This one's a bit older, written in 2014. As the title suggests, it's playing around with the idea of teleporters.
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Teleporter. It’s one of those funny words… like refrigerator. You know
what I mean? Words that sound kinda silly if you think about them for a minute,
if you let the word just sort of sit in your head without its meaning attached
to it. But words like that become so common place… I don’t know, it’s like your
brain just gets used to the sound of it. I suppose that’s just how language
works, but, like, I could imagine some dude from the nineteenth century writing
a science fiction story with, like, a “refrigidization apparatus” and that
would sound totally bizarre, but it would just be a box that makes shit cold. Anyway,
I’m rambling, but teleporters are like that, right? You first see them turning
up in old movies around… what, the 1960’s? I’m not really a film buff, but Star
Trek had teleporters I think. After that, the word crept into everyday
language. But like a lot of stuff, it was just a word for an idea. Hell, folks
were pretty certain for a while that teleportation was impossible- that is,
instantaneous transmission between two points. And, to be fair, the image most
folks had in their minds back then of how… well, how something like that would
have worked- well, that is
impossible. I’m not even sure if you could really call what we have now the
same thing as that- but whatever, I mean, it accomplishes the same thing, so
the name stuck.
I may not be too savvy on old
films, but history in general’s always interested me. I mean, speaking of
teleporters… it always gets a chuckle outa' me when I think about it. I mean,
back in the twenty-first century, right around the turn of it, man, people had all the components. Maybe not
refined as much as they needed to be, but all the right shit had already been
invented. It’s a lot like computers, actually, come to think of it. There was
this guy, I don’t remember his name, he had made like… I don’t remember if it
was just a model, or just, like, the designs for it, but he’d basically
invented the first computer- and this was back in the mid 1800’s, man, basically
a hundred years before the first real computers actually came about. But the
poor bastard couldn’t get funding for it. Ok, so that isn’t exactly what
happened with teleporters, but man, it’s the same shit. They could have been made way earlier. Not
that it would have been terribly useful to have back then. Folks only lived on
one planet. Would have been silly, really.
And that’s the key there, I
think. Shit usually doesn’t get invented until there’s a need for it, and for
teleportation, that need came about when we needed to move between planets. We
figured out pinging in the 2080’s, but that only works with pure information.
For everything else, the speed of light is a hard limit. And for a human body
it’s way less. Traveling close to relativistic speed will turn most things to
mush. So yeah, that was a puzzler, I’d imagine. Free long distance calling,
anywhere in the galaxy, right? Still, pinging was kinda useless if we had
no-one to talk to.
I remember my first time. It was weird, you know? Back then I didn’t have
a lot of money. I’d never really thought of traveling- and no one in my family
had ever gone- heck, I didn’t know anybody
who had. I was, honestly, scared shitless. I remember it being explained to me
like… a big camera comes and takes a picture of your atoms. They have to put
you to sleep to do that to make sure its precise. And when you wake up, you’re
there. That’s it. That was all there was two it, and, though that is a pretty
simplified explanation, that is literally what happened, subjectively anyway.
The facility was enormous, of course, but all you see is a little waiting room
with a front desk. When they call you back it’s like… it’s hard to describe. It’s
like the place was a hotel with only one room. They had a table that you could
set your bags on, and then there was a bed. A nurse came in and gave me a shot
and I was out.
Waking up was way less pleasant. I imagine it had something to do with
where I was teleporting to. The place was a bit backwater. Also, by the way, in
case you didn’t know, teleportation is not
instantaneous. That is a big fat fucking lie. Like, maybe it’s different if
you’re zapping between Earth and Alcie Three where they have like, a hundred
freaking hangars, but for most places you can be in a queue for several days.
Or more. I was waiting for like, two weeks. That place was a real shithole.
They said they had to wait for a new shipment of one of their material cartridges
because, apparently they didn’t have any sequestration stations set up near the
freaking tele-port. How asinine, right? It was probably potassium or something
obscure. They said they don’t get people too often, usually just processors or
encryption blocks. Whatever. Anyway, its usually way more pleasant, but at that place it sucked. They didn’t even have a room
to wake me up in, I literally woke up next to the vat after they’d thawed me,
or whatever it is they do. It was really unprofessional, actually, I felt like
a piece of luggage. Oh fuck, I’d almost forgotten about that part. I had to
wait two months for those mouth-breathers
to tele my luggage in. Fuck, I sound like such a snob, I can hardly believe it-
but honestly, I’ve done this so much sense then, like… I don’t know, I guess it’s
like I was saying before. You just get used to things, but seriously, I think
it’s important to have some standards.
