
"Heh, you're dead. My uncle showed me how to skip stones really good."
"Quit talkin'! Do it!" The boy with the rock launches the rock sideways from the palm of his hand across the lapis surface. One, two, three, four, five.....
late afternoon April 9th, 2025
"Roger! Get the HELL back on!" The newsteam manager yells at the newsanchor, demanding him to get back to his spot before the commercials is done airing.
"Look, I don't like the way she is setting up my make up schedule this early in the mo...."
"Roger, I don't give a shit! Get back up there, or you may as well walk yourself out the back door."
Roger, the newsman tightens his tie and puts the current situation quickly behind him as he strides up the corridoor onto the newset.
He spins his chair to face the camera just as the news goes back on the air.
He begins reading the telepromter.
"Does anybody remember SpinTech?" Roger reads as he asks the invisible state-wide audience. "SpinTech, original developer of Trudy, the personal car assistant, is apparently back on the scene. You won't believe this part." the whimsical newsanchor continues "apparently, discussions have begun with General Electric to buy the patent for their latest invetion the supposed "teleporting machine"." Roger stops for a moment, a very brief moment unrealized by staff or audience, due to a very unfamiliar, uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. "The machine, supposedly capable of actually teleporting mass up to as large as twice the size of an average sized human, has been the topic of heavy discussion all across the nation this week, turning heads at ad posts, causing wonder.. and even deep concern for many Americans. One Floridan blogger had this to write on his number one blogsite, "...teleportation devices? Guys, are you serious? You've got to be (censored) kidding me. Listen, people, nation, USE your brains. Wake up! You can't just mass produce a consumer level teleportation machine. What????? I can't even begin to imagine the insanity this will contribute in our day to day lives. If nothing else, hopefully at least the people of Florida will heed my warning." The newsanchor continues, "SpinTech plans to announce later this week any updates regarding the agreement with General Electric....."
Roger, the newsanchor continues, "In local news today........."
evening of April 9th, 2025 Two miles outside of Conway, Arkansas
"Hear about that little kid shot by that man? Little shit apparently ran up to his sister and grabbed her chest." The young woman grazes the palms of her hands over the tall grass stocks as she skips almost weightlessly up the hill.
"I did! Apparently the kids' parents are suing the school since the kids had disappeared over lunch. Get this, though.. the weird part.. supposedly the dad of one of the other kid he was hanging out with is the vice president of SpinTech."
"SpinTech? Never heard of it." The woman lays down on the soft pillow of grass atop the lush hill, arms outstretched, gazing toward the stars.
A young man, early twenties, sits on his knees next to her and continues, "Yea.. SpinTech developed the first vehicular AI assistant. Remember?"
"Ah, yep. They were quickly bought out though, if I remember."
"Nope. They strangely handed the contract to Apple, free of charge. Then seemed to disappear off the face of the Earth. Until... get this... until now.."
The young man lays himself back slowly next to the young woman.
The two journalism students slowly fall asleep under the clear night sky.
September 29th, 2025 Macau, China
Two men sit for drinks in a nearby tea house.
One man says to the other "Meiguó dà mógui sadàn. Jùxíng guàiwù zài dibù haishàng. Hai guài quánbù kòngzhì meiguó jingshén. Hai guài ji rén hao zhuyì famíng de duì rén duì meiguó. Meiguó nánzi suíhòu dou sile. Sile yóu ta benrén."
The other man laughs heartily, responding, "Mógui sadàn you ta de rìzi. Zhongguó yuo yitian chéngzhang. Zhongguó fazhan wài xing rén feidié. Zhengfú zhongguó zhenggè yuzhòu. Meiguó shì wèizhi dangjin zhongguó dàodá yuan de yuzhòu."
Both men laugh hysterically.
October 13th, 2025 Juarez, New Mexico
At a carnival, three kids play, unawares to the troubles of the world. One of the boys motions for the other two to follow him to a carnival game. The game, is a dart throwing game, with atypically small rings and a concernably small bullseye. The prizes are a tiny kid's dream. Large stuffed giraffes, bags of candy, holographic cards, several iPhone Infinity 2s, and one small robot tucked away in the back so as not to be seen plainly, being the most expensive item.
The young boy runs up to the counter, with his two friends trailing not far behind. "I want the bear! The blue bear!" The boy points at the giant blue bear hanging from the carnival game stand's railing.
"What are you, Five??" One of the girls says to the boy.
"Lemme 'lone! That bear is COOL."
"Well, son, you can try for it. Just one token!" The boy cheers and hands the man two tokens. "Err.. son, it just takes one token." The boy stares intently up at the man.
"Well, sir. I'd like to win the bear AND the robot." The man's face seems to flush, a bright red. He gulps, stepping to the side to cover the robot as best as possible.
"Right, oh. Yes, right. Um.. that old robot? Over there? Ok, you bet, kid!" sweat acrues on the man's forehead as the boy aims for the dart board.
The small boy misses with both of his darts and walks off in a fit, his friends tagging still closely behind.
A man in a black suit, watching all along, heads toward the group of children.
"Ahem.. hey there! hey... kids!" the man jogs pacefully up to the children, "Hey! kids! hey.. hey.." he stops near them. "Did you want one of those prizes?" The boy looks up at him, confused, wondering if he had broken something or done something wrong.
"I um.. yes, I want that big blue bear!" The man looks pitifully down at the child. He glances at the booth where the kid had played the game previously then looks back at the bunch of kids. A strange but subtle sound seems to emit from the man.
"Well, I bet I could spin that one for ya." The man pulls his arms out from behind his back and with it a giant blue bear. His sunglasshes shimmer briefly as he smiles brightly at the children.
October 28th, 2025 Detroit, MI
"Nah, dude. I'm just sayin'. People bein able to teleport n' shit? That's straight off the wall, yo."
The black gangster riding in the passenger sea raises his gun in the air, in a waving motion, "Check it. I'd teleport all the diamonds out the bank right theh, yo." As they pass by a bank.
From the same gang, in the back seat joins in, "Dawg. Check it. Dawg."
"Nigga, say it."
"Hah. Check it. See that bitch right there? I'd ren' a room'n teleport that bitch up in there!"
The whole car floods with rough laughter and hollering. Another Detroit gangster in the back seat jumps in,
"Then I'da teleport that bitch into the kitchen a'make me some grub."
The carload continues in a loud obnoxious overreaction.
Except, except for the driver. Who sits silently staring straight ahead. Then he turns up the radio.
"Violence erupts in the middle of downtown Philadelphia this morning as, what authorities are now calling rioters, protest the offical public release of the first home teleportation dev..."
Suddenly the car comes to a screeching halt, "Hey, dawg. We here." The four gangsters pull out their guns and rush quickly out of the car.
November 7th, 2025 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
"In light of the now over one week ago's protest turned tragedy, local officials have decided to begin discussing potential regulations on the soon to be released state of the art technology from SpinTech. We go to Mitchell Burnhem at the site of the protest over a week ago which also happens to be the front of SpinTech Co's Main Headquarters."
"Thanks, Rena. We are indeed making headway out here in front SpinTech, I have two teenagers, it's ah.. it's about all I could come up with due to the.. " The reporter adjusts his neck piece. " law enforcement blockading the area. I wanted to get closer, to see if I could catch any actual SpinTech employees, but was unable to do so, we should have more on that later." The reporter points the microphone towards one of the teenagers chin. "Do you.. ah.. do you have anything to share with us regarding the recent protest? You told me your cousin here was directly involved, correct?"
The kid smirks bashfully and looks down at the ground shuffling his feet, answering, "Y-yes, I was directly involved in the protest. My mom was arrested and jailed, she was a front line sign holder. Her friend's friend was put into a coma from a smoke grenade hit to the temple." The college aged kid points to the east side of the SpinTech building, as the news camera pans to where he is pointing. "And.. and you see that?" The news camera pans to an unusual spot near the building, it's a totally unused and blank patch of very healthy looking bright green grass, which is fenced in like a partial moat to the side of the SpinTech building. "That's where they teleported a man the other day. My mom saw it. They did a demonstration. They teleported a man! They teleported him into ground! He was, he was..." The teenager began panicking, then crying. The reporter, for the first time in several years (to his colleague's recognition), looked completely bewildered.
National News... November 22nd, 2025
"Spokesperson Fletcher Metsen of the judicial branch of the Government of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania announced this week that it would not go forward in allowing the new legislation instead the local government ordered an appeal and a new mandate revoking the right of SpinTech Co to release any such Teleportation device or anything related for mass consumer use.
Many wary American's will sleep easier tonight I would think, Tom. Back to you."
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania November 25th, 2025
RELEASE DAY
"In an exciting turn of events, Jake, it seems as though SpinTech has been able to circumvent the recent legislation to control their efforts. SpinTech has announced today... also, I should add, amazingly, they did so simultaneously to the actual unveiling and release of the product in hardware stores all over the United States. SpinTech announced that instead of releasing their products freely to retailers across the country and continuing with the global expansion of the company previously planned later this year, that they would instead bypass the local government's orders by releasing the product in cognito under the guise of a hardware utility to be sold at even a local hardware store. It's reported they managed this method legally by requiring a brief back ground check and registration to own the product. Due to regulations and fair rights practices, it is reported to be several weeks until US congress can intervene.
Apparently, over the last 72 hours, SpinTech has been striving hard to recover from the fatal financial blow it was struck by local congress. No settlement in another unrelated lawsuit resulted in SpinTech being held vulnerable and caused them to take this present course of action. The vice president has been reported to be acting unusual, by colleagues.
You can expect SpinTech products to be available on local hardware store shelves such as Lawes and House Department and even national "buy everything at once" chains such as WellMart and Sim's.
