Copyright © 2005 by
Joel Marks
Published in scifidimensions
October 2005.
(With a tip of the Hatlo hat to Daniel
Dennett, Peter Carruthers, “Jerzy Shaffer,” et
al.)
Doctor, I don’t know
who I am.
You are Andre
Polonsky.
This is not clear to
me.
What do you mean?
I don’t know how to
explain.
Are you suffering
from amnesia?
No, no. I remember
everything. That is, I know everything about Andre Polonsky that there is to
know … I mean, that he could know. What I don’t know is whether I am he.
This sounds very
similar to the case you just prosecuted.
Yes, of course.
Then why don’t you
tell me what the one has to do with the other.
On a hot July
morning in 2043, Alyosha Kemlin went to the transporter in New York on his way to work in New New York.
His ticket stub shows that he arrived at the station at 7:45 a.m. EDT and was transmitted at 8:04 a.m., arriving on Mars at 8:09 a.m. MST7. Reconstruction took 17
minutes. He then proceeded into the terminal, where he purchased a cup of
moffee. Moffee in hand, he emerged from the terminal at approximately 8:30, whereupon he was shot in the
face by Ivan Turbotsin, who had been waiting for him. The security guard
immediately disarmed Ivan, who offered no resistance. An ambulance was
summoned, and Alyosha was pronounced dead at the scene at 8:40. When police arrived at 8:44, Ivan spontaneously confessed to having shot
Alyosha. “Good riddance to the bastard,” he concluded before lapsing into
silence for the trip to the lock-up.
Subsequent
interviews and investigation revealed a typical love triangle. None of the
facts were left in doubt. Ivan cooperated fully. In fact, he had no desire to
defend himself at all, refusing even to hire an attorney or act in his own
behalf. It was as if, his revenge spent, he had no desires left at all.
But procedures must
be followed, so the court assigned him an attorney, who submitted a pro forma
“Not guilty” plea on Ivan’s behalf. Unfortunately, by the luck of the draw, the
attorney he was assigned was the notorious gadfly, Socratina Laertes. The “not
guilty” plea turned out, therefore, not to be pro forma at all. Socratina had
an angle.
Things moved along
rapidly, since the police work was over quickly. Socratina asked for no delays,
as she did not want her client to remain incarcerated longer than was
absolutely necessary. She was acting with supreme confidence. Evidently all she
did was line up a couple of expert witnesses and brief them on her idea. Her
client had by this time retired into a mood of complete indifference, neither
cooperating with nor resisting her plans. Meanwhile, I also had no objection to
moving right ahead, as it was an open and shut case. I was asking for the death
penalty.
The trial took place
on Mars, as this was the venue of the crime. It was a day like any other in the
climate controlled dome of New New York
– pleasantly invigorating. The government made its case, reciting the facts and
the background. We called a few witnesses: the terminal guard, the ambulance
medic, the police detectives on scene and from interrogation, the ex-wife.
Socratina had hardly a word to say. She made no objections during the entire
proceeding. Frankly, I was baffled as to what she had in mind by way of a
defense. The government closed. Socratina called her first witness.
Please state your
name and profession for the court (said Socratina).
Jack Devis.
Independent engineer.
Have you ever done
work related to so-called teleporters?
Yes I have.
Please describe the
nature of that work.
I was part of the
original design team for the device. New technology had made it feasible to CT-scan
a human being’s body and brain in every particular and then digitize the
information for transmission via electromagnetic radiation – in layperson’s
terms, on a light beam. This seemed to open up the promise of transmission of
people themselves – to enable them to travel without their bodies – hence, much
more quickly than a body can travel -- at the speed of light -- and far less
expensively than transporting a human body over a long distance.
You say, “seemed
to open up the promise.” Did it not do so in fact?
“Your honor,” I
objected at this point, “what possible relevance has this review of the history
of teleportation? This is an accepted fact of daily life. Most of us in this
room, in fact, teleported here today for this trial.”
“Ms. Laertes?”
inquired the judge.
“Your honor,” she
replied, “I am seeking to establish that my client is innocent of the murder of
Alyosha Kemlin. If you will allow me to continue questioning the witness, I
shall supply the proof in a very short time.”