Whatever. What was I even saying? Oh yeah. Two months. I mean, it was
fine really, my business there took about that long anyway. Right, if I hadn’t
mentioned, that’s why I got to go in the first place. My boss ended up having
surgery or something that month, so I had to go. The little town the tele-port
was in really grew up around it, and I happened to learn a bit more about the
process while I was there, because… man, let me tell you, I was way curious. I
really hadn’t believed that guy when he’d said you just go to sleep and you end
up there like fucking magic. I mean, I knew the basics, but… well, it’s kind of
a weird thing to wrap your head around. I mean, the basic idea is you’re 3D
printing a person, right? But it really isn’t even remotely like printing a sandwich
or a book or something. There isn’t any way to vectorize a person… well, I
mean, not to the same extent anyway. And, as you can imagine, imaging a
person’s energy state is a little more complicated than making sure the lettuce
is cold and the bacon is hot on your printed BLT.
I actually spoke with one of the dudes that helped wake me up- well, more
than spoke, he gave me a fucking tour. We even went out for drinks when his
shift ended, real nice guy, his name was Erich. I think. It’s been a few years.
Anyway, he took me back to show me the printing hangar- apparently he does this
a lot, most places don’t just let any old fuck-off go back and ogle the
machinery, but it’s all open there, so, lucky me, right? Anyway, it’s a long
walk, so while we’re going, he tells me a bit more about the imaging process. Basically,
it’s like… I guess the best analogy to draw would be an MRI? It’s able to look
at every molecule and atom though, like, super precisely. Erich didn’t really
have a full grasp of it himself, said it had something to do with a stupidly
strong magnetic field and then, somehow, directing a focused stream of pings.
The first part gives detailed information on what sort of atoms you’re looking
at, and precise locations. The second part gives the delta-vee, spin,
what-have-you. And then they read the entropic information too somehow. He
wasn’t sure. I really don’t know, I don’t imagine its important. Anyway, that
40k or so petabytes of molecular data is what gets pinged. The info is received
instantly, and then printed whenever they fucking feel like it I guess. I’m
being a child, I know, but it’s really annoying, they literally never mention
that part. It makes perfect sense though, I mean, the reading part is really
quick, but printing can take a while, and most ports only have one or two
printing hangars.
So anyway, we get to the part of the facility where they do the printing
orders. Its massive, let me tell you. I’ve seen pictures of these things sense
then, but they don’t do it justice. Material tanks freaking everywhere. Those
get pumped the enzyme stations, recombinators, and several other things that I
neither have names for, nor understand the purpose of. Basically, shit gets
pumped to this… it’s this long armature that passes over the printing media,
and, according to Erich, is covered in molecular machinery that assembles
whatever it is that’s getting printed. And, I said the printing process takes
time ,but that was in comparison to the scanning process. That armature was
flying. It was building up layer by layer a crate- a fancy old wooden one,
probably full of oranges or something equally retro.
It was interesting to watch. I’ve never seen a person being printed, but
it’s gotta be a similar process. I asked, and Erich said the procedure was
pretty much the same for printing something alive, but that the printing
temperature had to be calibrated more carefully, and that it actually worked a
bit faster when it was doing a human teleportation- honestly it was hard for me
to wrap my head around, and still is. I don’t really get how, like… I mean,
you’d think blood would start going all over the place, or something, but hey,
it clearly works.
Whatever, that’s… eh, kinda grisly to think about. It was a pretty big
leap, in the beginning, to make that jump to printing a person. Obviously the
tech didn’t spring up out of the ground in one piece. Shit, people had been
printing food for decades at least, less complicated stuff for ages before
that. And even after there was a high enough confidence in the scanning and
printing tech that a human being could be reliably printed… its still, I mean,
it’s a big leap to print them with an
intact consciousness. My father used to tell me that when he was a kid, he
figured that scientists would have figured out how the brain worked by the time
he’d grown up, but we never did. Best guess we have is that every person’s
brain is similar enough, but the process of growing and developing over a
lifetime builds a unique neural network that’s almost impossible to generalize.
Our AIs are just a brute force approximation of human sentience- and I mean, it’s
close. Better than close really, but there’s a big difference between making an
intelligence from scratch and understanding our own. If we had any real grasp
of the way the brain worked… shit, we’d have like, brain implants, and telekinesis
and other wacky sci-fi crap. We’d be able to manipulate memories, or whatever.
