Alphaboi’s post below got me reminiscing about a disturbing short story I dimly remember from childhood:
A scientist has developed a technique for teleporting objects over short distances. Inanimate objects go through his teleporter without a problem, but living things (mice, I think?) always arrive on the other side dead, unless they’re sedated before they go through, in which case they recover completely. Or maybe they can go through feet first and survive, as long as their heads don’t go through?
So eventually they want to test the teleporter on a living human - a guy goes through while fully conscious and comes out the other side raving insanely before dying, and we gather that this is because although the teleportation occurs instantaneously in “our” reality, the guy spends some terrible conscious eternity in the wormhole or whatever it is that teleports him between the two gates.
Anyway, I’ve been trying to find that story off and on for the last few years, without success. Anyone else familiar with it? I don’t see how it could have avoided being made into a “Twilight Zone” or something similar…
Thanks!
P.S.
Any recommendations for other sci fi/horror stories/authors that fall in the category of “existential dread” would be greatly appreciated. I really like horror that doesn’t rely on grossout gore, and would really appreciate any suggestions. I like J.G. Ballard, Richard Matheson, Robert Bloch, Harlan Ellison, Jorge Luis Borge, some of Ramsey Campbell, and old-school horror like Lovecraft, Poe, Algernon Blackwood, and M R James.
While the OP’s description fits The Jaunt reasonably well, I also recall a similar short story focused on the inventor of the teleportation device. Right down to the part about sending the mice through butt-first. Can’t seem to remember much more than that though.
That story really resonates with our fears, doesn’t it? I almost always hear it cited as the short story that terrifies. I know it messed my head up, as a kid. Till this day, I fear ‘eternity’. Probably because of that story. He really had his finger on the terror button with that one. Seriously, I guessed the story before I clicked the link.
I’ve never read “The Jaunt” but I assume the term refers to the act of teleportation itself. If so, did Stephen King steal… er, borrow the term from Alfred Bester?