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A few decades ago, a new glorious invention in our huge FTL interstellar empire was created - teleportation tech. A 2 meter cube is technologically put in a "Warp" field at one location and deployed 1 minute later at the destination (if there is a transporter there. If there isn't, it takes 5 minutes). You can teleport anything but heavily radioactive elements like uranium, up to the moon and back. You can also teleport humans and animals. The tech is mostly used in military and spaceships.

Except, there's a nasty side effect. In 0.1% of cases ( the actual percentage is a closely guarded secret that only a few people know. Not even all teleport technicians know how high the "number of malfunctions" is) , whatever you teleported doesn't show up. In fact, it gets replaced by a nasty warp creature made of material you teleported (let's call it a "demon") which is actively hostile to human and alien life. If you teleport a human being, it can be replaced with such a creature (which might even look human, at first glance, but is not, with the original human dead) but which has an innate connection to its home dimension, can summon more creatures by fiddling with the teleport and wants to violently kill all humans, because killing humans and aliens gives them an unprecedented high. Once the ship blows up/loses power, the "demons" die too but they are too drugged up to notice by that point.

If you teleport 100 kg of pudding, it is replaced with a surprisingly tough shape-shifting demon-possessed pudding golem which tries to do the same. Demons are quite hard to kill and it usually takes explosions and incineration by a fire of at least 300 degrees Celsius to kill one. Or 10 days without nitrogen in the coldness of space, but are otherwise pretty much immortal (they eat and breathe nitrogen and don't die from old age).

What would the use of the technology be (how to use it safely) and why would anybody use it? Would you make armored bunker "demon resistant rooms" and put the teleporter in there? Why would anybody use technology which can potentially kill everybody involved, if only in a small % of cases?

(somewhat related xkcd: https://xkcd.com/325/

enter image description here )

My idea was that teleporters were used on space navy ships and that 20 or 30 years ago the space navy might lose a whole ship to a runaway "demon" from teleport incident. That problem is solved today and teleports see somewhat regular use. How was it solved? How often is it used today, 50 years after introduction?

jo1storm
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  • Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat. – Monty Wild Oct 30 '19 at 23:47
  • I assume "fire of at least 300 degrees Celsius" is intended to be something difficult to achieve, but I don't imagine that would be the case because most flames seem to exceed that and even flames 5 times as hot shouldn't be too hard to safely produce. – NotThatGuy Oct 31 '19 at 13:30
  • It's moved to chat. It is not that difficult to achieve, it is difficult to hide and maintain. – jo1storm Oct 31 '19 at 13:43
  • There’s a saying, “two can keep a secret—if one of them is dead.” In an entity big enough to produce such a device, you are very likely to have at least one Edward Snowden. – WGroleau Oct 31 '19 at 16:23
  • Expect that military scientists might actually consider this a spectacular opportunity to study an alien form of life and obtain clues to the nature of its plane of origin. Can we weaponize this? Can we travel via (or to) this other plane and use it to our strategic advantage somehow? Is there unique technology or science to be obtained beyond what we currently know? Expect that the military will accelerate, not diminish, their use of the technology in pursuit of scientific advances. – Brian Lacy Oct 31 '19 at 16:32
  • I assume the original transported human is kill/irretrievable in such instances? – Stephen R Oct 31 '19 at 16:33
  • @MrLister you will find answers in chat. – jo1storm Nov 01 '19 at 05:46
  • @Ghedipunk you will find answers in chat. – jo1storm Nov 01 '19 at 05:46
  • @StephenR you will find answers in chat. – jo1storm Nov 01 '19 at 05:46
  • @BrianLacy you will find answers in chat. Moderator, please move questions there then delete them. – jo1storm Nov 01 '19 at 05:59
  • Mine was a clarifying question. Don’t move that to chat! – Stephen R Nov 01 '19 at 15:04
  • Mine is also a clarifying comment but, as it led to further narrowing down the rules of this world, I'll quote it and the response into an answer. – Ghedipunk Nov 01 '19 at 18:12
  • If Ship A with a teleporter is traveling at 0.5 c, and you teleport a pencil to the teleporter on Ship B, which is stationary, will the pencil arrive on Ship B traveling at 0.5 c or will it arrive with no velocity? Now, what if Ship B has no teleporter? What is the velocity of the pencil after arriving on Ship B? – cowlinator Nov 02 '19 at 00:04
  • @jo1storm My "questions" were rhetorical, intended to suggest an alternate perspective and fuel creativity for the OP and future contributors. The comment is legitimate; moderator, pease do NOT move that to chat. – Brian Lacy Nov 02 '19 at 10:52
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    My first thought with this is that it's a question on what levels of risk we are willing to put up with for the sake of a technology flourishing. And, ok, cars don't spawn demons, but it would be interesting to compare rates of deaths in car accidents with this teleportation example - people will put up with a surprising amount of death as long as it is improbable enough to seem like a remove possibility! – DoublyNegative Nov 02 '19 at 21:19
  • @BrianLacy handwaved. Tech deals with it. That's why it takes 1-5 minutes. The cube moves through warp. Calculations to return it to real space are very complex and take a while, even with modern technology. – jo1storm Nov 04 '19 at 06:48
  • @BrianLacy btw, older teleporters were cruder and allowed you to do some REALLY dangerous stuff and stunts with them. There is complex math involved but these days it is replaced with automation behind it. There are tricks and shortcuts to it, but new generation of technicians doesn't learn them, because they don't need them. Think of it like this: 70 years old WWII veterans took out test airplane with old AAA gun on the first try. Modern Navy AAA technicians couldn't do it with old gun, until those guys taught them how. Then they got it after 3rd try. – jo1storm Nov 04 '19 at 07:09
  • You would need to remove like 90% of safety equipment on the new transporter to make it work like old one. And old technicians were all trained in a sot of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trachtenberg_system made especially for teleports. And they did it so often, it became ingrained. They could send you things every 10 or 15 seconds on average with old teleporter. But the speed was sacrificed for safety and accuracy in these modern times. And do dangerous stunts, like teleport nuclear bombs in the way of warping ships, despite teleporting uranium being "impossible"... – jo1storm Nov 04 '19 at 07:22

