Teleport

To be teleported is to be entirely atomized. The quarks and sub-quarks and sub-sub-sub-quarks split again and again, halved near-infinitely. Once a person is broken down to less than static, they can travel at unfathomable speeds. An atom is mostly empty space, after all. Enough emptiness to fit an entire person through, if they’re disassembled appropriately. Once the pieces reach their target, they are reassembled by equally complex means.

It takes less than a breath.

As a kid, I used to play with this antique puzzle my grandmother had. Bits of cardboard pieces to be arranged into a wildflower-dotted hill. My brothers and I set it up a dozen times or so, and it was never in one piece. Over the years, the gaps in it got bigger and bigger. We were as careful as we could be. We crawled under the dining room table and checked the bottom of our shoes. But pieces still disappeared.

I wonder how many pieces I would split into when I step on that panel. Quintillions, surely, or more. I can’t quite remember a bigger number than that. A million bajillion?

How can I know that every bit of me will make it through? It seems some bits would likely go missing, get snagged on some unknowable molecule and never reach back to its home in my eyelash. It wouldn’t make a difference, really, losing three or four, not at first. But how many bits will get lost the next time? The time after that? Would I even see the parts of myself falling off, or would they fade and fall like a man’s thinning hair? By the time I notice, would I even be enough of myself to care?    

I think today, I’ll take the bus.

Hannah Melin is a writer working out of Dallas, Texas. Her nonfiction writing has been featured in “Big Muddy,” “HCE Magazine,” “BioStories,” “Grub Street,” Heart of Flesh,” “Whispering Prairie Press,” and The New York Times’ “Modern Love.” Her fiction has been featured in “Monkeybicycle,” “Night Picnic Press,” and “The Metaworker.”