It was thought that we’d have to crack that nut in order to really print a conscious
person, but that didn’t end up being the case, obviously. Really, we just had
to take a picture of what was there, and then copy it. We didn’t have to understand
it. We just needed a better camera
Understand of course- and I don’t think I can say this enough-
teleportation isn’t dangerous, and it never was. Its actually a pretty big misconception,
and it comes from, ultimately, I think, the misconceptions folks had way back
when about how a teleporter would work. Like I said earlier, it really doesn’t
work like that at all. There’s no beaming of molecules, or quantum bullshit or
getting your genes mixed up with a fly that flew into the teleporter with you.
It’s a bit like how we imagined flying machines would involve giant flapping
wings. Anyway, it’s just a big fancy 3D printer. Nothing is actually getting
‘teleported’ at all. That’s the rub. Really, the technology is more akin to a
giant 3D fax machine than anything else
That raises more questions than it answers, I know, I know, and it
confused the fuck out of me too. It actually came up while I was at the bar
with uh… What was his name? Right, Erich. Remember I said we went out for
drinks after the tour? It was pretty cool, actually. Really retro. Bars on
earth are so noisy, but this place was real quiet, like a fuckin’ saloon from
an old western. I was really into it, he got a kick out of that. Anyway, we
printed a couple cheap vector beers and got to talking, and he mentioned the
whole fax machine analogy. I was like, yeah, I actualy know what that is. He
was impressed, but as I took a long drink he kept looking at me like he was
waiting for me to make some connection that was less than obvious. I’ve always
like cheep beers, to be honest, by the way. There's something appealing to me
about the homogeneity, but that’s just me I guess. Anyway, the whole fax thing
went right over my head, so he just explained it. I probably won’t do it
justice but the thing is… uh… Well, you go to the tele-port, you get imaged,
and then your molecular and entropic data is pinged to wherever it is you were
planning on going. And then you wake up. Or rather, both of you wake up.
There’s the you that gets printed, and then there’s the you that got
scanned, and you and that other you diverge the moment you get imaged. I
imagine it’s pretty unsettling, actually, when you wake up. You be like “did it
work? Am I there?” And they’d be like “No… no, you’re still the original,
sorry” Or at least, I imagine that’s how it goes. From my perspective, I’ve
been the me that wakes up at my destination each time. I have no idea what it’s
like to be the original, honestly. And to tell you the truth, I try not to
think about it. Because while, subjectively, I may have memories from an, at
this point, long life of teleporting here and there, objectively, I was created
wholesale the last time I was teleported, which happens to have been yesterday,
actually. I one day old. My memories were created at the same time I was. If we
had the ability to design a human being from scratch, and write original
thoughts to put in his head, he could be printed just like any of us. He could
be made with memories of being a vampire for three hundred years. He could be
written to have memories of a square sun and a polka-dotted sky. It’s freaky,
right? My stream of consciousness is not even twenty four hours old, but I have
memories of a whole life lived before that.
I’m really making it out to be spookier than I should, if I can be honest
here. Really, you could argue that your stream of consciousness blips out every
time you go to sleep, and a new one starts in the morning. I’m not a
philosopher or a neurologist, so what do I know. Anyway, as for the you that
gets left behind, the original you, what you do after you visit the tele-port
is your business. From what I’ve heard, there are three basic ideologies.
First, you could kill yourself. It sounds morbid, but if you want to move to another
planet, leaving one of you behind on the old planet would be a bit silly. I
don’t know. I think, even knowing that there’s another you out there, it would
make it hard to do the deed. The second ideology is the opposite. Let’s say you
have business you need to attend to in person on another world. You tele
yourself, and then you go about your business as usual. Your tele-clone does
whatever it needs to off on the other side of the galaxy and then offs himself.
Its efficient, if you think about it. No need bothering with a return-tele.
Still, I kind of imagine it’s the cowards way of dealing with it. It’s stupid
though, really, because if you can’t kill yourself, what makes you think your
clone would be able to?
The third option is just forgetting about the issue at all. That’s what I
do. In my line of work, I rarely return to the same planet twice. I don’t have
any idea what my clones do, and I don’t really care. It’s their business,
really. Or mine, rather. You know what I mean. I know some folks just keep
instances of themselves in places they would otherwise need to tele to and from
regularly. It’s bad form to have more than one of yourself running around on
the same planet at the same time. It’s even illegal most places, but it’s a
hard thing to keep track of, so I’m sure it happens frequently to folks like
me. Ah well. If I ever bumped into myself, I think that would be alight. I’m
not sure what we would talk about. I guess I’d ask him what he’s been up to.
Hmm.
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