I worry about that. I don't necessarily believe in a soul; I don't believe in taking chances. If my soul isn't recorded somewhere in the process, I'm dead, even though my memory remains as reconstructed electron tracks.
Where society is concerned, there are equally serious problems.
Let's say we've reached step. one. We've recorded our customer and we now have a record and a ball of ionised plasma. Why not beam the record to two receivers? Now we've got a duplicator. The legalities get sticky. We could get around them by permitting one, say, one Isaac Asimov to a planet; but who gets the royalties on the FOUNDATION trilogy?
Similarly, you can keep the record. You fire the signal at the receiver, but you store the tape. Ten years later the passenger walks in front of a bus. You can recreate him from tape, minus ten years of his life. But-aside from questions concerning his soul-can he collect his own life insurance?
Suppose we change our mind after step one. We store the tape instead of firing it. Is it kidnapping? Or, in view of the fact that we have mortally vaporized a man, is it murder? Does it cease to be murder if we reconstitute him before the trial?
Finally, we assume an advance whereby we needn't destroy the model to get the record. Shouldn't we destroy him anyway? Otherwise he hasn't gone anywhere.
Our fourth method doesn't have these difficulties. It is often called tranposition or teletransposition, but that's too much work. Henceforth I'll call it teleportation. It involves making two points in space contiguous... somehow. Generally we take advantage of the fact that the universe, as viewed from four or more dimensions, resembles a crumpled handkerchief.
Light follows the contours of the handkerchief, so that spaces which are really contiguous in four or more dimensions do not look contiguous when viewed across apparently fiat space.
If the universe does not in fact resemble a crumpled handkerchief, maybe we can make it resemble a crumpled handkerchief. It may be possible to bend the fabric of space by the judicious application of electromagnetic fields, until two points touch. At least we get no embarrassing duplication of passengers.
The embarrassment arises if two sets of machines are in operation at once, anywhere in the universe. At best, space will be bent in some unanticipated way, and nobody will get where he wants to go. At worst, the fabric of space comes apart like a too-often crumpled handkerchief.
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.