shy_magpie (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
shy_magpie) wrote2025-03-18 11:50 am
shy_magpie) wrote2025-03-18 11:50 am
Entry tags:
teleporter tropes
Feeling too catty for Bluesky where whining about this trope might be seen by someone who actually writes SF and I just want to bitch about people being stuck on the first level of implications after 20 years or more not make someone feel bad because they're one of the lucky 10k or they want a go at the toy even though a bunch of others have had their turn and are bored with it now.
Yet another SF story about "teleportation" where the author is still on "did you know fax machines don't move the original document at all? It makes a copy that is just treated as if it was the same document. Dude dude what if you were the document and like you got shreded after being sent!"
It's not a bad trope! I just thought we'd be building on it by now. Like it seems ripe to be merged with clone tropes.
Like what if you thought you were being faxed to a new office and it was a big secret so you didn't even know where you'd wake up but actually when they called you a model employee they meant they'd be sending you to a dozen offices. 10 years later you're doing tech support on a big wigs computer to find out not only are you not the only you but the original got told "darn I guess that teleporter failed but you can have your old job back while we figure out what went wrong". So there are a dozen of you living variations of your life and it turns out Original!you actually did fine without the life changing promotion that made you so loyal to the company. One of you got back together with your ex; another is writing cheesy spy novels on breaks & the only reason you didn't notice the pen name you picked at 15 is you quit reading those after making the painful decision to quit since you thought you'd never get published; just as you're wondering if all the others are doing better than you, a message comes in from a you who can't believe one of you is actually living the dream of having your own twitch show and is so impressed that you're doing it after work so you're not financially dependent on the advertisers. Yeah that one shrugs and admits that from what they can tell they're the evil twin since they're the only one who doesn't have anything going on outside the office unless you count cyber stalking the rest of you.
That's all a weird meditation on the idea that this isn't a Scrooge thing, there isn't really stunningly good or bad clone until that one slips and gets a date wrong from your pre fax life. You do some mental math put together with how your pre fax memories are just a bit fuzzy on things that could be used to date them like music, outfits, & tech. The version you're talking to is at least 20 years older than you, you didn't find all the other yous; you only found your batch and don't know how many batches there are. Plus they are able to alter your pre fax memories. The one you thought was the original you was just the prototype for this generation, your old job being mostly to test if this batch was worth making more of. You feel a certain perverse pride in being such a good employee they kept 'hiring' you for generations before you go back to the memory alteration bit. What if you're an ideal employee because they've trimmed away anything that doesn't fit in? What an insult to the human soul! You're feeling pretty righteous about doing investigation on the original and finding what they took from you only to find out, sorry buddy you were bland to begin with.
Huh wasn't expecting to accidentally a fic.
Yet another SF story about "teleportation" where the author is still on "did you know fax machines don't move the original document at all? It makes a copy that is just treated as if it was the same document. Dude dude what if you were the document and like you got shreded after being sent!"
It's not a bad trope! I just thought we'd be building on it by now. Like it seems ripe to be merged with clone tropes.
Like what if you thought you were being faxed to a new office and it was a big secret so you didn't even know where you'd wake up but actually when they called you a model employee they meant they'd be sending you to a dozen offices. 10 years later you're doing tech support on a big wigs computer to find out not only are you not the only you but the original got told "darn I guess that teleporter failed but you can have your old job back while we figure out what went wrong". So there are a dozen of you living variations of your life and it turns out Original!you actually did fine without the life changing promotion that made you so loyal to the company. One of you got back together with your ex; another is writing cheesy spy novels on breaks & the only reason you didn't notice the pen name you picked at 15 is you quit reading those after making the painful decision to quit since you thought you'd never get published; just as you're wondering if all the others are doing better than you, a message comes in from a you who can't believe one of you is actually living the dream of having your own twitch show and is so impressed that you're doing it after work so you're not financially dependent on the advertisers. Yeah that one shrugs and admits that from what they can tell they're the evil twin since they're the only one who doesn't have anything going on outside the office unless you count cyber stalking the rest of you.
That's all a weird meditation on the idea that this isn't a Scrooge thing, there isn't really stunningly good or bad clone until that one slips and gets a date wrong from your pre fax life. You do some mental math put together with how your pre fax memories are just a bit fuzzy on things that could be used to date them like music, outfits, & tech. The version you're talking to is at least 20 years older than you, you didn't find all the other yous; you only found your batch and don't know how many batches there are. Plus they are able to alter your pre fax memories. The one you thought was the original you was just the prototype for this generation, your old job being mostly to test if this batch was worth making more of. You feel a certain perverse pride in being such a good employee they kept 'hiring' you for generations before you go back to the memory alteration bit. What if you're an ideal employee because they've trimmed away anything that doesn't fit in? What an insult to the human soul! You're feeling pretty righteous about doing investigation on the original and finding what they took from you only to find out, sorry buddy you were bland to begin with.
Huh wasn't expecting to accidentally a fic.