VICTORIAN SCIENCE LAB and STREET CORNER, VICTORIAN LONDON

After years of grueling effort, a pair of intrepid Victorian scientists have achieved the unachievable: matter transportation!

The Victorian Era gave us great literature, and established both the mystery/thriller genre and science fiction. This part of the Portal straddles both sections of the store, physically and conceptually. On one half, next to Sherlock Holmes, is a wink of a street corner from what was at that time the greatest city in the world. On the other half is a small, private laboratory – one that could have been tucked into a nook just off that same street.

Behind this whirring, Promethean world-changer, lies its backstory: inscrutable equations crawling across blackboard fragments and a slag-pile of porcelain monstrosities – innumerable failed transport experiments, the finest of china tea sets, sacrificed to the insatiable gods of Victorian scientific progress.

A high shelf in a Victorian scientists' workshop, featuring assorted machinery, and -- a matter transporter! It's portals glow and the dials and knobs throb with color. A new era is upon us!

“At last. Test Run 796.78 D is a success. This ingenious little machine does, in fact, transport a small, china egg dish from one compartment to the other, whilst preserving its structural integrity. We will begin experiments on living tissue, as soon as the intern returns from market with our cakes.

For England.”

The matter transporter is a classic Pepper’s Ghost illusion, crammed inside a piece of Ikea furniture, run by Arduino. Triggered by a PIR sensor, it also features timed machine noise, snatches of dialogue, blinking lights, and moving gauges.

The action appears to transport a small porcelain egg and egg dish from one compartment to another, and back again, several times.

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