by Robert Graf
"Dinner time and you’re the chef,” she said, sitting down at the kitchen table and stretching her legs.
"I'm weaker than I thought. That little shopping trip about did me in," Alex answered, grabbing an opened bottle of Zinfandel from the cupboard.
She winced as he used his teeth to pull the cork. “Don’t do that.”
“I’m short-handed,” he quipped, half-filling two glasses. "Cheers," he said, taking a long sip.
She sipped from her glass, relaxing as the wine’s warmth spread through her. She yawned. God she was tired.
“OK, then it’s pizza again,” he said.
"Anything but anchovies. I worked one summer cooking pizzas and came to hate the slimy vile things.”
While he ordered, she pondered re-entanglement. In principle her field-expedient process should work even though power had been shut off for a week or more. Something she should have realized; if this method worked, she could keep Clio up-to-date. But for how long? No way to tell. Theoretically there should be no limit. She'd just have to try.
Maybe tomorrow would bring better news; she could hope.
[Thursday, Petaluma]
Ann just finished her second cup of coffee when her phone chirped. “Leave me alone,” she muttered, but picked it up.
Isaac’s smiling face greeted her with a cheery “Good morning, Ann.”
Now what? "Good…" she hesitated, looking at the wall clock, "evening, Isaac. How's things?"
“We’re getting our EntComs tomorrow, and I'm sort of in charge."
That got her attention. "That's wonderful. What are you going to do with them?"
He looked apologetic. "The Cardinal wants to do historical research, though I don’t know what that entails. I'm hoping for a little help.”
She didn’t believe his lame explanation, but…"Of course. What can I help you with?"
"You're Global's expert. I hoped you might have more tips on the best way to conduct the research."
"I'm no longer with Global, I resigned."
Isaac’s mouth dropped open. "What? You can't, we need your expertise."
"It's done. You should go through Global, but I'll help you if I can. Let me think." She didn't want to get tied down in a long discussion. "I have a brief, and I mean brief, set of guidelines I cobbled up for NASA. I can send them to you if you like, but you must promise to keep it quiet."
"That's all? You've done nothing more?"
Besides trying to stay alive? "I've been occupied with other issues. That's the best I can do, Isaac, and I'm treading on shaky ground as it is."
"Of course. I apologize if I sounded too demanding. It's just that I'm both excited and apprehensive. Yes, please send the file."
She smiled. Glad someone is. "I'll do it this morning. Good luck." She shut the connection.
"You got the notes and pictures?" Ann asked, nervously tapping her fingers on the bed frame.
"Relax. That's the fifth time you've asked. Yes, all typed in, and photos in the phone."
Easy for him to say, but that was being ungrateful. With Alex taking notes while she dictated, she'd been able to concentrate on the procedure. She checked the results one last time: One exotic matter cylinder evacuated, valves shut; combined gases in the other; IR laser at zero degrees; Green laser at ninety; Timer set to three minutes; Power switches maxed and synced to the power supply, and everything plugged into the surge suppressor.
She glanced at the bedside clock, past noon. "How about some left-over pizza?"
"Why not, a little more cholesterol won't kill me."
She reheated the pizza in the toaster oven, and they ate the slices washed down with glasses of cool water. “Let’s do it."
Back in the spare bedroom she gave the assemblage one last review. She handed Alex an eye shield. "Here, put this on," She helped him adjust it to fit over the bandage. She pulled the other shield over her face. "Ready?"
At his nod she pressed the power supply ON button. Brilliant green light flooded the bedroom, and even with the shield she had to squint. Three minutes ticked off the counter, and the glare faded. They removed the eye shields.
"Now we reverse the process."
With Alex’s assistance, in half an hour she finished. One final check on the cable connections, and she was ready.
Ann consulted her notebook and carefully followed the power up procedure. Last, she booted the PCs and switched on the flat screens. The keyboards sprang to life.
"You sit there," she said, pointing to the folding chair and took her seat at the bedside table. She pointed to the Reset switch. "This is the key to this whole scheme. If a message fails, we toggle this and pray the interrupt circuit works." She typed "In 1492 Christopher Columbus discovered America" and pressed F1.
Nothing.
Her stomach knotted. "Toggle the Reset."
Alex complied, and she resent the message.
The message instantly appeared on Alex's screen. "Re-entanglement works," she exclaimed, barely containing her rising excitement. "Now we see if Clio's back."
"How?"
"We need to test something that occurred between Farid’s escape and now, something simple."
"How about pizza last night?"
She pushed her keyboard to him. "Perfect. You send it,"
"What do I say?"
"Try 'Alex Baxter ordered pepperoni pizza last night'."
He pecked her suggestion one-handed and successfully sent it.
"Good, so far. Now change it to anchovy."
"But that's wrong."
"Exactly."
He changed “pepperoni” to “anchovy” and pressed F1.
The message began blinking and didn’t transmit.
"We did it, by God, we did it," she yelled, venting her pent-up excitement and relief. She leaned over and kissed him hard.
"Is that part of the procedure?" he asked, a twinkle in his eye.
"Why not, put it in the notes." Which reminded her; she opened a new file on her tablet and entered the entanglement details.
