Tele-Problem

“One too many?”

The Investor stared at the testing field, where, sure enough, he counted at least ten duplicate faces in the crowd.

“What do you mean by ‘one too many’?”

“W-well, we think there’s a glitch in the server. Too much lag, maybe.”

The Investor turned to the Researcher. They were nothing more than a man in a plain white lab coat, with a clipboard clutched to his chest. In any other situation, he would’ve probably looked completely calm, but now his hair was a mess, and his eyes darted back and forth between the Investor and the test subjects.

“Lag? Like what happens when you stress a computer too much?”

“Y-yes.” The Researcher flipped a page on his clipboard and scanned the data. “You see, we make an exact copy of the individual, down to the exact quantum momenta of particles. That took a lot of our work, finding out how to get past the uncertainty principle, but—”

“I don’t care about your nerd shit.” The Investor pointed at the test subjects. “Tell me about that.”

“Oh! Y-yes, of course. Well, the thing is, we don’t …” The Researcher’s voice trailed off, leaving it impossible to determine the rest of their sentence.

“I’m sorry, what?” The Investor leaned in. “Speak up, man.”

“W-we think it was because we …” Once again, the Researcher refused to make himself heard.

“Say it clearly, or I’ll cut off your funding.”

The Researcher’s eyes went wide, and in a heartbeat, he blurted out, “We send two signals, one as a precursor and another as a confirmation, b-but when we don’t see immediate results, we send another teleport command.”

“Meaning?”

“The two signals arrive at the same time somehow, and we get …” The Researcher motioned to the test subjects. “This.”

The Investor hmphed and began pacing, hands behind his back. The gears turned in his mind. He didn’t know nearly enough about all of this science mumbo-jumbo to piece together what this meant for the world. All he cared about was what it meant for his bottom line. Too many people would lead to overpopulation, and that had been nasty for a couple of decades already. Food would be the next main problem.

That was when it hit him. He turned and stared long and hard at the teleporters. As far as he was aware, there wasn’t a limit on what could be teleported. It didn’t have to be manually recalibrated anytime someone different stepped on the platform. It was a one-and-done situation, able to be put anywhere. That right there could solve the food crisis. And by solving the food crisis, he would be made a hero.

With an excited grin, the Investor spun on the Researcher. “You think we could advertise cannibalism as the new diet fad?”