Very concering news, Jake. You take it."
*
Wendy Hillers sat atop her roof, the construction on the house seeming too much for her and her husband alone. She wandered to the edge, peering down at the ground. For some reason, today she felt completely at ease standing on the edge of the house. Only moments of thought later her husband arrived at home in his red Ford pickup. He pulled in more quickly than usual, and even a slight screech could be heard veering into the driveway. Once parked, Wendy's husband hopped out of the truck excitedly and waved his arms up at his wife and yelled,
"Honey! Honey!! I got it!! I got the second one!!"
A few minutes later they were both standing out on their back deck, looking up at the heavy weather damage to the shingles above the patio door. A large tree limb stuck like a knife directly through the ruffled siding.
"Well, do.. do you know how to use it?" Wendy looked curiously at her husband.
"I ah.. I watched a how-to video on MeTube, well.. some of it at least." Wendy's curiousity turned to a concern as she watched as her husband fiddled with the device. It was hand held, but quite a bit bigger than your usual hand held device of 2025. Wendy likened it silently to a device or gun they would use on some science fiction stuff from something her husband watches.
Wendy, now frustrated, grabbed the device out of her husbands hands, after several minutes of nothing happening, "Look, see here?" Wendy points to the side of the gadjet, "that's the on-button, then you set the paramters here.. predicted width/height.. it doesn't even have to be exact, and it will calculate the difference."
Her husband looked at her, a look of shock and puzzlement. "Where the hell did you learn all that?"
Wendy snickered, "There have been documentaries on it they've been replaying on TW Center all-week long" Her husband nodded, then looked at her and then looked at the branch. "Well, can you get that branch out of there?"
"I can sure try. I think I'm confident enough to use it, it's supposed to be very user friendly." Wendy proceeds to point the gun-like device at the tree branch. She presses the red-button trigger on the front center of the device and a fairly loud whirring protrudes from the object into and the ears of the newly wed couple.
But, then, nothing happens.
The couple look at eachother confused.
"Haha, maybe it's broken or you did something wro....." Just then, in the middle of his sentence, a large tree limb duplicate of the one in the house, and even small chunks of the house, suddenly appears attached on Wendy's husbands head.
Wendy screams the loudest she has ever screamed. The left half of her husbands head and now is now fused with a tree branch stretching and contorting his facial features to conform unnaturally to the side of the tree branch attached to his head. A small piece of a shingle sticks out of his head near his right ear.
Wendy crying madly, watches in terror as her husband falls backwards due to the weight of the branch. The branch breaks his fall, propping him up backwards against the ground, his head still fused into the tree branch.
A distant whirring sound can be heard, at least a distance of one to two houses away. A scream is heard by Wendy, one of Sara Miller, one of Wendy's neighbors.
Sara's hand is caught in the side of her teal colored Lexus, but not caught in any usual way. Her hand was literally mended within the steel and the frame of the side of the car itself.
"What the hell did you do!?!?" Sara yells at her husband.
"I- what the hell!!!!" Her husband screams crazily, "I aimed it at the lawn mower!!!!" Blood was pouring down the side of the car from her arm, staining the rusty blue greenish car a violent crimson. She could even see her hand on the other side through the glass. It was about three times puffier than a hand should look, and it was veiny and purple and she could not feel a thing from it. "I'm calling the police right now!!!! Don't worry, baby!! Don't worry!!"
Several city blocks away a man waits in line in his car at a fast food restaurant.
His turn eventually arrived, "Welcome to MacDonalds, can I take your order?"
"Hi, yes, I'd like two screamy cheese puffs, five dollar menu cheese burgers with the new beefy sauce, and a medium Diet Stroke"
But, before his order could be finished, the sound of an explosion, as one from a car crash, can be heard coming from the main street near the MacDonalds.
A man, standing near the crosswalk, is pointing a teleportation device in various directions, activating one shot after the other.
Rectangular shapes, chunks of matter, reality seem to be appearing and disappearing from random, scattered places. They seem to start wherever he points the device.
A fire hydrant is now merged with the top of an old brown toyota which is veering in and out of control and finally crashes into a wall. A middle aged woman lies dead near the man with the device, with her right leg fused through the front and back of her chest through her heart. Half of her head split open, and most of her brains spilling on to the man's foot, unnoticed by him as he continues havok in the middle of the city.
A man running as fast as he can in the opposite direction down the sidewalk adjacent to the man with the device screams, terrified as he notices the man with the device pointing it at him. Trying as fast as he can to get away, the main fails as he is transported instantly from the sidewalk to several stories directly above the position from where the last time his foot ever graced the earth. Screaming, much more wildly now, the man waves his arms madly in front of his face, to shield it, as he rockets towards the ground the impact quickly cracking most of his bones and shoving the front of his face into the back of his head.
A large hispanic woman attempts to tackle the man by approach him quietly from behind. Just as she nears him, he turns around and catches her before nearly pouncing on him.
He points the device urgently at her, though he did not quite aim it where he wanted. As he meant to pick her up and crush her like he just did that man, instead a large, perfectly rectangular chunk is taken out of the left half of her body. One of her lungs slipped out of the cavity where her arm and the side of her body once were and onto the ground. Following directly after, each with a sickening splat on the ground, her other lung fell, her heart, some intestines spewed out, her kidneys, one after the other most of her organs and the remaining half of her body splatter onto the pavement.
"Shit." The man said, as he vomitted.
evening time November 25th, 2025 Las Vegas, Nevada
Car alarms, violent screams, the sounds of broken slot machines, explosions could be heard on the streets of Vegas. Large crowds of people could be seen running occasionally from nothing but one person. In one part of the city at this particular moment, there were cars suddenly dropping from the sky onto people. Two children and their mother scamper to get away from the chaos as a major portion of an old Chevy Blazer crashes down smashing her between the truck and the pavement. The kids scream and cry as they realize their mother has been instantly murdered. Nearby, a car falls near a man onto another car, "Oh gosh, that was close." he gasped in relief, but only miliseconds later the two cars explode, sending fragments of molten steel althroughout the front of his body, the man drops face first onto the ground dead. A sinister and mentally ill looking man stands on the corner onlooking the massacre, chuckling.
San Fransisco, California
A group of teenagers are running from a another madman hundreds of miles west.
A mixture of teen boys and teen girls in brighty poppy clothes leap down a steady hill as quickly as they can.
The man, screaming, shouting strange sentences, aims the teleportation device he is carrying at the group of teenagers, he initiates the teleportation procedure.
Suddenly, the top halves of most of the teenagers disappear into thin air, the bottoms of intestines and blood and pairs of legs falling to the ground. The top halves of the teenagers are now all falling at the same time from above about 50 feet, the screams fade as their brains die not moments before splattering down onto the city street below.
The same man, uses the device again, this time transporting an entire person into another person.
The two people were running, he took the farthest one away from himself, then pointed it at the other tilted more sideways and made an X shape out of the two of them, they lose balance and plummet, fused together and dying quickly, to the ground.
Various places in the United States
All over the country, in major and minor cities alike, the most atrocious, bizarre catastrophies can be seen as a result of the release of the recent super-hyped up teleportation mechanism.
However, not only are there strange, violent acts unlike that have ever been seen by human kind before, in abundance, but also strange anomolies and occurrences with what seem to be time and space itself.
The country... the world... just don't look the same as they used to, many things are blended together and confusing to determine what is what by simply observing. Objects and parts of objects and squares and cubes and rectangles of objects and buildings and city structures and aspects of nature are now scattered throughout cities like massive three-dimensional checker boards.
Bright, violet, electrically charged cubes of 'anti-matter' now appear in random places all over the United States, where an unknown part of reality has now been ripped apart and revealed to humanity. Profusing from them is a purple, electrical, plasma like substance, which looks somehow like a blend between an active electrical current and the smoke from dry ice.
Strange creatures begin walking into the world, from who knows where, and attacking people and eating people everywhere. And... doing things which... can't even be described. Acts and vicious twists of reality and physics which cannot be understood or explained yet by human perception. Violence, torment and hell for all the organisms of Earth begins, occurring in ways known and unknown.
April 5th somewhere outside of Stillwater, Kentucky
"Dad ever comin home?" Tucker asked his mother.
"Stop askin' that. 'Course he's comin home. Just ain't real soon is all."
Tucker pulled the truck over and put the car on a jack, checking underneath. He spotted an oil leak.
Dinner was delicious that night.
Tucker woke up and put his clothes on. He looked out his second-story bedroom window. It was a lovely day.
He went down stairs, turned the T.V. on, it was old movies day and Godzilla was on. Tucker opened up a can of pears, ate a few then went for a walk.
TELEPORT
Thanks for reading if you made it this far! I'd like to point out a couple of things, for example... Ronald sitting in his truck at the same time he is with the guys is done on purpose. I tried to throw in a bunch of 'easter eggs' so if you like that sort of thing. Plus, everything connects together in the story, some references and connections are a bit more difficult to see than others, some are very obvious (Ronald... and... MacDonalds, instead of McDonalds) for example.
I've only showed the story to my family members and I don't think they liked it too much, so I'm trying to see what a stranger thinks.
I'm pretty sure there are a lot of punctuation errors in it, I'm not gonna waste time editing it if it sucks.
Thanks, guys! Been a reader of reddit for a long time.
Billy S.
Hi, everyone! This is my first time ever posting to reddit. I wanted to get some feedback on a short story I wrote, so I wanted to find a place where people would be able to read it, so I thought of reddit. I'm not even sure if we're allowed to post stories... or if there is a specific forum on here to do so.
