The question now was how to even begin.
“To be honest, I am not so sure I actually can explain it. Well, it is… no, that is not right. If you look at the different dimensions… no, not right either. Not even the right word.
Heck, there are no right words. No language I know of has anything even remotely capable of describing how a Q-link works. It is so far out there… maybe Clarke's third law… but no, that will do nothing to explain…”
I rubbed my temples, feeling the headache coming, even here in cyberspace.
“I could… yes, that could work. Ok, I think I have a way to explain it. At least partially.
So, have you ever heard about quantum entanglement?”
To give him credit, while it was obvious that he had no clue about it, he kept showing interest.
“No, I can’t say I have. I mean, it is obvious that it has something to do with quantum physics, but that’s all I have.”
“No worry. It is nothing that would concern you. Basically, it is a fringe phenomenon in quantum physics.
In certain circumstances, a couple of subatomic particles can become entangled with each other. One of the factors is that they have in the same location for the entanglement to happen.
Now, as long as the entanglement is not broken, which can happen pretty quickly if something goes wrong, the universe treats these two particles as one. If anything influences one of them, it influences the other exactly the same way in exactly the same instant.
And it is completely irrelevant if they no longer are in the same location. They can be a few centimeters apart, a few meters, or on the other side of the galaxy from each other.
The instant something happens to one of them, it happens to the other.”
Ben frowned and looked pretty thoughtful.
“That can’t be right. That would mean instant communication, and it still takes hours one way into the outer system.”
“You would be right, it would mean instant communication if the uncertainty principle would not play spoilsport here.
Essentially, anything that can be entangled that way is small enough that simply checking the status of the entangled particles means changing its status randomly.
It has some uses in the verification of a light-speed signal for interference, but that is it.
No breaking relativity that way.”
“Hm, ok, so it is mostly a curiosity but not important in real life. And the way you tell it, you are not talking about your Q-links here. So what gives?”
I inhaled deeply, before continuing.
“What gives is that I… learned how quantum entanglement actually works. Just to make it clear, it simply should not be possible according to Einstein. But it exists, so Einstein must have had some things wrong.
Again, I have learned how it works. And, much more important, I learned how to induce a much deeper entanglement between bigger things than particles.
What I mean is, that I can entangle complete atoms, or even molecules, to an extent that, when one of them gets electrically stimulated, so does the other.
Those are the Q-links. Single carbon atoms that act as an electrical conduit for a signal.
Or an electromagnetic signal.
And while quantum entanglement is… fragile, Q-links are much harder. They are… also more versatile. Instead of just two particles, I can link several atoms together, in a form of broadcasting.”
Ben just sat there silent for some time, until he finally answered me:
“You are saying you have… an instant communication system. With what? Unlimited range?”
“In a way, yes. It is… much more complicated than that, and the real way it works is actually at no range but… frick, that is so complicated.”
He inhaled deeply a couple of times.
“Yes, I can see that this… is an advantage. I can also see that it will be bad if it is known. But… hell, how? Yes, I get that you are smart, but how the fuck did you discover something like that?”
I sunk back into my chair.
“I… didn’t. Not… really. I found it, but somebody else discovered it.”
“Of course you found it. How else… fuck, Vivian, how comes nobody but you has that?”
“That… is the complicated part. Do you remember that when I had finished the Lamb, I learned to enjoy finding out things, tinkering?
Early on, I desperately tried to engage my mind in other things than revenge and rage. I searched for the most esoteric, hard-to-understand science texts I could find. The more obscure, the better. Anything to distract me.”
I had the urgent need for some coffee, so I spawned some.
“Do you want some?”
Without waiting for his answer I spawned a cup for him as well, while I took a sip.
“Roughly a year, maybe a year and a half later, I found some leads to a science paper that… had the reputation to drive people mad. I thought I had nothing to lose there.”
“That… is debatable. But please continue.”
“I managed, after some digging, to find a copy of it. Seeberger’s last hypothesis. Or Seeberger’s madness, as some called it.”
“Who is Seeberger?”
“Andreas Seeberger was a professor for theoretical physics at one of the better European universities I think. It is a crime that his name is so unknown. By rights, he should be talked in the same way people talk about Newton or Einstein.
But three factors made his work… well lost.
First, when he published his hypothesis, I can only assume that he made a typo. Nothing too bad normally, just a mistyped letter. An h instead of a g. Unfortunately, it was deep in the bowels of the main equation. An equation that gives one a headache just looking at it.
At least when I played with the math, it made no sense to me, and I looked deeper and discovered that the h in that place made no sense, and invalidated the whole equation.