As you can imagine,
a look of astonishment appeared on every face in the room – the judge’s, the
jury’s, mine, even the defendant’s – all except for Socratina’s and the
witness’s.
“What are you
talking about? I killed the bastard!” interrupted Ivan.
“Order! Order in the
court!” intoned the judge. “I will permit no further outbursts of this sort,
Mr. Turbotsin. Ms. Laertes, your remarks are puzzling. But as this is a capital
case, and the evidence so far presented seems so overwhelmingly prejudicial to
your client, the court will lean over backwards to allow you to defend him. The
objection is therefore overruled. Please continue to question the witness.
However, if the testimony does not demonstrate its relevance within a
reasonable period of time, I shall receive another objection from Mr. Polonsky
more favorably.”
Thank you, your
honor (Socratina replied). Now, Mr. Devis, your wording before suggested that
you may have had some reservation about teleportation. Did you?
Yes, I did. In order
for the device to work as intended, there must be a human body at each out of the
transmission. A human being walks into the transmitter and of course a human
being walks out of the receiver, but no human body has been teleported.
That seems obvious
enough. So what is the problem?
Well, a means had to
be devised to reconstruct a human body from the transmitted data on the
receiving end. Here again the new technology proved to be up to the task.
And so …?
But there still
remained the problem of the human body that enters the transmitter. It had to
be, ah, disposed of, you see.
That would not seem
to present any special technological problem, would it?
None at all. In
fact, the method that has become routine is simply to cremate the body. The raw
materials are then used to reconstruct new bodies from incoming data.
(At this point there
was some squirming among the jurors, as laypeople are generally no more
acquainted with the details of teleportation than they are with the blood and
guts of medical surgery or, for that matter, with the butchering that gives us
those pleasantly packaged meats at the supermarket.)
“Your honor …” I
began
“Yes, Mr. Polonsky.
Ms. Laertes, could you please bring this discussion to some relevant
conclusion?”
Yes, you honor
(Socratina replied). So, Mr. Devis, you still have not told us what
specifically bothers you. It is not that you are squeamish …?
Not in the least. It
is what happens just prior to the cremation. The person must first of course be
killed.
“Your honor! This is
outrageous!”
“Mr. Devis,” interjected
the judge, “what do you mean that the person must be killed? The person is in
the process of being transported – electromagnetically – to his destination, is
that not so? I would ask you to refrain from speaking sensationalistically. It
is only the body that is destroyed at the transmitter, not the person, am I
correct?”
“Your honor,” the
witness replied, “in my opinion I spoke correctly. Just before the cremation
the person is given a painless, instantly acting lethal injection.”
“In fact, your
honor,” interposed Socratina, “it is the identical procedure that the
government wishes to impose on my client.”
“You honor!” I
protested.
“Ms. Laertes,
if you please,” the judge reprimanded, “allow me to continue to question the
witness myself. For my own edification, if you don’t mind.”
“Certainly, your
honor,” Socratina replied – I could swear with a slight concavity to her lips
and eyebrows.
“So, Mr. Devis, you
claim that the person entering the teleporter is killed. But there are often
cases where the transmission breaks down, for example, during an electrical
storm caused by a solar flare. In those cases transmission is temporarily
suspended and the person exits the transmitter in fine shape, perfectly alive.”
“The m.o. is to
await confirmation of successful transmission before killing the person. Thus,
it is only after somebody walks out of the receiver at the destination that the
word is given to terminate the person at the transmitter.”
“I see,” said the
judge, somewhat uncertainly. “Well, then, Ms. Laertes, where is all this taking
us? Continue your questioning of the witness, and would you please … wrap it
up.”
Thank you, your
honor (said Socratina). Mr. Devis, if the person entering the transmitter is
killed, then who is it that emerges from the receiver?
That is something I
am unable to answer.
Why? Do you know the
answer but will not tell us?
No, I genuinely have
no idea who that person is … or even if it is a person at all. I only know who
it is not.
Then, who is it not?
The person who went
into the transmitter. That person is dead, or will be as soon as word gets back
to the transmission station that somebody, or –thing, has emerged intact from
the receiver.
Then in the case
before this court, if Alyosha Kemlin entered a transmitter on Earth at 8:04 a.m. EDT, could he have been on
Mars a few minutes later?
