John Cramer - Einstein's Bridge

THE NEW CAMPUS OF THE IRIS INSTITUTE U.S.A. STOOD on a rocky bluff along the broad southern edge of Lopez Island, one of the San Juan group that clustered in North Puget Sound just south of the jagged international border separating Washington State and British Columbia. The several buildings recently constructed on the site formed a crescent facing southward toward the spectacular view of the blue waters of Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains behind them.

George Griffin met his three visitors at the rooftop helicopter pad and walked immediately to the young man who was about his height. “Hello, Charles,” he said. “I like your new face.”

Charles Lewis, the new president of PetroGen, Inc., who had once been George Preston, who had once been George Griffin, smiled. “Roger’s right,” he said. “Everyone should change his name and face once in a while. It’s like cleaning house. It gets rid of a lot of excess baggage and keeps you on your toes. At PetroGen, though, I have to be careful not to be too much like the old president. I wouldn’t want to confuse our staff.”

Griffin conducted them downstairs and into the new conference room atop the central building. “I haven’t yet had the opportunity to kiss the bride,” he said. He kissed Alice on the cheek.

“We had a private ceremony, with Roger as best man,” Charles said. “We would certainly have invited you and Grace if we’d decided on a larger wedding.”

“No problem,” said Griffin. “I’ve been away from here too much as it is.”

“How does Grace like the San Juans?” Alice inquired.

“This change has been very good for her,” said Griffin. “She’s a lot more relaxed and happy now. And also, she’s pregnant…”

He looked at his hand, then at Charles. “I don’t know what that is going to make you. An uncle? A godfather?”

“Uncle Charles will do fine,” said Lewis. “I haven’t seen you since the November elections, George. What do you think of the big turnover in Congress?”

Griffin stroked his beard. “Your friends the SSC-killers certainly lost their seats in droves. Here in Washington State, every member of the House who voted to terminate the SSC was thrown out of office. Was all of that your doing?”

Charles smiled and shrugged. “One only does what one can. The problem is that these flinty-eyed Republicans who replaced the Clinton-wave Democrats may not be a change for the better. I don’t think they understand in complete detail how they got elected. It will be interesting to see how Newt and his Newtonian Congress carry the ball for the next two years. I’m glad that we have no large political agenda to deal with in the immediate future.”

“How is the recruiting for the institute going, George?” Roger asked.

“Very well, actually,” said Griffin. “We’ve persuaded some of our university groups to relocate here. They form the nucleus of the effort. With the cancellation of the SSC, we’ve also been very successful in our recruiting in computing, accelerator design, and particle physics, both theory and experiment. Biotechnology has been a bit harder, but there’s been a minor shakeout in the industry lately, which has helped us,” He looked out the window. “Also, the site helps. There are lots of scientists and technicians with a deep-seated desire to escape the East Coast or the L.A. area or Silicon Valley for a more tranquil environment with lower housing prices and plenty of waterfront property.” He looked at Roger. “How’s the recruiting going at Iris Institute Europe?”

“Very well,” Roger said. “With the depressed state of science in the U.K., the recruiting has been fairly easy. The Cornwall coast is an appealing location, with many of the attractions of this one. Tern’s group and others came from Cambridge, and we were able to pinch a number of Brits from CERN who were glad to return to the U.K. at a decent salary. Also, the meltdown of the U.S.S.R. allowed us to recruit many scientists from the former East Bloc countries. They’re much more understanding of the Iris secrecy restrictions than are many of my own countrymen.” He sighed.

“Have you considered recruiting your younger self?” Griffin asked, winking at Charles.

“Young Roger is only twenty-one now and has another year at Oxford,” said Roger. “I remember that year very well. He needs it to grow and mature and learn. After that, I plan to recruit him. I’d hate to have him waste several years getting a Ph.D. at Cambridge learning obsolete physics and mathematics, when I could teach him so much more.”

Charles nodded. “I’m having an easier time with that in our new commercial enterprises. Applications of the Reynald spin battery are already making us lots of money and also generating considerable interest among scientists in our new industrial laboratories in Galveston. Industrial scientists understand trade secrets, and they don’t feel such a compulsion to publish their results immediately. But I’ll still be very glad when this phase of our operation is over.” He looked across the table at his alter ego. “How is the medical end of the project shaping up?”

“That’s going to take some time,” said Griffin. “Actually, it’s quite frustrating. We have in our hands a broad spectrum of cures for all human ills: AIDS, cancer, flu and the common cold, all genetic diseases, excess fertility, even acne, hair loss, and dandruff. But we can’t release them yet. We must first discover how to produce the appropriate proteins and retroviruses without Writing them. After that, we must get the approval of the Food and Drug Administration or its equivalent in other countries. That will take years or even decades. And we will need to give the existing biotech industry a piece of the action, so we don’t destroy it. It’s going to be very tricky for a while. We’ve been using Roger’s new projection techniques to evaluate the impact of various scenarios for releasing new drugs. Sometimes the second-order social effects are amazing.”

Roger grimaced. “That’s too bad,” he said. “It seems to be easier to invent a space drive than a cure for athlete’s foot.”

“That reminds me,” said Charles. “We have a new industrial component. PetroGen has just spawned an offshoot company, SpaceGen. We bought out one of the ailing California aerospace outfits that had been sliding toward bankruptcy since the Cold War ended. We renamed it and moved the corporate headquarters to New Mexico. We’re setting up an organically grown laser launch facility there, near the old White Sands proving ground. Soon we’ll start boosting small payloads into low Earth orbit. We have some nanodesigns that will eat the space junk that’s been accumulating in LEO and make it into useful stuff.

Then we start intensive probing of the moon and the asteroid belt, where more raw material is available. We’ve assembled a team that’s doing a preliminary design for a permanent manned moonbase. And with the Garcia drive showing promise, we may be launching a series of unmanned interstellar probes before long. It’s amazing how everything opens up when the launch cost goes down and the drive efficiency goes up. It’s the dawn of a new space age.”

Roger nodded. “We’re going to need that technology. Tern’s team at Iris Institute Europe has been making real progress in understanding the Makers’ maths. It’s now clear that the mathematics used by the Makers is a variant of Clifford algebra. It’s like finding the Rosetta stone. We have the code key to their formalism. There’s a realistic possibility of doing Planck-scale physics, once we master the formalism and gain more insight into the techniques.

“But the catch seems to be that Planck-scale experimental work will have to be done in space. Preferably well-removed from the sun’s gravity well, which means outside the solar system. Otherwise, the gravitational curvature is too disruptive. We’re going to need infrastructure to support a base out in the Oort cloud.”