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James Brubaker

Abstract

Stevie and I were sick of this town. That’s why we built our teleportation machine. Or rather, we decided to build our teleportation machine in part because we were sick of this town, but also because this town’s public transportation isn’t very good, and both of us got busted for Operating a Vehicle after Underage Consumption and lost our licenses for two years—though neither of us even owned a car to begin with—and because my mom is dead and my dad is a drunk, and because Stevie’s parents, while both alive and not drunks, are too busy to drive him around and won’t let him borrow their cars because he lost his license, and because we’re geniuses who finished high school by the time we were sixteen only to drop out of college a year later and move back home—but really, Stevie was kicked out of MIT because he was caught drinking in his dorm room several times, though he doesn’t drink anymore, I guess—and finally, because when Stevie went to college he met a girl named Tiffany who is a violin prodigy and who gave Stevie a handy on the first date, and that was the first time a woman had done something like that for Stevie so he fell in love with her, but without a driver’s license he couldn’t drive to visit her, and he couldn’t fly or take a bus because he gets motion sick and anxious any time he tries to travel long distances in a confined space surrounded by strangers. Really, while we had no shortage of reasons...

Cover Page Footnote

"Why We Built a Teleportation Machine and Why It Was a Bad Idea" was originally published at Booth.

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