"And you can reassemble me when it's done?"

"Oh yes," the technician assured Caroline. Our system tracks your exact mechanical pattern so that you can be reconstituted, body and mind intact."

"Well.. then, it's settled!" Caroline said resolutely, taking off the last of her clothes and stepping up onto the insulating metal platform.

The machine whirred, and before Caroline even had a chance to get cold, a beam of overwhelming energy crackled through Caroline's body. At once, the pleasure flowing into her nerves was too much to bear--she arched her back and screamed in ecstasy as the machine continued to crackle. She trembled in helpless bliss as the power continued to crackle into her, making her nude body glow first white, then blue. Finally the molecules in her body could no longer hold together, and they escaped as a puff of energetic gas, Caroline's scream of joy fading into a whisper, then silence.