It's the only "real" (if you can call it that) short story I've ever written. It was an idea bouncing around in my head for a while and I decided to just go ahead and do it.
Please, all the criticism you want! You won't offend me if it's bad because I'm not a writer, so I haven't put too much effort into learning how to write.
But, I enjoyed doing it, and want to see where I can go from here:
Please enjoy if possible...
TELEPORT
2025
"Looks like they were blindsided by those winds, Kevin. Makes you wonder about their local weather forecast. Back to you."
"I hear that, Shelly. We'll keep an eye on events as they unfold over in Stillwater, Kentucky. For those of you just joining, this storm nearly making national headlines, sweeping across the eastern portion of Kentucky, suspected to be adopted from the East Coast."
"We'll have more to report after this."
The newsanchor detached his earpiece from his head and walked off the set.
"Hey, Kevin!"
"Yea?" The newsanchor replied.
"Got a story for you, this one is crazy. Capital c, man."
"Oh yea?" The newsman grabbed the fold of papers from the coorespondent. He briefly glances over it, flipping the pages.
"Heh, is this a joke? It's April 3rd, you're a little late."
"I wish it was, Kevin. This... this is legit."
The newsanchor glanced back down at the newstory, headlined "GE Develops Teleportation Device? Can Teleport Objects Twice As Big As The Size Of An Average Person"
"This is ama..." The newsanchor stops short of his sentence. "B-but.. how? How does it work? I mean, what are the real limitations of this thing?"
The bearer of the newstory looked up at the newsman, appearing just as baffled as the other. "I don't know, Kevin. Strange, though. I've never felt my nerves act up like this before with a story."
Stillwater, Kentucky April 4th, 2025
"Ronald!" A voice exclaims, feeling quite a distance away from the barnhouse.
Ronald Loyer looks up from his activity, slicing up a lamb for the next months stew.
"Ronald!!!!!"
"Blasted, what do you WANT woman." He said not even beneath his breath, yet his wife Clarel, still not near the barn, didn't hear.
A few moments later his wife shows up at the barndoor.
"Did you not hear me? The boys are back from town, they got two whole sacks of potatas and three ears of corn."
"Woman, you came to tell me that? I been suspectin' them of bringin more and you come on like its good news. you just leave me to my slaughter."
"Whatever. Listen, you wanna be nice then I'll unlock the back door, hear? Or else you can just sleep out here tonight." Clarel slams the barndoor with an unlikely strength for even a southern woman. "This ain't the damn 1800s, you the one who broke the truck!" Clarel yelled through the door as she walked off huffing and sweating from working that day far too long outdoors.
**
After an argument later that evening, Ronald, Clarel and their children, two boys and a girl (Jeffrey, Susan, Tucker), sit down for a meal a bit later than usual.
"It's nearly dark, you know we can eat earlier if your father don't act like such a baby." Ronald slams his fist on the table. "Heh.. DAMNIT. Look, do we need to go back outside to finish this?" Clarel mumbles looking down at her food stirring her cauliflower soup with her fork. Jeffrey, 19 years old (and the second oldest) smirks. Susan is the youngest at 18, only a year apart from Jeffrey and Tucker the first born is 24 years old.
"Can't we at least watch the T.V. while we eat?" Jeffrey pauses for a moment everyone looking up at him for breaking the momentary silence. "Well? We usually do!" he concludes. Jeffrey forgets about it and goes back to eating. Ronald stands up and walks over to the T.V. and turns it on.
"What it be? that late night show? Weather?"
"I can't stand watchin the weather no more, it just makes me sad. How many dead is it so far?" Tucker pipes up.
"A dozen or more, not too far from here either." Susan continues, " 'say it's Kentucky's biggest disaster in ten years."
"Just terrible. I hope the parker family is ok, them winds hit hardest over in that area." Static blares from the T.V. as Ronald stares blankly at the floor with his hand on the T.V. knob. "... heck I agree.. let's watch somethin else." Ronald's face brightens up as he turns to one of the local entertainment channels.
**
The next day Ronald can be seen sitting in his truck attempting to start it up. "Damn technology, ruinin my damn truck, shoulda never hooked in that new battery." Ronald silently vows, as he did much of the time, to do without as much technology as he can manage to get by on. Always a disdain for technology, Ronald raises his kids as far away as he can from what the considers to be the modern treacheries of man. His buddies in town would always make fun of him, accusing him of being a southern Kentucky mennonite or just outright laughing at what they believed to be ignorance.
"Alright, fellas. Check this one out." Barry bellows out, startling all of the guys except Ronald. Ronald looks up from his beer to lock eyes with Barry, "The wife came home two nights ago, alright? This why I been a bit quiet. She downright smell of whiskey and straight up look'a damn shame, I tell by the look at her face she been seein that doctor. Willy? Billy? Willy Billy?" Barry bursts out laughing, "Billy with a little Willy!" Barry continues laughing and chortling profusely then stops suddenly, growing much quieter, "Ah.. damnit guys... just damnit.. I'm losin' her ain't I?" Barry's eyes begin to tear up a bit as the rest of the guys all stare modestly and silently down at the bar table.
After a few moments Paul speaks up, "Ya' know my dad is sellin his prize chickens at the auction this month. Didn't you say you wanted a shot at 'em, Barry?" Paul attemps to change the subject to comfort Barry. "Ah, I.. uh.. yea that sounds good. Just come get me whenever they do the shoutin'"
*
While Ronald was typically present during "the guy's" daily morning binge, today he sat in his truck, in his garage and a little more torn up than usual. Almost synchronistically with Barry's, Ronald's eyes tear up, but not over any wife. Ronald remembers back when he was a kid, in the 1980s, he daydreams of his mom and his dad as though they were still around. Ronald's parents were killed in an automatically piloted vehicle in 2021. The case was heard in many of Kentucky's most significant courtrooms and Ronald, though an incredbily futile effort, attempted to get AVRSs (Automatic Vehicle Redirection System) banned everywhere and removed from any and all pertaining vehicles permanently. After Ronald's failed plight, he took the settlement money and moved with his family into southern Kentucky just ouside Stillwater, where he would await unknowingly his fateful future.
Strangely, after a final twist of the key, the truck started. "I .. uh.. wait, what?" Ronald stuttered. He thought back on Jimmy Allems, his old High School buddy, working out the kinks in his truck the other day, while Ronald wasn't present during most of the operation, he was sure Jimmy hadn't fixed a "darn" thing. Little did Ronald know, however, that fate had started the truck that day. Not wires, not repairs, not a battery, not coincidence.. but hard, cold fate and the turn of events it offered.
Ronald decided to omit informing his family and to go ahead and attempt to drive the truck into town, the truck had nearly a full tank of gas. "They see my truck gone, they can figure what happened, I figure." Ronald murmured to himself as he drove away from the farm, up the hill and connected with the gravel road into town.
Ronald had a bit of a smile on his face as he bumped up and down on the bumpy road towards downtown. Not a great big smile, but enough of one. Ronald neared the bridge to town that crossed Obion Creek. A smaller vehicle, a blue sedan with chunks of paint taken off all the way to its' rust, roared past Ronald and his truck probably going 30 miles over the speed limit, or rather what Ronald deemed to be the speed limit had there been something official.
"What in the devil!" Ronald screamed as he slammed on his brakes. The blue sedan had nearly run him into a ditch. Ronald pulls to a screeching completely stop as he eyes the driver now up ahead of him. Ronald squints, because he can't believe his eyes. Ronald watches as the blue sedan drives over the bridge and straight into the rough old creek.
"Oh my dear sweet Lord in Heaven." Ronald shouts to himself. Stunned for a moment, Ronald tries hard to begin to figure out what to do he can do. The blue sedan at this point is being whisked away down the rapid creek.
Ronald pulls up and stops on the seemingly ancient wooden bridge. Ronald cups his hands over his eyes, shielding the sun. The blue sedan has been carried off too far, there's nothing he can do.
Just then.. Ronald jumps as he hears the roar of yet another engine. A black, much longer sedan this time, with tinted windows pulls up next to Ronald's car on the bridge.
Three men step out of the car, "There, how about that one?" points one of the men in nice black suits and sunglasses. "Looks good, prep the razor." Ronald stares at the men, mystified and completely curious as to the events unfolding right in front of him. Ronald watches as one of the mysterious men in black suits grabs some device out of the trunk of the car. The man then proceeds, or so it seems, to aim the device down the wiley river, in the direction of the blue sedan!?!? Ronald shakes his head subconsciously testing his state of alertness.
"Alright, do it." One of the men stated, right before the man with the device began to.. glow? The man with the device was now glowing a bright greenish-blue and it seemed as though at least 100 mph of winds were blowing through his clothes. Yet, Ronald nor any of the other men standing near the man with the device were covered in this glow OR any sort of fierce wind. It seemed to be strangely isolated to that man with the device alone.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, a large blue beam shot straight out of the device and seemed to instantly stretch for what seemed to be miles and miles into the horizon over the river. Only mere seconds later, a horrible screech seemed to pierce over the entire landscape of Kentucky as a large blue cloud-like bubble appeared over the bridge. Then SLAM! The blue sedan which drifted down the river appeared out of nowhere over the bridge and slammed down on the gravel road next to it.
"What... in the... f..." Before Ronald could finish, the three men rushed to the driver side door of the blue sedan, nearly ripping the door off its handles as they pull the driver violently out of the car.
"Cuff him, wipe him." Said one of the suited men to another. One of the men put the driver, who was a man apparently in his mid-40s who Ronald had never seen before, in handcuffs and lowered him into the back seat of the sleek black car.
As the last man gets in the drivers side of the black sedan, he glances at Ronald, seeming to notice him for the first time.
