Smarter

by Laurence E. Dahners

  Ell looked at him a moment, “It’s Ell…” she cleared her throat, “Ellen… Not ‘Girly.’”

  He guffawed and slapped his knee, then punched Silent on the shoulder. “Oops, my mistake.”

  Ell stared at him a moment longer, her right eyelid twitched a couple of times like it often did when she was irritated. Then she ran the table.

  After she drilled the eight ball into the corner pocket, she looked up at Bill and Silent who looked on a little goggle eyed. “We’ll keep the table ourselves, thanks.” She picked up the rack and started racking the balls. She looked up at James who was quite goggle eyed himself and winked at him.

  James said, “I thought you’d only played a ‘few games?’”

  Ell grinned up at him and shrugged, “Maybe quite a few.”

  James broke again and they resumed play, Ell playing just a little better than James now. With the sullen bikers still standing behind her, Ell suddenly felt anxious to get the game done and go back to sit down. She noted out of the corner of her eye that several more biker types had walked over and were grinning and ribbing Bill and Silent.

  Ell pocketed the eight ball with an easy shot and picked up the tray for the balls so they could return them. Bill stepped up to the table and snarled, “Hundred bucks says you can’t do that again.”

  “What, make the eight ball in the corner pocket there?”

  “No! You know what I mean. Play us again and win.”

  “Oh! You’re absolutely right.” Ell put her hands up in surrender. “I just got lucky. You guys can have the table.” She said this pleasantly, smiling at him as unthreateningly as possible. Inside she cursed herself for running the table earlier.

  “Hundred bucks!” he grated out.

  “Oh! No thanks. I don’t gamble.” She carefully didn’t look at James to see how he was taking this.

  “You’ll play us, or I’ll bust up your pretty little boy toy.” he said, jerking his head at James.

  Now Ell did look at James. White faced, he licked his lips nervously. “No, no, this was all just a misunderstanding.” Ell said, “I just got really lucky. You can have the table. It’s all good.” She’d picked up her pool cue and began twisting it in her hands as if she were nervous.

  Bill jerked his chin up at James who was about twelve feet away. “Pretty Boy, let’s you and me go outside.” he snarled.

  James backed up a step but Silent had been standing behind him and James bumped into the massive man. Bill stepped toward James. Ell, feeling herself dropping into the zone, took a couple of quick steps beside him and reached to grab his elbow. Bill shrugged her off and said, “Pretty boy, outside! Or do I have to mess you up in here?”

  Ell, consciously slowing her voice so it would sound normal, said, “If you really want to play…”

  “Naw, now I got my heart set on beatin’ the crap outta your pretty boyfriend.”

  Bill lunged toward James.

  Ell slipped her pool cue between Bill’s legs and started screaming hysterically.

  Bill crashed to the floor and skidded into Silent Joe’s feet, James having reflexively stepped to the side.

  Ell, keeping a grip on the pool cue and still yelling, swiveled her head to make sure the bouncers were on their way over.

  Silent saw the bouncers coming and grabbed at Bill as he came up off the floor fighting mad. Bill shook off Silent’s hand and turned back toward Ell, throwing a massive roundhouse punch. Ell dodged just underneath the punch while snapping her head back as if she had been struck. She pretended to stumble backward against the pool table. Recovering, Bill took another mighty swing, this time Ell dodged her head out of the way but let his fist strike the handle of the pool cue she’d been holding beside her head. This strike was solid enough to split Bill’s knuckle and make a loud “cracking” sound. At the “crack” Ell flung herself backward across the table as if she’d been hit.

  The bouncers arrived, immobilized Bill and summoned the police. AI’s were interrogated for their audio-video record of the events and Bill arrested for assault and battery. Thankfully no one looked for bruises on Ell. They trusted the video evidence which convincingly made it appear that, with no serious provocation other than winning a pool game, she’d been struck hard twice. Roger, Emma, Al and Jerry had rushed over to be sure James and Ell were OK but wandered back over to their table during the police interrogations.

