To the Stars -- And Beyond

by Robert Reginald

  * * * *

  SELECTED EXCERPTS FROM THE TRANSCRIPT OF THE TRIAL IN THE CASE OF DOLLIVAN (plaintiff) vs. THE VANSPEEPE TRANSPORTER GATE WEB CORPORATION (WORLDWIDE) AND THE CITIES OF ATHENS, BANGKOK, BERLIN, BIRMINGHAM, BOMBAY, BOSTON, BUDAPEST, BUENOS AIRES, CAIRO, CALCUTTA, CANTON, CHICAGO, CHUNGKING, DELHI, DETROIT, DJAKARTA, ESSEN, HAMBURG, KARACHI, LENINGRAD, LOS ANGELES, LONDON, MADRAS, MADRID, MANCHESTER, MANILA, MELBOURNE, MEXICO CITY, MONTREAL, MOSCOW, NEW YORK, OSAKA, PARIS, PEKING, PHILADELPHIA, RIO DE JANEIRO, ROME, SAN FRANCISCO, SANTIAGO, SAO PAULO, SEOUL, SHANGHAI, SHENYANG, SYDNEY, TEHERAN, TIENTSIN, TOKYO, TORONTO, AND VICTORIA (hereinafter collectively called the defendant):

  JUDGE: (the Honorable Milton B. Langworth) Is the plaintiff ready?

  PLAINTIFF: I am an attorney in the State of New York, United States of America, licensed to appear before the bar of the World Court, your honor. I am appearing for Mrs. Samuel Breathwaite Dollivan. We are ready, your honor.

  JUDGE: And the defense?

  DEFENDANT: Geoffrey Vaspution, your honor, of the firm of Vaspution, Shiny, Dogeness, and Murphy, representing the collective defendant except the cities of Essen, Hamburg, and Berlin, which have their own attorney, who is present, the city of Cairo, which claims that the present dispute is outside the jurisdiction of the Court, and the city of Delhi, which refuses to defend for philosophical reasons. We are ready, your honor.

  JUDGE: You may proceed.

  DEFEN: Before we continue, your honor, I would like to introduce a motion to have this case dismissed. With prejudice.

  JUDGE: On what grounds? It seems a bit premature.

  DEFEN: Your honor, the defendant is charged with, if I may read, “causing the instant death of the plaintiff’s husband, Samuel Breathwaite Dollivan, by enticing him into and permitting him to enter a device known as a Vanspeepe Transporter Gate in the City of New York under the belief that it would somehow miraculously and instantaneously transport him to one of the forty-seven other cities in the so-called ‘Web’; whereupon his body was deliberately, and with intent, immediately reduced to its constituent atoms, and the atoms changed from their material state into the form of energy, much as in an atomic bomb or other advanced infernal device, this causing and inducing his immediate death.”

  PLAIN: It seems very clear to me, your honor. A simple tort, real and punitive damages.

  JUDGE: Yes. It sounds like a valid complaint. What is wrong with it?

  DEFEN: Your honor, for the record, ask the attorney for the plaintiff to state his name.

  JUDGE: Oh, wasn’t it given? No, I don’t remember. Sir, your name, please.

  PLAIN: Dollivan, your honor: Samuel Breathwaite Dollivan.

  JUDGE: I’m afraid I don’t understand. Are you, in fact, this woman’s husband?

  PLAIN: In life I was, your honor.

  [more]

  * * * *

  “Doctor, I assure you, I am not crazy!”

  “Fair enough, Mr. Goodale. Let me assure you, I am not a psychiatrist. A psychological dysfunction such as you are experiencing may have many direct physical causes. I’m merely going to give you a series of tests to see if we can isolate one of those causes. I’m a neurologist.”

  Mr. Goodale visibly relaxed. “I thought I was going to be, you know, laughed at,” he said. “I almost didn’t come, but my wife said I’d better. I never heard of anything like it: a forty-seven-year-old man waking up in the morning and suddenly he can’t read. Nothing. I didn’t think of it like it was a, you know, medical problem. All I could think of was Kafka. Everything felt strange. Kind of backward. And I couldn’t read except in a mirror. You know, at first I was afraid to look in the mirror, like maybe I had turned into a, you know, giant cockroach. I haven’t thought of that story in maybe twenty-five years, and first thing when I woke up and everything was backwards, I thought I was a cockroach. You sure you’re not a shrink?”

