Analog SFF, July-August 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  “Then several people came up with the bright idea that there was just all this energy lying around in the vacuum, like money in a bank waiting to be robbed. Ed Witten calculated that with just the right nudge, an early transition from the current vacuum state to the lower vacuum state could be induced ... releasing an enormous amount of energy.

  “At the same time, Epplestein invented the Casimir pump, and it was realized that with enough Casimir pumps working, the vacuum could be nudged.

  “The problem is the energy release will be much larger than we estimated. It will be catastrophic. The math that the message contains illustrates this. What I don't understand is why the president refuses to even consider the danger."

  “But it is safe,” Tex protested. “I mean, that's why they built it on the far side of the Moon, right? Just in case."

  Park shakes his head. “Wrong. Have you ever heard of gamma ray bursts?

  * * * *

  “So what's the plan?” Park asks the young DHS agent.

  “Um, plan, sir?"

  “Escape plan. Not that I'm trying to pry, or anything."

  She stops and looks at him, startled. “Oh, um, yeah. Well, sir, we're going to get you out of here."

  “'We?’ Is someone else helping?"

  She looks even more startled. “Yes—no. Sorry, it's just a force of habit? Everyone here always talks like that, you know? ‘We just have a few questions, ma'am.’ ‘We don't really want to have to do that to you again, sir.’ You know?"

  “Yeah.” He looks at the solid walls. Still no windows. “Look,” he says, “can you at least tell me what day it is? I'd really like to know."

  “What day it is?"

  “Yes, the date. I've lost track."

  “Um, I don't think I can tell you that."

  “Why not?"

  Her face goes tight. “I might get in trouble,” she says quietly.

  “You're helping me to escape, so presumably you'd get in more trouble for that."

  “Um, yeah, I guess you're right.” But still she hesitates.

  “Look, I just want to know how long I have, how long we have until the vacuum energy mining starts. I think I've been here three days, which means I have only two more days."

  The young woman turns and resumes briskly down the hall. Park has to walk fast to keep up. “I don't know anything about that, sir. We should, um, keep moving."

  At the end of the hallway the agent opens a door, revealing a staircase. Park goes through and starts down.

  “Not that way, Professor. We need to go, like, up?"

  Park stares at her. “Up? Why? Is there a helicopter on the roof to pick us up?"

  The agent opens her mouth. Nothing comes out but, “Um ... um ... um..."

  Park sighs. “Never mind. Up it is. Can't go nowhere but up from here."

  * * * *

  Tex sat with his fingers neatly folded and resting on the fatty ledge of his protruding gut. “I get the feeling there's something you aren't telling us."

  “I've been trying to tell you about gamma ray bursts."

  Tex sighed. “Fine, Professor, let's go back to that topic.” He paused. “Are ‘gamma ray bursts’ some sort of code word?"

  “No, gamma ray bursts are huge fireballs of energy that occur in distant galaxies in the early part of the universe, from the first few billion years. We had a few theories about them, but they were all unsatisfactory, and funding was yanked under W to pay for Iraq, so we never did solve that mystery.

  “But the message explains them: if you try to mine the vacuum energy, you catalyze a sudden phase transition. The energy release is huge, much greater than a supernova. It will destroy our solar system and fry every planet within a thousand light years. All the gamma ray bursts we see in distant galaxies are ancient civilizations blowing themselves to hell trying to mine the zero-point energy."

  Tex furrowed his brow. “But if, as you say, there are all these advanced civilizations out there, how come none of them are blowing themselves up in our galaxy?"