"Got it. This science stuff could be fun."
Little did he know. "The reality is far different. Ninety percent of the time it's plain dull, hard work. Let's take a break in the kitchen and see how the world's reacting to my interview."
Ann peeked over Alex's shoulder as he scanned SFGate. "That’s it?" she asked, reading the headline: Jupiter Space Ship Saboteur Caught by Lie Detector, by Gerome Litton.
"Yeah. A few comments bemoan the naive reporter buying into what's clearly sensational nonsense. I think those can be dismissed out-of-hand. Then there's this flavor."
She read the highlighted comment from 'beenthere':
"I first dismissed this as utter nonsense, but then I checked out Dr. Grey. She is a respected physicist besides being the co-inventor of the EntComs on NASA's Jupiter ship. NASA's 'no comment' is highly suspicious and the arrest of the saboteur is real, the FBI got their man.
So, is this in fact true? She wouldn't be the first scientist to make claims that are completely bogus. There's Linus Pauling, with his unfounded claims for Vitamin C and Shockley's views on eugenics, but these pale in comparison to the article's claims.
There's just one way to resolve this. SHOW ME. Provide a public demonstration."
"What a spectacle that would be," she said, "Though I have to agree with the comment."
"Here's a different take."
She read the second highlighted commentary from 'trustNme':
"While I don't for a second believe this outlandish claim, as a mental exercise let's speculate on the implications. Crime could be eradicated, criminal lawyers would become extinct; Politics would be utterly changed (for the better?); Science, would we even need scientists? Medicine, better treatments; Religions, there is a truly sticky, dangerous issue. Overthrowing widely held beliefs would utterly change societies; Economics, the so-called free market?
I could go on, but you get the idea. Is this a blessing or curse? Can humanity stand to or e
ven want to know the absolute truth about everything?
I don't know. Maybe we'd be better served if the thing was destroyed."
Alex continued, “There are other comments the editors deleted, probably some real nut jobs. A few stated you'd found God and called upon readers to rejoice. Others claim you're the Antichrist. There are dozens more I haven't even skimmed."
She perched on the stool next to him. "We've talked about the same topics, and I'd even considered destroying Clio, though what would be the point? It's too late, the information is out there. There’s no way to keep a secret in today's connected world. All I want is to be left alone and do my research, but is that going to happen?" she asked in a bitter tone. "Of course not."
Alex scrolled through the Chronicle's page layout and selected Business.
"What are you doing?"
"Just a second," he replied, typing one-handed. A window popped up with Global's latest stock quote. "Look."
She gazed at the sharp rising curve in astonishment. Up fifteen percent in two days? "I blew it."
"How could you know? Somebody's betting that your claim is true."
“Who? That kind of jump takes big bucks. Smells like insider trading, anyway that’s the Board’s problem. Speaking of which, I wonder what the Board thinks of the article. Now there's a scene I'd love to see."
"What?"
She smiled. "The Board knows, or knew, nothing about this. Hooper’s going to have some serious explaining to do."
"What are you going to do?"
She leaned back. "I already exercised the stock options. I need to think more about a strategy to fish out how this works. Maybe there isn’t one. My intuition has deserted me."
"Why not ask your Clio?"
She fixed her gaze on him. "What do you mean?"
He shrugged. "I'm not sure. Can you bring up those rules you devised for NASA?"
"OK." She retrieved her tablet from the end of the counter and opened the document:
Fact checking guidelines
1. No lies/non-truths in past relative to entanglement date
2. Predictions, undetermined events, such as sports, weather, etc. OK
3. Parser evaluates each message for past, present or future tense. Only Past tested. Implies true or false in present or future tenses do not fail whether true or not.
4. Questions and answers OK
5. Languages ? English, German, and...
6. Non-messages, i.e. random characters OK
"Other than sending it to Isaac, I haven't given it much thought. What's your idea?"
"Give me minute." Alex studied the tablet. "Item 3 is confusing and makes 2 redundant."
"NASA had a similar comment. I tested 'I am/am not married', and both versions transmitted just fine." She studied the screen. "Brilliant." She deleted 2 and renumbered her list.
His expression grew more puzzled. "But..."
"Alex, I know practically nothing, which is why I'm struggling, hunting for a way to even start. Well, not completely ignorant, but close enough."
"All I was trying to say, isn't there a way to ask Clio about Clio? Since you've named it isn't there some circumstance you can test now that's in the past?"
She laughed. "I haven't the foggiest." Was that true? "Maybe. I did use NASA's EntComs to test if the prototype would lie, and the answer was ambiguous. As for the name, we settled on 'fact from non-fact' to describe the ability."
"You and your husband?"
"No, Ian and I, when we were in Oregon."
He frowned.
"My dilemma is that there is no theory, no matter how wild, or obscure mathematical speculation that touches what Clio does. Oh, I've mumbled nonsense about it demonstrating that Feynman's path-integral is valid or the many worlds interpretation is real, mumbo-jumbo signifying complete ignorance. Physics is nothing more than an attempt to describe the material universe as we perceive it. And I’m failing.”
"So, you'll invent a theory. Einstein did it, why not you?"
