A Lack of Enthusiasm for Teleportation

Recently I went with some friends to a lovely country pub, to eat fish and chips on a Friday night, while the beautiful British summer howled against the window panes and soaked up the legs of my trousers.

They were some of the best fish and chips I’ve had. The fish was a giant slab of cod that clearly came from the body-building champion of the cod world. It was delightfully battered and tasty, and the chips were huge and chunky, salted and vinegared – the kind of chips seagulls have wet-dreams about, not those pathetic skinny things people (yes, Americans, I’m talking to you) call fries.

On the way home, I sat in the back of Miss-Matic’s tiny car, staring out of the window at the beautiful summer evening as it lashed the glass and flooded the road. I think someone was trying to engage me in conversation, but as so frequently happens when I have a window from which to stare, my mind was elsewhere.

I was listening to the chassis scrape the ground every time we went over a bump, weighed down by the combined bulks of five food-stuffed adults, impatient to get to a sofa where I could lie and hold my stomach and groan about how full it was. And I realised that instead of subjecting Miss-Matic’s poor little automatic with the torturous task of chauffeuring us about, a more efficient and elegant solution might present itself in the form of teleportation.

Such a technology would not only be a great benefit to mankind, solving all kinds of large-scale logistical problems – such as getting aid to disaster-struck countries, mining rare-earth metals from the asteroid or Kuiper belts, or unloading groceries from the car without making multiple trips – but a sufficiently idiot-proof system would also allow formerly designated drivers such as Miss-Matic the opportunity to drink and teleport without fear of crashing into someone else’s teleporter, teleporting into a tree at the side of the road, or ill-advisedly attempting to drag-race other teleporters.

Initially I resolved to forego groaning on the sofa while holding my belly, and instead to commence designing such a teleportation system as soon as we arrived home – but as I began to work out some of the technical challenges in my head, I also became aware of some of the potential dangers.

As a terrifying scenario played out in my mind, I came to realise that the project would be doomed from the very beginning.

With a completed teleportation device, Miss-Matic makes one last trip to the country pub with the nice fish and chips. She distracts the bar-staff with witty conversation and a large order of local beers, while I install the teleportation pod in one of the toilet cubicles, cleverly hidden with a fool-proof out-of-order sign. The other pod sits in a dusty corner of our flat.

The next time I want to go out on a beautiful summer evening for a giant plate of fish and chips, I just teleport home afterwards, thus avoiding the ravages of said evening – and allowing Miss-Matic to stay home and do whatever it is that seems to take up all her time on Facebook instead.

Now, I’m a smart guy. Not only do I know science and shit and have successfully built a working teleporter, but I learn from the mistakes of others. Before I dial home from the pub, I check every fucking inch of that teleporter for stowaway flies.

And then, in less than a minute, I’m home. I go straight to the sofa. Lay myself upon it next to Miss-Matic – who’s still on Facebook – hold my belly and groan and wish I hadn’t eaten so much.

Life is good.

Until the changes start.

At first, they seem beneficial. Over the coming days I get stronger and more powerful. My sexual stamina increases, and Miss-Matic is delighted.

But then my fingernails start to fall off. And one day, when we’re cooking, I get an overwhelming urge to jump into the frying pan.

Fearing something is terribly wrong, I go back and check the teleporter logs, and realise my mistake.

You see, dear reader, despite my precautions, I had inadvertently taken other genetic material into the teleportation pod with me. It wasn’t just Ash-Matic that teleported, but also the remains of the body-building champion of the cod world, and a plateful of chunky chips.

The teleporter was confused. It didn’t know what was me, and what was not. It fused us at the molecular-genetic level. My newfound strength is the strength of a body-building cod. My newfound sexual prowess is the stamina of a potato.

I’m turning into a human-fish-potato hybrid.

And then it gets worse. Miss-Matic realises she’s pregnant. She tells me of terrible dreams of giving birth to an aquatic Mr. Potato Head.

My fish-potato instincts begin to outweigh my human instincts. I cover myself with salt and vinegar and tartare sauce and run into restaurants, throwing myself onto the plates of the diners and screaming, ‘Eat me! Eat meee!’

Miss-Matic tries to get an abortion, but I kidnap her first and force her to prepare a magnificent feast with myself as the main course – but she shoves me into the teleportation pod at the last moment, sabotaging it with a filetting knife.

With a flash and a bang, I end up back in the pub where the whole nightmare began, fused with the the smoking remains of the other pod, as a badly written out-of-order sign floats slowly down onto my human-fish-potato hybrid corpse.

And so, my friends, when I arrived home that evening I went straight to the sofa and lay down, groaning and holding my stomach, while Miss-Matic checked her Facebook beside me, instead of designing and building a teleporter.

I no longer have any enthusiasm for teleportation, and make no apologies for it.