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It was weaponized. The military now have the ability to teleport sufficiently large numbers of items to an enemy city (or key military facility, spaceship etc.) to trigger a demon invasion. No need for tricky-to-handle plutonium to destroy the enemy, just teleport them a few thousand packs of, say, Stay-Puft marshmallows.

Adrian K-B.
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    That's a war crime. And court martialin'. Other than that, how do you deal with demons afterwards? – jo1storm Oct 29 '19 at 14:39
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    @jo1storm - You could sell T shirts that said "I visited Nova Terra after the demon invasion and all I got was this lousy Tshirt!". It would be all ripped up, of course. – Willk Oct 29 '19 at 14:43
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    That's a political consequence but it was probably tried at least once. Maybe not on a city but more likely on an enemy space station or starship so the demons can't spread off it but you still get to destroy it. Maybe now there are interstellar treaties in place to ban teleport demon weapons, similar to our nuke control treaties. – Adrian K-B. Oct 29 '19 at 14:58
  • that might work. Teleport troops in, and if one of them turns into a demon, have own troops fall back and let demon do the damage. – Bald Bear Oct 29 '19 at 15:49
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    @jo1storm Something being a war crime does not seem to stop militaries from commiting them all the time. There's a media backslash sometimes, real punishment almost never. So I wouldn't be so concerned. – Tomáš Zato Oct 30 '19 at 12:37
  • @Tomáš Zato yes, I know, that's why I asked him how will he deal with "demons" afterwards. It's one thing to use forbidden weapon, it is completely another not be able to fulfill your future objectives because you used it. We have "We infected enemy soldiers with deadly and easily spread virus but do not have vaccine for our own or any way to contain it if it shows up at our home" situation here. Or nuclear fallout at the territory you want to occupy for a long time. – jo1storm Oct 30 '19 at 13:05
  • This was my first association as well. @jo1storm It's perfectly viable for anything in space, since it can't infect anything else. Any livable planet cannot be accidentally infected, since the heat of uncontrolled re-entry is significantly higher than your kill threshold. – Gloweye Oct 30 '19 at 14:20
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    Teleporting waste and sewer. It's rainning waste and hell dog – xdtTransform Oct 30 '19 at 14:36
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    Why stop at just stay-puft marshmallows? Just teleport in primed explosives and autonomous drones. The ones which stay intact perform their required function. The ones which turn into demons...perform their required function. – Adam Miller Oct 30 '19 at 17:53
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    Being able to teleport is kind of a game-breaking scenario from a military perspective. You don't even need to hope for demons. Just teleport normal bombs into the enemy city. Or troops. Or teleport a bunch of big rocks into the upper atmosphere above their city and wait a few minutes for them to crush everything. – dwizum Oct 30 '19 at 18:55
  • How traceable is this teleportation? Will they be able to prove that YOU were the one teleporting in cans of soda and other things detrimental to human health? What about when the terrorists inevitably get their hands on the technology? – user3067860 Oct 30 '19 at 22:06
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    New headcanon: the Doom series is a result of teleporting 1000 marshmallows to a military base on Mars – John Dvorak Oct 30 '19 at 22:19
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    Nice ghostbusters reference.... have your upvote sir. – UKMonkey Nov 01 '19 at 14:07
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The teleport "conversion" was solved for military ships by the simple expedient of putting the teleport receiver inside an armored compartment with a large, fast-opening door -- to vacuum. Any received transmission is interrogated in a manner that has been developed to provoke "demons" -- but is reasonably harmless to humans or other legitimate payload -- and if the load is found to have converted, a "panic button" opens the vacuum door and flushes the demon out into space, where it will either (eventually) suffocate or collide with something (a moon, an atmosphere, etc.) at an orbital or higher velocity, vaporizing it.

