Description:
Teleporters do not provoke the kind of persistent worry that telepaths induce in most normals, but their particular gifts cause a more physical concern. An experienced teleporter can reach or see into any location they’ve ever been; security officials don’t just need to make sure that no teleporter is in a restricted area, but that they’ve never been there before at any time. Access into the most important areas is carefully filtered to ensure that no outside teleporter ever gets a chance to see a location they might suddenly appear in several months or years later.
Most governments with access to trained psychics will have at least a few expert teleporters on hand to provide untraceable communications links and superlative infiltrators. Despite their many advantages in intrusion and evasion, however, a teleporter needs the skills to actually get into a restricted area before they can take advantage of a quick escape. It’s not unknown for teleporters to be paired with more conventional burglars who supply the security-defeating skills and information gathering talents that a professional psychic doesn’t always have the time to cultivate.
The criminal applications of teleportation are obvious, as is its utility in surveillance. Some bold teleporters make excellent money as thieves or spies for whatever employer can afford their exorbitant fees. The price for their services is invariably high, not only due to the rarity of experienced teleporters, but due to the consequences of arrest.
As tempting as the criminal path can be for many teleporters, most are dissuaded by the penalties. Very few worlds have prison facilities that are in any way designed to cope with teleporting inmates. On advanced worlds, this means that criminal teleporters are often implanted with surgical bombs keyed to explode if they leave a restricted area or stop receiving a specific signal from a government transmitter. On primitive worlds, this means that criminal teleporters face summary execution for any crime more serious than a misdemeanor.
Some devices can be used to defeat teleporters, creating a curdled patch of metadimensional space that is impossible to enter or leave via teleportation. These ancient pretech artifacts are invariably ridiculously expensive in the unlikely case that a planetary government allows them to remain in private hands at all, and only the most important figures of an advanced world will have any access to teleporter-sealed “safe zones”. Many worlds have no access to such devices at all, with even princes and potentates left to keep a wary eye on teleporting psychics. A metapsion brainguard is the usual low-tech answer to psychic threats, if such an expensive mercenary can be hired on the world.