The transing syndrome

The time is a few short years in the future. All private means of transport have been banned. People and goods are shifted by matter-transference. Sherman has a terror of 'transing'. He is convinced that whenever you step into a booth and dial yourself from one place to another, you are killed and a copy of you is created at the other end. His psychiatrist tells him that he is suffering from teleportation phobia. But around him people appear to be becoming cruder and cruder. Are they copies of copies? There are rumours of persons disappearing in transit, of others being duplicated and arriving in two places at the same time. Sherman's forced retirement allows him to feed on his obsession. A former motor car designer, his job has been abolished. In the age of unlimited mobility, his life has become static, reduced to old movies on TV with motor vehicles edited out, and dreary adult parties. He reaches the turning point when he awakens convinced that his heart has changed sides, that he has been reversed in a reversed field. So begins his one-man war against the powerful Teltrans Authority.