A bigger problem was the loss of teleported personnel; this has made teleportation of living things (especially humans) an emergency-only procedure. I might step into a teleporter if the alternative was, say, dying as my ship's power converter overloads (and too little time for escape pods to get to safe distance) -- but I would resign a multi-year commission if there was as much as .01% chance that getting home for a furlough would result in my instantaneous death (or transport to the "demon dimension" which is the same only it hurts more) and that was the only method offered.

Zeiss Ikon
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  • Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat. – Monty Wild Nov 01 '19 at 01:14
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    "Emergency-only" is relative. Since we're talking about the military, it's worth pointing out that the people going in the teleporter probably don't have the luxury of making a risk assessment at all. If the brass has decided that a 1/1000 casualty rate for logistics is an acceptable sacrifice for getting the drop on an enemy, in you go. I'm not an expert on the military, but I'm pretty sure modern day soldiers are very frequently commanded to undertake actions that have a much higher fatality rate than 0.1% during active conflicts. – GrandOpener Nov 01 '19 at 18:38
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    I mean, per mile it is still probably safer than any common transport mechanism we have today. – Vality Nov 01 '19 at 22:41
  • @Vality Okay, but who'd even consider driving to, say, Titan? You wouldn't live long enough. – Zeiss Ikon Nov 03 '19 at 00:10
  • @GrandOpener Sadly, you're probably correct about Able Spacers going where ordered, how ordered -- though a few well-publicized reports of losses in routine transport might badly hurt recruitment. if you're not in actual combat, however, a military practice that kills one soldier in ten thousand every year will soon wind up before Congress (or the Galactic Parliament, as the case may be). – Zeiss Ikon Nov 03 '19 at 00:13
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In a real emergency, maybe you can convince somebody to hop in, but it should be noted that for all we know getting dumped into the hell dimension is a fate much worse than death.

Instead, I suggest we just keep using regular 'ole chemical rockets. But, the teleporter is still really useful here. Assuming the energy cost is paid at the sending end (you indicate that you can send to non-teleporter areas in 5 minutes), instead we make our fuel tanks just big enough to get into orbit. From there, we teleport fuel directly into the combustion chamber (or sufficiently securely designed fuel tanks). This gets us around the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation, and who cares if your rocket fuel is demonic? That stuff is already as nasty as it can get, and is about to be exploded.

Zwuwdz
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    Ah, so this is what the "hell energy" is in Doom 2016? – Baldrickk Oct 30 '19 at 11:26
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    A demon swimming in your fuel tank could still wreak havoc to your fuel pumps. It might be better to have a couple spare fuel tanks on your space vessel so you are able to discard those which make weird noises. – Philipp Oct 30 '19 at 13:27
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    Or dump the fuel into space near your vessel and use a fuel scoop to refuel if it's demon-free. – delinear Oct 31 '19 at 15:21
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    Who needs fuel tanks? Teleport a nuclear bomb behind you and ride the pulse. If you get a demon instead, no problem. Just send up another nuke. – kynapse Oct 31 '19 at 17:00
  • @kynapse, the question said no fissionable material. (Well, it said "radioactive elements" but went on to say uranium rather than Co60.) – Ghedipunk Oct 31 '19 at 18:44
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    @Ghedipunk Oops, conventional explosives then. My point being that you don't need to teleport anything into your spacecraft. – kynapse Oct 31 '19 at 20:51
  • @Philipp: If the fuel is sent directly into the combustion chamber, no one cares about additional demons. If their energy density is different from fuel, you'll expect an occasional hiccup, but nothing more, I suppose – arc_lupus Nov 01 '19 at 05:59
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Seems like infinity energy, just teleport some stuff and there are chances you get something that would never die and doesn't need much to survive.

Stick that demon into a large hamster wheel facing some people and BAM, unstopping energy generator.