  “I’m not laughing at you, Mr. Goodale.”

  “Well, you feel kind of funny walking into a hospital and telling them you can’t read anymore. I see fine, but I just can’t read any more. Except in a mirror. If you don’t find anything, is my medicard going to cover this? I mean, is it going to cost me anything?”

  “Cradle to the grave, Mr. Goodale,” the doctor said, twitching open the medical record. “Say, you know you write backwards too?”

  “I do?”

  “Yes indeedy. Say, this isn’t a put-on, is it? You weren’t hired by one of my associates, were you?”

  “It s very interesting, in a way,” Mr. Goodale said, gently tapping himself on the chest with the flat of his hand. “Yaw eno, for example. I never realized the beauty of road signs until I saw them reversed coming in to the hospital. Nrut. tfel on. I live on eunevA nosidaM.”

  “Here,” the doctor said, handing Mr. Goodale a ball point. “Write something. Use the paper on the desk.”

  Mr. Goodale took the pen and made a few flourishes in the air. “What shall I write?”

  “Anything. Sign your name; that’ll do for a start.” He watched as Mr. Goodale carefully scrawled his name in mirror-writing, from right to left. “Have you always been left-handed? Can you write at all with your right hand?”

  “Left-handed?” Mr. Goodale sounded puzzled. He lifted the hand which held the pen. “Right-handed, you mean!”

  “Curious,” the doctor commented, mostly to himself. “Medulla? Frontal lobe, perhaps. Well! Let us start at the beginning, and keep going until we reach the end, and then diagnose.” He took a disposable stethoscope from its plastic bag, pincered one end onto his ears and waved the other end toward his patient’s chest. “Unbutton your shirt,” he said. “Breathe,” he said. “Hmmm!” he said. “Well!” he said. He clutched convulsively for the record folder and started flipping pages. “One thing about the computerization of hospital records; you sure get to know more about a patient than you want, or can use. But somewhere in this mountain of socialized facts there should be a statement, some simple notice.... Nothing! You’d think someone would have noted…. After all, a man’s heart....”

  “My heart, Doctor? What’s the matter? There’s something wrong with my heart?”

  “Not that way, no. It’s just on the wrong...aha!”

  “Aha?”

  “You’ve had your appendix removed!”

  “That’s right. At this hospital. It was two, no three, years ago.”

  “Let’s see it!”

  “The appendix? I’m sorry, I didn’t keep it. I didn’t know you were supposed to.”

  “No, Mr. Goodale, not the appendix: the scar.”

  “Oh. Here it is, Doctor.” Goodale pulled his shirt up and indicated an almost invisible hairline scar.

  “Right!” the doctor said, a satisfied smirk on his face. “Now, if that was abnormal they’d have to have mentioned it. Mr. Goodale, I know what’s wrong with you.”

  “You do? What?” he asked, clutching his hands together over his belly. “Is it malign?”

  “Sit down.”

  “That bad?” He sat. “I’m ready.”

  “Mr. Goodale, you’ve been turned inside out!”

  “What?” He stood. “I’ve been what? What does that mean?”

  “I have no idea,” the doctor told him. “Inside out is perhaps inexact: you’ve been flipped right for left. Your heart has changed sides, your appendix scar has changed sides, your brain, apparently, is comprehending in reverse. Luckily, you can understand speech, since it’s a linear function; but anything with bilateral symmetry, you’ve reversed.”

  “I don’t exactly, understand.” Mr. Goodale looked frightened.

  “Mr. Goodale, raise your right hand.”

  Mr. Goodale complied.

  “Very good. Now, to you that’s your right hand. Always has been, always will be. But to me, and to the rest of the outside world, Mr. Goodale, that’s your left hand. Sometime in the recent past you’ve flipped over, like, a fourth-dimensional flapjack!”

  “Is this, ah, common, Doctor? Is
it covered by my medicard? Is it curable?”

  “I don’t think there’s anything I can treat,” the doctor said. “It seems to be harmless, if annoying. You’ll have to learn how to read again; and you’ll have to get a MedicAlert® bracelet or something similar. Just a simple statement: ‘Heart and other internal organs on wrong side’— Just in case you get in a car accident or something.”

  “What causes this?”

  “I don’t know. Not common, I assure you. Have you done anything unusual recently? Unusual for you, I mean. Doesn’t have to be unique.”

