X-Sender: grauer@oberon.pps.pgh.pa.us
Date: Tue, 11 Mar 1997 00:33:13 -0500
To: philip.gibbs@pobox.com
From: Victor Grauer 
Subject: The Transporter Dilemma

The Transporter Dilemma

by Victor Grauer

Lieutenant Marvin Noordren stepped gingerly out of the transporter onto the deck of the Enterprise. He felt rather strange, as he always did when emerging from this device. And all the old questions occured to him, as they always did.

He knew the theory of how the transporter worked. You enter it, press a button and wait. After a moment or so, it "vaporizes" you into a mist of disembodied cells, performing a complete analysis of your entire body, every drop of blood, every strand of DNA. For a long time, the technicians claimed that it then "transported" you, atom by atom, from your starting point to your destination. Eventually a skeptical group of scientists launched a private enquiry, determining that, as they had expected, this was not the case. There was, in fact, no way to "transport" a body, in any form, across such great distances, nor was there any need for this. All atoms of a particular element are identical. Once you have been vaporized and analyzed, a perfect replica can be created at the other end out of just about anything at hand that can also be reduced easily to atoms. What is "transported" by the "transporter" is, simply, information -- information about the atomic/ molecular/ cellular/ genetic structure that is "you."

For many years controversies raged about the transporter and what it might mean to be "transported." Many people refused to have anything to do with transporters and efforts were made to outlaw them. Public debates went on for years. Logical, ethical and religious arguments were provided on both sides, but with inconclusive results.

Ultimately, the effect of the early years of deception proved decisive. Millions had already been "transported" before the disturbing truth about the device became known. There had, apparently, been no problems. No one had ever become ill -- no one had ever lost their memory or felt in any way that they were not the same person they were when they entered the device at the original location. And so, over the years, the doubters gave in, the device proved indispensible. Everyone used it.

But doubts remained. And Lieutenant Noordren was among the doubters. Each and every time he entered the transporter, he uttered a silent prayer: "If I should die before I . . ."

Suppose there *were* a soul. There was no provision for one in the design of the transporter. At the moment of "transportation" the soul might be destroyed -- or left to linger on the spot, without a body. He would be dead. At the other end, some other entity -- without a soul -- would be born and exist in his place. An empty simulacrum.

But this was nonsense. He had been through the process many times and nothing bad had ever happened. Nothing had changed. If there was a soul, he must still have it. Unless -- that empty feeling inside him, that slight chill in the gut, was a reminder of his doubt. Maybe he didn't have a soul. Maybe he was not, never had been, Marvin Noordren. Perhaps he was new, newly born out of the transporter. How could he ever tell for sure? If he were an empty clone, he would still have Noordren's memories (or the memories of the last Noordren clone). Memories are seated in the tissue of the brain, not the soul (if there is a soul).

So Noordren suffered. But not for long. Soon he settled comfortably into the life of the Enterprise. He knew his duties well. He had friends. He had hobbies. Days went by, then weeks and months. Eventually all the cells that had been in his body at the time he had last emerged from the transporter had been replaced by new ones. Every molecule, every atom of his body had been replaced, naturally, through the action of his DNA, which, like the transporter, transmitted information -- only that. So the question was moot, wasn't it? Was he still Noordren? Had he been alive for years -- or only months? Was he only a clone? A machine wihout a soul? Without a past? How could he ever tell for sure?