15th March, 2018
Teleporting is fun. Accidents are rare and traffic jams are now a thing of the past. They don't make you wait in lines for a simple ticket because practically everybody has one these days, everybody who is anybody anyway. There are still some poor people around though who share Teleports. So strange, that, like sharing a public toilet, paying a dollar for every time you use it. You'd think people would be a little more picky about who they scrambled their molecules with! The body is split apart every time we use a Teleport. Some naysayers even say that you even leave behind some of yourself in that deep space between two ports. I don't believe in such nonsense though; it is, no doubt, invented by those oil companies who still want people to burn fossil fuels and use large SUVs and such.
No, teleports are safe and reliable, and that is all there is to it. A few molecules lost here and there are not depleting the ozone layer like the SUVs did, or forcing me to become a passive smoker while the fossil fuels burn up the world.
30th May, 2030
The world has changed. Teleporting is not an option anymore, its the rule. Even the poorest of the poor own one per family - the last government gave them away for free in a last-minute "reform", conveniently just before the great election of 2024. They won that year, but were replaced by the Democrats again this year. Now the Democrats complain that the treasury has no money for running and maintaining subways and roads, thus forcing every person to use their feet or a Teleport to travel. Factories have now been built in the vast underground tunnels that were once subways; that is where all the remaining fossil fuel is used these days. That and for electricity, although even electricity is mostly generated through the nuclear or solar plants.
Still, life is good, the air is clean, there is plenty of food and water for everyone and people visit each other almost everyday across the world. Travel from third-world countries is still limited because they don't have the monies to build Teleport factories, and use airplanes even now. Most of us have now learned to ignore those irritating naysayers of teleporting. Some scientists are even calling this decade as the "Age of the Great Loss", owing to the millions of molecules we all seem to have collectively lost while teleporting through quantam space. Some say that even the weight of the human soul seems to have decreased among those of us who teleport often. Can this even be possible?
20th July, 2035
I just came back from the fertility labs in South Malta, where people of the world are gathering their sperm and ova so they can be matched for the highest rates of successful fertilization. My results were disappointing, to say the least - I have been declared sterile. No doubt my partner Mia will also be saddened by this, but we'll move on and she'll find a more suitable mate, like everyone else does these days. Heartbreak is not an emotion we feel deeply any more, neither is joy or elation. Fear, now that I can still comprehend.
Fear. The one emotion that I still feel, though I wish it had been the first one to go. I feel fear at the loss of my soul, fear that more and more of us are found sterile everyday, fear at the rising shadows that now press against me when I teleport. Fear that the naysayers and the oil companies were right, that the loss of the ozone layer would have still been better than this emptiness we now feel inside.
14th Feb, 2050
They say the sea is to rise tomorrow. As I lean over my balcony and watch the horizon, I can see the shadows in the distance. They moved from the quantam realm through the portal some years ago, first a trickle that nobody noticed and slowly increasing to a tide that no one could stop. They brought us face-to-face with versions of ourselves that had somehow manifested from our own molecules, twisted insubstantial entities that were hungry to become corporeal through the bodies of the creatures they had been born from, namely, us. But even fear has left me, and now I feel nothing anymore. The government that controls us forbid the use of teleports when the shadows finally became visible to everyone. Now we walk through narrow alleyways and between towers of steel to get to the nearest convenience store or to work. But I will not relive the past, we have been instructed to only concentrate on the present. The sea may rise tomorrow and drown us all, but so what? We will have lived for nothing, just as we will die for nothing. Life's like that, we've been told. Those who did not listen took off in their spaceships for different planets, while the government was left behind to call them traitors to the race. They will live for sure, but they will live with that on their permanent record, that which replaced the human "conscience" a long time back. My record has been spotless so far, with no violations, no thoughts of treason or murder, like many of my fellow men and women resorted to after the Sterility March. I will die in the morning, but I will die with a clean record.
Teleporting is fun. Accidents are rare and traffic jams are now a thing of the past. They don't make you wait in lines for a simple ticket because practically everybody has one these days, everybody who is anybody anyway. There are still some poor people around though who share Teleports. So strange, that, like sharing a public toilet, paying a dollar for every time you use it. You'd think people would be a little more picky about who they scrambled their molecules with! The body is split apart every time we use a Teleport. Some naysayers even say that you even leave behind some of yourself in that deep space between two ports. I don't believe in such nonsense though; it is, no doubt, invented by those oil companies who still want people to burn fossil fuels and use large SUVs and such.
No, teleports are safe and reliable, and that is all there is to it. A few molecules lost here and there are not depleting the ozone layer like the SUVs did, or forcing me to become a passive smoker while the fossil fuels burn up the world.
30th May, 2030
The world has changed. Teleporting is not an option anymore, its the rule. Even the poorest of the poor own one per family - the last government gave them away for free in a last-minute "reform", conveniently just before the great election of 2024. They won that year, but were replaced by the Democrats again this year. Now the Democrats complain that the treasury has no money for running and maintaining subways and roads, thus forcing every person to use their feet or a Teleport to travel. Factories have now been built in the vast underground tunnels that were once subways; that is where all the remaining fossil fuel is used these days. That and for electricity, although even electricity is mostly generated through the nuclear or solar plants.
Still, life is good, the air is clean, there is plenty of food and water for everyone and people visit each other almost everyday across the world. Travel from third-world countries is still limited because they don't have the monies to build Teleport factories, and use airplanes even now. Most of us have now learned to ignore those irritating naysayers of teleporting. Some scientists are even calling this decade as the "Age of the Great Loss", owing to the millions of molecules we all seem to have collectively lost while teleporting through quantam space. Some say that even the weight of the human soul seems to have decreased among those of us who teleport often. Can this even be possible?
20th July, 2035
I just came back from the fertility labs in South Malta, where people of the world are gathering their sperm and ova so they can be matched for the highest rates of successful fertilization. My results were disappointing, to say the least - I have been declared sterile. No doubt my partner Mia will also be saddened by this, but we'll move on and she'll find a more suitable mate, like everyone else does these days. Heartbreak is not an emotion we feel deeply any more, neither is joy or elation. Fear, now that I can still comprehend.
Fear. The one emotion that I still feel, though I wish it had been the first one to go. I feel fear at the loss of my soul, fear that more and more of us are found sterile everyday, fear at the rising shadows that now press against me when I teleport. Fear that the naysayers and the oil companies were right, that the loss of the ozone layer would have still been better than this emptiness we now feel inside.
14th Feb, 2050
They say the sea is to rise tomorrow. As I lean over my balcony and watch the horizon, I can see the shadows in the distance. They moved from the quantam realm through the portal some years ago, first a trickle that nobody noticed and slowly increasing to a tide that no one could stop. They brought us face-to-face with versions of ourselves that had somehow manifested from our own molecules, twisted insubstantial entities that were hungry to become corporeal through the bodies of the creatures they had been born from, namely, us. But even fear has left me, and now I feel nothing anymore. The government that controls us forbid the use of teleports when the shadows finally became visible to everyone. Now we walk through narrow alleyways and between towers of steel to get to the nearest convenience store or to work. But I will not relive the past, we have been instructed to only concentrate on the present. The sea may rise tomorrow and drown us all, but so what? We will have lived for nothing, just as we will die for nothing. Life's like that, we've been told. Those who did not listen took off in their spaceships for different planets, while the government was left behind to call them traitors to the race. They will live for sure, but they will live with that on their permanent record, that which replaced the human "conscience" a long time back. My record has been spotless so far, with no violations, no thoughts of treason or murder, like many of my fellow men and women resorted to after the Sterility March. I will die in the morning, but I will die with a clean record.
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