  “Well, I’ve been on this diet my wife found: the Eat, Drink, Throw Up, and Stay Slim Diet. This doctor found it in some research he was doing on the ancient Romans. Been on it for two weeks now. Funny, I haven’t been hungry until we broke the diet last night for that Chinese dinner. Since then I’ve been getting hungrier and hungrier. Every time my wife goes on a diet, I go on a diet.”

  “I don’t see how the diet could have anything to do with this,” the doctor told Mr. Goodale, “but I must say that I think this particular diet is medically unsound. What about the Chinese dinner?”

  “Tell that to my wife, Doctor, not me. The idea of barfing after dinner doesn’t grow on you even after you’ve done it for two weeks. The only thing unusual about the Chinese dinner was that we had it in Shanghai. That’s getting pretty common these days, I guess, with the Transgate; but it’s still new to us.”

  “Aha!” the doctor said. “The Transgate!”

  “Could that have done it?”

  “I think it’s safe to assume that anything which can flip you from place to place electronically can turn you inside out or wrongside around or whatever. We’ll look into it. Any other symptoms you’ve noticed since last night, anything at all?”

  “Nothing but being hungry. I guess it’s either the Chinese food or the diet, but it is something new.”

  “We’ll check you out. How do you feel now?”

  “Hungry.”

  [continued]

  * * * *

  PLAIN: Vibrations, you say, Professor? The transporter turns a person into a bunch of vibrations? Something like a symphony, or a cantata?

  WITNESS (Professor Harold Vanspeepe): That is an incorrect statement of what I told you, sir. We are—all matter is—merely a complex pattern of vibrations at all times. What the Vanspeepe Matter Transporter does is to transmit these vibrations through space a high-order space, you understand, in the form of an energy analog of the matter. Surely....

  PLAIN: It turns matter into energy. We understand that, Professor. Would you say it turns us into, like, radio waves, then beams these waves to a new location?

  WITNESS: No, sir, I most assuredly would not say that! That is a gross oversimplification, and contains several errors in fact.

  PLAIN: But Professor, bear in mind that I and the other people present in this courtroom are non-technical people, and not distinguished scientists like yourself. For our untechnical brains, in a grossly oversimplified statement that we mere laymen can understand, wouldn’t a description of beamed waves be fair?

  WITNESS: Well....

  PLAIN: Thank you, Professor. Now, where in this beam, in which matter is destroyed, converted into energy, and then reconstructed at the other end, is the soul?

  WITNESS: But....

  PLAIN: If we were to think of a radio or television program, Professor, we would realize that the real person is not there in front of us; merely the reproduced sight and sound of that person. By the same analog, Professor, is it not fair to state that in the Vanspeepe Transporter it isn’t the real person who comes out to us on the other end, but merely his reproduced body?

  WITNESS: I have no idea what that means. It isn’t scientific.

  PLAIN: Thank you, Professor. You may step down now.

  [more]

  * * * *

  “The fucking Vanspeepe Transporter,” Edith McSchwartz said, savagely throwing a tray of papers into the wastecatcher, where they disappeared with a popping sound and a slight smell of ozone, “has caused more troubles than any other five inventions in history lumped together!”

  “Don’t bitch, Edith,” said her executive assistant, a dumpy little man named Clovis; “it has also created the power base that’s made this office the most important political position in the world. ‘City Manager of Earth,’ they call you. Stop throwing the trays away with the papers, they’re getting expensive to replace.”

  “But it’s such a goddamn uphill fight,” Edith said. “Every time something new happens, somebody else wants to close down the system or set up barriers or something. We’ll be back to passports and border guards pretty soon; only they’ll be at the gates instead of at the borders. Who the hell crosses borders any more?”

  “A little imagination, that’s all it takes,” Clovis said. “You’ve got to keep one step ahead of them, that’s all. Like those kid gangs; the metal detectors at the gates stopped them cold. It’s no fun to rumble in some strange city if you’ve got to do it bare-knuckled and the local hoods have all the firepower.”

  “You are imaginative and effective, I grant you, Clovis; the best damn executive assistant I’ve ever had. I’ve always said that men make the best secretaries. But every time we solve one problem, there are two more wagging their stubby little tails around the corner.”