  Park gave a thin smile. “Good question,” he said by reflex, like he would to a student in class. Then he bit back on the sour taste in his mouth. “It's possible to figure out how dangerous mining the vacuum energy is. You want to know the good part, the really funny part? We had a chance to discover this ourselves. Back in the 1990s. If we had built the Superconducting Supercollider, we would have discovered that the Higgs Particle in fact does not exist and that would have led to correct theories about fast and slow inflation and gamma ray bursts. But it got cancelled—during the very first Bush presidency—and we spent the money on the International Space Station instead.” Park laughed harshly. “Anyway, most civilizations do figure it out, and they monitor primitive societies like ours to make sure they don't make a fatal mistake. That's why the civilization on Tau Ceti is frantically trying to warn us off. They're only twelve light years away, and we'd take them with us."

  Tex fiddled with his tie. “Do you realize that by criticizing and undermining a project of national importance, you are giving comfort to the enemies of the US?"

  "Nobody is going to be comfortable when we are blown to our constituent quarks...."

  “The president has complete confidence in this project, and her science advisors have said there is not the slightest shred of danger."

  "Science advisors? There hasn't been a real science advisor for decades! Haven't you noticed? Pollution is at an all-time high. Coastal cities everywhere have been evacuated from flooding from global warming—"

  “Global climate change is just a theory,” snorted Tex.

  "The ice caps are melting!"

  “It may just be a natural process."

  “Listen, there is no science left in this country. American children believe the Big Bang is a French lie. They are taught evolution is ‘just a theory,’ and an unlikely one at that...."

  Tex sniffed, “Another French science."

  Red-faced, Park shouted, “Darwin was a bloody Brit, you idiot!"

  “But don't the British now disavow Darwin?"

  “Only because of economic and military pressure from us! My God, look at the stupid Buchanan Act, which makes illegal any medicine ‘based upon unproven scientific principles such as so-called Darwinism.’ That eliminates most modern medicines, as all of modern biology is based upon natural selection. Why do you think there have been so many plagues striking the US?"

  “Evolution as a cause of plagues is only a theory,” Tex said slowly.

  “What other theories could there possibly be?” asked an incredulous Park.

  “Well ... it could be punishment from God. That's an equally valid theory."

  Park opened his mouth, then closed it, then opened it again. At last he found words. “We're being punished, all right."

  As they climb the stairs, Park finds his chest filled with dread. What I find at the top of the stairwell won't make any difference, he tells his thudding heart. It's no worse than what faces us all.

  As they reach the top, the junior DHS agent stops in front of an unlabeled door, hesitates, then turns to Park. “Um, we have to wait here a minute, okay?"

  “Wait? For what?"

  “Um..."

  “You can't say."

  She flushes and nods.

  Park stands there, a cold, greasy lump in his stomach. Even if he were to get out—what would he do?

  A sudden noise diffuses through the door. Park frowns. The noise sounds, improbably, like ... like a large group of people yelling “Surprise!” followed by applause and laughter.

  Park looks at the young woman. She avoids his gaze.

  A minute later the door is yanked open from within. A dark face appears. “You brought him?” the young agent is asked. “Good, come on in."

  Bewildered, Park shuffles through the door. In the room, yes, there is a crowd of people, surrounding and congratulating a beefy, middle-aged man. Tex. Behind him a short, squat woman is making a speech: “...and all of us should be
proud that it was the Albuquerque office to reach this milestone in making America safe. It wasn't easy, and we had to rush the paperwork through. But Richard's keen skills made it all possible, not to say the brilliant idea to push through the top-secret classification of the so-called ‘message.’ Oh, and I see that the, shall we say, man of the hour himself is putting in an appearance. Very kind of you, Mr. Park! You certainly put up a great fight, and we all want you to know that we respect you for that."

  It is only then that Park notices a banner hanging from the ceiling: CONGRATULATIONS! ONE-MILLIONTH ENEMY COMBATANT APPREHENDED.

  Park finds his way to a chair and collapses. The young DHS agent hovers, perhaps worried that he might escape after all. Beyond her, Park sees a wide window overlooking the Rio Grande valley and a sky so blue it crushes his heart.

