i'm from linebyline and followed you here, fellow writer.
(please dont be creeped out...)

i actually like your first answer better.
thats the kind of stuff prompts are supposed to do... make you think creatively.
as a writer you can totally discover (or invent) an instantaneous teleportation machine.

so take it and run with it... who is the mad scientist that discovers it? or is it a genius who trapped his mind in a cat who invents it and (of course) no one is going to take a cat seriously on the gas crisis ... you can do SO many things with that asnwer.