In my opinion, no.
Then he could not
have been killed on Mars a few minutes after that?
In my opinion, no.
No further questions
for the witness, your honor.
A hush stole over
the court room. I myself was a bit dizzied by the upshot of Devis’s
questioning. So this was her strategy – absurd! It had to be some kind of
incredibly specious line of reasoning, for the conclusion was patently false.
But I had to think of a way to refute it on the spot. I did my thinking on my
feet.
“Have you any
questions for the witness, Mr. Polonsky?”
Yes indeed, your
honor (I replied). Mr. Devis, I … and I’m sure members of the jury … am having
some difficulty absorbing the implications of what you have expressed as your
personal opinion on this subject. So, if I may, let us go over these things
carefully. Now, you say that Alyosha Kemlin was killed on Earth. Well, so what
if that is true. Can’t we just say that he was … as it were, reincarnated on
Mars? Isn’t that in fact what teleportation involves: putting somebody into a
new, albeit identical, body at the destination?
I suppose you could
think of it like that. But you could also think of it as a wholly new person
being created at the (supposed) receiving end.
But this “wholly new
person” would be completely identical to the person who entered the
transmitter, would he not? Not only the same body, but the same mind, the same
soul?
Well, with all due
respect, I’m not sure what the soul has to do with it. This is a strictly
physical transmission of information via electromagnetic radiation. If somebody
has a soul when they entered the transmitter, I don’t understand how it’s
supposed to travel along afterward with digitized information on a light beam
to another physical location. Indeed, that’s one of the reasons I have for
thinking that a person is not being transmitted at all.
Mr. Devis, then what
is it that you think emerges from the receiver? You are saying it is not only
not the same person who entered the transmitter, but not a person at all?
That is what I said
before. I suppose it might be, well, like a zombie.
Mr. Devis! Your
story becomes more bizarre with each telling of it. I do not think this will be
helpful to Mr. Turbotsin’s case.
“Your honor,”
interrupted Socratina.
“Mr. Polonsky, no
editorializing, please.”
I’m sorry, your
honor (I said). Mr. Devis, let us just stick with the facts and forgo
metaphysical speculations. The person (please permit me to use that term, as it
is only common sense) – the person who emerges from the receiver is in every
particular that we can determine by means of our senses identical to the one
who entered the transmitter, is that not so?
Yes, I think that is
so.
So, for all
practical purposes, it is the same person, is it not?
Well, I’m not sure
what you mean by “practical purposes.”
Please don’t
quibble, Mr. Devis. I mean that the person could perform all the same functions
– could do the same job, could recall everything about the life of the person
who entered the transmitter that that person was capable of recalling himself,
could, and would, love his wife, or her husband, in exactly the same way as
before, etc., etc.
I grant all that.
But that’s not everything.
I don’t understand
you, Mr. Devis. What else could there possibly be?
Well, let me put it
this way. Suppose I have a piece of paper that I want to make some copies of. I
put it into a photocopy machine, and out come the copies. Now it seems to me
that the original piece of paper is different from the copies, even though the
copies might be, as you would put it, identical in every particular to the
original. But they are not the same piece of paper I inserted into the copier.
Mr. Devis, what does
a copy machine have to do with a teleporter? Teleporters do not make copies;
they send the original itself. That is the point; otherwise, nothing has been
teleported.
My point is that a
teleporter is not a teleporter; in fact, it is a copy machine.
That’s just an
opinion. What possible reason can you have for saying such a thing? Again, it
flies in the face of common sense.
It’s very simple,
really. Remember that the person who enters the transmitter is killed (if you
will permit me to speak that way) only after the transmission has been
confirmed. That means, for a few minutes, while we await word from the distant
destination – since the message can only travel at the speed of light and not
instantaneously – there are identical bodies, or perhaps persons, at both ends.
But there cannot be two of the same person. Therefore one of them must be a
copy.
(I was momentarily
mentally staggered by this argument. I began to sweat as I sensed the jury’s
gaze upon me. I grasped at straws while desperately trying to think of a
telling retort.)
Mr. Devis, that is
an ingenious argument, to be sure. But surely it must be specious. You are even
contradicting yourself: You keep referring to a transmission, so aren’t you
admitting that this really is a teleporter?