  When the police released James and Ell they walked over to join the others at their usual booth. Emma looked up as they walked over and said, “What happened?! We saw you guys playing pool with those bikers and thought that was kind of weird but then no one noticed anything else until Symonds started screaming! You can really make some noise girl!”

  James looked down, then back up at the group. “Uh, we were just playing each other when they challenged us to a game for the table.”

  Ell said, “James had the common sense to tell them they could just have the table but I was an idiot and told them we’d play them for it.” She turned to James, “Sorry, I should have followed your lead.”

  James winced, “Yeah… I’ve been around guys like that before. They can be real assholes. But, maybe if I’d stood up to them it would have defused the situation.”

  “No! There’s no defusing guys like that. You were really smart to just tell them they could have the table. I think that Bill guy was hoping to start a fight from the very beginning!”

  James shrugged his shoulders, “Yeah, I think so too.”

  Emma said, “But what happened? Did he punch you James?”

  “Naw, he was coming after me but he fell down. Did you trip him with your pool cue Ellen?”

  Ell looked sheepish, “Maybe? It felt like his foot hit my cue.”

  James spoke to his AI, “Let’s see the video of the attack.” James’ AI forwarded it to the group and they all watched in slow motion on their HUDs as Bill leaned forward and stepped out with his left foot. As soon as he started moving Ell’s pool cue swung out in front of his right leg and behind his left so that when Bill’s right foot moved to follow the left he tripped over the pool cue, falling violently outstretched to the floor. The video was disturbed by James’ quick step to the right out of the direction of Bill’s fall but Ell felt pretty sure that it appeared she had accidentally tripped the man. At least she hoped everyone thought she had at most made a reflexive move with the pool cue rather than recognizing that she had carefully planned out exactly what she was going to do and executed it perfectly with her zone enhanced reflexes.

  With relief Ell heard Roger say, “Wow, Ellen, that stab with the pool cue couldn’t have been more perfect if you’d planned it that way.”

  They all watched the video as Bill scrambled back up from the floor, rage on his face and made his roundhouse swing at Ell. As her head snapped back in the video, Ell was pleased to see that it really did look like Bill had connected. She heard her friends uttering versions of “Ouch!” or Damn!” When Bill made his second swing and Ell leaped back across the table she herself easily recognized her own muscles contracting to throw herself backward and taking the blow on the pool cue instead of her own head but no one else seemed to notice. Emma said, “Ellen, we should take you to the hospital. You might have a serious head injury after getting hit like that.”

  Emma reached for Ell’s face to look for swelling or bruises but Ell shrank away. She was worried that Emma might disturb her nose prosthesis. “No! No, I’m fine. Really! His first swing just grazed me and the second one mostly hit my pool cue. I’m not hurt, at most I’ll have a bruise tomorrow.”

  Emma said, “Well, you should at least stay at my place tonight in case you have a concussion or something like that.”

  Relieved, Ell said, “Sure, I can do that. But no hospitals! I can’t afford that when I feel fine.”

  The group chattered excitedly about the fight for a while longer and conversation gradually turned to other things. James leaned over to Ell and whispered, “Hey, let’s keep your pool s
kills a secret for now. I’d really like to surprise the Professor with them sometime.”

  “Uh, OK. But I really did get lucky. I don’t normally run the table.”

  “Yeah, sure. And I’m as retarded as Biker Billy. You may not run the table every time, but you are really, really good at pool. I can’t believe you sandbagged me with that, ‘I’ve never played before’ line and I bought it. It’s embarrassing to remember that I was trying to teach you how to play.” James chuckled.

  “OK,” Ell said turning back to listen to Al.

  Al had started telling the group about a lecture he’d attended on exoplanets. “So they’ve turned the Large Radiotelescope Array on over eighty percent of the known planets that are in the liquid water zone and none of them are transmitting. We’re talking thousands of planets that should or could be life bearing. I just can’t believe that none of them have developed intelligent life.”