I have to assume that he actually had the right equation because the rest of the paper works perfectly when you use the corrected equation.
So, the next unfortunate point was that just two days after submitting the paper, and roughly a couple of weeks before the first feedback that it was not working came in, he had a fatal car accident.
So he was no longer around to correct the typo.
Still, that was before the war, so there were enough people knowledgeable enough to find the mistake and correct it.
If… he did not have his accident on January 28th, 2079.”
It took a moment, but then Ben groaned and buried his head in his hands.
“So… all that happened just two weeks before world war III started?”
“Yep. And when China visited Taiwan, people had pretty quickly other things to do than trying to understand the math he devised. And after the war, it was mostly forgotten.
It did not help that physicists were preferred targets of assassinations on all sides. I am not sure that after the war there were even a dozen people who were smart and educated enough to get what Seeberger wanted to say, much less to understand that he had made a typo.
And with Sanderson's Folly in effect, it’s gone downhill from there. Until K4.”
“So, a revolutionary new step in humanity lost because of bad timing?”
“You get it. Honestly, after the war, everybody who tried to understand the paper… either they gave up, or were the sort of kooks that are easily, and all too often rightfully, stamped as insane. So of course it had the reputation of inducing insanity.”
“That did not stop you from looking into it, apparently.”
He sounded slightly amused but did not comment further.
I lifted my hands and shrugged.
“Yeah, sure. I was not all that sane anyway as I see it. I honestly did not expect to get anything out of it. I did it just… well, I needed a distraction. It helped that I could not find the English version. I had to learn Seeberger's language to be able to read it.
And at first, I got exactly what I expected. A nice puzzle without an available solution. It took me quite some time to get to the point where I could actually understand it as much as it could be understood.“
I needed to do something with my hands and spontaneously spawned an old-fashioned pen, after I placed the never-ending cup back on the table, and began playing with it.
“I expected to read it, decipher it as far as it was possible, laugh about it and then put it aside. I managed the former two, with some effort. The latter two, not so much.
I don’t know… somehow, something made click for me. For some reason I… just… knew that the equation was wrong. I could not tell you how I knew, or even when I knew. I just suddenly realized that I knew.
I was delighted. The puzzle had turned out to be even… more interesting, more distracting. It took me nearly a month, virtual that is, to find out why the equation was… wrong. It took me another month to find out what variable I had to use instead.”
I whirled the pen around my fingers, looking sometimes at it, but without real attention to it.
“Not that I expected the hypothesis to suddenly work just because the equation was correct. It was just something to divert myself, keep myself from crossing the event horizon.
But suddenly, it all made sense. I had previously only dipped my toe into physics, I was more an engineer than a scientist, or at least I’ve seen myself so. But I had learned enough to at least get the basic idea.
The next couple of months I invested much more… energy into physics, especially the more advanced parts. Quantum physics, string theory, relativity theory, the height of our knowledge of the universe.
And I understood more and more of Seeberger’s hypothesis.”
I took another sip of the coffee, becoming more and more agitated.
“It was… it is… brilliant. Simply brilliant. The man should have been celebrated as one of the greatest scientists of all time. Here he was and discovered the holy grail of physics, the fricking holy grail, and nobody knew about it just because of a fucking typo.”
At that moment I realized that I was basically screaming at Ben. I closed my eyes, shook my head to clear my thoughts, and generally tried to calm down. Ben used that moment to ask a question.
“The holy grail?”
I deeply inhaled and exhaled a couple of times, spreading my hands to regain my composure before I answered.
“He… he discovered the theory of everything. No, that does not sound right. He discovered the Theory of Everything. Yes, better.” I had taken special care to emphasize the capitalization.
“The one theory that explains, well everything. I… barely scratched the dust layer on the surface and I… already know so much more than the physicists from before the great war… it is scary.”
I finally managed to calm down somewhat, and a sudden thought crossed my mind, and I sat up straight.
“Why the heck am I even telling you this? I… this is squarely among my most important, most valuable secrets.”
I was, frankly, pretty bewildered. In retrospect, I realized that I had gotten louder and more energetic continuously while I told about it. I looked at Warden to see if she had any idea, but she just sat there, unmoving, and seemingly uninterested. Then I looked at Ben, and he was smiling this mild, knowing smile, as if he was looking at a particularly bright child.
After he looked into my eyes for a few seconds, he answered me.
“I… might have a clue why. Do you want to hear it?”
I nodded, still perplexed.
“Ok. First, a question, to make sure I am right. I assume that you are proud of it?”
I frowned. Was he joking?
“Yes, of course. This may be the most momentous discovery since… well, at least Einstein, but probably much further back. So yes, naturally I am proud of it.”
