So…space travel. Right. Space travel via cell phone. Even with the upgrade the cat gave her the idea made Rowan’s head hurt with the sheer absurdity of that statement. Of course there were no space shuttles involved, but the teleportation angle only made the whole matter more unsettling. She remembered something she’d read once, who knows how long ago, speculating on the possibility of teleportation. She couldn’t recall most of what it said but she very distinctly remembered a statement to the effect of “anything put through a teleporter would be disintegrated at point A and reassembled at point B.” She wasn’t entirely certain of how true that was, and even less certain about how much she actually wanted to test that. Could she even know if she’d been reassembled from a cluster of scattered atoms? Was that something she would even want to know?

As always the thoughts came rapidly, an anxious salvo, a hailstorm on a tin roof clattering out all other sound. She gave her head a brief sharp shake in an attempt to divert them, at least for a few moments. A lot of other people had supposedly done this many times without dying. Or at least dying and leaving behind an identical self with containing the same memories. There was really no way to know. Maybe the cats know. She made a mental note to ask next time she saw one.

Right. Ask the cats (the magic cats) about the possible disintegration during the teleportation during the space travel. Rowan had never done drugs in her life, but lately she’d been half wondering if she had a habit of dosing with something that made her both forgetful and prone to ludicrous flights of fancy. Maybe she’d somehow gotten tangled in some barbed wire in this stupor and had a long, one-sided chat with an exceptionally patient cat. Frankly, that seemed like a more plausible explanation than the rest of it.

And when she got there, what then? It was supposed to be her “homeworld” after all. Homeworld number two. Or number one, depending on how she chose to look at it. Reincarnation was, after all, another tick on the bizarreness checklist. Another thing to push aside as far as she could until she had a better grasp on at least some of the rest of it. It made her feel like a child trying to hide vegetables under the other food. There was only so much you could pick away before they showed their unwelcome faces once more.

She gave a final decisive huff. Think about it. Focus. Press the button.

Maybe disintegrate herself.
Maybe fly apart into an unimaginable number of atoms.
Maybe come back together in the same configuration, somehow no worse for wear than when they parted.
Maybe be a facsimile of the person who pushed the button and never know the difference.

No. Think about it. Focus. Press the button.

She unconsciously held her breath as she held her finger over the icon before finally allowing it to hit its mark.