"Looks like you have quite a story for the locals here, eh?" Ronald acknowledges the strike up in conversation, but the man quickly gets in the car, abruptly ending any possible continuation of it.
**
April 8th, 2025 New York, New York
"Welcome back, folks!" Lenny Williams, host of America's favorite late night talk show, welcomes his audience back from a commercial break. "So, how about these diseased whales off the coast of Acapulco? I wonder if MacDonalds has any plans to invest in any of this for part of their livestock." The audience bursts into heavy laughter. "Now here's a story..." the talk show host picks up a card off the table and holds it up to the audience, "Local Kentucky man reports seeing a government top-secret experiment regarding teleportation. He is currently being held in custody for questioning and may be handed over to mental officials" the talk show host pauses for a few seconds, then continues, "Just hope they don't use that teleporter to handover whales to the McDonald officials." The audience bursts into laughter again.
the morning of April 9th, 2025 Cincinnati, Ohio
"... the search for eastern Texan Jenny Brooks is on tonight as an avalanche near Wellsprings, Colorado sent her and three of her friends off the side of a mountain highway early Tuesday morning." the newswoman pauses to take a breath, gulping unnoticeably. Inwardly arguing with herself how much more of her boss and his advances she can take before quitting and taking out another school loan.
"The two missing boys and one girl have been found, but the search does still continue for 23 year old Jenny Brooks. Her family, devastated, was interviewed late last night, her father's presence, however, could not be obtained for the press."
"... An update with the Kentucky man who reportedly witnessed what he claimed to be the top secret Federal Government performing an experiment near his hometown. Apparently, 45 year old Ronald Loyer has now told doctors that it was not a top secret division of the government, or the FBI, as he previously had stated, but in fact.. aliens. Lead team specialist of the mental health facility informed an as of now anonymous journalist that, in fact, Mr. Loyer would be remaining under their care at the hospital for days to come."
The nightly 30 minute news segment ends, the newswoman walks off into the dim lights of the set.
** afternoon of April 9th, 2025 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
"Alright, I'll make you another bet." a preteen boy says to another preteen boy at Devil's Pool. "I can skip this rock across the lake five times. If I do, you gotta go kiss that girl over there and then stick your hand up her shirt and run off."
"You're kidding, right? You can't skip that rock five times, it's a deal."
"Heh, you're dead. My uncle showed me how to skip stones really good."
"Quit talkin'! Do it!" The boy with the rock launches the rock sideways from the palm of his hand across the lapis surface. One, two, three, four, five.....
late afternoon April 9th, 2025
"Roger! Get the HELL back on!" The newsteam manager yells at the newsanchor, demanding him to get back to his spot before the commercials is done airing.
"Look, I don't like the way she is setting up my make up schedule this early in the mo...."
"Roger, I don't give a shit! Get back up there, or you may as well walk yourself out the back door."
Roger, the newsman tightens his tie and puts the current situation quickly behind him as he strides up the corridoor onto the newset.
He spins his chair to face the camera just as the news goes back on the air.
He begins reading the telepromter.
"Does anybody remember SpinTech?" Roger reads as he asks the invisible state-wide audience. "SpinTech, original developer of Trudy, the personal car assistant, is apparently back on the scene. You won't believe this part." the whimsical newsanchor continues "apparently, discussions have begun with General Electric to buy the patent for their latest invetion the supposed "teleporting machine"." Roger stops for a moment, a very brief moment unrealized by staff or audience, due to a very unfamiliar, uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. "The machine, supposedly capable of actually teleporting mass up to as large as twice the size of an average sized human, has been the topic of heavy discussion all across the nation this week, turning heads at ad posts, causing wonder.. and even deep concern for many Americans. One Floridan blogger had this to write on his number one blogsite, "...teleportation devices? Guys, are you serious? You've got to be (censored) kidding me. Listen, people, nation, USE your brains. Wake up! You can't just mass produce a consumer level teleportation machine. What????? I can't even begin to imagine the insanity this will contribute in our day to day lives. If nothing else, hopefully at least the people of Florida will heed my warning." The newsanchor continues, "SpinTech plans to announce later this week any updates regarding the agreement with General Electric....."
Roger, the newsanchor continues, "In local news today........."
evening of April 9th, 2025 Two miles outside of Conway, Arkansas
"Hear about that little kid shot by that man? Little shit apparently ran up to his sister and grabbed her chest." The young woman grazes the palms of her hands over the tall grass stocks as she skips almost weightlessly up the hill.
"I did! Apparently the kids' parents are suing the school since the kids had disappeared over lunch. Get this, though.. the weird part.. supposedly the dad of one of the other kid he was hanging out with is the vice president of SpinTech."
"SpinTech? Never heard of it." The woman lays down on the soft pillow of grass atop the lush hill, arms outstretched, gazing toward the stars.
A young man, early twenties, sits on his knees next to her and continues, "Yea.. SpinTech developed the first vehicular AI assistant. Remember?"
"Ah, yep. They were quickly bought out though, if I remember."
"Nope. They strangely handed the contract to Apple, free of charge. Then seemed to disappear off the face of the Earth. Until... get this... until now.."
The young man lays himself back slowly next to the young woman.
The two journalism students slowly fall asleep under the clear night sky.
September 29th, 2025 Macau, China
Two men sit for drinks in a nearby tea house.
One man says to the other "Meiguó dà mógui sadàn. Jùxíng guàiwù zài dibù haishàng. Hai guài quánbù kòngzhì meiguó jingshén. Hai guài ji rén hao zhuyì famíng de duì rén duì meiguó. Meiguó nánzi suíhòu dou sile. Sile yóu ta benrén."
The other man laughs heartily, responding, "Mógui sadàn you ta de rìzi. Zhongguó yuo yitian chéngzhang. Zhongguó fazhan wài xing rén feidié. Zhengfú zhongguó zhenggè yuzhòu. Meiguó shì wèizhi dangjin zhongguó dàodá yuan de yuzhòu."
Both men laugh hysterically.
October 13th, 2025 Juarez, New Mexico
At a carnival, three kids play, unawares to the troubles of the world. One of the boys motions for the other two to follow him to a carnival game. The game, is a dart throwing game, with atypically small rings and a concernably small bullseye. The prizes are a tiny kid's dream. Large stuffed giraffes, bags of candy, holographic cards, several iPhone Infinity 2s, and one small robot tucked away in the back so as not to be seen plainly, being the most expensive item.
The young boy runs up to the counter, with his two friends trailing not far behind. "I want the bear! The blue bear!" The boy points at the giant blue bear hanging from the carnival game stand's railing.
"What are you, Five??" One of the girls says to the boy.
"Lemme 'lone! That bear is COOL."
"Well, son, you can try for it. Just one token!" The boy cheers and hands the man two tokens. "Err.. son, it just takes one token." The boy stares intently up at the man.
"Well, sir. I'd like to win the bear AND the robot." The man's face seems to flush, a bright red. He gulps, stepping to the side to cover the robot as best as possible.
"Right, oh. Yes, right. Um.. that old robot? Over there? Ok, you bet, kid!" sweat acrues on the man's forehead as the boy aims for the dart board.
The small boy misses with both of his darts and walks off in a fit, his friends tagging still closely behind.
A man in a black suit, watching all along, heads toward the group of children.
"Ahem.. hey there! hey... kids!" the man jogs pacefully up to the children, "Hey! kids! hey.. hey.." he stops near them. "Did you want one of those prizes?" The boy looks up at him, confused, wondering if he had broken something or done something wrong.
"I um.. yes, I want that big blue bear!" The man looks pitifully down at the child. He glances at the booth where the kid had played the game previously then looks back at the bunch of kids. A strange but subtle sound seems to emit from the man.
"Well, I bet I could spin that one for ya." The man pulls his arms out from behind his back and with it a giant blue bear. His sunglasshes shimmer briefly as he smiles brightly at the children.
October 28th, 2025 Detroit, MI
"Nah, dude. I'm just sayin'. People bein able to teleport n' shit? That's straight off the wall, yo."
The black gangster riding in the passenger sea raises his gun in the air, in a waving motion, "Check it. I'd teleport all the diamonds out the bank right theh, yo." As they pass by a bank.
From the same gang, in the back seat joins in, "Dawg. Check it. Dawg."
"Nigga, say it."
"Hah. Check it. See that bitch right there? I'd ren' a room'n teleport that bitch up in there!"
The whole car floods with rough laughter and hollering. Another Detroit gangster in the back seat jumps in,
"Then I'da teleport that bitch into the kitchen a'make me some grub."
The carload continues in a loud obnoxious overreaction.
Except, except for the driver. Who sits silently staring straight ahead. Then he turns up the radio.
"Violence erupts in the middle of downtown Philadelphia this morning as, what authorities are now calling rioters, protest the offical public release of the first home teleportation dev..."
Suddenly the car comes to a screeching halt, "Hey, dawg. We here." The four gangsters pull out their guns and rush quickly out of the car.
November 7th, 2025 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
"In light of the now over one week ago's protest turned tragedy, local officials have decided to begin discussing potential regulations on the soon to be released state of the art technology from SpinTech. We go to Mitchell Burnhem at the site of the protest over a week ago which also happens to be the front of SpinTech Co's Main Headquarters."
"Thanks, Rena. We are indeed making headway out here in front SpinTech, I have two teenagers, it's ah.. it's about all I could come up with due to the.. " The reporter adjusts his neck piece. " law enforcement blockading the area. I wanted to get closer, to see if I could catch any actual SpinTech employees, but was unable to do so, we should have more on that later." The reporter points the microphone towards one of the teenagers chin. "Do you.. ah.. do you have anything to share with us regarding the recent protest? You told me your cousin here was directly involved, correct?"