His smile intensified.
“And you are obviously pretty passionate about it, and what happened to… Seeberg?”
Just fine. Instead of giving me a clue about what he thought was going on, he confused me even more.
“I… am? And it is Seeberger.”
“Oh yes. Honestly, I’ve not seen you so… engaged about any topic, not even your new cyberware. This is what you are born to do.”
I looked at him slack-mouthed.
“Oh-kay…” I drawled that one word pretty hard.
“If you say so?”
He chuckled.
“Oh yes, that is pretty clear by now. And that is the reason why you told me about it. You are desperate to share it with somebody, anybody really. This, not the replicator, is your masterwork. The thing you are most proud about. But you couldn’t. You did not have anybody who you could even marginally trust with this… knowledge. Until now.”
Could he be right? Could that be it? But if he was right, how did he know it. Another, much darker thought came to me. I felt as if a cold hand had gripped my heart and began to squeeze.
“You… that was psychobabble. Are you a… psychologist?”
He snorted.
“As if I had ever the time to learn psychology. No, I am just good with people. A psychologist, a good one at least, is as well, but that doesn’t make me one. I have to confess though that I’ve read some books about it, but nothing special.”
Did I… could I, really trust him about that? He… he could be lying. But… was that so bad? Would that change anything? I realized that I had instinctively increased my compression where he could not follow me. That allowed me much more time to think.
If… well if I could think at all that is.
My thoughts were coursing chaotically. On one hand, I had no indication that he was lying. But… somebody in his position, I was pretty sure that he was very good at it. So the first question was, did I trust him? After a bit of thinking I concluded that for now, yes, I would.
But I would look into it further.
So the next question, if I later found out that he had lied about it… was it really that bad? That important?
I shuddered when I realized that yes, it was. I would not… could not really, trust any psychologist. I knew enough about it to know that this… trust issue was not entirely, ok not even a little bit, rational. It was justified, no question about it, but even I knew that the… psyops jerks were not really psychologists, counselors, or however they called themselves.
That did not change the fact that I… just couldn’t be near one of them.
But what would I do now? Or if I found out that he had lied?
With trembling hands, I took a few cleansing breaths again. I would have to nuke that bridge when I came to it.
Left just the question of what to do now? Could I trust him far enough for now to continue?
The question now was how to even begin.
“To be honest, I am not so sure I actually can explain it. Well, it is… no, that is not right. If you look at the different dimensions… no, not right either. Not even the right word.
Heck, there are no right words. No language I know of has anything even remotely capable of describing how a Q-link works. It is so far out there… maybe Clarke's third law… but no, that will do nothing to explain…”
I rubbed my temples, feeling the headache coming, even here in cyberspace.
“I could… yes, that could work. Ok, I think I have a way to explain it. At least partially.
So, have you ever heard about quantum entanglement?”
To give him credit, while it was obvious that he had no clue about it, he kept showing interest.
“No, I can’t say I have. I mean, it is obvious that it has something to do with quantum physics, but that’s all I have.”
“No worry. It is nothing that would concern you. Basically, it is a fringe phenomenon in quantum physics.
In certain circumstances, a couple of subatomic particles can become entangled with each other. One of the factors is that they have in the same location for the entanglement to happen.
Now, as long as the entanglement is not broken, which can happen pretty quickly if something goes wrong, the universe treats these two particles as one. If anything influences one of them, it influences the other exactly the same way in exactly the same instant.
And it is completely irrelevant if they no longer are in the same location. They can be a few centimeters apart, a few meters, or on the other side of the galaxy from each other.
The instant something happens to one of them, it happens to the other.”
Ben frowned and looked pretty thoughtful.
“That can’t be right. That would mean instant communication, and it still takes hours one way into the outer system.”
“You would be right, it would mean instant communication if the uncertainty principle would not play spoilsport here.
Essentially, anything that can be entangled that way is small enough that simply checking the status of the entangled particles means changing its status randomly.
It has some uses in the verification of a light-speed signal for interference, but that is it.
No breaking relativity that way.”
“Hm, ok, so it is mostly a curiosity but not important in real life. And the way you tell it, you are not talking about your Q-links here. So what gives?”
I inhaled deeply, before continuing.
“What gives is that I… learned how quantum entanglement actually works. Just to make it clear, it simply should not be possible according to Einstein. But it exists, so Einstein must have had some things wrong.
Again, I have learned how it works. And, much more important, I learned how to induce a much deeper entanglement between bigger things than particles.
What I mean is, that I can entangle complete atoms, or even molecules, to an extent that, when one of them gets electrically stimulated, so does the other.
