“Is the fugitive in sight?” you hear an officer’s walkie squak as you book it for the transport room. You slide in, slamming the door shut behind you, listening for the tell tale smacking sound emanating from it a seconds later. In front of you sits a mess of wires and machinery. A friend told you that the transporters were finally connected up to one another, though you didn’t think there would be this much of a mess. “Get out of there!” Roars an officer as the door shakes with a loud bang. You rush to the machine, hit a few buttons in the exact order your friend told you to, and step inside the metal box, hoping for the best.
That intro is a bit over dramatic for the game at hand. While I may at some point do an escape hypothetical (or several now that I think about it), the main focus is teleportation. Specifically, the second method of teleportation, Matter Relocation. Unlike Fantasy teleportation, this method uses a machine to deconstruct your molecules and reconstruct you somewhere else.
While some believe that this is an actual possibility in the far future, I believe that this is impossible in our world. While scientists see the primary issue as quantum mechanics and the inability to recreate a human using the information stored in their cells (not to mention the ethics involved in dismantling and reconstructing a person), I think the problem with this method is the fact that we all have souls. A spiritual element that only exists within humans. We don’t even know how to see or touch that part of ourselves in a scientific manner, so moving it is out of the question.
But in this hypothetical world, it works. The requirements I imagine are simply that one machine is at the place you want to teleport from, and one machine is where you are teleporting to. Maybe the more powerful transporters can send you wherever you want, but can’t pull you back.
When a world gains this type of technology (or any type of technology for that matter), it takes time for it to spread throughout society. (Look at the history of cellphones and color television for examples.) I’d hazard a guess that the first few places this technology would appear would be in the major cities and important government buildings of third world countries. If space has been semi-populated, transporters would show up on the moon and some of the planets as well.
Once they became more conventional, people would probably use them with the same frequency as trains. Not terribly often, but when needed or wanted. I haven’t had to travel much, so my use of transporters would probably be next to nil at this point.
Of course, if they are so standard and safe that they are a household item, it becomes a similar scenario to fantasy teleportation on the global scale. Teleport to work, back home, to the movies, etc. It becomes the main mode of transportation. I suspect planes would be out of service in favor of transporters, but cars, bikes, and other small scale methods of transportation would still be useful for traveling in local areas.
Space travel. Teleport to a planet with supplies to build another transporter, build it, and transport back to the ship or base planet. If the range is far enough, spaceships might not even be necessary. Planet hopping would be a typical requirement for space exploration in this game.
That’s the large scale picture. The real question is how are you going to use the technology. Well, if you did get yourself into a situation like the intro, it would come in real handy. But let’s hope you aren’t an evil person on the run. You are an ordinary citizen. Long range trips, such as to different countries or across the larger ones such as the US or Canada, would be no brainers. What would the price of using a transporter would be? Depends on what it takes to teleport you. Transporter companies would probably act like modern day phone companies. That’s a scary thought.
Whether you’d use one closer to home, that’d be up to you and the stage of this scenario you are in.
Sad to say this is where I need to end this weeks hypothetical. (Slacker…) I’m on vacation right now, and the internet here is flaky. But that just leaves more topics for you to discuss. What stage of this scenario would you find most interesting (at the invention of transporters, when they’re in major cities, or when they are everywhere)? What would you do with the technology? Can you find any exploits in the transporters to make them a super weapon or overpowered? Would you explore space with them? Which do you prefer, fantasy teleportation or matter relocation?
I cannot wait to hear what you have to say. Thanks for playing!
The Hypothetical Game 