How does teleportation feel?

Considering it would at some point detach your nerves from your body, you wouldn't feel much of anything.

I think it would tickle.

I'd say it would feel like being dissolved (imagine being in a glass of tonic water as it fizzes) I'd also imagine it would be accompanied by some kind of vicious, full-body tingling that persists for a while after.

But that's just me =)

Kemp said:

I'd say it would feel like being dissolved (imagine being in a glass of tonic water as it fizzes) I'd also imagine it would be accompanied by some kind of vicious, full-body tingling that persists for a while after.

But that's just me =)

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I like this one. There'd also be a bit of a mind blip, unless they are consious during teleportation, which seems like it would make me rather sick.

I teleported home one day
with Ron and Sid and Meg.
Ron stole Meggy's heart away
and I got Sidney's leg.

EclipsesMuse said:

I have a character in my novel that is getting teleported via a cell phone. They will be digitized and travel through the cellular network, land lines, and possibly air.

I am drawing a blank as to how this would feel. I welcome any examples from books or even your opinion on how you think it would feel.

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I don't have my copy of TRON here unfortunately, which is the only written example of digitization and teleportation I can think of. Oh, and the Pern books, when the dragons go between. IIRC, that's described as cold and then lack of any sensation at all.

My opinion would be that it would be incredibly painful at first, followed by an absence of sensation. I imagine it as comparable to my fingers being put in a blender to break down into mush, for example, and then broken down further to the atomic/particle stage, but applied to the whole body. On reassembly, there would be psychological trauma. That's how I'd write it, anyway.

How do you want it to feel? Is it important to the story that it be painful, euphoric, fizzy, etc?

If it's an intentional teleport, IE man-made or caused by an intelligence as a part of some system or device, then I'm betting it would not be uncomfortable. Consider that if transporters in Star Trek caused physical pain, they wouldn't be used very often (if at all). However, if the teleport is a natural phenomenon or a malevolent force, then pain could very well be part of it until the nerves themselves are dissolved.

In the end, what effect do you want the feel of the teleport to have on the story? For my part, if I were on the cellphone with someone and they ripped my atoms apart painfully and yanked me across time and space to stand next to them, the first thing I might do is a right-cross. Something to consider.

efkelley said:

How do you want it to feel?

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Exactly. One of my character's describes it as 'Like being stretched too far and then snapping back into place'

Kinda like an elastic band.

In my story-world, teleporting feels like your entire body is breaking into a bazillion tiny bits and shifting through the air/wall/whatever you're teleporting through. At full power, it's a buzzing, tickling, pins-n-needles kind of feeling. When you're exhausted (and especially when moving through an object), it feels a bit like being squeezed through a tube of ground glass.

In Stephen King' short story The Jaunt (I think that's the title) he describes an extremely interesting effect of teleportation that I refuse to describe because I want you to go read the story first.

Ugh. There are some philosophical concerns associated with teleportation.

Some (including me) think it's death, followed by the creation of an exact duplicate at the other end.

You probably don't have to go into that in your story, though...

If it's through the cell phone, then I imagine the manufacturers of the technology would have come up with a way to make it not feel too painful, otherwise the technology wouldn't sell rite?

Liosse de Velishaf said:

I like this one. There'd also be a bit of a mind blip, unless they are consious during teleportation, which seems like it would make me rather sick.

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You're not even "together" during transmission so I doubt you'd feel anything.

Oddsocks said:

Ugh. There are some philosophical concerns associated with teleportation.

Some (including me) think it's death, followed by the creation of an exact duplicate at the other end.

You probably don't have to go into that in your story, though...

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For more on this, read "The Mind's I." We even had a thread on this recently, but I'm too lazy to go find it.

There's also the problem of people asking "Where does your soul go?" The company that does this will no doubt have a customer service department with priests and rabbis on call to answer these questions and quell custoners' fears.

Titania said:

If it's through the cell phone, then I imagine the manufacturers of the technology would have come up with a way to make it not feel too painful, otherwise the technology wouldn't sell rite?

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You're being completely taken apart at one end and put together at the other. That could be painful. I suspect it might involved powerful drugs or something to make you unconscious during the process.

benbradley said:

There's also the problem of people asking "Where does your soul go?" The company that does this will no doubt have a customer service department with priests and rabbis on call to answer these questions and quell custoners' fears.

