John Cramer - Einstein's Bridge

Alice carefully demonstrated her method to the child, who successfully transferred a roll of spaghetti and sauce to her mouth. She tasted it thoughtfully. “That is very interesting,” she said, taking a drink of water. “It is sweet and hot and salty and a bit bitter, all at the same time. In a human body the sensation of eating is very different from that of the Makers. It’s a very pleasant sensation.” She began to eat the spaghetti with some enthusiasm.

After they had finished off all of the spaghetti, they had more wine and Iris commenced the Reading lessons.

“You must understand,” she began, “that I will only be able to teach you a few basic skills now. The arts of Reading and Writing require lifetimes of work and discovery. You are at the starting point of a very long road. You must not expect too much too soon. But let us begin.”

As Alice had done by accident, they were instructed to place their right hand in contact with the soft flesh under their left arm, close their eyes, and concentrate.

After the electric sensation that Alice had experienced previously, the Reading commenced. Alice became aware of her own body in a way she could never have imagined. She could see clearly the small miracles of its operation, the cycles and processes she took for granted or was simply unaware of. She could see the tendencies to accumulate fat in the wrong places, the muscle tone that was withheld unless pounded in with physical exercise. She could see the programming associated with aging, the withdrawal of hormones and collagen replacement, the cross-linked proteins that were allowed to accumulate, the wrinkles, sags, and crow’s-feet that were the consequence. She could see the wired-in hair-graying cycle, the biological clock ticking toward the onset of her menopause.

She could also see the outright defects, the tendencies toward breast cancer, arterial plaque, and calcium loss that were part of her genetic heritage. “That’s awful!” she said aloud and looked around. George and Roger lost their self-absorbed expressions and looked at her, nodding in agreement.

“To me,” said Iris, “all of you Read like untended gardens that have been allowed to go to seed and decay. Now that you see the problems, perhaps we can begin to work on the solutions. Let me give you an example.” She swiped her index finger across each of their palms. “Read that,” she said.

Alice concentrated on the area of her right hand that Iris had just touched. Somehow she could see that it was a virus. She focused on it, wondering what its function was. Suddenly the answer popped into sharp focus. It was a retrovirus designed to transcribe itself permanently into a human cell nucleus as a small loop of DNA that coded for a specific enzyme.

What did this enzyme do? She considered this, and the answer became startlingly clear. In normal cells each strand of DNA had a special noncoding segment on each end, like the plastic tips of a shoestring. She could see that each time a cell divided this special end segment became shorter. And finally, when the segment length went to zero, the cell could not divide again, the natural cell renewal processes stopped, and the body began to age. The new enzyme systematically restored the end segments to human DNA. It did not require cells to divide, but it allowed them to when the body’s repair mechanisms made the request. “Wow!’ said Alice aloud. “It’s the Fountain of Youth!”

WOLFGANG STOOD AS GEORGE WALKED INTO THE underground laboratory that now housed the Snark. “Well,” he said, “welcome back. It looks as if your vacation did you good. You look very healthy.” They shook hands. Wolfgang looked down at his hand as he withdrew it.

“I had to make a quick trip over to Seattle,” said George. “Not particularly restful.”

“I must go to Seattle sometime,” said Wolfgang. “You look ten years younger.”

“Perhaps it’s the coffee,” George said. “How has our Snark been behaving while I’ve been gone?”

“Schlecht,” said Wolfgang. “The day after you left, the second-level transmissions from the Makers stopped. Tunnel Maker is still talking to us, but he’s been rather evasive about further large transmissions. He says they have come to the end of their prepared downloads. From now on we should ask questions or request specific information. On the other hand, his end is still downloading massive quantities of our data from the Internet, the Web, the NSF net, and various proprietary databases that they have bought access to, using the bank account we provided. I’ve watched it on the monitor. There is no subject, from pornography to pet grooming, that has escaped their notice.”

“Hmm,” said George. “What happens when you do make a request for further information?”

“When I’ve tried,” said Wolfgang, “Tunnel Maker has usually given me a reference to data that we’ve already downloaded. It’s certainly true that it’s going to take us a long time to digest all the information they’ve already provided, but surely that’s not all there is. It seems the equivalent of giving a child a set of encyclopedias instead of educating him.”

“What about this end?” asked George.

Wolfgang gestured toward the equipment racks. “We made many equipment changes. I think we’ve reached some limit to the transmission rate. We’re up to two hundred megabaud now, and it seems difficult to go higher.”

“Any problems with outside interference?”

“We had an official visit. Your SSC director showed up here with a big group of ‘interested parties’ from various of your government agencies. There were people from your DOE, FBI, CIA, NSA, and some military officers in uniform. The military people said their experts had been studying the downloads and had some questions about the Hive species mentioned in them. They were once again threatening to take the Snark and move it to a secure site, but we convinced them that as long as the data was streaming in from the Makers, we shouldn’t change anything. I don’t know how long that will last.”

“Okay, Wolfgang, thanks for all your effort here,” said George. “I can take over now, if you’ve got things to do. I need to talk to Tunnel Maker. Perhaps I can get a clue as to what’s going on.”

Wolfgang looked relieved. “I’m glad you’re back, George,” he said. “I’ve been practically living here, and my wife is beginning to complain.”

As they shook hands again, George looked at him closely. “You don’t look so well, Wolfgang,” he said. “Perhaps you’re coming down with some virus. I’ve heard there’s a new flu strain going around. Perhaps you should take a few days off.” He wondered how Wolfgang would react when he began to Read.

Wolfgang blinked, surprised. “I feel well enough,” he said as he left. “But I’ll be careful. Danke. ”

After checking the door, George triggered the microphone connection. “Okay, Tunnel Maker, we’re back. We hatched your Egg in the Gulf of Mexico. Your daughter, Iris, is a lovely child. We like her very much.”

“Yes,” the voice of Tunnel Maker came from the speaker, “I am in contact with the one you call Iris. I am aware of your progress.”

“She told us that you were in contact, but I don’t understand that,” said George. “I thought such communication between Bubbles was only possible through a wormhole.”

“Once a Bridge, what you call a wormhole, has been established, it is not difficult with our technology to cause it to divide, to become two instead of one. It can be dangerous to have more than one Bridge connecting between Bubbles, should a time shift between them occur, but in this case there is no problem. The Egg contained a new Bridgehead, which is now inside the head of Iris. We use it to communicate.”