Ever Wonder? #1 — The Transporter

GRADY: Ever wonder about the transporter? I'm Grady.

JUNE: And I'm June. And yes, he has been waiting all week to ask me this.

GRADY: I have. Okay — the transporter, on Star Trek. You know how it looks. A fellow steps up on the pad, he sparkles, he disappears, and a second later he's standing down on some planet, waving back up at the ship. Looks simple enough.

JUNE: It looks simple. I hear a "but" warming up.

GRADY: Here's the idea a lot of folks believe about how a machine like that would really work. It doesn't move you — not the way a truck hauls a load of wood. It takes you apart, every little piece of you, down to nothing — and it uses what it learns to build an exact copy at the other end.

JUNE: Exact?

GRADY: Exact. Same face. Same clothes. Same memories. Same scar on your hand from when you were twelve. That copy steps off the pad believing he's you. And far as he knows — he is.

JUNE: Then where's the fellow who stepped on?

GRADY: That's just it. He didn't go anywhere. He's gone. The machine destroyed him to make the copy.

JUNE: Okay. That is worse than I expected before coffee.

GRADY: It gets worse. Say the copy beams back up to the ship — same thing all over again. Copy number two gets taken apart, copy number three steps off the pad. Five trips out and back, and the man walking around that ship is the tenth copy of the fellow who first stepped up.

JUNE: Ten times made.

GRADY: Ten times destroyed. And not a one of those copies has any idea.

JUNE: All right, here's my question, because there's one part you keep walking past. What if it hurts?

GRADY: …Go on.

JUNE: Being taken apart — what if that's the worst pain a body could feel? Even if it only lasts half a second. Except while it's happening, you're frozen. You can't scream. You can't move. You can't so much as blink. All you can do is be there for it, all the way down to nothing.

GRADY: And nobody would ever know. That's the terrible part. The copy's memory skips right over it — last thing he remembers is stepping on the pad, next thing he knows he's waving from the planet. Ask him and he'll tell you honest: "Didn't feel a thing." And far as he knows, he told the truth.

JUNE: The only one who could say different is the one who felt it. And he's not around to say anything. He never got the chance to tell a living soul.

GRADY: Kind of scary to think about, isn't it? I don't know for a fact that's how it would be. Nobody does.

JUNE: But if somebody ever does build one of those machines, and they invite you to step up on that pad —

GRADY: I believe I'd just as soon walk.

JUNE: Same. …So now we're asking you. Would you step on? Tell us in the comments — we read every one, and the good arguments get talked about right here, under this same piece.