We've seen Kirk and Spock transport themselves to alien worlds countless times. “Beaming down” is a quick and easy process that gets people where they need to go, without burdening a budget-conscious television show with the cost of a starship landing sequence. The process, we are told, converts the passenger into pure energy, which is then broadcast to the destination, where it is reassembled into a living, breathing person. Handy — but let us suppose that there might be more to it than that. What if every time this machine is used, a human life is simultaneously created and destroyed?
Legendary Canadian animator John Weldon's 10-minute film To Be (1990) tackles this subject brilliantly. We begin with our unnamed heroine (voiced by Kim Handysides) attending a demonstration of a newly invented teleportation device. The inventor (voiced by Howard Ryshpan) has set up two booths (refrigerators with TV antennas attached) and is asking for volunteers to try the device out. Sure enough, a subject steps into one booth, and emerges intact from the second booth a few feet away. When pressed, the inventor admits that the machine actually only records the contents of the first booth and beams the information (and not the passenger!) into the second booth. There, the machine constructs an exact duplicate of the passenger, and it is the copy that emerges and takes a bow. So what happens to the original passenger? Well, the booth destroys him. Otherwise he hasn't gone anywhere.
Yikes.
A spirited ethical debate ensues between the inventor and the protagonist. The inventor insists that the process is ethically sound, and demonstrates by “teleporting” himself over and over. He even uses the machine with both doors open, so we can see the creation-destruction process ourselves, accompanied by wacky cartoon noises and amusingly diverse methods of body deconstruction and assembly.
The protagonist proposes an experiment — the inventor will transport himself again, but this time, the destruction of the original body will be delayed for five minutes. This results in a five-minute period in which two copies of the inventor exist. They shake hands and compare birthmarks. All is well, until the protagonist points out that the five minutes are up, and one of the scientists must now step into the booth to be destroyed. Oh dear.
John Weldon (of Log Driver's Waltz fame) has constructed a brilliant little film that will bring a smile to your face while presenting you with a unique mental conundrum that can be pondered for days. The science fiction elements are presented in a very tongue-in-cheek manner (the control panel on the machine resembles the buttons on a kitchen blender), yet the philosophical implications of the story are rich and exciting. Some of the ideas presented here were put forth by noted sci-fi author Larry Niven in his wonderful essay “Exercise in Speculation: The Theory and Practice of Teleportation” (1969), which can be found in the book All the Myriad Ways and is highly recommended reading. Niven asks several intriguing questions about the destruction-reconstruction method of teleportation, including “Suppose we change our mind after step one. We store the [information] instead of firing it. Is it kidnapping? Or, in view of the fact that we have mortally vapourized a man, is it murder? Does it cease to be murder if we reconstitute him before the trial?”
Readers interested in the more outré implications of teleportation are advised to seek out both Niven's essay and Weldon's film, as both cover a fascinating topic in different, highly entertaining ways. Then, check out the other various works by these two remarkable artists. You won't be disappointed.
