by Mark Alpert
Lucille made a face. “What? That’s impossible.”
“It sounds impossible, but it’s true. An ion in superposition is like a schizophrenic—it’s one and zero. It holds two values simultaneously. Now imagine putting two ions into that state. They hold four values at the same time—one/one, zero/zero, one/zero, and zero/one. And a string of three ions in superposition holds eight values simultaneously. You see the pattern?”
Lucille thought about it for a moment. Then she nodded. “Yeah, I do. Every time you add another ion to the string, you double the amount of data the string can hold.”
“Right again. The capacity increases exponentially, so a quantum computer with a relatively modest number of ions can hold an extraordinary amount of data. And when those ions interact and start exchanging their data, they’re actually performing an enormous number of calculations simultaneously. If you could build a quantum computer with just a hundred trapped ions—and that’s definitely feasible within the next decade—it could perform trillions upon trillions of calculations at once. It could accomplish certain tasks billions of times faster than the best conventional computers in the world.”
“What kinds of tasks? Anything that DARPA might be interested in?”
“Oh yeah, plenty. A quantum computer would be ideal for searching through large databases, looking for patterns hidden inside gigabytes of noise. Or creating computer simulations of extremely complex phenomena, such as the shock wave that triggers a nuclear explosion. But the thing that DARPA’s most interested in is code breaking. A quantum computer could break public-key codes, which are now considered unbreakable. Those are the codes used on the Internet for encrypting credit-card numbers. And the military uses the same encryption scheme on some of its classified data networks.”
Lucille nodded again. She retrieved the shiny, glass-topped ion trap from Monique and studied it for a while, holding it up to the light.
David stared at it, too, wondering what the hell Jacob had been doing. Even back in the days when they were in grad school together, Jacob had been unusually secretive about his research projects. It was an extreme case of professional caution: Jacob had been deathly afraid that another grad student or postdoc would steal his ideas. Although he’d freely shared all the details of his personal life, often regaling David with elaborate descriptions of his sexual adventures—he’d been a real Don Juan in those days—Jacob never talked about his research. When it came to his work, he trusted no one.
David stepped toward the desk, intending to tell Lucille about this. Just then, however, the office door opened and the FBI agent with the blond crew cut ushered Adam Bennett back into the room. His face looked even pinker than before and his eyes were bloodshot. David got the feeling that he might’ve been crying in the men’s room. Or throwing up. There were wet spots on the front of his jacket.
Lucille leaned back in her chair and swiveled to face Bennett. “Feeling better?”
He took a deep breath and nodded. It seemed that Agent Parker’s prediction had been correct. The man was ready to talk now.
She held up the ion trap for Bennett to see. “While you were gone, we found one of Jacob’s toys. And Dr. Reynolds was kind enough to explain how it works.” She glanced at Monique, who’d folded her arms across her chest and propped her butt on the edge of the desk. “So how close was Jacob to building his quantum computer?”
Bennett stared at the ion trap for a few seconds, uncomprehending. Then he shook his head. “He wasn’t close.” His voice was low and ragged. “That was the trouble.”
“Really?” She placed the device on the desk and tapped her fingernail on its glass top. “Even after you gave him all those millions of dollars?”
He kept shaking his head. David had never seen anyone look so defeated. “The last prototype he built for us could perform calculations with a string of sixteen ions. That was a record, better than anything built by other research teams. But it was still light-years away from a practical machine.”
Lucille gave Bennett a skeptical look. “I thought a quantum computer didn’t need a lot of ions. Isn’t that the whole point?”
“Well, you need more than sixteen if you want the computer to do something that ordinary computers can’t do. You need at least fifty. And Jacob was finding it difficult to scale up his prototypes. He ran into technical problems.” He grimaced. “The truth is, the technology isn’t ready yet. Sooner or later, physicists will build a practical quantum computer, but it’s going to take time. Maybe five years, maybe ten. And Jacob didn’t have that kind of time.”
