Packets
Original: Packets on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1:
Red-shirted crewman (man with red hair, standing on a teleporter pad): Wait, before I get into the teleporter... if you explode me then reassemble me elsewhere... don't I die?
Bald officer (in yellow shirt): Nah. All wrong.
Panel 2:
Bald officer: Do you have any idea what it costs to reassemble a person from atoms?
Red-haired crewman: Then what DOES happen?
Panel 3:
Bald officer: We cut you into twelve to sixteen chunks so you can fit in a cannonball, then fire you down to the surface for reassembly.
Panel 4:
Bald officer: Your head is kept intact, or at most cut in thirds. Seems pretty clear that if you're put back together immediately you never "die."
Red-haired crewman: (looking uneasy)
Panel 5:
Bald officer: Now, if we could get a nicer teleporter. Maybe up to 100 or 200 chunks, then it gets dicey. Philosophically and literally.
Panel 6 (two silhouetted figures, one seated, one standing on a platform):
Red-haired crewman: I'm having an existential crisis.
Bald officer: Hey, if you still have it when your headchunks are stitched back up, it proves you're still you.
Votey:
A close-up of the red-haired crewman's face (drawn in simple line-art with flame-like hair).
Crewman: Thanks, I feel better.
Red-shirted crewman (man with red hair, standing on a teleporter pad): Wait, before I get into the teleporter... if you explode me then reassemble me elsewhere... don't I die?
Bald officer (in yellow shirt): Nah. All wrong.
Panel 2:
Bald officer: Do you have any idea what it costs to reassemble a person from atoms?
Red-haired crewman: Then what DOES happen?
Panel 3:
Bald officer: We cut you into twelve to sixteen chunks so you can fit in a cannonball, then fire you down to the surface for reassembly.
Panel 4:
Bald officer: Your head is kept intact, or at most cut in thirds. Seems pretty clear that if you're put back together immediately you never "die."
Red-haired crewman: (looking uneasy)
Panel 5:
Bald officer: Now, if we could get a nicer teleporter. Maybe up to 100 or 200 chunks, then it gets dicey. Philosophically and literally.
Panel 6 (two silhouetted figures, one seated, one standing on a platform):
Red-haired crewman: I'm having an existential crisis.
Bald officer: Hey, if you still have it when your headchunks are stitched back up, it proves you're still you.
Votey:
A close-up of the red-haired crewman's face (drawn in simple line-art with flame-like hair).
Crewman: Thanks, I feel better.
Alt text
A six-panel SMBC comic parodying Star Trek-style transporters. A red-haired crewman in a red shirt stands on a teleporter pad and asks a bald officer in a yellow shirt whether being exploded and reassembled elsewhere means he dies. The officer says "Nah. All wrong," then explains that reassembling a person from atoms is too expensive. Instead, they cut the crewman into twelve to sixteen chunks to fit him in a cannonball and fire him down to the surface for reassembly; his head is kept intact or at most cut in thirds, so the officer reasons he never truly "dies" if reassembled immediately. The officer muses that a nicer teleporter slicing people into 100 or 200 chunks would get dicey "philosophically and literally." In the final panel, shown as two black silhouettes, the crewman says "I'm having an existential crisis," and the officer reassures him that if he still has the crisis after his headchunks are stitched back up, it proves he's still himself. The joke: a horrifying dismemberment is reframed as reassuring. In the votey aftercomic, a simple line drawing of the red-haired crewman's face says "Thanks, I feel better."
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.