Just hope the demons doesn't break out.

Michael
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    "Good news, Prisoner 32919819. Your death sentence has been been commuted to life in prison. You'll have a giant moving transparent aluminum wheel of sentient pudding watching you over the course of it, but otherwise you're good. Please don't break it, no matter what happens. You'll die if you do so." – jo1storm Oct 30 '19 at 16:24
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All teleported goods and passengers are kept in nitrogen free quarantine for 11 days and observed for signs of extradimensional naughtiness. Either in vacuum, or in a low pressure pure oxygen atmosphere, depending on which is least damaging to the thing you're sending.

People can't breathe pure oxygen at Earth sea level pressure, but we can breathe pure oxygen at lower pressure.

It's inconvenient, but still more convenient than going further than low Earth orbit in a rocket.

Note that many things that are barely flammable in normal air become very flammable in pure oxygen. So on the one hand you may need some extra safety precautions, but on the other hand it will be easier to incinerate that shipment of pudding that got too rowdy.

Robyn
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    Given that you don't need a large volume, could you use another inert gas, e.g. helium, to keep to the ~20% Oxygen ratio in the current atmosphere. Which also has some possibilities for a little comic relief if this ever gets made into a film. ;) – dgnuff Oct 30 '19 at 03:19
  • Just teleport the person with breathing apparatus, into a room with replacement bottles. – WGroleau Oct 31 '19 at 16:17
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    For the last paragraph: At the 0.2atm pressure, material in a pure O2 atmosphere are no more flammable than in an Earth-like O2+N atmosphere. It's when the atmosphere is pure O2 and at higher pressures, like 1atm, that non-flammable things start getting unusually burny. – Ghedipunk Oct 31 '19 at 18:50
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    @dgnuff in case you were not aware, experiments in underwater habitation used heliox (gas mixture of helium and oxygen) to prevent nitrogen narcosis. There was a documentary made with interviews with the subjects - with the vocal peculiarities you would expect. – pluckedkiwi Oct 31 '19 at 20:05
  • just use argon. doesn't have the problems with helium and is already abundant – thegreatemu Oct 31 '19 at 20:45
  • you could substitute argon or some other noble gas for the nitrogen, infact all spacecraft may use an argon-oxygen atmosphere just to be safe. – Jasen Nov 01 '19 at 05:17
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Passengers:

Its usage will be affected by not doing living things unless absolutely necessary.

General anti-demon rules:

Teleportation to friendlies is as a rule done towards a receivingpad without the controls to teleport. In case a demon takes posession of the material (say a crate of plasma weapons or something similarily harmless if it came alive) the demon will not have access to a working telepad to call in more. Camera's at the receiving end will alert any technician at a working teleporter and they will go into lockdown and power down all teleporters, also in the event of camera shutdown just to be safe. This limits the potential for demons to call in more and makes it easier to get control of the situation.

Further safety measures are that the receiving end can be build to contain any threat. Since the demon likely inherits most of the material properties of the beamed over material you can prepare canisters with a gas, liquid or even put plates of material on the ground that would react violently with the beamed over material when released. If the teleport receiver might get damaged in the process alternatives are in place. A few flamethrowers in the surrounding area for example. Or the teleport receiver is in a room with a room around it where lots of remote/espatier wielded guns, acids and such can be made ready. The teleport receiver could be retracted into the ground and the chamber violently spun while some heavy balls are released to crush whatever luckless thing was inside. A dedicated heavy weapons team with a deployed gun could watch the pad and blow anything remotely not looking like what they were supposed to receive out of the way. The options are pretty much all over the place.

Matter creation:

In the case that the demon accessing a teleporter does not need to teleport materials to create a demon army you can use this to create matter. Just have a controlled environment where the demons are called into being (say an empty ship without any weapons or engines) and when enough demons are called into being you blow it to pieces and collect the matter.

In the case the demon does need matter to create new demons you can limit the amount of loose materials and superfluous things that can be ripped loose and teleported for demon creation.

Demigan
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The usage would be varied, but I think the primary uses would be for material movement and for special forces.

Teleporters would be a fantastic supply chain tool. A way to get a big box of rations or bullets across great distances that cannot be interfered with by opposing forces is a fantastic advantage to the Empire. Create your box of goodies as a small atmospheric re-entry vehicle and pop it into a geosynchronous orbit above where you need it, kind of like the "biscuit bombs" used for re-supply in the south pacific in WWII. If you get a demon instead, it will be in hard vacuum for a while and die. Evil demon problem solved. It could work because there is a very small window for the enemy to destroy the interstellar care package.

