[WP] Teleportation is real. It works by destroying and rebuilding the teleportee's body. This means that anyone who teleports technically dies. No one has figured this out, until today.

"It kills you!" He cried.

Nobody listened.

When teleportation technology was discovered, it hadn't changed society. It hadn't ushered in a new wave of trade and travel. It was mostly a curiosity for transporting small amounts of goods, in fact - the power requirements were far too high for it to be a practical means of transport, to say nothing of the complexities of transporting a live, conscious creature. People went about their lives as normal, and the slow march of society continued as it had for the past few decades.

Then cheap fusion technology was discovered, and then teleportation changed society. Vehicles became nearly obsolete overnight. Public transport certainly did. Why buy a car when you could teleport anywhere you wanted, in seconds, from a public booth anywhere in the civilized world? Hell, it'd take longer just to find parking. The fact that it disassembled you, molecule by molecule, atom by atom, didn't seem to bother anyone.

Well, it bothered one person, actually.

"It changes you!" He cried on the street corner. Most people ignored him. "It's not even you!"

"You still look and feel the same when you come out the other side, don't you?" A passerby asked. Someone had decided to humor him.

"Yes, it might look like you, but it's not you. They're different atoms."

"But they're in the same arrangement. The atoms and molecules in your body replace themselves anyway, every few weeks to years. You're not made of the same atoms that you were when you were a child."

"...But it's not the same consciousness," he cried, a little more hesitantly this time.

"It's as close as you can get. And your consciousness changes from day to day - from moment to moment - anyway. You're not the same mind that you were when you were six, are you?"

"I-For an instant, you don't exist! There's no 'you' in the universe as you're being reconstructed!"

"The delay's measured in microseconds, and besides - are you really arguing that stopping your consciousness means you're not the same person? What about people who die for a few moments? What about sleeping? Your mind shuts down for hours every night, but when you wake up the next day, everyone treats you the same way."

"It's.. it's not the same," he stammered. He couldn't explain the feeling of existential dread.

"When you come out the other side, you have your same thoughts, your same appearance, your same memories. It's you, in any sense of the word - at least, if you consider yourself the same person you were last night, or ten years ago."

He froze, an unsettling feeling of wrongness sinking down his gut.

The stranger put a friendly hand on his shoulder. "Hey. You've never been on a transporter, have you?"

"N-no, of course not."

"Come on. We'll do it together. It's perfectly safe - and I'll pay your fare. You wanna head to the mall?"

He didn't speak, but he managed a tiny nod. The arguments made sense, and he couldn't see any rational reason for his fear - but it still felt wrong. That sinking feeling grew worse as they approached the transporter.

"Come on," the stranger said, pulling him onto the pad and swiping his pass twice. "We'll go on three. Ready?"

"One. Two. Thre-"

A flash of light consumed them both.

Two men stepped from a Transport chamber in the Hargreave public shopping center.

"How do you feel?" One of them asked.

"I feel great. No doubts whatsoever. I can't believe I was so silly," the other said with a smile on his face.

It was a bright, sunny day. All was right in the world.

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