Oh, I do not deny
that there has been a transmission – of information. I only deny that the person
– perhaps even a person – has been teleported.
Why, if that were
the case, you yourself would be … well, you would not be Jack Devis at all!
Why do you say that?
Did you not teleport
here to be an expert witness at this trial? But, according to you, that means
the real Jack Devis was killed somewhere on Earth, and you are some kind of
imposter!
(The jury laughed
quietly, but with an air of relief. After all, they too had mostly teleported
to the court that very morning.)
I beg your pardon,
but I did not teleport here for the trial, nor have I ever teleported in my
life. I was sent out here by rocket many years ago as part of the crew to set
up the first teleporter installation on Mars. It was then that the full
magnitude of what we were about to undertake struck me. I quit my job and have
remained here ever since. You’ll never get me into one of those contraptions,
nor any one I know whom I can persuade otherwise.
“Your honor,” I
said, thoroughly at a loss as to how to respond and wanting to cut my losses, “we
have no more questions for the witness at this time. We reserve the right to
re-examine this witness after any other witnesses the defense may wish to call.
Otherwise, we request a recess.”
“Ms. Laertes?”
“Your honor, the
defense calls Jerzy Shaffer to the stand. As Mr. Shaffer has a view of
so-called teleporters that is similar to Mr. Devis’s, he also has never entered
one. And since he did not wish to undertake the long interruption to his job
nor endure the stress or risk of a trip by rocket, not to mention the expense
to the court and delay of the trial, we have arranged for him to speak via
visiphone.”
“Yes, teleporters
are very convenient,” I interposed, knowing I would be admonished by the judge,
but unable to resist.
Unfortunately (Socratina
continued), this does mean we will have a several-minute delay between each
question and response, due to transmission over the great distance between our
two planets. I ask the permission of the court, therefore, for rather more
comprehensive questions to be put to the witness and similarly for his
answers.”
(The judge granted
the request. I was glad: I could use the thinking time myself.)
Mr. Shaffer, what is
your occupation (Socratina asked)?
Professor of
philosopher.
(Ah, I thought, a
patsy. The defense is moving from science fiction to metaphysics, which will
only heighten the implausibility of their case in the jury’s minds.)
What did you think
about the testimony of Mr. Devis, which has been transmitted to you?
I think Mr. Devis
has nicely made the case that teleporters are in fact not teleporters but,
instead, glorified copy machines. I will continue to call them teleporters --
although I would rather call them “purporters,” if you will forgive my attempt
at humor. I always do find engineers to be among the most logical thinkers
among my students at the university. But if there are any particulars about his
arguments or any others that you or the prosecution would like to clarify, I
will try to assist.
No, thank you. I
myself am quite satisfied with the case that has already been made. I have
invited you as a witness solely to allow the prosecution an opportunity to
exhaustively pursue the matter. Your witness, Mr. Polonsky.
(Whoa: Talk about
throwing down the gauntlet! What a brazen move. Her defense is so desperate
that she wants to substitute a show of supreme confidence and shift the burden
of proof to me. It is a clever move, I must admit. I am trained as an attorney,
but I know that these philosophers can be sharper even than we when it comes to
logical sparring.)
Thank you, Ms.
Laertes (I said). Now, Mr. Shaffer, there are a number of things that trouble
me about the line of argument you claim to share with Mr. Devis. Let us suppose
that you both are correct to think of a teleporter as a copy machine. My
question is this: Why would that rule out its also being a teleporter? Mr.
Devis proposed that one and the same person cannot be a double. Well, is that
really so? Why not? Once again, the person who emerges from the receiver is identical
in every respect to the person who enters the transmitter. Well, all right,
both of them may exist at the same time. If there is absolutely nothing to tell
them apart, then don’t we just have to say that a person can exist in two
places at the same time?