  “Intelligence might be a lot rarer than we’d expect.”

  “Do we know if they have life at all, much less intelligent?”

  Al said, “I think he said that over fifty percent have oxygen atmospheres. They believe that oxygen atmospheres require life, though they can’t be sure.”

  Jerry said, “They might be intelligent without using radio.” Ell felt goose bumps run down her spine. Jerry continued, “Humans have been intelligent for tens of thousands of years but have only had radio for a little over a hundred.”

  Ell continued to have chills. She’d thought that Jerry meant that intelligent beings might communicate with something better than radio, whereas he’d just meant that they might not have discovered radio itself yet. However, it suddenly seemed blindingly obvious to her.

  Maybe this could explain Fermi’s paradox regarding the vast number of stars which should have developed intelligent life and the question of “where are they?” In other words since there should be thousands of other intelligent species in the galaxy we should be able to pick up their radio messages with SETI.

  But, not if they didn’t use radio!! Of course! The reason that the human race hadn’t detected advanced civilizations communicating by radio is that advanced civilizations communicated with something better than radio. Certainly, over interstellar distances radio was far too slow to be useful! Advanced civilizations must use something much faster. Could they be using something like Ell’s “spin bumping” or other instantaneous communication methods with a connection through her postulated fifth dimension? Ell, mind working furiously on this, completely missed the next minutes of conversation, eyes focused on her Coke glass.

  Emma shoved her again, “Hey, Ellen, you OK?”

  Ell looked up and turned, still glassy eyed, “Huh?”

  “Huh, yourself. I was beginning to think concussion had set in. Are you ready to head home?”

  Ell puzzled over this a moment. Why was Emma asking? Then she remembered that she was supposed to go home with Emma for “observation” in case she actually had a concussion. “Uh, sure.” She finished her Coke, “Let’s go.”

  Jerry stood, “I’ll walk you.”

  Emma turned and curtsied minutely, “Thank you kind sir.”

  Jerry grinned sketching a tiny bow with waving hand in return, “Ah, it is but the least I can do.”

  When they stepped outside, a large shadow separated itself from the wall, Ell turned quickly to see Silent Joe gazing at them. Jerry blanched. She stared at Silent and began to drop into the zone but the huge man merely inclined his head and said, “Nice shootin’. Bill was a jerk. Got what he deserved.” Then he leaned his bulk back against the wall.

  Jerry, Emma and Ell made to pass, all staying a little to the far side of the sidewalk. Allan whispered in Ell’s earpiece. “’Silent Joe’s’ real name is Joseph Jamieson. He’s forwarded us contact information with a note to reach out to him if you ever need help.”

  “That’s… astonishing,” Ell subvocalized. “Tell him thanks.”

  When they reached Emma’s apartment Ell began to worry about hiding her “fat pants.” As she had feared, Emma apparently intended for Ell to sleep in Emma’s queen sized bed with her. Ell successfully avoided this by lying down on the couch, pulling a blanket over herself and then quickly feigning sleep. When Emma tried to get her to come in to bed, she grumbled and snuffled and demanded to be left alone where she was. As promised, Emma woke her up once in the middle of the night to be sure she was OK and not suffering from a serious head injury. Ell had to pretend to be muzzy with sleep when she’d actually been lying awake, her mind racing over the possibilities of interstellar communications through her postulated 5th dimension. She felt like there was something about the possibility of interstellar communication that should clue her in on the way she did the experiments she had going but it hovered just out of reach—like a word on the “tip of your tongue” that you can’t quite remember.

  Chapter Six

  Weeks followed with little progress. It took several weeks just to tweak the setup so Ell could successfully detect “bumping” at the location where it was being performed. Then more weeks were required to successfully entangle condensates and confirm that they were actually entangled.

  Then more weeks passed trying to detect evidence of the first condensate’s “bumping” at the second condensate. Those attempts were all without success.