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33 Responses

  1. Bexstar says:

    I would just like to say, that was the best idea ever!! Until super pooning potato fish man died & buggered up the teleportation/toilet stall. And it was then I realised that even though you are awesome at science, there were some minor ffaults in your otherwise excellent plan.
    There is no moral to my comment. It’s late & I’m waffling. But you should know, in NZ, our seagulls are muthaeffing velociraptors. Throw some chips into an angry mass of those bastards & it’s seagull fight club. I can’t say anymore. They asked me not to talk about it.

    • Ash-Matic says:

      I know! You have some mean-ass flying fuckers over there!

      Miss-Matic and I were there a couple of years ago, and the seagulls were always trying to steal kumara chips out of our hands, mid-way between chip-tray and mouth. I wanted to introduce a foreign species just so I could swing it by the tail and hit the seagulls with it.
      How’d you like that endangerment, chip-thief?!

  2. Lady in Red says:

    I read this and enjoyed it – but my brain is shut off right now and I can’t think of a clever comment 🙂

  3. Addman says:

    I eat at Nandos quite often. If I were to use one of these teleportation devices, would I become a human-chicken with peri-peri wing-fingers? If so, I think I could live with that for the sake of a teleporter. Plus, I could poke people in the eyes and watch their sockets burn with peri-peri goodness.

  4. Mark says:

    You know, you should try and sell that idea to Hollywood. They’ll probably eat it up, no pun intended. I think though that teleporters are better than that, they don’t take stomach contents in to account. My guess is they only have trouble differentiating between living organisms.

  5. Chiz says:

    “My newfound sexual prowess is the stamina of a potato.”

    I immediately regret not eating the recommended serving of potatoes.

  6. Rachel says:

    I always thought it would be a good idea to be able to teleport. Now… Well, I wouldn’t want to be some sort of strange hybrid creation because some itty bitty thing was over looked. I think I’ll stick to driving.

  7. I was in a rough area today called Ordsall, in Salford. It looked like Nazi occupied Poland.

    “So?”

    Oh. Well there was a chip shop, and it had metal windows and a metal door.

    “It was abandoned?”

    No, it was still open, that’s just the precautions they need to take!

    “Whoa. That is rough.”

    Yeah, so anyway, if you ever need a secure chip shop to store the teleporter you claim you will now never build, i think this may be the place.

  8. erica says:

    If I were Miss Matic, I probably would have just let you fry yourself. I don’t know how else you would fix things.

  9. Elsie says:

    I always thought being able to teleport would be a brilliant plan…now I see it’s not so brilliant after all. Thank goodness you were able to think this all the way through!

    **I’ll be munching on my American french fries in the corner lol

  10. sporkgasm says:

    Hahaha. You totally became the Fried Fish Fly!

    I think you should make a smaller teleportation device so that you don’t have to do it from the toilet area. I have germy OCD issues so you need to teleport from somewhere cleaner dammit. 🙂

  11. lily says:

    I believe that smothering yourself with condiments and running into pubs, whilst simultaneously shouting “eat me” is a new kind of fetish.

    Here’s the website I found it on http://www.eatmebutinanonsexualway.battermeup.co.uk

  12. You should certainly be happy that a fly didn’t get in there with you too.

    I always wish I had the power of teleportation when I have to make any kind of long commute… anything longer than 10 minutes, really. I don’t even have to be drunk or tired… I just hate driving.

  13. jnana says:

    Hahahha totally well-thought out!

    I do miss British fish and chips 🙁

  14. DWei says:

    We have the beginnings of possible the most kinky fanfiction known to man.

    You must complete it!

  15. Jax says:

    Body building of the cod world?? Sounds yum yum to me 😉

  16. Teleporting, I think yes! What about a teleporting device that allows food to teleport right into your hands? I think yes, again.

  17. The Beans says:

    Oh, I’m sure that if you worked out the kinks with the teleportation device, it would work just fine! Think of it as teleportation 2.0, an updated model that doesn’t splice or fuse genetic material.

    -Barb the French Bean

  18. Bersercules says:

    I was gonna say teleportation is a fantastic idea but then I read your whole post and now I know! TELEPORTATION IS THE MOST FANTASTIC IDEA EVER!!! We need fish potato people! That would make our world perfect! Please get on this idea soon! I wanna have fish potato people neighbours and ellected officials as soon as possible! In Cod we trust!

  19. No, your problem is that you aren’t using your teleporter for evil. Think of the many possibles. You could teleport yourself into bank vaults or gold mines. You could teleport useless coworkers into the bottom of a lake. I mean, it’s practically begging you to misuse its godlike powers in the name of evil.

  20. Too funny, Ash! Great visuals…I mean, the visuals WEREN’T so great, but you did a great job of putting them there! lol… No teleportation for you! Thanks for the chuckle. 🙂

  21. Tonja says:

    I was worried about the flies too. Glad you checked.

  22. mistyslaws says:

    But what if you were a vegetatian? Would you turn into a large head of broccoli? With the body of Quinoa? I am intrigued by this idea. It gives that whole “you are what you eat” theory a whole different slant, don’t you think?

  23. Brilliant. Plus, now I know what I want for dinner.

  24. G says:

    How about the yeast in the beer?
    There are all manner of nasty genetic things lurking around…

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