Bill stared out the window. It would take nearly twenty-four hours of flight time going from place to place, with all the connecting flights to get from North Carolina to Jakarta. Rita said that he was crazy for not just teleporting. The whole process would take twenty minutes instead of a whole miserable day, but Bill couldn’t bring himself to do it. He wasn’t completely convinced that he was going to visit his daughter. It would look like his daughter, talk like his daughter, remember all the things that his daughter remembered, but was it actually his daughter? He wasn’t so sure. A whole day was still way better than the months it used to take. And that was good enough for Bill.
She would remember all the memories of childhood and all the things that made Rita, Rita. She would remember taking walks with Bill to the park with her mother when she was six in Brooklyn. She would remember that one time that she kept yelling “Higher Daddy!” until she let go at the zenith on accident. She tumbled but Bill was able to use his dad reflexes and catch her before she hit the ground. He was hero for the day. She would remember all of it. But he wasn’t convinced that it was actually her.
Teleportation was an incredibly convenient thing. Step into a machine here and be reproduced somewhere else. They’d started with replicating individual photons and then molecules, then cells and microorganisms. Then rats, dogs, chimpanzees, and finally human test subjects. It was done silently offshore, even though by the time enough chimps had been sent it was all but foolproof.
The issue for Bill, that he could never get past, was that you were, in fact, destroying your corporeal form. You had to be completely broken down in order to be reproduced accurately, like a giant reverse 3D printer. You stepped onto the platform, the chamber sealed, there was a decontamination scan to eliminate stowaways, then there was a flash freeze (to keep everything from getting messy), followed by a breakdown and collection of data via laser metrology, followed by the transmission, followed by the reconstruction, followed by an electric pulse. Theoretically, you would simply feel for a moment like your whole body had fallen asleep, pins and needles. It was clean. No nightmarish half fly, half human. Even if a fly somehow got in, it would be reassembled separately.
Once reassembled, you would pick up right where you left off.
But BIll asserted that this was folly. Weren’t you simply giving a copy of you a chance at life and permanently disconnecting the consciousness of your original form?
“Oh, Dad, you think too much.”
“You aren’t thinking enough, despite how brilliant you are. You aren’t really you. My girl is gone. She killed herself by stepping onto the platform. But I must love you…”
How could it actually be her? You cannot disconnect your consciousness and plug it back in. Or could you? Rita was now Rita v2. OR was it v6? How many times had she teleported by now?
The first time was the hardest.
Bill was not a religious person, but he tried illustrating the point, “Does your soul transfer as well? How does it know? Does the copy get it?”
“All I know is that I can go from here to wherever you can beam the information and be there in twenty minutes.”
“But not you, Rita. A copy of you.”
And still he cared because what else could he do? But he couldn’t shake the feeling that Rita was gone, and this vessel that held her being was all that was left. A reminder, a living hologram, able to walk and talk, but not actually Rita.
“And what if they send you to two places at once?”
“The protocols won’t allow that. Encrypted and backed up in such a way that you can only go point to point, completely verified as a 100% accurate total data transfer.”
“But they put that protocol in place so you can’t be reassembled in two different places. Tell me, if that happened, which one would be you?”
“But it can’t happen.”
“Please don’t go. It’s suicide.”
“Dad, I have to.”
“Take a plane.”
“I work for the company that makes these things. I have to.”
“Get a new job. Please, I’m begging you.”
“Dad, it will be fine. I’ll call you as soon as I get there.”
“But you won’t. You will close your beautiful eyes and never open them again. Your copy will live the rest of your life.”
After she went, she called him, sure enough, twenty minutes later, from the other side. She assured him that she felt fine and that she told him he worried for nothing. Bill went home and cried. He had a short funeral for Rita in his house by himself. His little girl was both gone and still alive, and he didn’t know how to square the feeling.
