John Cramer - Einstein's Bridge

I can’t believe it, Alice thought. Jake is actually being magnanimous. Could he have had a personality transplant over the weekend? But what did he mean about the Snark not being the kind of object the SSC was built to study?

“Some might argue that Professor Griffin’s discovery lies outside the realm of particle physics. That it more properly belongs in the domain of astrophysics, SETI studies, or even extraterrestrial biology.” Jake paused and looked at the audience.

Okay, here it comes, Alice thought.

“But I feel that this great discovery was made in this laboratory and it should remain in this laboratory. I would like to suggest to the SSC director and the SSC executive committee, with all due respect for their prerogatives, that they should create a Snark task force to investigate this new phenomenon as fully and rapidly as possible, that significant laboratory resources be committed to this project, that additional external support be immediately sought from the funding agencies and foundations, and that Professor Griffin be asked to take a leave of absence from his university so that he can head this task force and devote his full effort to this project.” Again he turned to George. “And I want to congratulate Professor Griffin again for his remarkable achievement.”

Facing George, Jake began to clap, and soon the audience of the entire auditorium rose in a standing ovation.

The director strode up on the stage and warmly shook George’s hand. “We’ll take our break now,” he said into the microphone.

When she could get George’s attention, Alice, balancing her coffee cup and cinnamon roll, said quietly to him, “Was that really Jake Wang who said those things? Or was this a changeling swapped for Jake in the night by the elves?”

George laughed. “You have to be able to read your Jake,” he said. “Allow me to interpret. First, he saw no way of blocking work on the Snark, so he got out in front to lead the parade, radiating whatever reflected glory he could in the process. Second, he claimed as much credit as he could for the LEM detector as a device for discovering wormholes, and I’m sure he’ll continue to do so with rising intensity for the indefinite future. Third, he has effectively moved all work on the Snark as far from LEM as possible, sending me with it. And finally, he’s suggested that general laboratory funds and external funds be used to support whatever work is done on the Snark, meaning that LEM funds will not be spent on it. Understand now?”

“He’s moved you out of his road, so he can get on with discovering the Higgs?” Alice asked.

“Exactly,” said George. “I suppose I might have done something similar in his place.” He winked at her.

A tone sounded in the hallway, indicating that the second part of the seminar was about to begin. Together they walked back into the lecture theater.

THE DISTINGUISHED VISITORS WHO HAD PARTICIPATED in the Snark seminar this morning stood clumped together, their attention directed at the large flatscreen mounted on the Snark laboratory wall. It displayed the bit-stream from the Snark, rendered as a 1728 by 1728 pixel bit-map image. The display changed as the bit-stream came in, cycling through the same twelve images every two hours. A nearby oscilloscope showed the changing waveform of the transmission.

Alice leaned against the wall opposite the flatscreen. She had seen the images enough times to have memorized them all by now. She was growing impatient.

On the lab bench rested the now-famous Snark scintillator unit. It was connected to several cables that led to an electronics rack standing beside the bench. The electronics provided the signals and protocol for connecting the device to the local area network. As far as the network was concerned, the Snark was now just one more node.

George sat at the old-fashioned computer terminal, looking up at Roger.

“What are you waiting for, George?” Alice asked. She had a sense of being present at a historic moment. She thought again about the Snark book she intended to write and wondered what kind of advance it might bring.

“This is the moment of truth, Roger,” he said. “When I hit this computer key, we will have done something irreversible. We will have revealed ourselves to an alien civilization that must be far more advanced than we are. We’ll signal them that we exist and wish to communicate. Once I hit the key, the world becomes a different place. Do I really want to do it?”

Alice made rapid notes, not wanting to miss anything.

Roger looked at George. “Your options are very limited, I’m afraid. The rumors of our work have been going out like a tidal wave. Many people in other places attended the seminar this morning using remotes, and the computer mail is flying. I predict that by tomorrow there will be an Internet discussion group devoted exclusively to speculations and news about the Snark. I predict that soon an army of reporters will converge on the laboratory, with bureaucrats from a whole array of federal agencies not far behind. I think there are only two choices. You can initiate communications right now, or you can let a bunch of State Department or military bureaucrats do it. Your choice, George.”

George bit his lip and shook his head. “Shit!” he said and hit the return key.

“That may become a famous quote, George, like ‘Damn the torpedoes — full speed ahead!’ or ‘One small step for a man…’” Alice said, writing more in her notebook.

“Let the record show,” said Roger, “that George said, ‘I initiate this contact in the name of all humankind,’ before he hit the final keystroke.” He grinned.

The message that Roger, Wilson Mulligan, and their rapidly assembled team of SETI experts had prepared began to flow into the Snark. It had not been necessary to prepare it from a cold start. The community of radio astronomers, mathematicians, psychologists, and others interested in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, despite their battles with former Senator Proxmire and other members of Congress, had been refining a basic strategy for establishing contact with an alien civilization for the past four decades. Parts of that plan, of course, were irrelevant. There seemed little point in communicating to residents of another universe the coordinates of pulsars near the solar system, for example. But most of the approach was directly applicable to the problem of contact: the sequence of smooth transitions from mathematics to physics to chemistry to biology to language to culture. A distillation of this approach, distilled to a bit-stream, was now flowing down the cables and through the Snark, to emerge in another universe.

Alice backed away from the wallscreen and studied it. There was no change in the sequence of diagram. It was presently tracing the last few lines of the Snark version of the periodic table of the elements, one of the diagrams it had repeated in roughly two-hour intervals for the past week. The nuclear chemists were fascinated by this diagram, which extended to element number 128, some seventeen positions beyond the place where our own periodic table of known elements terminated.

Perhaps, Alice thought, Roger was right and the communications link, if one were possible at all, would require months or years, even centuries to establish. How short could a wormhole path be that connected one entire universe with another? This could be a long wait.

The periodic table diagram on the flatscreen had just completed. Alice watched it, anticipating that the next diagram, which depicted atomic orbits and transitions, would be displayed. But the flatscreen remained unchanged, with no update trace proceeding across the top, and the oscilloscope beside it now showed a green blur. Alice glanced across the room to the electronics rack. Angry red lights were flashing from the data-processing modules there.