  “That’s known as life, Edith. You want no problems? Drop dead. Don’t take that personally; I meant it illustratively only.”

  * * * *

  HOMETOWN JAIL BILL PASSES GENERAL ASSEMBLY

  NEW YORK, Monday (cns)

  In an example of that international spirit that is rapidly making the United Nations a true World government, the General Assembly today passed the so-called Hometown Jail Bill by an overwhelming voice vote.

  The bill provides that any person convicted of a crime anywhere on Earth in a country not his own can be sent back to his place of citizenship to serve the sentence, the cost being defrayed by the sentencing authority. This “bill,” in reality a draft treaty, is designed to halt the wave of misdemeanors committed by people from the poverty pockets who Gate to rich-nation cities for the sole purpose of spending a few weeks in jail.

  The bill is expected to be ratified and passed into the ever-expanding body of International Law within a matter of weeks.

  [continued]

  * * * *

  JUDGE: The jury having found for the plaintiff, I have no choice but to so declare. I award real damages in the amount of one million dollars, and exemplary damages in the amount of one dollar. Will counsel for the plaintiff please step forward? I find no choice, Mr. Dollivan, but to conclude, on the basis of the jury’s findings, that you are not a true person, but a sort of doppelgänger, without a soul, or essence of whatever it is that makes one human. Personally, I think that this is a ridiculous finding, and one that should not be used as a precedent. I intend, Mr. Dollivan, to see that it isn’t by discouraging such cases in the future.

  PLAIN: I don’t understand, your honor.

  JUDGE: Mr. Dollivan, a jury of your peers, at your insistence, has found you to be not human. Therefore, I find that you are, and must be, a chattel of the Vanspeepe Transporter Gate Web Corporation, in whose apparatus you were first discovered.

  PLAIN: But, your honor, you can’t…!

  JUDGE: You no longer have any standing in this court. This case is closed.

  * * * *

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Goodale, it isn’t going to be as simple as I first thought.”

  “What do you mean, Doctor? What’s the problem?”

  “I neglected polarity. I mean, it’s not something that comes up every day. As a matter of fact, it’s never happened before. Never. Mr. Goodale, you are now left-handed all over. All those nice little right-handed sugar and protein molecules can no longer be utilized by your body for food. Mr. Goodale, no matter how much you eat, you re starving to death!”

  “You mean it’s not this crummy diet? How the hell do you like that!
So what do I do?”

  “I admire your faith, Mr. Goodale. As a matter of fact, there is something you can do, and I’d suggest you do it right away.”

  “Great. What’s that?”

  “Sue the Transporter Gate Web Corporation for a lot of money. And don’t lose!”

  “How’s that?”

  “Mr. Goodale, we’re going to have to synthesize everything you eat. You’re going to live on a thick broth of the worst-tasting left-handed amino acids ever made out of coal tar. In a couple of days you’re going to look back nostalgically on the worst diet your wife ever dreamed up. And I think we can keep the price down to four or five thousand dollars a day.”

  * * * *

  “If you think the Goodale case is bad,” Clovis said cheerfully, “I got a worse one for you now!”

  ‘That poor guy,” Edith McSchwartz said; “what a hell of a thing.”

  “Yeah, but at least there’s a chance of a cure. If they can figure out what happened to him, exactly, they can do it again and he’ll re-flip. But this new one, a guy called Langart, he’s got a problem.”

  “Another transporter case?”

  “Right on!”

  “And they can’t stick him back in the machine to cure it?”

  “Don’t see how. Which one would they stick back?”

  “Which…?”

  “Yup. There’s two of him. He left Buenos Aires and arrived in New York. At the same instant, he arrived in Shenyang. Then he went home. Both of him. His wife is about to have a nervous breakdown, and neither of him is looking too calm either.”

  “I resign,” Edith said.

  “You can’t,” Clovis told her. “You have a lunch date with the Secretary General. Right now, Professor Vanspeepe is here to see you.”

  Edith took a deep breath. “Show him in,” she said.

  Professor Vanspeepe advanced like the Hun taking Belgium. “I have it all solved!” he yelled.

  “Everything?” Edith asked.

  “It is all clear! Why didn’t I see it before? Another two years and everyone will have one!”

  “One what?”

  “Vanspeepe Personal Transporter. Just wear it around your waist like a girdle. Self-power. Poof! You are where you want. No receiver necessary. It will change the world!”