Gregory Benford - Timescape

“The ones I connected up?”

“Yeah, I guess. You drew this first?”

“No, Saul unscrambled it from a coded sequence. What about them?”

“Well, maybe it’s not a bunch of curves. Maybe the points are molecules. Or atoms. Nitrogen, hydrogen, phosphorus.”

“Like in DNA.”

“Well, this isn’t DNA. More complicated.”

“More complicated, or more complex?”

“Crap, I don’t know. What’s the difference?”

“You think it has some relation to those long-chain molecules?”

“Could be.”

“Those in-house names. Dupont and Springsomething.”

“Dupont Analagan 58. Springfield AD45.”

“Could this be one of those?”

“Those products don’t exist, I told you.”

“Okay, okay. But could they be that kind of thing?”

“Maybe. Maybe. Look, why don’t I see if I can figure this thing out.”

“How?”

“Well, try assigning atoms to the sites in the chains. See what works.”

“The way Crick and Watson did DNA?”

“Well, yeah, something like that.”

“Great. Maybe that’ll unravel some of—”

“Don’t count on it. Look, the important thing is the experiment. The oxygen loss, the fish. Hussinger and I are going to publish that right away.”

“Good, fine, and—”

“You don’t mind?”

“Huh? Why?”

“I mean, Hussinger says he thinks we should publish it together. If you and I want to do a paper on the message and its content; Hussinger says, that’s another—”

“Oh, I see.” Gordon rocked back in his chair. He felt worn down.

“I mean, I don’t go along with him on that one, but…”

“No, never mind. I don’t care. Publish it, for Chrissakes.”

“You don’t mind?”

“All I did was say, look into it. So you looked and you found something. Good.”

“It wasn’t my idea, this Hussinger thing.”

“I know that.”

“Well, thanks. Really. Look, I’ll follow up on this chain picture you got here.”

“If it is a chain.”

“Yeah. But I mean, maybe we can publish that. Together.”

“Fine. Fine.”

The resonance curves remained smooth. However, the noise level continued to rise. Gordon spent more of his time in the laboratory, trying to suppress the electromagnetic sputter. He had most of his lecture notes for the graduate course in Classical Electromagnetism finished, so he was free to pursue research. He abandoned his sample preparation, however, in favor of more time on the NMR rig. Cooper was still digesting his own data. The noise would not go away.

HE BANGED THE OUTER OFFICE DOOR SHUT AND thumped across the old broad-boarded flooring. He had a respectably ancient office, just off Naval Row, but at times he would just as soon have had less oiled wood and more modern air-conditioning. Ian Peterson, returning from a morning-long meeting, dumped a file of papers on his desk. His sinuses had a stuffed, cottony feel. Meetings invariably did that. He had felt a thin haze descend on his mind as the meeting progressed, sealing him off from much of the tedious detail and bickering. He knew the effect from years of experience; fatigue at so much talk, so many qualified phrases, so many experts covering their asses with carefully impersonal judgments.

He shook off the mood and thumbed into his desktop Sek. First, a list of incoming calls, arranged by priority. Peterson had carefully sorted out names into lists, so the answering Sek computer would know whether to alert him. The list changed weekly, as he moved from problem to problem. People who had once worked with him on a project had an annoying tendency to assume that they could then ring him up about continuing secondary issues, even months or years later.

Second, incoming memos, flagged with deadlines for reply.

Third, personal messages. Nothing there this time except a note from Sarah about her bloody party.

Fourth, news items of interest, broken down into abstracts. Last, minor unclassifiable items. No time for that today. He reviewed category One.

Hanschman, probably wailing about the metals problem. Peterson deflected that one to an assistant by typing in a three-letter symbol. Ellehlouh, the North African, with a last-gasp plea for more fly-ins to the new drought region. That he routed up to Opuktu. He was the officer in charge of selecting who got the grain and molasses shipments; let him take the flak. Call from that Kiefer in La Jolla, flagged urgent. Peterson picked up his telephone and punched through. Busy. He stabbed Repeat Call and said “Dr. Keifer” so the tape could add it to the “Mr. Peterson of the World Council is urgently trying to reach” message which now would try Kiefer’s number every twenty seconds.

Peterson turned to the memos and brightened. He punched for a screening of his own memo, dictated while riding to work this morning and machine-typed. He had never tried the system before.

deployed system is in the Gulf Stream hope I’ve got those capitalizations right off the Atlantic coast of Miami period yes. There is a four not oh special spelling button. I suppose k-n-o-t, there, a four knot current steady and reliable. Those currents rotate the giant turbine fans, producing enough electricity for all Florida. The turbines are admittedly huge, 500 meters in diameter. However, I would paraphrase the technical discussion as saying they are basically Victorian engineering. Large and simple. Their floating hull is 345 meters long and they hang fully 25 meters below the surface. That’s enough for passing ships to run safely over. The anchoring cables have to go down that’s t-w-o miles in some places. That is minor compared to the cables carrying power to land, but technical branch says that probably has no bad side effects either.

Our projections are that the nearest candidates—natural gas from seaweed and ocean thermal energy conversion—are hopelessly behind Coriolis. The name, as you undoubtedly know and I didn’t, springs from a French mathematician who had a hand in showing why ocean currents go as they do. Effects of the earth’s rotation and so on.

The snags are obvious. Having 400 of these slowing the Gulf Stream might be dicey. The weather pattern for much of the Atlantic Ocean hinges on that current, which sweeps by the US and Canada and then out to sea and back to the Caribbean is that the spelling must be. A full-scale numerical simulation on the omni all caps OMNI computer shows a measurable effect of one percent. Safe enough, by current guidelines.

Negative political impact is minimal. Introducing 40 gigawatts to that area will silence criticism of our halt to fishing, I should believe. I therefore advise prompt approvals. Yours sincerely et cetera.

Peterson grinned. Remarkable. They even assigned the most probable homonym. He corrected the piece and sent it off through the electronic labyrinth to Sir Martin. Committee flotsam and jetsam was for the assistants; Sir Martin saved his time for judgments, the delicate balancing act above the flood of information. He had taught Peterson a good deal, all the way down to such fine points as how to speak on a committee where your opponents are lying in wait. Sir Martin would pause and breathe in the middle of his sentences, then rush past the period at the end and on for a clause or two into the next sentence. No one knew when to make a smooth interruption.