The next use would be to deploy special forces deep into enemy territory. This works well for a number of reasons. Your special forces will have the primary purpose of popping in, destroying as much as they can and then going to some sort of extraction point to be picked up by manned ship, or another teleporter that was sent as a separate package. If things go off without a problem, nasty things happen to the enemy. If you get demons, nasty things happen to your enemy. Win-Win for the Empire. The problems of people being afraid of the risk of demons is almost not a problem because special forces troops already know they might not make it at the best of times. And if they go to demon territory, they will claim to be ready to give the Devil himself Hell.

Paul TIKI
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    Comment on your last 2 sentences: Special forces know they might not make it but they believe they can make it, because they believe they are the best of the best and most importantly are in control of their own destiny. However I've seen special forces transported on a submarine, where they are no longer in control, and absolutely hate it. I think the same would be true here - no SF would want to use this and maybe die due to random bad luck outside their control, they would rather take a bigger risk fighting through to the objective and live because of their skill. – Adrian K-B. Oct 30 '19 at 14:39
  • It costs way too much to train SF to throw 1% of them away on a bad bet. Especially since you can teleport inert materials like rocks or support beams from demolished building and have a 1% chance of them becoming virtually unstoppable killing machines. – Corey Nov 01 '19 at 03:31
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Put it on jupiter orbit or further and you can travel back in time. Why?

Well "instant" travel from physics perspective is the speed of causality (=speed of light). You probably know about time dilation - the faster you travel, the slower your time relative to observers in destination. If you traveled somehow at the speed of light, the route would be instant from your point of view, even if you traveled hundreds of light years.

Now your teleport takes things to destination in 1 minute, if there's a port. But it will never take less than 30 minutes to get to Jupiter by light speed. So your one minute is shorten them lightspeed "instant" travel. You experience even less time than light, which experiences zero time.

What exactly happens is speculative, but almost all logical thought routes you can take based on known physics mean that you will travel back in time. (there are other ways than the one I outlined to reach the same conclusions, see the article below)

Your teleport does not need to send humans. It may just transfer a very tiny computer or SD card or USB drive and you'll be sending information back in time. If you use micro SD, the resulting random demons should be easy to burn with some laser automatically if they appear on either side of this time-internet.

You can use this to know movements of enemy forces before they happen, or to know when the world will end.

Everything already happened if you can send information back in time.

Also worth reading: https://www.askamathematician.com/2011/09/q-hyperspace-warp-drives-and-faster-than-light-travel-why-not/

Tomáš Zato
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  • That's why the range of the device is from Earth to the Moon. But good idea nevertheless. – jo1storm Oct 30 '19 at 13:01
  • @jo1storm I missed that part, sorry. I'll leave this answer though, it might remind other teleport worldbuilders of this potential problem. – Tomáš Zato Oct 30 '19 at 15:30
  • When the information about you initially leaving reaches Jupiter is not the "same time" as when you left, it is just when the information about you leaving reaches Jupiter - there is no time travel there. You could not then make the return trip and meet yourself before you left - you would still be arriving twice the travel time after you initially left. There are some ways to theoretically allow it with multiple objects actually traveling through space FTL but all at different relative speeds to each other - this kind of teleportation is not that. – pluckedkiwi Oct 31 '19 at 20:27
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    Just no. FTL is not time travel. Just because light takes longer to get there doesn't mean you're travelling back in time. That's stupid, and I'm disgusted that the physics community is still pushing this rubbish. – Corey Nov 01 '19 at 03:36
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    @Corey Do you have anything to back your claims? – Tomáš Zato Nov 01 '19 at 11:55
  • @TomášZato Logic and thought experiments. Even with near instantaneous travel you can't send information back in time. All you can do is travel outside the light cone of your origin, and that's not time travel. – Corey Nov 03 '19 at 22:35
  • @Corey I see. You do not have anything to back your claims at all. Thanks for your input. – Tomáš Zato Nov 04 '19 at 09:27
  • @TomášZato Just as much as you have for time travel at FTL. Thanks for playing. – Corey Nov 04 '19 at 22:29
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It will not affect development of the technology at all... not until the problem is discovered.

This wonderful technology was adopted extremely quickly, and it was only some years later when the first demon came out that people suddenly had to backpedal, scale down use, and retrofit protection devices on existing devices. Total abandonment is not possible because a large segment of the economy already depends on the technology (humans on other planets cannot return, some industries depend heavily on imported ore, food farms have been set up in orbit following ecological disasters and depend on the teleportation to feed Earth).

