Thank you for calling the Teleportation Customer-Service Line.
Please listen carefully because our menu options have recently changed.
Your call is very important to us. Calls may be monitored for training purposes.
Please be advised that as of 1 January, a pregnant person will be charged as two passengers.
Please be advised that under the Personal and Existential Dignity, Continuity and Persistence Act, hacking into our subatomic database for any purpose, including but not limited to hijacking, kidnapping, the creation of a second version of yourself (or any other individual) for use as a friend, lover, organ donor, prey to be hunted for sport or because you always wanted to know what it feels like to take a human life and have convinced yourself that you have discovered a morally neutral way to give yourself the experience, is illegal.
For security purposes, all pattern data down to the subatomic level are automatically deleted after 24 hours. After that point they cannot be retrieved for any purpose.
Please be advised that under the Personal and Existential Dignity, Continuity and Persistence Act, we are not permitted to speculate whether you were killed and resurrected during the teleportation process, or whether you are the same person you were before. For further information, please refer to the user agreement, which you clicked on. We distinctly heard your click.
Read more science fiction from Nature Futures
If you have split into doppelgängers — one passive and one aggressive — you are probably the aggressive one because you are proactive enough to make this call.
If you are the passive doppelgänger, sit tight. Your aggressive counterpart is actively searching for you, longing to be reunited.
If your aggressive counterpart is instead bent on destroying you because to them you represent the ‘weak’ half that they are ashamed of, please contact law enforcement.
In case of body swapping between two or more passengers, consider that it might be just the change you need.
To read our user agreement, press 1.
To accept our user agreement without reading it, press 2.
For customer service, press 3.
Beep.
To report incomplete transmissions of cargo or luggage, press 1.
To report incomplete transmission of yourself, press 2.
To report missing or distorted torso, limbs or facial features, press 3.
To report missing or distorted internal or sensory organs, press 4.
To report lost or distorted distinguishing marks such as tattoos, piercings, fillings, moles, birthmarks or blood type, press 5.
To report faded, oversaturated or otherwise erroneous hair, skin or eye colour, press 6.
To report sudden inexplicable changes in mood or outlook, long-established habits, personality traits, endearing quirks, annoying tics or an overpowering sense that something is wrong or missing — you just don’t feel right, you know? — but you can’t quite put your finger on why, press 7.
To report the reversal of left-handed amino acids to right-handedness, press 8.
For a directory of sources for amino acids that can be digested in cases of reversal of molecular handedness, press 9.
If you have been temporally displaced to the past, please be advised to let bygones be bygones.
If you have been temporally displaced to the future, how can you expect us to worry about something that hasn’t happened yet? Don’t borrow trouble.
To report transmission into a parallel dimension eerily similar to our own, press 10. Please be prepared to offer proof of parallel displacement. A copy of a Beatles album with Pete Best on drums instead of Ringo would do nicely.
If you believe that, as a result of a horrible metaphysical process hitherto undetected but ongoing since the invention of matter transmission, you are surrounded by an increasing number of entities that seem to be independently conscious persons but that can’t possibly be, because teleportation, many people are saying, gradually erodes the human psyche, the soul, if you will, press 11.
Please be advised that in the unlikely event of manifestations of soulless populations, or cases of extradimensional possession by malign entities, they are still human beings under the law, so no, it is not OK to violate their personal space in any way.
For complaints, press *.
Beep.
Welcome to the Teleportation Complaint Line.
Please listen carefully because our menu options have recently changed.
Your waiting time might be longer than usual owing to power outages, network crashes, budget cuts, labour walkouts, security breaches and pandemics.
