John Hawks - The GoldenCity

“Good morning, Mr. Corrigan. We met several months ago when General Nash gave you a tour of the research center.”

“Yes. I remember.”

“Nash’s sudden death was a real shock to all of us. He was the principal force pushing for the quantum computer.”

“The board has decided to rename your building the Kennard Nash Computer Center,” Michael said. “If the General was still alive, he would also want to see some results. There have been too many delays in this project.”

“Of course, Mr. Corrigan. I share your concern.” A door opened automatically and Dr. Dressler led them down a hallway. “I do need to mention something before we enter the laboratory. Our research team is divided into two groups with different security clearances. The technicians and support staff have blue level access. A much smaller core group with red-level access knows about the messages we’ve received from our friends.”

“How do you know they’re friends?” Michael asked.

“That was General Nash’s view. He believed that the messages came from an advanced civilization in one of the different realms. Anyone who gives us such useful technical data should be considered friendly.”

The three men entered a control room filled with computer monitors and equipment panels that glowed with red and green lights. A window looked out on a much larger room where a woman wearing a head covering and two younger men in lab coats were testing the quantum computer. The computer itself was visually unimpressive, a stainless steel box about the size of an upright piano. Large electric cables were attached to the base of this box and smaller cables were attached to the side.

“Is this the quantum computer?” Michael asked. “It looks very different from what I remember.”

“It’s a whole new approach,” Dressler explained. “The old version used electrons floating in super-cooled helium. This new computer uses an oscillating electric field to control the spin-up or spin-down direction of individual electrons. The electrons serve as qubits-the quantum bits-of our machine.”

“So the technology is different, but it works the same way?”

“Yes. It’s the same principle. An ordinary computer-no matter how powerful it is-stores and processes information with bits that exist in either of two states: one or zero. But a qubit can be a one, a zero or a superposition of both values at the same time, allowing for an infinite number of states. This means our machine can calculate difficult problems a great deal faster than any computer currently in operation.”

Michael stepped closer to the computer, but he kept his hands away from the cables. “And how does this lead to messages from another civilization?”

“Quantum theory tells us that electrons can be multiple places at the same time. This is the reason why the atoms in a molecule don’t shatter when they bump into each other. The electrons act as both particle and wave-they form a sort of cloud that binds atoms together. Right now, our qubit electrons exist here, inside this machine, but they also ‘go away’ for a very brief moment.”

“They can’t just disappear,” Michael said. “They have to go somewhere.”

“We have reason to believe that the electrons enter a parallel world and then, when observed, return to our particular reality. It’s clear that our distant friends have designed a much more sophisticated quantum computer. They capture the particles, rearrange them into messages and send them back to us. The electrons shuttle back and forth between worlds so quickly that we only detect the result-not the motion itself.”

One of the young men rapped his knuckles on the window. Dressler nodded and switched on an intercom.

“We’ve done the system check three times,” the technician said. “Everything is ready to go.”

“Good. We’re going to start up now. Dr. Assad, would you please come into the control room.”

Dressler switched off the intercom as the young woman with the head-covering entered the control room. “I’d like you to meet Dr. Assad. She was born in Syria, but has spent most of her life here in the States. With Mr. Boone’s permission, she’s been given a red level security access.”

Dr. Assad smiled shyly and avoided Michael eyes. “It’s an honor to meet you, Mr. Corrigan.”

Everyone sat down and Dr. Dressler starting typing commands. Boone was the last person to find a chair, but he never relaxed. He was either watching the people in the room or studying the computer screen.

For the first hour, they followed an established protocol. Michael heard an electrical humming noise that started and paused and started again. Sometimes it was so loud the observation window began to vibrate. Dr. Assad had a round face and very dark eyebrows. She spoke with a calm voice as different levels of the computer were tested.

“The first ten qubits are operative. Now activating group two.”

As time passed, the computer woke up and became aware of its power. Dressler explained that the machine was able to learn from its mistakes and approach complex problems from different angles. During the second hour, Dr. Assad asked the computer to use Shor’s algorithm-a sequence of instructions that broke large numbers into smaller divisors. During the third hour, the machine began to examine the symmetries of something called an E-8, a geometric object that had 57 dimensions. After five hours had passed, Dr. Assad’s monitor screen went blank for a few seconds, and then the calculations continued without pause.

“What just happened?” Michael asked.

Dressler and Assad glanced at each other. “It’s what we saw last time,” Dressler said. “At a certain point, the computer begins sending substantial amounts of particles off to another realm.”

“So it’s like radio signals sent off into space?”

“Not exactly,” Dressler said. “It will take light years for radio and television signals to reach another galaxy. Our computer’s electrons are going to some place that’s not so distant-a parallel level of reality.”

Around the sixth hour, one of the technicians was sent out to get dinner. Everyone was munching on chips and sandwiches when the monitor screen flashed several times. Dr. Assad put down her mug of coffee and Dressler scooted his office chair over to her work station.

“It’s coming,” he said.

“What are you talking about?” Michael asked.

“The messages from our friends. This is what happened before,”

A dark wall of “plus” symbols flashed onto the screen. Then spaces appeared between them like holes in a wall. A few minutes later, the computer began creating geometric patterns. The first ones were flat like paper snowflakes, but then they gained dimension and symmetry. Balls, cylinders and cones floated across the screen as if they were being pushed by underwater currents.

“There!” Dressler shouted. “Right there! See it?” And everyone stared at the first number-a three.

More numbers appeared. Groups of them. Michael thought they were random, but Dr. Assad whispered, “This happened before. They’re special numbers. All prime.”

The monitor screen showed equations using different symbols, and then the equations vanished and shapes returned to the screen. Michael thought the shapes looked like balloons, but then they became living things: fat globular cells that divided in two and reproduced themselves.

Then-letters. At least, Dressler said they were letters. At first, they were geometric scribbles and scrawls that looked like graffiti scratched on a window. Then these symbols become solid and more familiar.

“That’s Hebrew,” Dr. Assad whispered. “That’s Arabic… definitely. Chinese… I think. I’m not sure.”