The kid smirks bashfully and looks down at the ground shuffling his feet, answering, "Y-yes, I was directly involved in the protest. My mom was arrested and jailed, she was a front line sign holder. Her friend's friend was put into a coma from a smoke grenade hit to the temple." The college aged kid points to the east side of the SpinTech building, as the news camera pans to where he is pointing. "And.. and you see that?" The news camera pans to an unusual spot near the building, it's a totally unused and blank patch of very healthy looking bright green grass, which is fenced in like a partial moat to the side of the SpinTech building. "That's where they teleported a man the other day. My mom saw it. They did a demonstration. They teleported a man! They teleported him into ground! He was, he was..." The teenager began panicking, then crying. The reporter, for the first time in several years (to his colleague's recognition), looked completely bewildered.
National News... November 22nd, 2025
"Spokesperson Fletcher Metsen of the judicial branch of the Government of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania announced this week that it would not go forward in allowing the new legislation instead the local government ordered an appeal and a new mandate revoking the right of SpinTech Co to release any such Teleportation device or anything related for mass consumer use.
Many wary American's will sleep easier tonight I would think, Tom. Back to you."
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania November 25th, 2025
RELEASE DAY
"In an exciting turn of events, Jake, it seems as though SpinTech has been able to circumvent the recent legislation to control their efforts. SpinTech has announced today... also, I should add, amazingly, they did so simultaneously to the actual unveiling and release of the product in hardware stores all over the United States. SpinTech announced that instead of releasing their products freely to retailers across the country and continuing with the global expansion of the company previously planned later this year, that they would instead bypass the local government's orders by releasing the product in cognito under the guise of a hardware utility to be sold at even a local hardware store. It's reported they managed this method legally by requiring a brief back ground check and registration to own the product. Due to regulations and fair rights practices, it is reported to be several weeks until US congress can intervene.
Apparently, over the last 72 hours, SpinTech has been striving hard to recover from the fatal financial blow it was struck by local congress. No settlement in another unrelated lawsuit resulted in SpinTech being held vulnerable and caused them to take this present course of action. The vice president has been reported to be acting unusual, by colleagues.
You can expect SpinTech products to be available on local hardware store shelves such as Lawes and House Department and even national "buy everything at once" chains such as WellMart and Sim's.
Very concering news, Jake. You take it."
*
Wendy Hillers sat atop her roof, the construction on the house seeming too much for her and her husband alone. She wandered to the edge, peering down at the ground. For some reason, today she felt completely at ease standing on the edge of the house. Only moments of thought later her husband arrived at home in his red Ford pickup. He pulled in more quickly than usual, and even a slight screech could be heard veering into the driveway. Once parked, Wendy's husband hopped out of the truck excitedly and waved his arms up at his wife and yelled,
"Honey! Honey!! I got it!! I got the second one!!"
A few minutes later they were both standing out on their back deck, looking up at the heavy weather damage to the shingles above the patio door. A large tree limb stuck like a knife directly through the ruffled siding.
"Well, do.. do you know how to use it?" Wendy looked curiously at her husband.
"I ah.. I watched a how-to video on MeTube, well.. some of it at least." Wendy's curiousity turned to a concern as she watched as her husband fiddled with the device. It was hand held, but quite a bit bigger than your usual hand held device of 2025. Wendy likened it silently to a device or gun they would use on some science fiction stuff from something her husband watches.
Wendy, now frustrated, grabbed the device out of her husbands hands, after several minutes of nothing happening, "Look, see here?" Wendy points to the side of the gadjet, "that's the on-button, then you set the paramters here.. predicted width/height.. it doesn't even have to be exact, and it will calculate the difference."
Her husband looked at her, a look of shock and puzzlement. "Where the hell did you learn all that?"
Wendy snickered, "There have been documentaries on it they've been replaying on TW Center all-week long" Her husband nodded, then looked at her and then looked at the branch. "Well, can you get that branch out of there?"
"I can sure try. I think I'm confident enough to use it, it's supposed to be very user friendly." Wendy proceeds to point the gun-like device at the tree branch. She presses the red-button trigger on the front center of the device and a fairly loud whirring protrudes from the object into and the ears of the newly wed couple.
But, then, nothing happens.
The couple look at eachother confused.
"Haha, maybe it's broken or you did something wro....." Just then, in the middle of his sentence, a large tree limb duplicate of the one in the house, and even small chunks of the house, suddenly appears attached on Wendy's husbands head.
Wendy screams the loudest she has ever screamed. The left half of her husbands head and now is now fused with a tree branch stretching and contorting his facial features to conform unnaturally to the side of the tree branch attached to his head. A small piece of a shingle sticks out of his head near his right ear.
Wendy crying madly, watches in terror as her husband falls backwards due to the weight of the branch. The branch breaks his fall, propping him up backwards against the ground, his head still fused into the tree branch.
A distant whirring sound can be heard, at least a distance of one to two houses away. A scream is heard by Wendy, one of Sara Miller, one of Wendy's neighbors.
Sara's hand is caught in the side of her teal colored Lexus, but not caught in any usual way. Her hand was literally mended within the steel and the frame of the side of the car itself.
"What the hell did you do!?!?" Sara yells at her husband.
"I- what the hell!!!!" Her husband screams crazily, "I aimed it at the lawn mower!!!!" Blood was pouring down the side of the car from her arm, staining the rusty blue greenish car a violent crimson. She could even see her hand on the other side through the glass. It was about three times puffier than a hand should look, and it was veiny and purple and she could not feel a thing from it. "I'm calling the police right now!!!! Don't worry, baby!! Don't worry!!"
Several city blocks away a man waits in line in his car at a fast food restaurant.
His turn eventually arrived, "Welcome to MacDonalds, can I take your order?"
"Hi, yes, I'd like two screamy cheese puffs, five dollar menu cheese burgers with the new beefy sauce, and a medium Diet Stroke"
But, before his order could be finished, the sound of an explosion, as one from a car crash, can be heard coming from the main street near the MacDonalds.
A man, standing near the crosswalk, is pointing a teleportation device in various directions, activating one shot after the other.
Rectangular shapes, chunks of matter, reality seem to be appearing and disappearing from random, scattered places. They seem to start wherever he points the device.
A fire hydrant is now merged with the top of an old brown toyota which is veering in and out of control and finally crashes into a wall. A middle aged woman lies dead near the man with the device, with her right leg fused through the front and back of her chest through her heart. Half of her head split open, and most of her brains spilling on to the man's foot, unnoticed by him as he continues havok in the middle of the city.
A man running as fast as he can in the opposite direction down the sidewalk adjacent to the man with the device screams, terrified as he notices the man with the device pointing it at him. Trying as fast as he can to get away, the main fails as he is transported instantly from the sidewalk to several stories directly above the position from where the last time his foot ever graced the earth. Screaming, much more wildly now, the man waves his arms madly in front of his face, to shield it, as he rockets towards the ground the impact quickly cracking most of his bones and shoving the front of his face into the back of his head.
A large hispanic woman attempts to tackle the man by approach him quietly from behind. Just as she nears him, he turns around and catches her before nearly pouncing on him.
He points the device urgently at her, though he did not quite aim it where he wanted. As he meant to pick her up and crush her like he just did that man, instead a large, perfectly rectangular chunk is taken out of the left half of her body. One of her lungs slipped out of the cavity where her arm and the side of her body once were and onto the ground. Following directly after, each with a sickening splat on the ground, her other lung fell, her heart, some intestines spewed out, her kidneys, one after the other most of her organs and the remaining half of her body splatter onto the pavement.
"Shit." The man said, as he vomitted.
evening time November 25th, 2025 Las Vegas, Nevada
Car alarms, violent screams, the sounds of broken slot machines, explosions could be heard on the streets of Vegas. Large crowds of people could be seen running occasionally from nothing but one person. In one part of the city at this particular moment, there were cars suddenly dropping from the sky onto people. Two children and their mother scamper to get away from the chaos as a major portion of an old Chevy Blazer crashes down smashing her between the truck and the pavement. The kids scream and cry as they realize their mother has been instantly murdered. Nearby, a car falls near a man onto another car, "Oh gosh, that was close." he gasped in relief, but only miliseconds later the two cars explode, sending fragments of molten steel althroughout the front of his body, the man drops face first onto the ground dead. A sinister and mentally ill looking man stands on the corner onlooking the massacre, chuckling.
San Fransisco, California
A group of teenagers are running from a another madman hundreds of miles west.
A mixture of teen boys and teen girls in brighty poppy clothes leap down a steady hill as quickly as they can.
The man, screaming, shouting strange sentences, aims the teleportation device he is carrying at the group of teenagers, he initiates the teleportation procedure.
Suddenly, the top halves of most of the teenagers disappear into thin air, the bottoms of intestines and blood and pairs of legs falling to the ground. The top halves of the teenagers are now all falling at the same time from above about 50 feet, the screams fade as their brains die not moments before splattering down onto the city street below.
The same man, uses the device again, this time transporting an entire person into another person.
The two people were running, he took the farthest one away from himself, then pointed it at the other tilted more sideways and made an X shape out of the two of them, they lose balance and plummet, fused together and dying quickly, to the ground.
Various places in the United States
All over the country, in major and minor cities alike, the most atrocious, bizarre catastrophies can be seen as a result of the release of the recent super-hyped up teleportation mechanism.
However, not only are there strange, violent acts unlike that have ever been seen by human kind before, in abundance, but also strange anomolies and occurrences with what seem to be time and space itself.