  A wall of sweaty white cotton shirt framed by black polyester/wool blend looms in front of him. Park looks up into Tex's waxy face. Tex (or Richard, apparently) holds out a small paper plate with a lump of cake and pink frosting. “Here you go, Professor. Uh, might as well enjoy it, because now that you've been declared an enemy combatant and had your citizenship stripped away, well..."

  “Time for intensive interrogation?"

  Tex nods.

  Park does not take the cake. He asks, “Why classify a message you don't believe?"

  “Misleading rumors are the most dangerous of all to national security.” Tex looks firmly at Park. “You know, you just about had me convinced. There was just one thing."

  “What?” he says in dull reflex.

  “I called up some fellows over at NASA. And there was a problem with your story."

  “All the real scientists have been driven out of NASA,” Park murmurs.

  “Now, now, Professor, don't get all arrogant.” Tex waves a red hand—the one not holding a plate of cake—like a gristly, underdone steak. “These rocket scientists at NASA told me radio waves would take twelve years to get there, and twelve years to get back."

  “Yeah. Even NASA hacks ought to know that. So?"

  “You see, the proposal for Project Infinite Energy was announced back in 2014, under President Jeb. That's twenty-nine years now! Whereas it should have taken just about twenty-four years. Your timeline had cracks, Professor."

  Park puts his head in his hands and sighs. “Yes, I know there's a gap. And if I—if all of us who received the message had had an extra five years, maybe we wouldn't be in this situation,” he says in a muffled voice. “The bureaucratic idiots! They've doomed us all. We might have had a chance, if only..."

  “Now, Professor, I know at Homeland Security we have a reputation as paper-pushing zombies, but—"

  “Not you,” Park snarls. “Damn you, you should have actually read the Tau Ceti message. It admits—sheepishly—it took them, the Tau Ceti scientists, five years of hearings and subcommittees and panels to get permission (what they called an ‘emergency effort') to send—"

  He halts, seeing comprehension wax across Tex's face; talk of gamma ray bursts and vacuum energy states Tex could not believe, but the cosmic universality of bureaucratic stubbornness hits home. “Oh Lord,” Tex whispers.

  With electric effort Park shrugs off the stupor that lies heavy upon his body, presses his advantage. “We don't have much time, a couple of days at most...” but Tex is shaking his head.

  “No, no, that date of April third was misdirection, for cases like, well..."

  “Mine."

  “Exactly."

  “Then when...?"

  Tex groans. “You know how President Jenna likes to surprise people. Especially Vice President Barbara."

  Park's heart beats wildly. “Today? Now? When?"

  Tex straightens. “I can phone—oops.” The paper plate in the agent's hand had had a long, tiring day and finally collapsed, letting the piece of cake plummet into Park's lap. “Lemme get a napkin,” says Tex, loping off.

  “Just make the damn phone call!” Park shouts, so loud that several people turn and stare at him. A few snicker. The junior DHS agent, who is looking out the window, says something, but Park lowers his head and stares down at the pink frosting smeared on his crotch. Great. Abashed, he closes his eyes, and doesn't even look up when the junior agent repeats, in a terrified voice, “Um, seriously, why does the moon look so funny?"

  And so Howard Park did not get to see the end of the world.

  Copyright (c) 2007 C. W. Johnson

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  * * *

  DO NO HARM

  by JOHN G. HEMRY

  It's possible to do some jobs too well!

  Sandra's acting weird, the geeks can't figure out why, and the boss is spinning like a pulsar."

  Kevlin pulled his attention out from the immersive medical simulation long enough to give Yasmina a questioning look. “I thought Sandra was supposed to leave this morning."

  “Right. She won't go. Come on. The director's called an all-principals meeting."

  “I'm a doctor,” Kevlin objected. “I'm supposed to keep the people working for the corporation on this station healthy. Why do I care about Sandra's problems?"

  Yasmina smiled back at him in a mocking way. “I'm a doctor, too. If I have to go, so do you."