Those are the Q-links. Single carbon atoms that act as an electrical conduit for a signal.
Or an electromagnetic signal.
And while quantum entanglement is… fragile, Q-links are much harder. They are… also more versatile. Instead of just two particles, I can link several atoms together, in a form of broadcasting.”
Ben just sat there silent for some time, until he finally answered me:
“You are saying you have… an instant communication system. With what? Unlimited range?”
“In a way, yes. It is… much more complicated than that, and the real way it works is actually at no range but… frick, that is so complicated.”
He inhaled deeply a couple of times.
“Yes, I can see that this… is an advantage. I can also see that it will be bad if it is known. But… hell, how? Yes, I get that you are smart, but how the fuck did you discover something like that?”
I sunk back into my chair.
“I… didn’t. Not… really. I found it, but somebody else discovered it.”
“Of course you found it. How else… fuck, Vivian, how comes nobody but you has that?”
“That… is the complicated part. Do you remember that when I had finished the Lamb, I learned to enjoy finding out things, tinkering?
Early on, I desperately tried to engage my mind in other things than revenge and rage. I searched for the most esoteric, hard-to-understand science texts I could find. The more obscure, the better. Anything to distract me.”
I had the urgent need for some coffee, so I spawned some.
“Do you want some?”
Without waiting for his answer I spawned a cup for him as well, while I took a sip.
“Roughly a year, maybe a year and a half later, I found some leads to a science paper that… had the reputation to drive people mad. I thought I had nothing to lose there.”
“That… is debatable. But please continue.”
“I managed, after some digging, to find a copy of it. Seeberger’s last hypothesis. Or Seeberger’s madness, as some called it.”
“Who is Seeberger?”
“Andreas Seeberger was a professor for theoretical physics at one of the better European universities I think. It is a crime that his name is so unknown. By rights, he should be talked in the same way people talk about Newton or Einstein.
But three factors made his work… well lost.
First, when he published his hypothesis, I can only assume that he made a typo. Nothing too bad normally, just a mistyped letter. An h instead of a g. Unfortunately, it was deep in the bowels of the main equation. An equation that gives one a headache just looking at it.
At least when I played with the math, it made no sense to me, and I looked deeper and discovered that the h in that place made no sense, and invalidated the whole equation.
I have to assume that he actually had the right equation because the rest of the paper works perfectly when you use the corrected equation.
So, the next unfortunate point was that just two days after submitting the paper, and roughly a couple of weeks before the first feedback that it was not working came in, he had a fatal car accident.
So he was no longer around to correct the typo.
Still, that was before the war, so there were enough people knowledgeable enough to find the mistake and correct it.
If… he did not have his accident on January 28th, 2079.”
It took a moment, but then Ben groaned and buried his head in his hands.
“So… all that happened just two weeks before world war III started?”
“Yep. And when China visited Taiwan, people had pretty quickly other things to do than trying to understand the math he devised. And after the war, it was mostly forgotten.
It did not help that physicists were preferred targets of assassinations on all sides. I am not sure that after the war there were even a dozen people who were smart and educated enough to get what Seeberger wanted to say, much less to understand that he had made a typo.
And with Sanderson's Folly in effect, it’s gone downhill from there. Until K4.”
“So, a revolutionary new step in humanity lost because of bad timing?”
“You get it. Honestly, after the war, everybody who tried to understand the paper… either they gave up, or were the sort of kooks that are easily, and all too often rightfully, stamped as insane. So of course it had the reputation of inducing insanity.”
“That did not stop you from looking into it, apparently.”
He sounded slightly amused but did not comment further.
I lifted my hands and shrugged.
“Yeah, sure. I was not all that sane anyway as I see it. I honestly did not expect to get anything out of it. I did it just… well, I needed a distraction. It helped that I could not find the English version. I had to learn Seeberger's language to be able to read it.
And at first, I got exactly what I expected. A nice puzzle without an available solution. It took me quite some time to get to the point where I could actually understand it as much as it could be understood.“
I needed to do something with my hands and spontaneously spawned an old-fashioned pen, after I placed the never-ending cup back on the table, and began playing with it.
“I expected to read it, decipher it as far as it was possible, laugh about it and then put it aside. I managed the former two, with some effort. The latter two, not so much.
I don’t know… somehow, something made click for me. For some reason I… just… knew that the equation was wrong. I could not tell you how I knew, or even when I knew. I just suddenly realized that I knew.
I was delighted. The puzzle had turned out to be even… more interesting, more distracting. It took me nearly a month, virtual that is, to find out why the equation was… wrong. It took me another month to find out what variable I had to use instead.”
