What If?

  Every so often, I think about how neat it would be to have something I see in the movies that might make life easier.  Today is one of those days.

I woke up to a blizzard blowing snow across the landscape so I could not see much.  I saw the building where I worked so I popped over for a short time but wished I had a way to pop there and back without getting wet and cold.

When I got home, I watched the latest Star Trek video and voila, the way appeared.  What if we had transporters in real life so we could live anywhere we wanted and just transported to our job every day.  If we needed to meet with a client, you could cross the world in a split second, meet, and head home to sleep in your own bed.

Transporter pads could be placed around like transit centers located in towns.  You pop over there, pay for the trip, get zapped to your destination,  complete your business and head home.  All for the cost of a round trip ticket.  Maybe these could operate like buses with a per trip ticket, monthly pass, or even a yearly pass.  You wouldn't have to worry about weather interrupting or delaying your trip.

It sounds like Utopia, doesn't it?  Going anywhere anytime, but what if there were side effects we hadn't thought about.  Since theoretically, your body is broken down to an atomic level, moved around and then reassembled on the other end, how many times could this happen before mutations start occurring?

Would the mutations be minor at first and increase later or?  How often would the machines be cleaned so people's patterns disappear?  What happens if your atomic stream is interfered with by atmospheric occurrences such as lightening?  Would you have a scan on file somewhere so if the transporter malfunctioned, you could be reassembled in totality?  How often would you need to update your scan?

Could you at some point when you are old and gray, take a trip and use a pattern of yourself from the age of 25?  Would you actually be young again or would your body be old with a new cover on it?  Could you take a trip if you were ill with cancer and use a scan from when you were healthy to reassemble a cured you?

Would you still be you after being taken apart and reassembled on a regular basis?  Such a way of travel opens so many questions and possibilities.  As long as we believe it could be, there is always a chance someone will figure out how to build one.  The future has yet to be written.