The country... the world... just don't look the same as they used to, many things are blended together and confusing to determine what is what by simply observing. Objects and parts of objects and squares and cubes and rectangles of objects and buildings and city structures and aspects of nature are now scattered throughout cities like massive three-dimensional checker boards.
Bright, violet, electrically charged cubes of 'anti-matter' now appear in random places all over the United States, where an unknown part of reality has now been ripped apart and revealed to humanity. Profusing from them is a purple, electrical, plasma like substance, which looks somehow like a blend between an active electrical current and the smoke from dry ice.
Strange creatures begin walking into the world, from who knows where, and attacking people and eating people everywhere. And... doing things which... can't even be described. Acts and vicious twists of reality and physics which cannot be understood or explained yet by human perception. Violence, torment and hell for all the organisms of Earth begins, occurring in ways known and unknown.
April 5th somewhere outside of Stillwater, Kentucky
"Dad ever comin home?" Tucker asked his mother.
"Stop askin' that. 'Course he's comin home. Just ain't real soon is all."
Tucker pulled the truck over and put the car on a jack, checking underneath. He spotted an oil leak.
Dinner was delicious that night.
Tucker woke up and put his clothes on. He looked out his second-story bedroom window. It was a lovely day.
He went down stairs, turned the T.V. on, it was old movies day and Godzilla was on. Tucker opened up a can of pears, ate a few then went for a walk.
TELEPORT
Thanks for reading if you made it this far! I'd like to point out a couple of things, for example... Ronald sitting in his truck at the same time he is with the guys is done on purpose. I tried to throw in a bunch of 'easter eggs' so if you like that sort of thing. Plus, everything connects together in the story, some references and connections are a bit more difficult to see than others, some are very obvious (Ronald... and... MacDonalds, instead of McDonalds) for example.
I've only showed the story to my family members and I don't think they liked it too much, so I'm trying to see what a stranger thinks.
I'm pretty sure there are a lot of punctuation errors in it, I'm not gonna waste time editing it if it sucks.
Thanks, guys! Been a reader of reddit for a long time.
Billy S.
Journalistic Fabulism and Ideological Agendas
Fabulism: a form of magic realism in which fantastical elements are placed into an everyday setting
Fabulist: 1) one who writes or tells fables; 2) a liar
Though (perhaps) an acclaimed journalist can be excused (somewhat) for one mistake in an otherwise illustrious journalism career, it appears that Sabrina Rubin Erdely has a history of – to be too kind – “fabulism” that extends back to the very beginning of her journalistic career.
Sabrina Rubin Erdely describes herself on her own website as “an award-winning feature writer and investigative journalist, and a Contributing Editor at Rolling Stone. Her work has also appeared in SELF, GQ, Philadelphia, The New Yorker, Mother Jones, Glamour and Men’s Health, among other national magazines. Her articles have been anthologized in Best American Magazine Writing and have received a number of awards, including two National Magazine Award nominations.”
She goes on to say that she “specializes in long-form narrative writing, especially about crime, health and social issues. She has written about con artists, murder investigations, vicious divorces, power brokers, lovable eccentrics, bioweapons, cults, sexual violence, medical ethics, hackers, LGBT issues, and teachers who have affairs with students – among other subjects.”
What she doesn’t say, however, is that (apparently like a number of her article subjects) she’s a fiction writer with an ideological bent pretending to be a journalist.
In an October 25, 2012 interview at the University of Pennsylvania (Erdely’s alma mater) “Former 34th Street staff member Sabrina Erdely… treated listeners to her journalistic origin story, describing her escalating addiction to ‘the hunt’ of investigative journalism as an undergrad thrilled to discover a real-life application for her curiosity.”
Sabrina Rubin (she later married Peter Erdely, see conflict of interest below) admitted on air that her first story for Rolling Stone had serious factual problems. She had profiled singer-songwriter Michelle Shocked, a born again Christian, and was called on the phone by Shocked’s husband.
“Michelle Shocked’s husband called at my house… calling to tell me that he had read the story and just about everything in the story was wrong,” Erdely said.
“Was that true?” Erdely’s interviewer asked. “It actually was true,” Erdely replied.
“I went to the library and pulled up tons of clips on her, borrowed whatever I could find. I just borrowed whatever facts I could find. It turns out that those facts which were in mainstream publications and magazines were not actually factual. Which completely shocked me. I just assumed those were real and legit but they were not at all.”
In spite (or because?) of this acknowledged fabulism, college junior Sabrina Rubin won the Rolling Stone College Journalism Competition award, which was taken by Erdely as a “sign from God” that she should be a journalist instead of a psychiatrist (she had been a pre-med student). Perhaps that was the better choice.
After leaving Penn, Erdely went to work for Philadelphia before pursuing a career as a freelance (with the emphasis on “free”) magazine writer.
To paraphrase an old maxim: Fool us once, shame on you; fool us a dozen times, you’re busted.
After being exposed as a journalistic fraud and fabulist in her now infamous Rolling Stone article about gang rape at U-VA – “A Rape on Campus: A Brutal Assault and Struggle for Justice at U-VA” – other better investigative journalists are uncovering a long history of deception on her part.
Ralph Cipriano found that Erdely made the exact same mistake of “misplaced trust” (or unwarranted credulity) that she now admits to in regard to the Jackie character in her rape story, in the star subject of her 2011 expose of the Philadelphia archdiocese’s sex crime scandal.
Sex-Abuse, False Imprisonment and Journalistic Scandal
Like the issue of sexual assault on campus (with all its ambiguities), the issue of child-sex abuse among Catholic priests and the cover-up by bishops and other prelates (for all its complexities) is quite real and quite concerning.
On both issues, a compelling tale can be told without resort to exaggeration, sensationalizing or highlighting the most egregious example that, on closer inspection, is full of holes, doubts and reasonable questions of veracity.
But this is exactly what Erdely did in her September 6, 2011 article (published in the September 15, 2011 issue of Rolling Stone) as “The Catholic Church’s Secret Sex-Crime Files: How a scandal in Philadelphia exposed documents that reveal a high-level conspiracy to cover up decades of sexual abuse”.
As in the “A Rape on Campus” article, Erdely composed a broad-brush context for a serious social problem. But, as in her recent (and now notorious) article about the U-VA gang rape that may not have happened, Erdely organized her expose around the unquestioned experience of the pseudonymous “Billy”, who was also the central witness who allowed an aggressive District Attorney to put a Monsignor (the first Catholic Church official convicted for cover-up), two other priests and a schoolteacher in jail for child endangerment.
One of those priests died in incarceration, while handcuffed to a hospital bed, as his attorney was seeking a new trial because of judicial errors and prosecutorial misconduct.
The problem, however, is that the star witness’ testimony was riddled with inconsistencies and changes over time (just as was Jackie’s), contradicted by numerous other witnesses (including his own mother and brother), and undermined by the release of the Secret Archives of sexual abuse from the archdiocese’s vault.
Never-the-less, a grand jury report willfully misrepresented Billy’s testimony, which resulted in a trial in which exculpatory evidence was excluded, and one priest meekly accepted a plea bargain by which he would acknowledge guilt on two counts and not have to spend the rest of his life in prison. He later recanted his guilt when he was brought as witness for a subsequent trial, and explained that he was never directly asked if he had done any of the alleged acts.
The monsignor has been out of jail, under house arrest with a monitoring ankle bracelet, while he awaited an appeal to the PA Supreme Court after a Superior Court overturned his conviction (which the DA then appealed). On April 30, 2015 a judge revoked bail for Monsignor William Lynn, 64, and ordered him back behind bars, after the PA Supreme Court reinstated his conviction.
All the cases revolved around the testimony of one “Billy Doe” – the same person whom Erdely mentioned 37 times in her article about the Philly Church sex-abuse scandal. Just as with Jackie’s story about a two-year-old gang rape (Erdely uses Jackie’s name 116 times), there was no physical evidence or any corroborating witnesses in the Church case. All the prosecution had was “Billy Doe” and his allegations.
Erderly describes her prime subject as “a 10-year-old student at St. Jerome School in 1998, and an altar boy just like his older brother before him. A sweet, gentle kid with boyish good looks.” And, on the basis of this angelic image, never bothers to question or fact-check his story.
The grand jury issued its fallacious report on 2/10/2011, and Erderly published her story in September of that year. But, when detectives finally got around to investigating Billy Doe’s allegations, they discovered that just about everything he told the district attorney was contradicted by his mother, his older brother, and others close to the alleged events.
A defense lawyer for one of the priests described Billy Doe as “a walking, talking personification of reasonable doubt”.
Now, to be fair, I don’t know how much investigation Erdely did for her expose, nor how much of the contradictory evidence had yet surfaced or was reasonably available. Perversely, much of the investigation into the grand jury allegations by the District Attorney occurred after they issued their report.
I do know that legal blogger, Ralph Cipriano, was later able to dig up 20 obvious errors of fact in the 2011 grand jury report, including egregious misrepresentations of Billy Doe’s testimony, and a number of highly critical discrepancies and inconsistencies in Billy Doe’s narrative.
Perhaps, Cipriano had the benefit of more distance from the events of 2011 which was not available to Erderly. Or, perhaps Erdely had simply allowed her passion for a good story to supercede her journalistic responsibility and integrity – as she did again in the sensational U-VA gang rape story.
Cipriano details the story for Newsweek, and also notes a glaring conflict of interest that Rolling Stone never disclosed:
Rolling Stone can run a correction. But what do you do about sending four men to jail for a sexual crime spree that may have only taken place in the imagination of a junkie criminal scheming to get out of jail? That’s the problem we have here in Philadelphia.
Erdely’s Billy Doe story was published under the headline, “The Catholic Church’s Secret Sex-Crime Files.”