  “They need you to analyze the project director's mind just in case he gets really dangerous this time,” Kevlin suggested. “I'm just a simple country doctor with a low-gravity, space illness specialty."

  “Sure. Then you'll come in handy if the director bursts a vein while he's yelling at everyone.” Yasmina beckoned. “Come on."

  Grumbling just loud enough for her to hear, Kevlin paused the sim and followed her down the hallway. “I could always monitor the director's health from my office,” he suggested.

  “Nice try. Didn't your teachers at med school ever tell you not to try to con a shrink?"

  Sandra was still at loading dock four alpha. Yasmina led the way onboard the ship, then along a passageway that ended in Sandra's control room. The limited area was already full of exasperated engineers of various types and persuasions, some looking dejected, some angry, and some staring into space as they tried to think. “Why can't we do a virtual meeting?” one complained as Kevlin and Yasmina wedged their way in.

  Another engineer answered in an accusing voice. “Because the director found out you guys had been hacking the meeting code so you could have avatars sitting in for you while you did other stuff. Now we all have to crowd in here in person so he can be sure we're all actually getting yelled at."

  “People have been hacking virtual meeting code since the Stone Age,” the first engineer protested, then hastily stopped speaking as a short man with a lofty attitude and an ugly frown strode in, the crowd somehow contracting away from him so he had free room.

  “Report,” the director stated, glowering at the chief designer.

  The chief designer, who had been arguing with Sandra's captain, made a helpless gesture. “Sandra won't work. Something's shorting out her central control functions."

  The director's glower deepened. “The Spaceship Autonomous Network Developmental Research Application is the most expensive project in the history of this company. I expect more from you than vague reports that it just doesn't work! Are you saying the control network isn't receiving the commands?"

  “No,” the chief designer responded in a tight voice. “I'm saying that the control network isn't responding to external signals. It's in some kind of weird loop, with only a few apparently random signals going out to minor subsystems. We give a command and nothing happens."

  “Nothing happens? Something has to happen! If nothing is happening that means something is happening!"

  Kevlin gave a glance at Yasmina, who was watching the director with a fascinated expression. He just knew she would love to get the director into a controlled environment so she could analyze his mental processes.

  One of the other engineers tapped the air in front of him, activating a virtual display. “This is what
Sandra's central processing activity is like."

  Yasmina looked suddenly startled as an image appeared overhead. “That looks like an EEG of an epileptic seizure."

  Eyes swung to focus on the doctor. “An epileptic seizure?” the director asked in a deceptively mild voice.

  Though it was obvious she regretted speaking, Kevlin wasn't surprised that Yasmina refused to back down. “Yes,” she insisted. “That's what that looks like. If I saw that representation of signal activity in a human, I'd say it was a seizure."

  “This is a ship,” the designer protested.

  “Yes,” Yasmina agreed. “A ship you constantly refer to as if it were human, as if it were alive, talking about the complexity of an internal and external sensing network that mimics that of a living creature. I've read the specs on the central command system. You modeled it on basic brain functions. Well, maybe that means it's subject to the sort of problems living brains develop."

  Kevlin waited for an outburst of laughter or scorn, but it didn't come. A third engineer nodded with a wondering expression. “The operating system is incredibly complex, full of learning routines and development loops. It could've developed problems like that."

  “How do we cure it?” the director demanded. “In people?"

  This time Yasmina grimaced in the way of a doctor trying to explain complex things in layperson's terms. “Short term, we use medications that raise the seizure threshold. Long term, we go in and fix whatever is causing the brain to short-circuit."

  The chief designer's eyes narrowed in thought. “Short-circuit? What could have caused that to happen? Sandra's central command functions were working fine yesterday. We haven't modified them since then."

  “Stray signals?” another engineer suggested.

  “The central command area is shielded."

  “Maybe some other part of the, uh, neural network on Sandra?” Yasmina offered.