“What do you mean?”
Bennett turned to David. The man had ignored him and Monique ever since Lucille began her interrogation, but now he looked David in the eye. “You saw Jacob this afternoon? Before he was . . .” His voice trailed off. “How did he look to you?”
David remembered the sunken eyes and hollow cheeks. “He looked terrible. He had leukemia, didn’t he?”
“Jacob had fought it for several years but he was losing the battle. I visited him every six months to check the progress of his research, and he seemed more depressed and bitter each time. He told me that he’d wasted his life. That he’d accomplished nothing of significance in physics, and no one would remember him.” He turned away from David and stared at the floor. “Jacob was desperate to do something important before he died. And he knew he couldn’t achieve a breakthrough in quantum computing. I think that’s why he began diverting his grant funds.”
Lucille sat up straight. This was the piece of embarrassing information she’d been waiting for. “You mean he was spending DARPA’s money on something else?”
Bennett took another deep breath. “I saw the first evidence of it a year ago. When I reviewed his progress reports, I noticed that he’d ordered the installation of dedicated fiber-optic lines. They were expensive, heavy-duty cables linking his laboratory’s server to the phone company’s trunk line.”
David remembered the severed fiber-optic lines he’d seen in the charred laboratory, hanging from the ceiling like dead snakes. It occurred to him now that the number of communication lines was unusually large, much more than a typical laboratory would need. “What was he using them for?”
“Jacob was vague when I asked him about it. He said he needed a faster Internet connection. But the fiber-optic lines he’d ordered went way beyond his personal needs. They could transmit thousands of gigabits a second. Jacob could send the entire contents of the Library of Congress through those cables in less than a minute.” Bennett shook his head again. “I sensed that something was wrong. That Jacob was hiding something, a completely different research project. So I asked him straight out: ‘Jacob, are you diverting the grant money from its intended purpose?’ He got very upset and denied it vociferously. And though I had my doubts, I took him at his word. Because I liked him, you see. And I felt sorry for him.”
“Then what happened?” Lucille asked.
“I noticed more odd things in the report he submitted last fall. And he missed the deadline for building his next prototype, a quantum computer with twenty-four ions. I was almost certain by then that Jacob was working on something else. But I couldn’t prove it. I tried talking to one of his lab assistants, but she couldn’t tell me much. Jacob kept everyone in the dark.”
Monique, who was still sitting on the edge of the desk, tapped her index finger against her lips. “Maybe Jacob changed his strategy. Instead of developing a more advanced quantum computer, could he have been building an array of simpler prototypes? With one quantum computer at this lab and others at different locations, all working together? That might explain the fiber-optic lines. Maybe the computers were exchanging data.”
Bennett shrugged. “I don’t know. I suppose it’s possible.”
David tried to picture it, a tidal wave of data coursing from one computer to another. Maybe that was why Jacob had called his project the Caduceus Array, naming it after the symbol of the Roman messenger god. An array of quantum
computers and fiber-optic lines could certainly send a lot of messages back and forth. But how could this array do what Jacob had said the Caduceus Array had done—detect a rip in the fabric of the universe? “Do you think Jacob might’ve ventured into another branch of physics? Besides quantum computing, I mean?”
“Excuse me?” Bennett looked askance.
“When I saw Jacob yesterday he said the Caduceus Array had detected an anomaly in spacetime. Did he ever express an interest in doing that kind of research?”
“No, I’m sorry. He never mentioned anything like that.” Bennett raised his right hand to his forehead. His face was slack. “All I can tell you is that I made a mistake. I should’ve stopped Jacob when I noticed the first irregularities in his work. But instead I stood by and did nothing. And now Jacob is dead and I don’t know why.” He raised his other hand to his forehead. His fingers ran through his hair, making it stand up in white clumps.
Lucille got out of her chair and came toward him. Her expression softened a bit. “All right, the first thing we need to do is find out where Jacob was sending all that data. Where did he keep his records?”