Why this problem was discovered only after so long is the object of intense speculation: did the demons simply discover teleportation later? Maybe the first replacement was a random fluke, and the demons quickly put effort into intercepting as many transmissions as possible once they realized that another civilization was intruding on their domain. This would explain large fluctuations in the percentage of impacted transmissions.

Law29
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    Heck, even when the problem is suspected it might not. Apparently, when microwaves ovens were first invented, they were so obviously convenient that they were put into widespread use before the studies of what microwaves might do to you were performed. The same with leaded gas. Or when radium was put into everything because it glowed and was supposed to be healthy. – DKNguyen Oct 30 '19 at 22:36
  • @DKNguyen What microwaves do to you, outside the microwave, was well known. Not to the food, though. And the radium thing went so fucking badly wrong... (The women painting it on watch hands licked the brush to make it wet.) – Volker Siegel Oct 31 '19 at 06:42
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In an effort to solve a completely unrelated problem, I put a little something on an Excel sheet. It should be transcribed correctly here (unless it's not).

With

  • $p$, the probability it backfires
  • $n$, the number of uses
  • $q$, the probability it backfires at least once within $n$ uses

It gives

  • $q=1-(1-p)^n$ , as I said the probability it backfires at least once within $n$ uses
  • $n=ln(1-q)/ln(1-p)$ , the number of uses at which there is a probability $q$ that it backfires at least once

Assuming $p=0.1\%$, after 100 uses, you have a 10% probability to end with at least one pudding monster. After 1000 uses, you're at 66%. After 3000 uses, you're at 95%.

Needless to say, you will need a pudding monster defence budget, if you are going to use this device with any sort of regularity.

For transporting goods, it would be fairly easy to just isolate the device by putting it in a big oven-like room/building, check arrivals for ravenous monsters and activate the defence system when necessary. This may damage the device, and your insurance premium will be quite high. But it might be cheaper than the cost of exploding rockets or refining unobtainium fuel for spaceships. Decisions, decisions.

For transporting humans, a typical Boeing 747-8 seats 467 people according to Wikipedia. So, assuming you transport people one by one (or that the probability to be affected is per person rather than per trip), you have a 37% chance that at least one of your passengers turns into a bloodthirsty creature from hell that may or may not kill the 466 other. You decide if you want to buy that ticket.

For comparison, this study on "worldwide fatal accidents to jet and turboprop aeroplanes above 5,700kg engaged in passenger, cargo and ferry/positioning flights for the ten-year period 2002 to 2011" (essentially big planes), page 30, gives a fatal accident rate of 0.6 per billion flight, or $0.00006\%$ which can be compared with the device's probability of failing. Taking $p = 0.1\%$ again, that's a difference of 4 orders of magnitude.

I chose air travel because it's probably the closest analogue to taking a spaceship to the Moon we have. Also I couldn't find data on fatal accident rate per trip for road transport.

AmiralPatate
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  • And that 37% chance is for one trip, right? Not there-and-back, or for jumping multiple times consecutively to go further. – DVNO Oct 30 '19 at 17:14
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    @DVNO It would be for the one trip assuming, yes, again assuming the probability to turn into a monster is individual (i.e. each passenger rolls the dice once and can transform independently of others' result) rather than collective (i.e. the group rolls the dice once and either all or none transform). I'm not really sure if the difference is significative in the long run or not, but the larger point is it's bad press either way. I also added a comparison with air travel for reference. – AmiralPatate Oct 31 '19 at 08:40
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If you're wanting the teleportation technology to be widely used, then you're going to need to keep some secrets. I'd probably say that the cover is that teleportation causes a low-level of radiation:

  1. The schematics of the teleporters are closely-guarded industrial secrets. The utility of the process would generate revenue, giving you a "teleportation lobby" to protect these secrets.

  2. The surroundings of the teleporters ave thickly coated "shielding to protect the surroundings from the radiation". In reality, these contain the disposal mechanisms for the teleportation contents. If demon appears, the contents are neatly incinerated and re-skinned.

  3. Teleportation operatives are highly vetted and trained (read: brainwashed). No one knows about the contingencies, no one knows about the reality of the "industrial accidents".

  4. Teleporters are large. If it's done in bulk, then loss quantities stay the same, but it becomes much more difficult to nail down the specific probability. Sufficiently large teleporters also need much more efficient disposal mechanisms, though.

The object of all of this is to keep the public unaware of the downside. You could also have some large-scale "radiation leaks" where the demons were able to escape, and the entire area needed to be cleansed, but these were used to re-enforce the containment measures, and the propaganda about radiation and "reducing exposure".