I whirled the pen around my fingers, looking sometimes at it, but without real attention to it.
“Not that I expected the hypothesis to suddenly work just because the equation was correct. It was just something to divert myself, keep myself from crossing the event horizon.
But suddenly, it all made sense. I had previously only dipped my toe into physics, I was more an engineer than a scientist, or at least I’ve seen myself so. But I had learned enough to at least get the basic idea.
The next couple of months I invested much more… energy into physics, especially the more advanced parts. Quantum physics, string theory, relativity theory, the height of our knowledge of the universe.
And I understood more and more of Seeberger’s hypothesis.”
I took another sip of the coffee, becoming more and more agitated.
“It was… it is… brilliant. Simply brilliant. The man should have been celebrated as one of the greatest scientists of all time. Here he was and discovered the holy grail of physics, the fricking holy grail, and nobody knew about it just because of a fucking typo.”
At that moment I realized that I was basically screaming at Ben. I closed my eyes, shook my head to clear my thoughts, and generally tried to calm down. Ben used that moment to ask a question.
“The holy grail?”
I deeply inhaled and exhaled a couple of times, spreading my hands to regain my composure before I answered.
“He… he discovered the theory of everything. No, that does not sound right. He discovered the Theory of Everything. Yes, better.” I had taken special care to emphasize the capitalization.
“The one theory that explains, well everything. I… barely scratched the dust layer on the surface and I… already know so much more than the physicists from before the great war… it is scary.”
I finally managed to calm down somewhat, and a sudden thought crossed my mind, and I sat up straight.
“Why the heck am I even telling you this? I… this is squarely among my most important, most valuable secrets.”
I was, frankly, pretty bewildered. In retrospect, I realized that I had gotten louder and more energetic continuously while I told about it. I looked at Warden to see if she had any idea, but she just sat there, unmoving, and seemingly uninterested. Then I looked at Ben, and he was smiling this mild, knowing smile, as if he was looking at a particularly bright child.
After he looked into my eyes for a few seconds, he answered me.
“I… might have a clue why. Do you want to hear it?”
I nodded, still perplexed.
“Ok. First, a question, to make sure I am right. I assume that you are proud of it?”
I frowned. Was he joking?
“Yes, of course. This may be the most momentous discovery since… well, at least Einstein, but probably much further back. So yes, naturally I am proud of it.”
His smile intensified.
“And you are obviously pretty passionate about it, and what happened to… Seeberg?”
Just fine. Instead of giving me a clue about what he thought was going on, he confused me even more.
“I… am? And it is Seeberger.”
“Oh yes. Honestly, I’ve not seen you so… engaged about any topic, not even your new cyberware. This is what you are born to do.”
I looked at him slack-mouthed.
“Oh-kay…” I drawled that one word pretty hard.
“If you say so?”
He chuckled.
“Oh yes, that is pretty clear by now. And that is the reason why you told me about it. You are desperate to share it with somebody, anybody really. This, not the replicator, is your masterwork. The thing you are most proud about. But you couldn’t. You did not have anybody who you could even marginally trust with this… knowledge. Until now.”
Could he be right? Could that be it? But if he was right, how did he know it. Another, much darker thought came to me. I felt as if a cold hand had gripped my heart and began to squeeze.
“You… that was psychobabble. Are you a… psychologist?”
He snorted.
“As if I had ever the time to learn psychology. No, I am just good with people. A psychologist, a good one at least, is as well, but that doesn’t make me one. I have to confess though that I’ve read some books about it, but nothing special.”
Did I… could I, really trust him about that? He… he could be lying. But… was that so bad? Would that change anything? I realized that I had instinctively increased my compression where he could not follow me. That allowed me much more time to think.
If… well if I could think at all that is.
My thoughts were coursing chaotically. On one hand, I had no indication that he was lying. But… somebody in his position, I was pretty sure that he was very good at it. So the first question was, did I trust him? After a bit of thinking I concluded that for now, yes, I would.
But I would look into it further.
So the next question, if I later found out that he had lied about it… was it really that bad? That important?
I shuddered when I realized that yes, it was. I would not… could not really, trust any psychologist. I knew enough about it to know that this… trust issue was not entirely, ok not even a little bit, rational. It was justified, no question about it, but even I knew that the… psyops jerks were not really psychologists, counselors, or however they called themselves.
That did not change the fact that I… just couldn’t be near one of them.
But what would I do now? Or if I found out that he had lied?
With trembling hands, I took a few cleansing breaths again. I would have to nuke that bridge when I came to it.
Left just the question of what to do now? Could I trust him far enough for now to continue?
