Interesting Times by Terry Pratchett Page A

biggest curse is ‘May you live in interesting times’, apparently.”
    “There’s a thing…it’s very blurry. Looks like a wheelbarrow or something. Quite small, I think.”
    “—or toes, ears, that kind of thing?”
    “Good, let’s get started,” said Ridcully.
    “Er, I think it’ll help if he’s a bit heavier than the thing we move here,” said Ponder. “He won’t arrive at any speed, then. I think—”
    “Yes, yes, thank you very much, Mister Stibbons, now get in the circle and let us see that staff crackle, there’s a good chap.”
    “Fingernails? Hair?”
    Rincewind tugged at the robe of Ponder Stibbons, who seemed slightly more sensible than the others.
    “Er. What’s my next move here?” he said.
    “Um. About six thousand miles, I hope,” said Ponder Stibbons.
    “But…I mean…Have you got any advice?”
    Ponder wondered how to put things. He thought: I’ve done my best with Hex, but the actual business will be undertaken by a bunch of wizards whose idea of experimental procedure is to throw it and then sit down and argue about where it’s going to land. We want to change your position with that of something six thousand miles away which, whatever the Archchancellor says, is heading through space in a quite different direction. The key is precision . It’s no good using any old traveling spell. It’d come apart halfway, and so would you. I’m pretty sure that we’ll get you there in one or, at worst, two pieces. But we’ve no way of knowing the weight of the thing we change you with. If it’s pretty much the same weight as you, then it might just all work out provided you don’t mind jogging on the spot when you land. But if it’s a lot heavier than you, then my suspicion is that you’ll appear over there traveling at the sort of speed normally only experienced by sleepwalkers in clifftop villages in a very terminal way.
    “Er,” he said. “Be afraid. Be very afraid.”
    “Oh, that ,” said Rincewind. “No problem there. I’m good at that.”
    “We’re going to try to put you in the center of the continent, where Hunghung is believed to be,” said Ponder.
    “The capital city?”
    “Yes. Er.” Ponder felt guilty. “Look, whatever happens I’m sure you’ll get there alive, which is more than would happen if it’d just been left to them. And I’m pretty sure you’ll end up on the right continent.”
    “Oh, good.”
    “Come along , Mr. Stibbons. We’re all agog to hear how you wish us to do this,” said Ridcully.
    “Ah, er, yes. Right. Now, you, Mr. Rincewind, if you will go and stand in the center of the octagon…thank you. Um. You see, gentlemen, what has always been the problem with teleporting over large distances is Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, * since the object teleported, that’s from tele , ‘I see,’ and porte , ‘to go,’ the whole meaning ‘I see it’s gone,’ er, the object teleported, er, no matter how large, is reduced to a thaumic particle and is therefore the subject of an eventually fatal dichotomy: it can either know what it is or where it is going, but not both. Er, the tension this creates in the morphic field eventually causes it to disintegrate, leaving the subject as a randomly shaped object, er, smeared across up to eleven dimensions. But I’m sure you all know this.”
    There was a snore from the Chair of Indefinite Studies, who was suddenly giving a lecture in room 3B.
    Rincewind was grinning. At least, his mouth had gaped open and his teeth were showing.
    “Er, excuse me,” he said. “I don’t remember anyone saying anything about being sm—”
    “Of course,” said Ponder, “the subject would not, er, actually experience this—”
    “Oh.”
    “—as far as we know—”
    “What?”
    “—although it is theoretically possible for the psyche to remain present—”
    “Eh?”
    “—to briefly witness the explosive discorporation.”
    “Hey?”
    “Now, we’re all familiar with the use of the spell as