If you wanted, you could also go through what would happen when the secret gets out. The sudden collapse of the industry, aswell as all related containment protocols that they enforced. The section of the population intent on reasoning with the demons, and attempting to exploit them (as some of these posts have been through).

Jozef Woods
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Nested teleporters. If your teleport goes awry, just teleport the whole room into space. Then go retrieve your teleporter in 12 days.

Jammin4CO
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  • I love that idea, but there is the terrifying (though rather small) possibility that you get two incidents in a row. – Jonathan Nov 26 '19 at 03:04
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There is no real side-effect., except for occasional hangover-like symptoms and few broken fragile items.

The whole thing is a scam, used to remove unwanted people and steal valuable parcels.

fraxinus
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  • Nice plot twist. I would do it twice, though: some evil teleport operators actually do steal parcels and remove unwanted people and say that the teleport just malfunctioned. That there are "demons" is a crazy story old space navy veterans are talking about and nobody believes them. It's a hunt for a Gnidget bird or for a stoplight oil you say to a rookie, right? Just a scary story to mess up with rookies, nothing more. Turns out to be correct once the safety malfunctions. – jo1storm Oct 31 '19 at 16:10
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The Johnson Rectifier.

Scientist Maria Johnson pulled logs from teleporter machines that caused demon events (many brave people died to gather these logs) and discovered a fluctuation in the quark pump, every time.

She invented a quark pump filter and since then, no teleporter equipped with one has had a demon encounter--unless the filter was damaged.

daveloyall
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    Science still hasn't identified the source* of this "interference". Anecdotal evidence suggests the interference is more likely to occur when the filter has just received maintenance--as if some force were checking if it still works...* This is fun. :) – daveloyall Oct 31 '19 at 21:46
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The answer depends on many details. First, assuming the technology has just been invented, is the percentage of demonization even an accurate number?

It is one thing to say "we have to maintain the quux field within a range of 15 angstroms (and we can do it reliably 98% of time), else bad guys are coming out of woodwork on the receiving end" vs "we teleported sandbags 100 times and twice we got monsters".

If it is the first case, we could limit the transportation of humans to emergencies and have protocols for demon liquidation on both sides, as described in other answers. As a side note, if possible, there should be 2 one way teleporters instead of a single both ways one, to limit extra summonings.

If the percentage of demonic possession is only calculated from empiric evidence though, you have no case to even build anything like that with one end on Earth. It is far too dangerous, because the is no telling what might happen next.

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Gnudiff
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Why risk human teleportation at all?

Robots have been an effective means of exploring the universe for decades, and still make up the majority of our exploration team - and if a demon does manifest from one of these robots, well-armed robots are more than capable of dispatching such a creature, with only the loss of some equipment.

Teleportation would then become a frequently used pre-cursor to colonization, with protocols in place to swiftly deal with any demon incursions on the receiving end of the teleport.

Zibbobz
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  • Robot components can also get "demon-possessed" by shapeshifting goblin. 100kg of vanilla pudding was just an example. "Demons" can manipulate matter from our universe on molecular level when it is in Warp dimension. Good idea though. You get my upvote. – jo1storm Oct 31 '19 at 11:02
  • @jo1storm I know - I mention that in my answer, and how to handle this possibility. But maybe not as clearly as I meant. I'll edit it to reflect what I meant. – Zibbobz Oct 31 '19 at 13:08
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This is not an answer to what the OP asked, but it's something about teletransportation that always bothered me. It may be useful in OP's plot.

Teleportation means death. Even when no demons are generated, all your matter is disassembled into particles and then vanishes. You die on departure. What is reassembled on the other terminal is a copy of you, that has all your memories and thinks it's you, but it's not - you're dead, that's a clone!

Star Trek has even scratched the issue a bit on the TNG episode Second Chances (6x24) where William Riker was copied on a transporter incident. A second Riker was created, who thinks he is the original. But the original failed to be killed, so we ended up with both.

This might be used as another "well kept secret" in OP's story.

Henrique
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    Not in this case. You are not disassembling and reconstituting matter or person, per say. You are putting a cube of matter in another dimension via bubble then popping that bubble to return it to this dimension. Basically like putting a person in a train/ car then getting them out at the destination. The fact that a car in this case is made out of forcefield and that the thing you travel through is another dimension makes no difference. Those are same atoms and molecules and there is no breaking of consciousness or reconstitution. – jo1storm Nov 04 '19 at 17:05
  • Good solution! I'm looking forward to reading your story! – Henrique Nov 04 '19 at 17:32
  • Silly episode. They ignored all those times that the transporters moved the actual molecules from place to place. Can't duplicate a person that way. – Corey Nov 05 '19 at 01:46
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Usage: Only if ABSOLUTELY necessary.

