The Truth About Santa

by Gregory Mone

  Warp drives aren’t perfect. There are space limitations, for example. The larger the bubble, the more energy you need to create it. Santa’s technology is highly advanced, but not even his tools can produce near-infinite amounts of negative energy.

  Still, it works. When Santa’s sleigh takes off, the warp drive generates a wormhole-like opening in the air. The reindeer pull Santa and his sleigh through, and they all slip into that isolated, balloonlike pocket of space-time. They slip out of the visible universe, travel almost instantly to the next destination, and pop back out again through another wormhole-like gate in the sky when it’s time to land.

  Muller suggests that this is the real source of the flying reindeer myth. Whenever a child sees the reindeer dropping down out of the night sky and landing on a rooftop, or soaring into the air with the sleigh trailing behind them, he or she is really watching as the animals, and the sleigh, slip into or out of a warp bubble. This creates the illusion that they’re flying, but, as Muller notes, the truth is that they’re just great leapers.

  PART VI

  Infiltration

  27

  Baby, It’s Cold in Interdimensional Space

  HOW SANTA’S SPACE SUIT KEEPS HIM ALIVE AND WELL IN EXTREME CONDITIONS

  Now that we know how Santa spends his year, tracks kids, earns revenue, stays healthy, and gets around the world in practically no time, we can move on to more important matters. What does he wear?

  Perhaps the most ridiculous of all the myths surrounding Santa Claus and his annual rounds is the idea that he accomplishes everything in a velour-like suit with thick leather boots, a belt, and a cuddly, fluff-trimmed hat. Wearing such an outfit would hardly be intelligent, given his mode of travel. No, Santa’s suits are far more advanced than the stories and sketches suggest. But why do his lieutenants need to don the red if they avoid all contact with witnesses? Furthermore, why do baseball managers wear the same uniforms as players?

  The second question is too great a mystery to address in such a short space, but Santa’s lieutenants have a host of reasons for wearing the suits. First of all, they are optimized for space travel. Wormholes and warp drive both transport an individual out of Earth’s atmosphere. They’re still connected to our world, but it’s likely that these regions of space-time do not have the same oxygen content and, as such, aren’t great places for humans, even ones with powerful health plans, to spend much time. Remember, the OC travels in an open-air sleigh. And his lieutenants don’t even use a vehicle: They just jump from one living room to the next, in and out of all those wormhole mouths. These journeys are often very brief, on the order of a few seconds or less, so a given Santa holds his breath as he slips into and out of an alternate world.

  The suits also offer protection should something go wrong. Say, for example, the tunnel is slightly longer than expected, or the warp drive isn’t purring perfectly. Santa’s suits, which, from the outside, do appear to resemble the fluffy, blanketlike versions depicted in so many illustrations and movies, can be sealed and offer a forty-five-minute supply of oxygen. By pulling his hat down over his face and attaching the stretchable brim to his collar, Santa can activate a pressurization system and allow himself some time to breathe.

  This is primarily for emergencies. Wormhole malfunctions lead to approximately one Santa every two years finding himself lost in an alternate universe. As far as we know, this never really ends well. But on the rare occasion that one of these unlucky Santas pops out of a busted wormhole somewhere in our galaxy, the suit gives him a chance for survival. Since the suit is pressurized and provides air for him to breathe, he knows he can live for a time, so he depresses an emergency response button. (It’s the third one from the top.) The suit then sends signals in all directions, which Santa’s space-based observatories eventually pick up. These observatories triangulate the signal and forward the estimated location of the lost Santa to the North Pole. Once the relevant elves are alerted, they inform the OC. If the lieutenant in question is close enough, the OC cranks up the warp drive and picks him up.

