DEVELOPMENT OF MECHANICAL TELEPORTATION:

Assume we have a teleportation transmitter and receiver. How we got these is a matter for science fiction; but once we have them we can move onto surer ground.

We assume that the principle does not involve beaming; it may involve tunnel diode effects or space-bending or something new.

So we've got two enclosed booths. Why booths?

Because of an old principle that two bodies cannot occupy the same space at the same time. Like a lot of old principles, this one isn't strictly true. Matter is mostly empty space. There is no reason why you can't teleport into a rock; there's plenty of room for your atoms and the rock's atoms. Trouble is, it'll kill you.

Teleporting into a mass of air will kill you too. There are energy factors involved, and also bends, embolisms, etc. Probably there will be an explosion.

So you need booths. Naturally the interior spaces are identical in size and shape. The transmitter booth includes air as well as the passenger or cargo. The receiver is evacuated. We teleport the air as well as the passenger and/or cargo.

If what we have are transceivers, we need not evacuate the receiver. We teleport its air to the transmitter as we teleport the cargo to the receiver.

With development, we may be able to do away with the booths. If we expand a spherical force field from a point (GREE stories, from Galaxy) to get a vacuum for the receiver, we need only a transmitter booth. Put the passenger in a pressure suit and we eliminate that booth; it doesn't matter how big a volume gets sent along as long as the volume of the receiver is bigger.

But- we'll have to start with booths.

Now turn to Figure 1 (page 92).

Booths A and B are used for the first stages of experiment, to find out if we can teleport reliably.

Once they are working well we move to step II: teleporting instruments from booth C to B and (if transceivers) back again. If conservation of energy holds, we expect a rise in temperature from teleporting down that cliff.

Booth D is built on railroad tracks. We set it moving to determine if conservation of momentum holds. Given relativity, we might as well use booth D as receiver only. Thus we can pad the back wall, in case conservation does hold.

Booths E and F test for continuous teleportation. Bullets are fired into the opening in E at various speeds. Which bullet will reach F before it strikes the back wall of E? This system could stand redesigning. Obviously we can't pad the back wall of E; we'd only teleport the padding to F. Thus we destroy a teleport booth every time the bullet hits the back wall of E. When the bullet teleports in time, it zings out of booth F and hits the scientist. If the scientist ducks, the coward, the bullet will still destroy booth B.

We can get better data with a long crossbow bolt, by measuring what length of the bolt gets teleported in time. But we destroy the booth with the arrowhead and clonk the scientist with the feathered end. I'm sure there's a better way to design this system.

PRACTICE OF MECHANICAL TELEPORTATION:

Here my theme becomes complex. I intend to demonstrate that any limitations we assume for our teleportation system are going to imply a society: one society for each set of limitations. Again, I will quote my sources where I can remember them, sometimes. But much of what follows is my own.

I

THE ASSUMPTION: We don't need a transmitter. Our teleport receiver will bring anything to itself, from anywhere. Limitations may exist as to distance or mass of cargo.

THE RESULT: Thieves capable of stealing anything from anyone in perfect safety. Such machinery was discovered by Seaton, and later by DuQuesne, in THE SKYLARK OF SPACE. In practice, anyone who has such machinery is king of the world. If many men have transmitterless receivers, society falls apart. When society stops making parts for the machines, the machines fall apart, and everything starts over.

II

THE ASSUMPTION: No receiver is needed. Our teleport transmitter will place its cargo anywhere we choose.

THE RESULT: We can put a bomb anywhere. The idea was used at least once, in THE PERSON FROM PORLOCK. In practice, a government that owned one of these would-again-own the world. Two such governments would probably bomb each other back to a preteleport level of civilization. Presumably it could happen any number of times.

III

Given the assumptions in (I) and (II) you don't really get a society. You get a short war. Hence most stories assume that teleportation requires both a transmitter and a receiver.

Let's do the same. Let us further assume that transmitters (transceivers?) look like telephone booths. You walk into a booth, you put a coin in the slot, you dial. You're elsewhere.

How do they work? We assume either space-bending or the tunnel diode effect. We assume the operation is relatively cheap: no more than a few quarters in the slot. Finally, a slug in the slot will send the customer straight to police headquarters.

THE RESULT: All present transportation becomes obsolete: cars and trucks and freeways, ships and docks, airliners and airports, trains and train stations. What do we do with a continental net of freeways once the cars and busses have disappeared? You use them for drag races and bicycle riding; you put houses on them or turn them into parks. Or you pack them with cars because there's no place else to put the damn useless cars. Not only freeways and turnpikes, but streets and roads and even sidewalks become obsolete. In business districts you keep the sidewalks for window shopping.

Elsewhere, pfftt!

The mind boggles. Assume the population problem continues in the direction it's going. Then, as Isaac Asimov has suggested, new generations could grow up without seeing the exterior of any building, including their own homes. There might soon be no countryside to see in any case, and precious few exteriors to buildings. Without need for streets or sidewalks, there would be no- space between buildings; they would be built wall to wall, or in units a mile cubic. And the people get their exercise by riding bicycles between two open booths arranged like E and F in Figure I.

IV

But suppose there are limitations on the booths? For each assumed limitation one gets a different society.

Let's take a few examples.

THE ASSUMPTION: Booths are expensive to operate.The price for any jump, regardless of distance, is two hundred dollars. (A reasonable restriction. Any spacestressing operation might well cost as much as any other. Ditto for a single tunnel-diode operation.)

THE RESULT: Cars, motor scooters, busses will remain. Except for emergencies, nobody would use booths for distances shorter than a transcontinental flight. But airplanes would disappear, except perhaps for cargo flights.

Change the price and you change the result. As price goes down, freight traffic by train and truck dwindles, and then. even automobiles begin to go. Raise the price to a few thousand dollars, and only spacecraft disappear.

THE ASSUMPTION: The booths are cheap, a couple of bucks a jump, but limited as to distance. Ten miles, let us say, is the upper limit.