{"id":370,"date":"2007-02-16T11:43:52","date_gmt":"2007-02-16T19:43:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/?p=370"},"modified":"2009-04-17T08:15:14","modified_gmt":"2009-04-17T16:15:14","slug":"ps2-note-10-frank-shooks-advice-on-teleportation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/2007\/02\/16\/ps2-note-10-frank-shooks-advice-on-teleportation\/","title":{"rendered":"PS2 Note #10: Frank Shook’s Advice on Teleportation"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

My old kind-of friend Frank Shook was in town the other day. He materialized right out of the ether, emanating form a tree fungus. I have a lot about my adventures with him in my \u201cnovel\u201d\u009d Saucer Wisdom<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Frank was telling me some stuff about teleportation, which fits in with my Hylozoic <\/em> novel project.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Constraints on Teleportation<\/b><\/p>\n

In order to keep the world from getting too chaotic, and also not to make things too easy for my characters, Frank suggests constraints on teleportation: No Mass Limit, and Silps Can\u2019t Teleport.<\/p>\n

(Mass Limits on Teleportation<\/em>) On a single teleportation hop, a single person can only move a certain limited amount of mass.<\/p>\n

(Not \u201cEveryone\u201d\u009d Can Teleport<\/em>) The power to teleport is limited to certain people or perhaps limited to the human race. Animals, plants, and objects can\u2019t teleport.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Mass Limits on Teleportation<\/b><\/p>\n

Suppose that on a given hop, a person can only carry along about as much mass as would fit in a suitcase\u2014say twenty kilograms. In PS1, the heaviest things that people teleported were the magic harp and a battlefield backpack-style atomic bomb.<\/p>\n

But suppose that a group of people working together can teleport larger things. So if you have a two thousand kilogram pre-fab home to transport, you might need to get a dozen or more people to pitch in.<\/p>\n

Make it thirteen, like the Last Supper. One of them flubs—the Judas. And the front porch is lost in the subdimensions. n.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

[This week my dear old friend Gregory Gibson visited as well. He’s a dab hand author himself, as well as being an antiquarian maritime book-dealer. He was in town for a book fair under the aegis of his firm Ten Pound Island Books<\/a >. Greg helped me discover the writing style I call Transrealism; in 1969 this sage suggested, “Suppose you were to write about your real life as if it were science fiction.”]<\/p>\n

Not \u201cEveryone\u201d\u009d Can Teleport<\/b><\/p>\n

Can objects teleport? What a mess that would be\u2026 I have enough trouble keeping track of my wallet, keys, and glasses without them sunnybucks teleporting themselves. Teleportation for objects seems risky. Think of fire, and of how joyfully the flames hop from branch to branch\u2014wouldn\u2019t fire want to teleport itself from tree to tree? This would be a disaster; the whole planet would go up in the spreading inferno.<\/p>\n

How to justify the lack of teleportation by the silps? I\u2019d like a fairly firm reason.<\/p>\n

Disinclination<\/em>. Through the eons, objects have been immobile or, at best, passively mobile\u2014why would they want any kind of new-fangled travel now? Maybe they don\u2019t have desires<\/em>. Maybe that part is lacking. Maybe, if you don\u2019t reproduce, that whole part of you is eliminated. So then they\u2019d simply be too mellow to teleport. Imbued with Buddhist non-attachment. But I\u2019d like an explanation that\u2019s firmer and more science-like.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Interdiction<\/em>. Maybe the planetary mind Gaia won\u2019t let objects teleport because if they did it would mess up her ecosystems. That\u2019s a little arbitrary.<\/p>\n

Mental Structure<\/em>. Silp minds differ in essential respects from human minds. Compared to a silp, a human\u2019s methods for producing thoughts is weirdly complex and roundabout. They think via a direct quantum computation with lazy eight memory, we do it via our neurons. Perhaps silps are inherently literal minded and can\u2019t cohere themselves into two alternate views?<\/p>\n

But keep in mind that, I\u2019d also prefer than plants and animals don\u2019t teleport. Otherwise the rats and ants would eat everything or\u2014if the vermin use third-party teleportation\u2014all our food would always disappear down into the rat warrens and the ants hives. So let\u2019s suppose there\u2019s something unique about a human-style mind that permits teleportation. The painfully evolved ability to be ambiguous and unsure and self-doubting.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

If Objects Teleport\u2026<\/b><\/p>\n

It could be that, later on, maybe bit by bit, the objects do learn to teleport . Maybe that\u2019s a bad side-effect of the Kang parasitizing our silps\u2019 computations, or of the Rull trying to slime us. The objects get restless and bored\u2014or frightened\u2014and wander around. \u201cWhere\u2019s my chair?\u201d\u009d \u201cHe got bored. Went for a jaunt to Alaska.\u201d\u009d \u201cHe got scared. He\u2019s at the bottom of the ocean.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n

But the Kang or the Rull will, as I mentioned before, mess this up.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Social effects of Teleportation<\/b><\/p>\n

People can live anywhere they can find a vacant lot to build on.<\/p>\n

You could be stealing stuff all the time; not only can you see it via omnividence, you can hop there, grab it and carry it home.<\/p>\n

If people can reach out and move objects by teleportation, then no woman\u2019s jewelry is safe. Or your food, guns, sculptures, paintings, furniture, and so on. Criminal gangs like the Beagle Boys could work in concert to whisk away cars or even houses. Does property no longer matter then?<\/p>\n

Suppose I wake up and my shoes are gone. A passerby has nicked them, and taken them home. The up side is that I can always locate my stolen shoos and teleport them back home. An ownership revision war.<\/p>\n

Another possibility is that I can tell the silp inside a valued object to make itself and the object telepathically invisible by pinching off its connection to the point at infinity router in the eighth dimension. But silps might not like to do this. It\u2019s lonely to be cut off.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My old kind-of friend Frank Shook was in town the other day. He materialized right out of the ether, emanating form a tree fungus. I have a lot about my adventures with him in my \u201cnovel\u201d\u009d Saucer Wisdom. Frank was telling me some stuff about teleportation, which fits in with my Hylozoic novel project. Constraints […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=370"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}