Bennett lowered his hands. He was breathing hard. “All of Jacob’s records were on his server, and that was destroyed in the explosion. But he was using the phone company’s trunk line. And they keep track of all the data traffic.”
“Okay, we’ll check with them. And I want to see all your documents related to Jacob’s research.”
He nodded. “Yes, of course. I’ll contact my office and make sure you get everything.”
Lucille turned away from him. David could tell she was thinking ahead, already planning the next step in the investigation. “We need to talk to whoever was receiving the data,” she said. “Because that person knows what Jacob was doing. Maybe we can find a name in one of the reports.”
“I can give you one name right now.” Bennett’s voice was quiet, almost a whisper. “I’m not sure if it’s a real name, but . . .”
Lucille spun around. “What?”
“I . . . I mentioned earlier that I talked to one of Jacob’s lab assistants? I asked her confidentially if Jacob had been in touch with any other researchers. She said no, but then she remembered a series of phone messages. Seven messages, all in the same day, and all from a computer scientist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.”
David was familiar with Hebrew University. Ten years ago, while he was researching his biography of Einstein, he’d spent a couple of months in Jerusalem going through the thousands of letters and manuscripts in the university’s Albert Einstein archives. The school also had a world-class computer science department.
Lucille stared at Bennett. “What’s the name she gave you?”
“It was so unusual, I couldn’t forget it—Olam ben Z’man.”
“Shit,” David muttered. He’d learned some Hebrew during his summer in Jerusalem. “That’s very strange.”
“Yes, I thought so, too,” Bennett said. “I was curious, so I looked it up in a Hebrew-English dictionary. The name means ‘Universe, the son of Time.’”
7
MICHAEL AWOKE ON A BARE MATTRESS THAT SMELLED OF PUKE. HE SAT UP to get away from the smell and felt a dull pain in his shoulder. He reached under the sleeve of his T-shirt and touched a gauze pad taped to his skin. Then he remembered the trip in the airplane and the shiny needle at the end of the syringe.
He wasn’t in the airplane anymore. The mattress lay on the floor of a dark, stuffy room. It was so dark he could barely see his own feet. He squinted and saw that he was still wearing his jeans and socks and sneakers. No one had undressed him while he slept, and he was glad about this—David Swift had told him many times that he shouldn’t let anyone touch his private parts, except a doctor, of course. But his underpants were damp because he’d peed in them during the night, and his T-shirt was sweaty. Also, his throat was sore. He was hungry and scared and wanted to go home.
The mattress was in the corner of the room. Michael touched the walls, which felt gritty. He looked over his shoulder and thought he saw a piece of furniture on the other side of the room, but it was too dark to make out any details. The only illumination was a thin shaft of sunlight that squeezed through a chink in the concrete wall. About an inch wide, the shaft descended at a twenty-degree angle and made a yellow parallelogram on the floor. Michael deduced from the shallow angle of the sunlight that it was either early morning or late evening, but he couldn’t tell which. His watch was no help—the glowing hands pointed at eleven, which couldn’t be right. The airplane must have crossed several time zones, he thought. He found it very distressing not to know the correct time. It was even worse than not knowing where he was.
He stood up and walked toward the chink. It was nearly six feet above the floor, but Michael was six feet and one and a half inches tall, so he could see through the hole if he stood on his tiptoes. Pressing his right eye against the wall, he peered through the chink as if he were looking through a telescope. At first he saw nothing but an aching brightness. But after a few seconds he saw a landscape of brown hills, rugged and treeless, stretching to the horizon. Two gray Toyota Land Cruisers were parked on the sand below the closest hill, and in front of the cars were twelve men in beige uniforms.
