By Darien Pletcher
Artist’s Note: This short story is based on the problems and possible solutions the teletransportation paradox raises as well as the moral and ethical challenges and problems that may arise. The questions raised by philosopher Derek Parfit were used as a starting point to imagine my own problems and solutions to his ideas. It also briefly touches on the problems that cloning would cause, as it would be easy to accomplish if the technology for teleportation existed.
His transmission had been delayed. He wasn’t sure if he was relieved or annoyed. The massive board listing all incoming and leaving transmissions was empty save for three departures, the soonest one leaving in seven hours. The station was deserted. Cheap tinny muzak crackled out of the intercom and echoed off the linoleum floors. The station is new at least, he thought as he turned to find something to do to pass the time. The Company usually builds them nice, but he had heard some horror stories. This one was built only ten years ago, to handle the wave of workers and employees building the transmission repeater and the nuclear-geo power plants to run it. Most of the station was built for unloading cryopods and cargo, but it also boasted four transmitting stations. This was probably an overzealous mistake by the Company as most could not afford the cost of transmission, instead opting to be frozen and lose years being ferried from planet to planet, limiting it to being used by higher up company employees and well to do citizens, neither of whom frequented this planet often. Thousands of people had lived here for a time, but after all the infrastructure and automated systems were built, the jobs dried up and within months it was a ghost town. Now, even when it was empty, he still got bumped. His mouth was dry due to the artificial humidity controllers. He needed a drink.
As he searched for the station bar, he walked past a row of old teleportation chambers left as an art or historical display. He stopped and touched the polished aluminum frame. He could not tell if it was a replica or an old unit hauled out here to rust. Initially, testing of the teleportation system was a massive success, just as space exploration and colonization were expanding to lengths of time that humans found difficult to endure. People clambered aboard the units to be beamed around the cosmos. Slowly, though, talk of “consciousness suicide” and “doppelgangers” began to creep into the discussion. Was the system really transporting people, or killing them and creating convincing duplicates? It was at that moment that the first cryopods were created by a rival group, offering a way to travel without losing so many years of your life at a much cheaper price, and without the fears regarding identity.
The Company scrambled to find a way to compete. Deciding on transmission, they would recreate exact doubles of the person wherever the person needed to be without destroying the original. After completing whatever business he or she was sent to do, the double would be granted citizenship under the same name but with a new number suffix attached. Prohibitive costs restricted use to the urgent, and kept potential instances of mistaken identity low. Interaction did happen, much to the Company’s chagrin, but was inconsequential, merely becoming a new addition to the cultural zeitgeist. The widest use of transmission was by the Company itself, to replace employees on different planets without losing profit training new ones. Routinely, the Company would make copies of the copies as some may have been more specialized and suited for the position that needed to be filled. He was the twelfth of such a line of clones.
The bar looked the same as any bar you would find in an airport or train station. “Wayne’s” was written above the door, and he wasn’t certain if it was referring to the actor or the owner. The inside was barren and dimly lit, offering a reprieve from the fluorescent lighting filling the rest of the station. A drunk was slumped over the bar and another patron sat beside him mulling over his drink. He took a seat in a booth in the corner, and waited for the nonexistent waitress to appear.
He had only been here four years and already he was being reassigned – transmission now, and then probably hop a slow boat within the next year. He would probably lose at least eight years travelling to the next planet; hopefully it would be a more populated one. He was starting to understand why 11 killed himself.
All the other planets he had been transmitted to had been trade hubs or vacation worlds, this was the first one on the fringe. He remembered that 10 was excited when 10 was asked to be transmitted out here. That excitement turned to dread after he was told there was an accident and he would have to transmit himself again. He remembered being 10 looking at 11 in the morgue. The circumstances of his “accident” all but proved that it wasn’t one, but company policy made sure it was never officially a suicide. All the workers and 11’s friends looked at him funny no matter how hard they tried not to. He didn’t blame them that much; it wasn’t every day that the dead came back to life and back to work with you.
“Ahem, you gonna order?”
The waitress staring down at him roused him from his melancholy. He placed his order and within minutes it lay before him. “You ain’t one of my regulars. You here to teleport?” the waitress asked.
“Yeah, I’m being transmitted out in an hour.”
“I don’t know how you company boys do it. Enjoy the drink, it’s on the house.”
As he nursed his drink, he began to study the other patron at the bar. His face seemed familiar, yet he couldn’t place it. All at once it came to him. He was a Gibeshi clone. In the early days, the company had been much more open with their technology, sharing it with any sovereign planet that wanted it. It did not take long before someone abused their generosity. Epsilon Eridani had always been a pugnacious and militaristic planet, and saw the new technology as a way to gain new land. It engineered a crude recreation of the transmitter and cloned billions of super soldiers based off Dr. Gibeshi to launch an invasion of their neighbors. Before they could strike, their new army led a revolt overthrowing the government and exposing their plot. He was young then, but he still remembered watching news reporters talking to rows of the same person. Not something one would forget. The Gibeshi plot, as it was soon named, led to the company’s creation of its own military to protect the transmitters, and its paranoid secrecy. Most of the Gibeshi clones died early as a result of the Frankensteinian procedures used to create them. It was rare to see one now. He raised his glass towards the clone, toasting him one clone to another.
He sat in the bar for a while longer before making his way out to the transmitter. He had always enjoyed being the prime, but now he couldn’t wait to pass off the honour. He felt bad for passing on such a confused gloomy mind to the future version of himself, but it wasn’t his fault he felt this way. He remembered when he was 10, when the world made sense, but ever since he got here it was one big nightmare he couldn’t wake from. It was difficult. Transmission made it difficult. He remembered his previous versions, they were him, he remembered being them, but he never was. He had only existed for four years, and had only been given a lifetime of memories to help him work better. The security checkpoint loomed in front of him.
“Your name” growled the officer not bothering to look up from his ID. “12”, the man said, nervous for no reason. “No, your real one.” “James Greer” the man replied before being let through into the transmission room.
The inside of the room was littered with parts and tools, a clear departure from the minimalist exterior of the station. Technicians hurry about talking in rapid whispers as he moved further in. 12 flagged down the one closest to him and asked “What’s going on? Is there something I should worry about?” “No,” he replied excitedly, “orders came down from the top to get a transmitter ready to receive a teleportation. Turns out it was Hohenzollern himself, out here to do something important evidently. He’s reason you got bumped.” 12 turned to see the elusive CEO of the company dressed all in black, known to be one of the few who still solely relied upon teleportation, instead of transmission.
Despite his better judgement, 12 walked towards him. He would not get this chance again. “Mr. Hohenzollern, may I ask you a question?” The CEO looked up at him, reading him with piercing eyes before nodding. “Why? Why do you do it? Teleportation I mean. Aren’t you worried you’ll die?”
“I think you know the answer to that question yourself. Transmission complicates things. You really are the same person you were when you were born, but society treats you as if you are not. I probably do die every time I teleport, but I am identical in every way except for my consciousness. Who’s to say that the consciousness even dies. We all sleep. We all have been unconscious. Teleportation is even less than that. I blink and then I am here.” A hand brushes 12’s arm. “Sir, we’re ready for you now”. The CEO smiles and walks slowly out of the room, feet clicking in step.
12 sits in the machine waiting. The technician asks him to try to remain still. The machine hums softly above him. He feels nothing. Somewhere he opens his eyes.