  Ell had not really experienced a major failure at something she had focused on in the past. Well, except for physical tasks requiring endurance. She and Emma had started running together for exercise. This was at Emma’s suggestion and Ell suspected that Emma was trying to work Ell’s butt down to a smaller size. She liked getting exercise but, as usual, her limited endurance made it agonizing trying to keep up with Emma on their morning runs. Hauling the “fat pants” made it even worse. The running and the frustration she experienced with failure after failure of her bumping setup resulted in weight loss. She slept even less than her usual three to four hours per night. Her hair became brittle, perhaps made worse by Ell’s need to constantly apply the dark mousse in order to cover her reddish blond hair. At least the mousse covered the broken ends.

  She felt a hand on her shoulder and lifted her head from her desk. She looked around blearily and found Roger standing at her shoulder, “Hey.”

  Roger looked concerned and said. “Ell, are you OK?”

  “Yeah, sure, what’s up?”

  “Our three PM meeting is in a couple of minutes. I’ve been worried about you though. You don’t look good.”

  “Yeah, this experiment is crushing me. Nothing seems to work and I’ve started having dreams about it.”

  Roger’s brows knotted as he looked at her with concern. He’d really started to like the odd looking young woman quite a lot over the past couple months. He found her ability to handle the math in Donsaii’s paper astonishing and her equanimity so far in handling the incredible frustrations of her experiment inspiring. He felt sad seeing the project getting the best of her.

  Ell got up and they went down the hall to the lab meeting. When they got there Dr. Johnson was in a terrible mood, ripping each of the grad students as they reported what was happening with their particular projects. But when he got to Ell’s project it got even worse. “Do you mean to tell me that you are still working on that ‘spin bumping’ crap? How many times do I need to tell you to move on to the double slit aspects of Donsaii’s paper? I want you to disassemble your spin bumping setup tomorrow! Stop! Wasting! TIME!”

  Roger was aghast. Ellen had looked so down before they came to the meeting, he was afraid this tongue lashing would be the straw that broke the camel’s back. Her eyes dropped down to the table a moment, and then she looked up with a drawn face. “If I promised to only work on spin bumping on my own time, say evenings and weekends, could I leave it set up?”

  Johnson’s eyebrows shot up, “You’d be thinking about it all the time, nothing would get done during regular hours!”

  Ell’s expression remained dull and flat as she said, “I�
�m sorry, spin bumping is what I want to work on. If I can’t work on that here, I’ll find a different graduate program to work in.”

  Roger was astonished to hear Ellen giving Johnson an ultimatum in his current mood, but even more astonished when Johnson suddenly leaned back in his chair. He looked up at the ceiling a moment then sighed. “OK, I’m sure that you guys are all aware that physicists under thirty make most of the really big discoveries because they try stupid stuff that older physicists know won’t work. But… you need to consider that thousands of foolish attempts at crap that older physicists know won’t work, don’t actually work. Though I’m ‘old’ I am not an idiot. But, I will not stifle you Symonds. If you want to work nights and weekends on something that is a complete waste of time, go ahead. However, don’t expect any help from me while you ‘tilt at your windmill.’ That project is now yours and yours alone, to fail with or even against all reasonable possibility, to succeed.”

  The grad students all looked at each other with raised eyebrows, stunned to hear Johnson the tyrant speaking as if they had choices? Then he leaned forward in his chair, “Now, tell me, what are your plans to look into the double slit phenomenon?”

  Still in a flat and listless voice Ellen said, “OK, we can’t try to detect which slit the photon passes with polarization or the like because such methods will break the fifth dimensional connection, so I’ve been looking for other means to register the passage of a photon. But there are two issues. First, that a method for detecting passage of a photon without stopping or deflecting the photon, and without breaking a fifth dimensional connection does not exist. Second, if Donsaii is correct, a single photon would, in fact, be detected at both slits, but I’m not sure how we would prove that two photons had not been emitted?”