Mr. Polonsky, I
applaud your logical boldness (Shaffer replied). A true philosopher must be
prepared to discard common sense if that is where the argument takes him or
her. So it is quite proper for you to demand more evidence than simply the cliché
or everyday intuition that nothing can be in two places at the same time. In
this instance, however, I am on the side of common sense. Here is a further
consideration to help make the point. Suppose someone were to make an exact
replica of the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America, and then
one day the original were to perish. Do you think anyone could plausibly deny
that an irreparable loss had been suffered? To put it in more homely terms:
Suppose both the original and the replica were in existence and both were
purchased by a private collector to help the government with its perennial
debt. Let us make this more plausible by supposing that the collector agreed to
leave the original document in its existing location in perpetuity and had in
effect only purchased pride of ownership. Now suppose that this friend of the
nation wanted to insure his purchases. Do you suppose he could convince any
insurance company to offer him the same coverage for the replica as for the
original? Not likely, I’d say. Indeed, were the original of the Declaration to
become tattered and the copy to resemble the original more than the original
resembled itself, so to speak, still we would value the original more, would we
not? That is because John Hancock signed the one, and not the other. It is the
history of a thing that establishes its identity, not the qualities of a thing.
Well, I don’t think that a human being is less unique than a document, do you?
An infant bears hardly any resemblance to a middle-aged adult, but the two can
share an identity because they are linked in the right way; while identical
twins may be indistinguishable, but they are nonetheless distinct entities.
But Mr. Shaffer,
what are you, and Mr. Devis, suggesting? Mr. Devis himself was unable to tell
us who or what emerges from the receiver of the teleporter: What is your take
on that? If it is not the same person, is it not still a person? But if it is a
person, and it is not the same person as the one who entered the teleporter, then
who is it?
I myself believe it
is a person, but not the same person; or, to use the subtleties of our language
to depict the difference, it is an identical person, but not the
identical person.
Your point may make
metaphysical sense, Mr. Shaffer, but what is its cash value? Let me grant you
that in some obscure sense, the persons at either end of the teleporter process
are not one and the same person. But is this not a distinction without a
difference? Yes, there could be some awkward moments if two identical people
showed up at their significant other’s doorstep … assuming there is only one of
the significant other! But given that cremation and reconstruction of bodies
are coordinated in the teleporter process, is not the net effect as if
teleportation had occurred?
I think that that
“as if” is a rather important one under the circumstances, Mr. Polonsky – a
supremely important one – a matter of life and death, not to be one jot
over-dramatic. I ask you to adopt the first-person point of view on the situation.
There you are, entering the transmitter. At some point you lose consciousness
(when the lethal injection is administered). I think your position is that the
next thing you know, you are at your destination. It is like waking up from a
good night’s sleep, or after a surgical procedure during which you have been
anaesthetized: It may seem as if no time at all has elapsed between the prior
moment of consciousness and the present one. But my feeling is this, Mr.
Polonsky – and this may startle you and the members of the jury, as well it
should – I believe that that moment of consciousness just before the lethal
injection is your last moment of consciousness. Oh, indeed, I am prepared to
admit that the being who “wakes up” at the destination will experience
consciousness, and even believe that his or her consciousness is continuous
with that of the person who entered the transmitter. But my claim is that this
is a false belief: that in fact the first person is dead and this person
has been alive for only an instant.
(There was a low
commotion in the courtroom. I could scarcely contain my own merriment at the
preposterousness of the philosopher’s assertion.)
Thank you, Mr.
Shaffer. Your honor, the prosecution has no further questions for the witness.
(As there were no
other witnesses called by the defense, and I declined to re-question the
defense’s first witness, since I felt confident the second witness’s testimony
had hoisted their case by its own petard, we proceeded immediately to
summations. I spoke first.)
Ladies and gentlemen
of the jury, the defense has made a noble effort to characterize what happened
at the New New York teleporter terminal on July 27, 2043, as a non-event. Even against the
protestations of the defendant himself, Ms. Laertes has argued that Ivan
Turbotsin killed no one, because teleporters are not teleporters, but copy
machines, which spew forth merely ersatz imitations of the originals, the
real-live flesh-and-blood people who entered them. In the course of this
argument, the defense’s witnesses have tried to persuade us that most or
perhaps all of us are not people either, for have we not all used a teleporter
at one time or another in our lives? But, according to the defense, that means
we died when we did so; and now who we are, standing or sitting here in this
courtroom, nobody can say. Evidently some of us are very young indeed,
according to this theory – even “born yesterday” does not do justice to those
of us who arrived by teleporter for this trial this very morning! Ladies and
gentlemen, as the defense has otherwise granted all the facts of the case that
were presented by the prosecution, I have no more to say except: Please render
a verdict of “Guilty” for the perpetrator of this cold-blooded murder. Thank
you.