However, if it is necessary to use it, here are a few general safety precautions:

  • Quarantine in a low-oxygen, nitrogen-free atmosphere.

  • Seperate quarantine chambers for every living thing. This is because, believe it or not, we actually produce a small amount of nitrogen when we exhale. As a result, the quarantine is pointless if you have >1 living creatures (plants included) in the room.

  • A "big red button" which throws everything in the quarantine chambers out of the airlock, should demons be detected.

  • "Site-to-Site" transporting ONLY if it is a "life or death" situation.

I hope these answers solve your problem.

Post Scriptum: Oh, by the way, I would suggest that you NOT use term "demon" to refer to the aliens, as doing so is guaranteed to tick off any Christian / Jewish / Muslim / Hindu readers.

In Hoc Signo
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Every passanger will carry a camera with him. He/she reaches a secured place, hands out the camera through a special compartment to the security team. The team analyzes the recording of the entire teleportation process and searches suspicious activities.

The camera is embedded into the passenger's wear, so that it will not draw the demon's attention and appear as an integral part of the process.

Christmas Snow
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  • Because demons incorporate teleported matter into their bodies, the method you describe would only work if the teleport event was successful. – Jonathan Nov 26 '19 at 03:11
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In the comments, I pointed out that teleportation breaks the universe by allowing infinite energy.

Infinite energy (which breaks a WHOLE lot of universes): Build very tall tower, line a shaft with copper coils. Teleport huge magnets into the top of the tower, then let them drop down the shaft.

The relevant parts of the response (in chat, so few people will be bothered to look) are:

The teleport works by putting something into warp field.

It takes quite a bit of energy to put things into warp. There is no magnet big enough and no copper shaft long enough to repay that cost.

Doing the math: 2 cubic meters of matter means one can teleport a magnetic cylinder of iron 1.25m tall and 1.25m in diameter. (Cubes might be more efficient, but the cylinder is easier to handle) The volume of that cylinder will be 1.52 cubic meters. That will weigh 12,045kg.

The tallest building in the world is the Burj Khalifi at 829.8m. (Lets ignore its basement, despite it being useful space for our linear induction generator.)

We can ignore terminal velocity; the mass will be falling so slow that the atmospheric drag won't matter, due to Lenz's Law. Also due to Lenz's Law, (very nearly) the entire amount of kinetic energy will be turned into electricity.

Restating to make the point crystal clear: The amount of electricity generated is the same as if the mass had been dropped down a vacuum chamber and we somehow harvest all of the energy of impact.

At 829.8m, it will have the same potential energy as if it was impacting at 127.3 m/s (459.11 km/h). Weighing 12,045kg, it will deliver 97,950,421 joules or, to put into more familiar terms, about 27 kilowatt hours.

In reality, the mass would be traveling about 5cm/s, so would take about 16,596 seconds, or 4.6 hours to deliver its 98 megajoules, giving it a wattage of 5.6 kilowatts.

This, of course, ignores the fact that you have an FTL society. FTL societies are used to making megaprojects, like Dyson swarms. FTL societies understand very well the implications of relativity, especially the most basic premise: every speed is relative.

So, why start our magnet at zero velocity relative to the surface of a planet? Why not teleport our magnet to a spot near a grand funnel of copper tubing a couple AU long? Since velocity only matters locally, we can have a zero local velocity of the magnet be equal to 1c relative to our funnel (or vice-versa; our funnel with a zero local velocity will see the magnet traveling at 1c).

12,000 kg of mass traveling at 2,997,925,458 m/s is going to deliver far more joules than traveling at 127 m/s. About 2360000 times more energy, for a total of about 2.3 exajoules.

If the teleporters run on anything around 2.3 exajoules, your civilization is completely alien to anything a modern human could understand, just as stone-age humans would be absolutely perplexed by humans using computers, driving cars, and having flushing toilets. Sure, a stone-aged person could adapt (humans have been smart for a very long time), but a person then could never have foreseen the most mundane aspects of our daily lives now.

We can not draw any conclusions about the weapons and demon mitigation tactics of a civilization that far advanced, just as 2,000 years ago, we didn't know about firearms, tanks, bombers, battleships, and aircraft carriers.

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Ghedipunk
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    Where is the connection to the question, other than the word teleportation? In other words, are you going to post the same answer to all other 87 questions tagged teleportation? – syck Nov 04 '19 at 16:42
  • With the chance of a demon appearing and destroying the whole machine, power generation of the kind you brought up would only be theoretically possible. – Jonathan Nov 26 '19 at 03:10