It may not have been Erdely’s fault that the grand jury report was subsequently found by this reporter to be intellectually dishonest and contain more than 20 factual errors. But Erdely did write a one-sided story that Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, ripped at the time as yellow journalism for “the factual errors, the stereotypes, the grand omissions and the melodramatic language.”
Erdely had an undisclosed conflict of interest as the wife of an assistant district attorney, Peter Erdely, in the Philadelphia D.A.’s office. She only interviewed people who ripped the church, such as a couple of former prosecutors, two critical former priests, a sex abuse victim and a former seminarian kicked out for disciplinary reasons.
But Billy Doe had an arrest record; six busts as an adult for theft and drugs, including one bust with intent to distribute 56 bags of heroin. He’d been in and out of 23 different drug rehabs. And every time he told his story the details kept changing.
Early Lesson in Fabulism and Success
Now, other investigators are uncovering a pattern of such fiction-as-fact journalism that extends throughout Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s career.
In a case of reality stranger than fiction, Stephen Glass once disciplined Sabrina Rubin for making something up for the University of Pennsylvania newspaper.
Glass became the Daily Pennsylvanian’s executive editor, and Rubin described how he threw a righteous fit when she and a colleague concocted a funny and obviously made-up travel story for 34th Street (the student run arts and culture magazine of the Daily Pennsylvanian) – going so far as to call an emergency session of student newspaper’s Alumni Association board to apprise them of the transgression.
This is ironic because Stephen Glass is perhaps the best-known fabulist of modern times. He also seems to have been something of a mentor to the young and impressionable Sabrina Rubin.
Sabrina Rubin said she and the rest of the editorial board “adored” Glass, saying “There are reporters who get ahead because they’re great schmoozers, and I think Steve was definitely one of them.”
Glass “schmoozed” his way into a journalism career and then into infamy. Sabrina, apparently, followed behind. Yet in 2004, Erdely penned an article for the University of Pennsylvania’s alumni magazine, the Pennsylvania Gazette, in which she declared disgraced journalist Stephen Glass a “sociopathic creep” for fabricating stories. By 2014, Erdely may have joined Glass in that category as well.
Through a Glass Darkly
Glass attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he was an executive editor of the student newspaper, The Daily Pennsylvanian, and was a classmate of Sabrina Erdely.
After his graduation, Glass joined The New Republic in 1995 as an editorial assistant. Soon thereafter, the 23-year-old advanced to writing features. While employed full-time at The New Republic, he also wrote for other magazines including Policy Review, George, Rolling Stone, and Harper’s, and contributed to Public Radio International’s (PRI) weekly hour-long program This American Life, hosted by Ira Glass (no relation to Stephen).
Though Glass enjoyed loyalty from The New Republic (TNR) staff, his reporting repeatedly drew outraged rebuttals from the subjects of his articles, eroding his credibility and leading to private skepticism from insiders at TNR. After the scandal broke, the magazine’s majority owner and editor-in-chief, Martin Peretz, admitted that his wife had told him that she did not find Glass’s stories credible and had stopped reading them. In the end, Glass’s final editor at TNR, Charles Lane, was instrumental in exposing Glass’s fraudulent writing.
Lane explained:
“We extended normal human trust to someone who basically lacked a conscience… We busy, friendly folks, were no match for such a willful deceiver… We thought Glass was interested in our personal lives, or our struggles with work, and we thought it was because he cared. Actually, it was all about sizing us up and searching for vulnerabilities. What we saw as concern was actually contempt.”
TNR subsequently determined that at least 27 of 41 stories written by Glass for the magazine contained fabricated material. Some of the 27, such as “Don’t You D.A.R.E.”, contained real reporting interwoven with fabricated quotations and incidents, while others, including “Hack Heaven”, were completely made up. In the process of creating the “Hack Heaven” article, Glass had gone to especially elaborate lengths to thwart the discovery of his deception by TNR’s fact checkers: creating a shill website and voice mail account for Jukt Micronics; fabricating notes of story gathering; having fake business cards printed; and even composing editions of a fake computer hacker community newsletter.
As for the balance of the 41 stories, Lane, in an interview given for the 2005 DVD edition of the 2003 movie Shattered Glass (about the Stephen Glass scandal), said, “In fact, I’d bet lots of the stuff in those other fourteen is fake too. … It’s not like we’re vouching for those fourteen, that they’re true. They’re probably not either.”
In 2003, Glass briefly returned to journalism, writing an article about Canadian marijuana laws for Rolling Stone. On November 7, 2003, Glass participated in a panel discussion on journalistic ethics (???) at George Washington University, along with the editor who had hired him at The New Republic, Andrew Sullivan, who accused Glass of being a “serial liar” who was using “contrition as a career move”.
After journalism, Glass earned a law degree, magna cum laude, at Georgetown University Law Center. He then passed the New York State bar exam in 2000, but the Committee of Bar Examiners refused to certify him on its moral fitness test, citing ethics concerns related to the TNR affair.
Since 2004, Glass has worked as a paralegal at a Beverly Hills CA law firm. Glass has passed the bar exam in both New York and California, but he withdrew his application to become a licensed attorney in New York in 2004 after he was advised it would not succeed, and in 2014 the California Supreme Court unanimously ruled that he should not be licensed in that state.
A court filing for Glass’s application to the California bar gave an updated count on his journalism career: 36 of his stories at The New Republic were said to be fabricated in part or in whole, along with three articles for George, two articles for Rolling Stone, and one for Policy Review.
Bad Experiences and Sixth Sense
It was the experience of former George editor and current editor-in-chief of Worth, Richard Bradley, that led him to publish a November 24 piece on his blog called “Is the Rolling Stone Story True?”
Bradley had suffered the misfortune of collaborating with Stephen Glass at George magazine (co-founded by John F. Kennedy, Jr.). In 1998, after the Glass fabulism scandal broke, Bradley developed a skeptical sixth sense from that embarrassment.
In applying that skeptical perspective to Erderly’s U-VA gang rape story, Bradley realized that “something about this story doesn’t feel right”. His blog post was the beginning of the unraveling of Erdely’s story. Four days later, Washington Post reporter Paul Farhi wrote:
“The alleged assault, described in graphic detail, is presented largely without traditional qualifiers, such as “according to Jackie” or “allegedly”. The absence of such attribution or qualification leaves the impression that the events in question are undisputed facts, rather than accusations.”
In an article titled “Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s Old Stories Sure Read Like Bad Lifetime Movies“, Mollie Hemingway writes:
A story about a heroin using mother has virtually no facts that could be independently verified. Though it does include a line that names and other details have been changed.
Hemingway continues:
Another story about a prostitute mother would be too unbelievable for a Lifetime movie. Here are just a few of the details mentioned in the story:
Dad is killed by the mob when she’s 9.
Runs away from home at 14.
Gets her GED and gets into Rutgers somehow.
Becomes a prostitute to pay for college.
Graduates with a business degree (natch).
Marries a man from a well-to-do family.
Transforms herself into a super successful businesswoman/prostitute/manager of prostitutes.
Complains that illegality of prostitution is just the worst.
Is also a devout Catholic who goes to church twice a week.
Anonymously mails the police listings of potential child molesters.
Really.
I’m pretty sure all the twice-weekly Catholic Mass attenders you know are very upset that some people find prostitution immoral. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to check these claims on account of the stories including accounts of people identified only by first names.
I guess we’ll have to trust the fact-checkers that everything checks out.
Awards and a Career Based on Scandals (Others and Her Own)
Erdely’s 1996 story for Philadelphia, in which a woman alleged to have been raped by her gynecologist, was nominated for a National Magazine Award. A 2012 story for Rolling Stone, alleging bullying of gay students in Minnesota, was similarly nominated and went on to receive a GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Magazine Article. Erdely’s 2013 Rolling Stone story “The Rape of Petty Officer Blumer” chronicled the alleged drugging and rape of a US Navy female petty officer by three US Army soldiers.
In 2011 Erdely reported a story for Rolling Stone about child abuse within the Roman Catholic Church in Philadelphia, built (as with Jackie’s story in “A Rape On Campus”) around the story of a fifth grade altar boy referred to by the pseudonym “Billy Doe” whom “brutal attacks turned … into a sullen, drug-addicted loner,” alleging a “high-level conspiracy” within the Church.
It was later charged that “Erdely didn’t know or bother to find out … that Billy had already told his story to the archdiocese, police, and a grand jury, and would subsequently retell it to two different juries in two criminal cases. And every time he told his story, the details kept changing” (much like Jackie’s evolving story to her friends and supporters).
In the first iteration of the rape “Billy Doe” claimed to have endured, he was knocked unconscious, stripped, tied to a church altar with sashes, and then anally raped on the altar for five hours. Subsequent iterations of the rape recounted by Billy Doe became increasingly less dramatic, and a final version omitted the five-hour altar rape. Instead, “Billy Doe” explained, he had been coerced into engaging in mutual masturbation. Erdely was also criticized for failing to include information on “Billy Doe’s” background that could have impugned his credibility.
The Catholic League, meanwhile, denounced what it described as “malicious distortions of the kind found in Erdely’s diatribe”.
Nuclear Fallout and Missing In Action
After Erderly’s Rolling Stone epic, “A Rape On Campus”, began to unravel like a ball of yarn chased by a hyperactive kitten, both the Washington Post and Boston Herald issued calls for magazine staff involved in the article to be fired.
Steve Sailer, at the Unz Review, writes that “the most self-evidently implausible aspects of Erdely’s story are related to all the shattered glass all over the place – there are four separate incidents in Erdely’s article of glass shattering. Is all this purely coincidence?”