(Socratina then made
her remarks.) Ladies and gentlemen, I know that the argument of the defense has
struck some of you as strange. And yet the logic is impeccable. The prosecution
has found no fault with it, but only with the implications. But what are we to
say to that? When Copernicus presented his arguments for a moving Earth, even
some of the most learned found it implausible … impossible to conceive. Why?
There was nothing wrong with his logic. They just didn’t like the implications.
Well, I am sorry. The world does not always conform to our likes and dislikes.
Your duty today is to serve justice, nothing more, nothing less. The charge
against my client is that he murdered one Alyosha Kemlin. We have proven that,
even if it was a person who emerged from the terminal in New New York, it was
not Alyosha Kemlin, but at best an exact duplicate of him. Alyosha Kemlin was
in fact killed on Earth, not by a bullet fired by the defendant, but by an
injection administered by a teleporter attendant. Therefore, even if Ivan
Turbotsin has killed someone, he has not killed Alyosha Kemlin. You must, in
good conscience, grant that there is, at the very least, a reasonable doubt
about the prosecution’s claim. Therefore I ask you good women and men to acquit
my client of the charge against him. Thank you.
Well, Doctor, you
know the outcome.
Yes indeed: Ivan was
convicted. The jury could not accept the absurd implications of the defense’s
arguments.
And, accordingly,
Ivan was executed.
Yes, justice was
served, as you said. So why have you come to see me?
Doctor, as I left
the courtroom after the trial on my way to the teleporter for my return home to
my loving wife and family, a nagging thought crystallized in my mind. That last
claim of Shaffer’s – it had seemed absurd: that the consciousness of the person
entering the transmitter might not be continuous with the consciousness of the
person emerging from the receiver. Why not? Just because there had been a time
gap? Deep sleep presents a similar situation, so a time gap should not count
against the continuity of the two consciousnesses. But now another argument
occurred to me; perhaps Shaffer would have spoken this himself had I not
immediately ended my questioning in order to truncate his testimony at what
appeared to be its weakest point in order to impress the jury. Since Alyosha
Kemlin was still conscious on Earth, awaiting confirmation of transmission
before his lethal injection, when, I had claimed, Alyosha Kemlin was emerging,
fully conscious, from the receiver on Mars, the latter’s sense of continuous
consciousness with the former is really no longer sufficient to establish their
identity. For would we not instead expect at this point – if the two were
really the same person – that “both” would suddenly experience a kind of
binocular consciousness? Just as our two eyes contribute to a single visual
experience, would not, for example, the four eyes of the two Alyoshas yield a
double and simultaneous visual awareness of Earth and Mars if these were indeed
the same person? But nobody who uses a teleporter reports that kind of
experience.
Therefore …?
Therefore … I
suddenly found myself unable to enter the teleporter for the trip back to
Earth. I felt, truly, like the man I had just condemned to death. I felt as if
I were about to be executed, and by the same means.
But that trial was
months ago!
Yes, I have been
here ever since. I am stuck. Oh, I will rocket home eventually … if I can find
a way to convince the government to pick up the expense. Even then it could be
a long wait, as rockets are few and far between now that we have teleportation.
But … your wife and
children?
I miss them
terribly. They miss me. But my wife has come to the conclusion that I am simply
crazy … especially because I won the case! She cannot understand.
Furthermore, as the days have extended to months, she despairs of my ever
“snapping out of it” and has even hinted at divorce. After all, it’s not only a
question of my returning home. It’s my whole career. Anyone who does not use a
teleporter these days is not going to have many people put up with the
exorbitant expense of moving him around physically – what with the reduced
demand, the prices have skyrocketed. And even visiphones are inconvenient, as
we saw at the trial, because of the transmission delay over the long distances
of interplanetary business that are now commonplace.
Then … what do you
want from me: metaphysical argument? For that you would need another
philosopher.
You may think that
is funny, but I have consulted others, and none who made any sense to me
disagreed with Shaffer’s position.
And this is so even
though you, and they, recognize that one implication of that point of view is
that there is a human holocaust every day of the week!
finis