I’m not the person I used to be. Nobody is. Everywhere I look I see strangers, behind every pair of eyes a hollowness that never used to be there. My invention changed the world, and then it changed everybody in it.

I’ve teleported more than anyone. The first time I shivered as my blood ran ice cold then swung to red hot, the reaction that gave teleportation it’s name; jolting. By my tenth jolt I didn’t feel a thing and declared my invention the driver of human progress. Instant global travel with no environmental impact.

The first travellers were the rich. Business leaders, billionaire entrepreneurs, presidents and prime ministers all came to my door. I saw the look on their faces after their first jolt. Their hands gripping unsteadily, their eyes darting back and to. With each trip they made I saw the reaction lessen, till jolting became mundane. I saw this, but didn’t see what it meant. Do the rich have souls to lose?

It’s taken 20 years, but now almost everyone in the world jolts daily. How many understand what it means to teleport? That the you who arrives home in the evening is not the same person who left in the morning? They may look the same, they may act the same, but you are not there. Your atoms are evaporating out into the universe, replaced by a golem imitating the old flesh.

I look and see mindless automations everywhere. There is no smile on any face, no anger in any heart. Every jolter in the world is a copy, of a copy, of a copy, and with each journey a little more whatever made people human is lost.

When I invented the teleporter I never considered people’s souls. As a scientist, I put aside such theological notions and studied the practical, the evidential, and the technological.

I should have listened to the priests.