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Ha! I like that a lot.

benbradley said:

You're not even "together" during transmission so I doubt you'd feel anything.

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Oh, you've been teleported before? I always bow to first-hand knowledge...

There's also the problem of people asking "Where does your soul go?" The company that does this will no doubt have a customer service department with priests and rabbis on call to answer these questions and quell custoners' fears.

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Would make an awesome story. Has someone written it yet?

You're being completely taken apart at one end and put together at the other. That could be painful. I suspect it might involved powerful drugs or something to make you unconscious during the process.

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Hm... teleportation abuse?

I like the idea of them getting to the transported location, saying "I'm fine, really." Then promptly throwing up.

The transportation shouldn't be completely safe. Anything has its' hazards - look at how many road accidents still happen each year, and we've had automobiles around for over a hundred years. Something so new (even a power one character posesses) should contain within it the possibility of a horrendous mistake. What happens when he gets distracted in the middle of pulling someone through the 'phone line? There are all kinds of nasty things you can do to increase the tension every time someone is subjected to the teleportation.

It feels like when you're just about to sneeze ... and suddenly you cannot sneeze. Women have commented that teleportation is like being on the threshold of climax and then ... phfffft .... gone.

That was bad enough. But then people's dogs stopped recognizing them when they came home after teleporting.

Something was wrong.

I ran into Megan Fox at the LA airport and she walked past me like looking at me was some sort of intrusion, like even recognizing we were two human beings in the same space was a burden.

So the guy at the teleportation pad asks me "Where to, chief?" and I happened to spy where megan had zapped off to, so I give him those co-ordinates too. Turns out it's Paris. Well, here's the thing with Paris ... they hold you in the buffer an extra thirty seconds because the French are such effete snobs. So I'm in the buffer with megan fox, and then we both step out across the aisle from each other ... and this time our eyes meet, she has to look at me or else we'll run into each other stepping off the pad, right?

And she smiles. And instantly it crosses my mind, the old saying that everyone at one point breathes the same air that was in Caesar's lungs, or Jesus' ...

Let me tell you about being in a teleportation buffer for thirty seconds with Megan fox: alot more exchange there than molecules of air.

Anyway, Megan fox smiled at me getting off the teleportation pad in Paris, and there was a look in her eye that said ... well ... sometimes there's the disappointment of not sneezing ... and other times there's a sensation that goes thru every fiber of your re-assembled body, of just really really having had a satisfying a-choo!

She smiled and sort of wiped some moisture off her beautiful little nose like she was remembering the itch and remembering a really satisfying and slightly promiscuous scratch. Then we did that clumsy, feeling foolish sidestepping back and forth into each other's way, trying to get out of each other's way. She actually laughed and then we got untangled and went our separate ways.

About a week later I saw a tabloid headline that Megan's dog had bitten her, and then gave her a quizzical look while she was playing with it on the beach, nothing serious, just a nip of momentary unfamiliarity ... And instantly i realized that all that week, my bedsheets had smelled of a strange perfume ...

Anyway ... teleportation is strange, but not always in a bad way.

Quoting myself = sad, but...

scarletpeaches said:

I teleported home one day
with Ron and Sid and Meg.
Ron stole Meggy's heart away
and I got Sidney's leg.

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To clarify, I stole that from Douglas Adams. I think it was from the first Hitchhiker book although I can't be sure. The Vogon poetry did a CTRL-ALT-DEL on my brain.

benbradley said:

There's also the problem of people asking "Where does your soul go?" The company that does this will no doubt have a customer service department with priests and rabbis on call to answer these questions and quell custoners' fears.

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Hopefully it won't get outsourced.

Oddsocks said:

Ugh. There are some philosophical concerns associated with teleportation

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"I think, therefore I--whoa! We're here."

EclipsesMuse said:

Actually, it's more of an ability one fo rhte characters have, not a developed technology. He's pulling someone else through the phone.

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Oh, wow, then perhaps this discussion on how it feels to be teleported will be nothing compared to the logical acrobatics needed to rationalise the science on that one....

Small Axe -- amusing read

Titania said:

Oh, wow, then perhaps this discussion on how it feels to be teleported will be nothing compared to the logical acrobatics needed to rationalise the science on that one....

Small Axe -- amusing read

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The Matrix didn't seem to need science for that one.