DON’T BEAM ME UP, QUITE YET.

I have never been a big fan of the idea of being disassembled into my component sub-atomic particles, beamed or otherwise transmitted somewhere else and then reassembled, so when, last week, a think tank in Birmingham, England, predicted – a little rashly I thought – that in a hundred years computer capacity would be such to make such a thing so, I was forced to re-analyze why I was firmly against the whole business. The first time I encountered the idea was in the Dan Dare strip in The Eagle when I was about five years old. The Treens on Venus had a device called the Electro-sender which beamed Dan Dare and his lower class sidekick Digby (this was England in the 1950s) from somewhere near the Venusian flame belt to the northern capital of Mekonta. Even this early, a hint that all might not be right with such a system was implanted when Digby came through somewhat disarrayed. Then The Fly was released with all its help-me, help-me, Vincent Price consequences. (Which were repeated twice with Jeff Goldblum and then Bart Simpson getting the insect head.) Finally I watched all those decades of Star Trek with only Dr. McCoy treating the transporter as a potential hazard.

For most, the fear is seemingly that one won’t materialize in the same physical shape as one left, but this has never worried me. Any kind of travel involves risk, and all one can do is play the odds and hope for the best. My distrust of the transporter is far more metaphysical. I wonder if the “you” that arrives at the destination is really the same “you” that left the embarkation point. Okay, so it’s identical in every detail, atoms, molecules, mannerisms, memories, but is it really "you"? What’s to guarantee that it’s not an entirely new entity, an exact replica in every respect, but a different being, while, meanwhile, the original “you” is dead, gone, finished, croaked, deceased, and otherwise tuning up with the Choir Celestial. By this reasoning, a whole stadium full of James T. Kirks could have died riding the transporter in Star Trek, and no one really ever gave a rat’s ass as long as the replicas were seamless and perfect. Even the replicas wouldn’t know the difference because, according to their memory, they would have gone through the process unscathed. They swear blind that they're the original. (They only find out to their eternal cost, the next time they are beamed up or down.) In other words, no one cares whether it’s the real “you” are not. As long as it’s a close enough facsimile for rock & roll.