In Erdely’s review of the movie “Shattered Glass”, which tells the story of Stephen Glass’s journalistic fabrications, she muses:
“I found the movie riveting – although, due to the personal connection, plus the fact that Shattered Glass portrays my own line of work (realistically, I might add), I’m an admittedly biased viewer. As the lights came up, however, I felt dissatisfied by the film, because it never attempts to resolve the big question: Why did he do it?”
Natasha Vargas-Cooper, a columnist at The Intercept (the news and commentary outlet begun by Glenn Greenwald), said that Ederly’s story showed “a horrendous, hidden bias”. And she continues:
“If you are a front-line warrior in the war against patriarchy, know this: facts, no matter how complicated or unpleasant, should not be obscured because they “help the other side”… It is remarkable and depressing how many SlutWalkers, members of The Progressive Internet, and Earnest Feminists, believe that good reporting somehow equates to victim shaming.”
A staff editorial in the Wall Street Journal charged that “Ms. Erdely did not construct a story based on facts, but went looking for facts to fit her theory”.
As to the question “Why did she do it?”, an answer may be revealed in this passage from “A Rape on Campus”:
“[L]ike most colleges across America, genteel University of Virginia has no radical feminist culture seeking to upend the patriarchy. There are no red-tape-wearing protests like at Harvard, no “sex-positive” clubs promoting the female orgasm like at Yale, no mattress-hauling performance artists like at Columbia, and certainly no SlutWalks. UVA isn’t an edgy or progressive campus by any stretch.”
Erdely’s “horrendous, hidden bias” and the reason she “went looking for facts to fit her theory”, can likely be found in contemporary ideological feminism, which castigates men as congenital rapists – whether in the form of Catholic priests or over-privileged frat boys.
As criticism of the story mounted, Erdely disappeared from public view, with various media outlets describing her as “MIA” and “off the grid”. Rolling Stone subsequently issued three apologies for the story.
On December 10, 2014, the Washington Post published an updated account of its inquiry into the Rolling Stone article. Summarizing that report, Slate noted that it “strongly implies, without outright saying so, that the gang rape at the center of Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s article might be fabricated”.
Another Sensationalized Rape Story
An April 7th, 2015 article in RedState, titled Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s OTHER Possibly Fake Rape Story, suggests that Erdely’s penchant for finding a sensational (even if untrue) rape and institutional neglect story to substantiate her pre-conceived conclusions is not isolated to the U-VA gang rape fiasco.
Excerpts:
One of the painful things the New Republic was forced to undertake when it first came to light that reporter Stephen Glass had fabricated certain details of his stories was to go over all his stories with a fine toothed comb to determine exactly how systemic the problem had been with Glass’s reporting.
By way of contrast, in the wake of a damning CJR report on the reporting practices of Sabrina Rubin Erdely and the editorial and fact checking practices of Rolling Stone, Rolling Stone has shown absolutely no inclination to engage in a similar soul searching over whether Ms. Erdely might have engaged in similarly shoddy reporting in the past.
It turns out, Erdely may have been guilty of the same journalistic errors she committed in reporting the UVA rape story on at least one other rape story that garnered national attention at the time. The story in question was published in 2013 and was titled “The Rape of Petty Officer Blumer”.
Erdely’s reporting of the Blumer story is eerily similar to her reporting of the UVA story. In each case, Erdely uses a central figure who has a similar tale to tell: she was a victim of a horrific rape, she reported the rape to authorities, and her concerns were ignored and/or used against her. The narrative in each case is used to advance the theory that the institution in question (college administrators in the UVA case, military command in the Blumer case) is indifferent to the problem of systemic sexual assault occurring right under their noses. In both cases, the stories read suspiciously as though Ms. Erdely arrived at her conclusion before writing her story, and simply set out to find the first person who would constitute a credible vehicle for the narrative she wanted to create, without regard to the factual accuracy of her story.
The evidence is clear…that Erdely – as enabled by her editors at Rolling Stone – has a serial habit of reporting rapes without conducting any more fact checking than she did of the UVA story. It is facially obvious that she did not talk to the accused rapist because there wasn’t one. There is no evidence that she talked with anyone who was present at any of the bars where Ms. Blumer drank on the night before her DUI to attempt to verify even her story about meeting the three guys. And, again: the sources who spoke to RedState (multiple members of Navy command who were either personally involved in the investigation of Ms. Blumer’s allegations or who had firsthand knowledge of the facts of this case) were clear that Ms. Erdely made no effort to contact any member of the Naval command who was involved with the investigation to get their side of the story with respect to what manner of investigation was conducted into Ms. Blumer’s allegations or what that investigation revealed.
After an exhaustive investigation that spanned a year and a half (which Erdely and Rolling Stone ignored and/or did no research into whatsoever), no one was able to produce any evidence, physical or otherwise, that a sexual assault had occurred. The alleged victim herself had no recollection of it happening, did not report it to the police who arrested her, and had a ready motive for latching on to the narrative, which is that it would have stopped or possibly prevented punishment at the hands of her military superiors and possibly prevented her from permanently losing the top secret clearance necessary to keep her job.
And yet, it appears that Rolling Stone brushed all this aside in the service of a story that fit a narrative that their reporter had going into the story. And it appears that Ms. Erdely’s failure to fact check her alleged victim’s story by contacting the “other side” for comment or explanation was every bit as egregious in this case as it was in the UVA case.
From Fabulist Journalist to Hollywood
In 2013 it was announced that Craig Brewer would adapt Erdely’s story “Gangster Princess Of Beverly Hills” (Heiress, actress, singer, model – Lisette Lee wanted everyone to think she had it all, but beneath the bling were secrets, lies and private jets filled with weed) into a motion picture.
Erdely’s August 31, 2012 story begins:
“What’s going on here? I’m a model,” Lisette Lee shouted, flinging open the door of her Escalade and assuming her most indignant expression. Her Chanel heels clicked on the tarmac, police lights flashed and sirens blared, as she faced down federal agents swarming in with guns drawn. Behind Lee, the two other cars in her convoy – a van and a Suburban – had also halted, its passengers emerging with their hands in the air.
The agents who had been waiting for her at the Columbus, Ohio, airport regarded Lee with wariness and curiosity, taking in her expensive-tart look – false lashes, lavender eye shadow, tight black pants, lace-trimmed fuchsia satin camisole – and imperious demeanor, all befitting a woman who had just arrived from Los Angeles via a Gulfstream jet now idling in the twilight.
Rolling Stone received the following letter from Lisette Lee following the publication of “The Gangster Princess of Beverly Hills”:
I realize that the article written about me was not going be a puff-piece; that, like any normal human being, there would be things that I would not like hearing about myself. Fair enough. This was a time in my life when I was involved with some pretty unsavory characters, and my actions were completely out-of-integrity for myself. This is indisputable.
Sabrina Rubin Erdely had been “tracking this story” and contacting me since 2010 to gain my participation for an article she had been paid to write for Rolling Stone. Sabrina explained that she had “always been intrigued” by my story and “wondered why does a person of privilege take such an unexpected turn with her life?” Sabrina specifically promised to “humanize me” and write about a “very complex character with a lot of richness and depth”. These are Sabrina’s own words, and the exact promises she made to me.
After her many, many exhortations and overtures to land an interview with me, and with the promise that I would be “well served” to participate, I believed that Sabrina would write a fair and accurate portrayal of what actually happened and why. In hindsight, it was a mistake to trust Sabrina Rubin Erdely.
Understandably, I didn’t want anything to impact my appeal to the Court, so I held off participating. But Sabrina went ahead anyway, wrote a first draft and submitted it to her editors. By her own admission, she only had half the story (again, her words verbatim): “All I have is the point of view of other people, as well as the portrait that’s been painted in legal documents, and they are not particularly kind” and that the theory she had about me was “kind of speculative”.
When I agreed to sit down to tell my side of the story with Sabrina in early May, no topic was off-the-table. Even though there were some private family matters that Sabrina knew, in advance, that I would need to dance around. Immediately afterwards, Sabrina told my people that I was “terrific”, “wonderful”, “enchanting” and “great to meet in person”. Apparently, the colored contact lenses matching my regulation blues and supposed penchant for “slippery talk” was not an issue then, when Sabrina literally squealed with delight in finally securing her interview.
My greatest fear was that this would be a “takedown piece”: a total hatchet job. That fear, unfortunately, has been realized.
There are so many things I dispute about the article. Three things jump out. First, the overall context Sabrina creates: hardly the “richness and depth” she promised. Sabrina takes every cheap shot possible to make me look like a complete head case. Second, the article is not a fair and accurate portrayal of me; instead, it relies on a very small subset of people who knew me, and apparently not very well. Then, even after she confided that calling someone a liar is a “terrible thing to ascribe to a person”, she proceeds to call me a “sociopath”, a “great liar”, a “master of deception” and an expensive tart. All completely defamatory, salacious and, frankly, catty. Third, the article closes with a glib statement – notice no quotation marks whatsoever – that I expect my prison sentence to be shortened by a judge any day now. I never said that, nor would I ever presume the judge in my case to treat me any differently than he always has; which has been nothing but professional and fair.
Thank you for the opportunity to rebut the article, its context and content.
Lisette Lee
Dublin, California
A film, titled “The Girl Who Conned the Ivy League” and based on Erdely’s story of the same name for Rolling Stone, is currently in development with Rob Epstein as director and Amanda Seyfried cast in the title role of Esther Reed.
Hollywood may be a far more fitting home for the now Missing In Action Sabrina Rubin Erdely. But only time – and authentic investigative journalism – will tell.
As the Shattered Glass DVD box suggests: “Read between the lies”
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