What a wonderful world

What if to teleport, you had to pay a terrible price?

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Click... Hiss. Arthur slowly lifted his heavy eyelids. How long had he been asleep? The last thing he remembered was driving in his car, a screeching, and the sound of metal ripping apart through the force of an impact. How could he have survived that? Arthur sat up suddenly, and looked around in astonishment. A man and a woman were staring intently at him. He appeared to be in a hospital room, but strange equipment he'd never seen before sat beeping next to him. The weirdest thing about this situation was that he was lying in an open metal cylinder.

"Now, I know this is confusing, but we've given you some medications to help you cope with this development. I'm Ryan, by the way. This is Patrice." the man said.

"What?" asked Arthur, "What am I doing here?"

"I know this is hard for you, but remember when you signed up for cryogenics?" Patrice said, "You died and were placed in cryogenic storage. We revived you in the year 3253."

Arthur processed this huge realization. "No, that can't be!" he yelled, "this isn't possible! I only signed up for fun!" "Well, you're here now, and you'll soon find out that this future is so much better than 2016!" replied Patrice.

"Hey, remember, we can't remind the revivals about 2016." Ryan admonished. He whispered something under his breath about presidents and clowns. "We've solved global warming, built a colony on Mars, eradicated clowns, and made huge leaps in science and medicine!"

"How am I accepting this so well?" asked Arthur

"The medications we invented help revivals to handle the sudden influx of information. We're about to upload data about the essential stuff you need to know into your brain." Suddenly, Arthur knew about artificial intelligence, the Mars colony, and teleporters. He wanted to go see it all. As they led him out of the hospital, he gaped in astonishment. Cars drove themselves around streets, which were considerably smaller. Buildings seemed to shift and change shapes to the environment, and solar panels and greenery covered every square inch of them. Ethnicities abounded, and a huge screen floating at an intersection displayed a news broadcast from Mars. Everything was different, yet somehow similar.

"Where are we going?" Arthur asked.

"We're taking a teleporter to Pacifica." Patrice replied. Sensing the questions that were about to be asked, she answered them. "It's an ocean city which is a global center for trade. Teleporters have a limited distance, so it's a stopping point in between. Teleporters scan each atom in your body, and simultaneously destroy them. An identical copy is created in the place you want to be sent to."

"Does it hurt?" Arthur asked.

"Of course not!" Ryan interjected. "To you, it feels like you step into the machine and immediately come out in Pacifica. It's perfectly safe."

The building that housed the teleporter looked a lot like a gas station. A lady sat behind a front desk, people went to talk to her and she typed something into a computer. They stepped into a glass container in the corner. Two metal bars swung around in a circle, and the person was gone. Arthur was surprised to see someone appear in another cylinder and walk out. There was music playing in the background. He strained to hear the lyrics, until he realized that it was "What a Wonderful World" by Louis Armstrong. It was in the middle of the song.

I see skies of blue,

And clouds of white.

The bright blessed day,

The dark sacred night.

And I think to myself,

What a wonderful world.

"Patrice and I will go through first, so you can get a feel for doing it by yourself" Ryan said. When they got to the front of the line, Ryan told the lady where they were going and swiped his hand on a sandpaper-like surface. There was a beep and they walked to the teleporter. First, Ryan went in, and after he disappeared, Patrice stepped in and smiled reassuringly at Arthur before being completely disintegrated and reassembled somewhere else. Nervously, he walked into the cylinder and waited. The metal bars swept across and... nothing happened. Arthur stood there, confused, and the people waiting began muttering to others and staring at him. He quickly walked out and went straight to the front desk.

"Um, excuse me ma'am, I think something's wrong with your teleporter. It didn't work."

"Wait, what? Let me check on that" she said. She pulled up something on a computer and frowned. "I don't see the problem. The teleport was successful. See?" She swung the screen around and Arthur stared in denial at him walking through a completely different city with Patrice and Ryan."

"But that's not me! I'm right here!"

"Hold on a minute." The lady ran into a back room and came out with her superior. She checked the computer and looked up at Arthur.

"Sir, the scanner worked and you were replicated in Pacifica. The atom destroyer malfunctioned. Just a small error that's very rare. It won't happen next time. You're alive and well in Pacifica."

"But... that's not me! That's someone else! I'm standing in front of you!" Arthur yelled. The woman looked at the other lady and then said to Arthur in a soft voice,

"I'm very sorry, sir, but we're obligated by law to destroy any structures that are replicated somewhere else. There's nothing we can do." Arthur panicked and sprinted for the exit, but two huge men caught him and dragged him to the teleporter. The scanner was turned off. He was thrown screaming into it and pounded against the door. The two bars swung in a circle and his screams abruptly cut off.

After a moment, the line of people watching started going into the teleporter, and went on with their lives. In Pacifica, Arthur, Ryan, and Patrice went to the cryogenic revival registration building. The woman behind the front desk typed up a quick insurance report and sent it. In the silence, the end of the song drifted through the room.

They'll learn much more,

Than I'll ever know.

And I think to myself,

What a wonderful world.

Yes, I think to myself,

What a wonderful world.