The men stood in a line, shoulder to shoulder. They were soldiers, but they looked different from the animated figures in Warfighter and the other computer games that Michael played. Their uniforms were dirty and didn’t match—some were in a desert-camouflage pattern, others were plain khaki. One soldier had a brown beard and a red bandanna. Another wore a black turban. They carried a variety of weapons, too: M-4 carbines, Bizon submachine guns, AK-47 rifles. After a while a thirteenth soldier stepped into view, a large man wearing a black beret. He stopped in front of the others, clasped his hands behind his back, and shouted something Michael didn’t understand. The other soldiers turned to the right and marched off. Michael adjusted his head, trying to get a better view through the chink. Then he heard a metallic click and the room behind him filled with light. When he turned around he saw Tamara.
Her left hand gripped the pull chain of an overhead light, a naked bulb screwed into a socket on the ceiling. In her right hand she held a rectangular tray. It was dark brown, like the trays at McDonald’s. On the tray were seven packets of Heinz ketchup and a bag of Lay’s Classic potato chips, the two-ounce bag that sold for ninety-nine cents. Also a twelve-ounce can of Sprite. This was Michael’s favorite snack, which David Swift usually prepared for him as a reward after he’d done a Good Thing, such as walking to the corner deli by himself or going three days without a temper tantrum. It was very confusing to see it here, on a tray carried by Tamara in this room with concrete walls. For a moment he assumed that David Swift had prepared the snack, and his heart beat a little faster—was David here? Had he finally arrived to rescue him? But when Michael looked past Tamara he saw no one behind her. The room was empty except for the bare mattress he’d slept on and a large wooden desk.
Tamara stepped forward, extending the tray toward him. “Dinnertime, Michael. Look, I brought your favorite things.”
She was standing too close. Michael backed up against the wall and slid to the left to put some distance between them. Tamara wore a desert-camouflage uniform similar to those he’d seen on the soldiers outside. On her left shoulder several loose black threads hung from the fabric of her shirt, as if a patch had been ripped off there. “Come on,” she said. “You like to put the ketchup on the potato chips, right? Exactly two drops of ketchup on each chip? Brother Cyrus said you were very particular about your food.”
Michael shook his head. Tamara wasn’t his friend. She was his enemy. He turned away from her and stared at the large desk against the opposite wall. “My name is Michael Gupta,” he said. “I live at 562 West One Hundred and Tenth Street in New York City.” This was the message that David Swift had instructed him to memorize in case he got lost. He was supposed to recite it to a police officer, who would
then bring him home. “Please don’t touch me. I don’t like to be touched because I am autistic. Please contact my guardian, David Swift, at 212-555-3988.”
Tamara didn’t respond at first. She just stood there. Then she nodded. “Okay, I understand. I won’t touch you.”
She turned around and went to the desk. It had five drawers, three of which were missing their knobs. Tamara placed the tray on the right end of the desk. On the left end was a computer, a Sun Ultra 27 workstation with a twenty-two-inch monitor. Michael was familiar with this type of computer. The autism center had an Ultra 27 workstation in its recreational therapy room, and he’d spent many hours playing games on it.
Tamara picked up a metal folding chair that leaned against the wall. She unfolded the chair and placed it in front of the desk. Then she backed away, moving toward the far corner of the room. She pointed at the chair. “There you go, Michael. Sit down and eat your dinner. I’ll stay far away, see?”
He stared at the bag of potato chips on the tray. He was very hungry. But he didn’t want to do anything that Tamara told him to do. Instead, he decided to repeat the last sentence of his message. “Please contact my guardian, David Swift, at 212-555-3988.”
Tamara continued to point at the chair. “You haven’t eaten anything in eighteen hours. You must be starving.”
This, Michael knew, was an exaggeration. He wasn’t starving. A human being could survive for three to six weeks without eating any food. He’d read this fact in The Concise Scientific Encyclopedia, which was a book that David Swift’s wife, Monique Reynolds, had given him for his nineteenth birthday. Michael got confused when people exaggerated; he often thought they were telling the truth when they were actually telling a lie that was supposed to be funny. So he’d found it useful to memorize the scientific encyclopedia, which contained facts on a wide variety of subjects.