She couldn't hide her frustration. "Thanks for the vote of confidence, but I'm stuck with the tools at hand. Einstein was a genius, yet even he built from what others had done, and he was never comfortable with quantum mechanics. There's nothing that remotely hints at what I’ve found, a seemingly infinite knowledge database. Are you listening to this? I'm floundering."
He shrugged. "Call it what it is —magic."
“What the hell does that mean?” she demanded her voice rising in exasperation. “It's just a word admitting my ignorance. I can't accept that."
"Ann, you've already teased out some limits of this 'magic'".
"Meaning I’m stuck with that for now? You're right, whining gets me nowhere; I need much more data." She got up. "'Once more into the breach' or something like that."
"I'm going to rummage around on the Web," he said. "Have fun."
Back in the spare bedroom she didn't feel at all confident as she took her seat. She glanced at the receiver screen and froze.
“hello” stared back
“Where did you come from?” she muttered. The transmit screen remained blank, just as she’d left it. She shook her head in annoyance. "Damn it, Alex, it's not funny," she yelled out the door.
A moment later he walked in and stood beside her. "What's not funny?"
She pointed at “hello”. "If that’s your idea of a joke, I'm not in the mood." She reached to toggle Reset, but Alex grabbed her wrist. "Wait."
She tried to free her hand, but he was too strong. "Ann, I swear I didn't type that." He gazed at her, his eye wide. "I. Did. Not. Type. That."
She felt light-headed, and her pulse pounded in her ears. "You're scaring me."
He released her hand. She snatched it back and folded her arms. Focus.
"hello" stared at them.
Alex broke the strained silence. "A bug?"
She shook her head. "No. The only software Clio has is the keyboard interface plus simple diagnostics, and 'hello' is nowhere in that code."
"Is it NASA?"
She opened her mouth to say no way, then shut it. She'd never considered the possibility, there had never been two systems running at once. But that's not true either. All the time Farid was kidnapped NASA was using their EntComs. What else could it be? "I'm calling Toffler, this is just too weird."
She hurried into the kitchen, grabbed her phone and selected Toffler's private code.
"Toffler, make it quick," rumbled in her ear.
"This is Ann Grey; I need to ask a favor."
His smiling face appeared. "Dr. Grey, I'm delighted you called. I've been meaning to thank you on behalf of NASA for your assistance in finding that saboteur. You're a bit of a heroine around here."
She blushed. "I'm glad to help, but that's not why I called. Have you been getting strange messages on the EntComs?"
He frowned. "Define strange."
How to say it? "Messages that just appear, not sent by the ship or CAPCOM."
"You mean interference?"
That's a good word. "They're intelligible, not noise."
"I'd have to ask. I'll get back to you tomorrow."
No, she wanted to scream. "I can't explain, but could you please check now?"
"It's inconvenient, can't it wait?"
"No, please?"
"All right, Dr. Grey, wait one."
He was annoyed, but she had to know. She tapped her fingers nervously on the counter top.
"Dr. Grey, you there?"
Her stomach knotted as she picked up her phone. "Yes."
"CAPCOM checked the logs and other than a few failed messages, no other problems. Are you experiencing issues we haven't seen yet?"
If he only knew. "That's excellent news. I'm working with my prototype and have run across some puzzling results. It must be the old equipment at fault, not the modern engineered versions you have."
"That's a relief. I should tell you a reporter from a San Francisco paper called and asked for comments about fact checking. I told h
im nothing as our official policy is being reviewed. It's caused a bureaucratic migraine, however that's not your problem."
"The secret’s out on the Web."
His expression radiated exasperation. "I know. You're free to tell whomever you please. I envy that, but I'm stuck with my orders. Is there anything else?"
"No and thank you very much." She hurried back to Clio's bedroom.
Alex was seated in her chair, his attention fixed on "hello".
"They've seen nothing unusual."
"So, it's not monkeys and typewriters? How about the neighborhood kid hacker?"
She shook her head. Not for the first time she wished they'd installed a memory module rather than the printer. She backed up a pace and aimed her phone at Alex. "Turn your head and point at the screen," she ordered and took a picture. "There, at least we have a record."
"Of what? Did you ever have results like this?"
She switched on the printer. “No.” Now what? “Send 'Hi'."
With one finger he typed "Hi" and stopped. "What are we doing? We have no fucking clue what's on the other end. None. I don't like it."
Is he right? How will she ever find out? "It's in English. Clio's not connected to any net. There's no spatial information in the quantum properties that could point to us. Do it."
"This is insane."
"Hi" appeared on the transmit PC.
“'hello” remained.
She shivered. "That can’t be. If a message fails, the transmit side blinks and nothing appears at the receiver. "
"what is pizza" flashed below "hello".
Alex stood and backed away. "This is too weird. You do it."
She didn't reply, dumfounded by the exchange. She handed him her phone and dropped into his chair. "Here, take pictures whenever the screen changes."
Don't panic, Ann, just play along. She sent "Food. Who are you?"
"zchaug who are you”
Ann stared at the screen, this can’t be happening. “What’s ‘zchaug’?” she stammered.