  Now, I know what you’re thinking: Why does he have to be close? If the OC has warp drive, couldn’t he go anywhere in the universe in a matter of minutes? Possibly, yes. But the OC is more concerned with time than distance. The OC could get to this Santa in a flash, but there’s no point if his oxygen has already run out. The problem is that the stranded Santa’s distress signal travels at the speed of light. Down here on Earth, three hundred million meters per second is quick enough for emergency communications. But space presents a different scale. It takes eight minutes for light from the Sun to reach Earth, and the Sun is practically next door—just about ninety-three million miles away. Since the stranded Santa has forty-five minutes’ worth of oxygen in his tank, that distress signal has a little bit more time to travel, but he’s still going to have to be somewhere within the Milky Way galaxy. If he pops out of that wormhole a few billion miles from Earth, there’s no hope. His oxygen reserves will be gone by the time the North Pole’s observatories receive the signal, and he’ll be long dead when the OC pulls up in his warp-drive sleigh.

  (Time travel probably wouldn’t work here either, since the universe doesn’t allow Santa to change events that have already happened. Unless, of course, nobody observes the death, in which case there might be some tree-falling-in-the-forest, causality-related way of getting around that apparent rule. But that’s for the aliens to figure out.)

  The suits also have a number of other capabilities. They are flame-proof, which, given the fact that Santa is constantly jumping into fireplaces, is pretty important. A stain-and moisture-resistant layer of fabric sits on the outside, so spilled eggnog trickles right off the suit and down to the floor. The furry white brim can be pulled down and attached to the collar, as described above, but it also contains an earpiece and microphone so that a given Santa may consult directly with one of his elfish minders if necessary.

  This is only allowed in emergencies, though; most of the time, communication flows strictly in one direction, with the AI software that coordinates all of Santa’s activities issuing orders through e-mail directives and other alerts.

  Those quaint little reading glasses so often depicted on the end of Santa’s nose? Look closely and you’ll see that the lenses are embedded with circuitry. The glasses function as a heads-up display, so that when Santa peers through them, he sees a virtual projection of his tasks, agenda, next steps, or any urgent warnings.

  The suits also boast a collection of wonderful little hidden pockets. Generally, Santa’s lieutenants find them stylish, breathable, and flattering. Yet the OC doesn’t endow his lieutenants’ suits with all the best technology. In fact, he keeps the finest materials for himself.

  28

  The Instantly Invisible Man

  METAMATERIALS, HOME INFILTRATION, AND THE SHOTGUN-SWINGING DAD PROBLEM

  Though it’s important for Santa to let himself be seen on occasion, there are moments when he would prefer to disappear. In the home of an overprotective father, for example. Take the following hypothetical.

  Still lying awake after spending the last few hours setting presents under the tree, Dad hears a noise in the living room. He swings his legs out of bed. He just saw a program on the news about Christmas burglars, and he isn’t going to let them grab his family’s goodies.

  His wife wakes and whispers to him. He lifts a single finger to his lips, telling her to be quiet. Up off the bed, Dad reaches inside his old terry-cloth bathrobe and removes the loaded shotgun he keeps there for these sorts of potential emergencies and/or invasions by foreign powers, be they Russian or North Korean. He tiptoes down the stairs, hears more rustling below.

  The OC, at this point, is still scanning the scene, making sure he has everything in order. But then he hears a click. Carefully, slowly, and, as always, jovially, he turns and sees a flannel-pajama-dressed Dad pointing a loaded shotgun in his direction.

  In an instant he disappears from view. He’s still in
the room, in the same spot as before, in fact. But he has become invisible, thanks to the metamaterials in his suit. His futuristic threads bend light around him instead of reflecting or absorbing it. They’re not the only things in the universe that have this ability. Stars, for example, exert so much gravitational force on the space-time around them that they actually warp it. A straight line extending past a star isn’t really straight, from our standpoint, but curved. Light loops right around them. Santa’s metamaterials have the same effect, but on a local level. They reroute light and hide him from view.

  In recent years, researchers have begun edging closer to developing materials with the phenomenal capabilities of Santa’s suit. Duke University scientist David Smith and John B. Pendry of Imperial College London, two of the pioneers in the field, laid the theoretical foundation for a real-world cloaking device in 2006. This mathematical work was a critical first step, but the scientists didn’t wait long to move into the construction phase. Less than a year later, Smith and his group at Duke constructed a device that reroutes micro wave radiation around a hockey-puck-sized object. More recently, Ames National Laboratory physicist Costas Soukoulis and his colleagues at Karlsruhe University reported that they had developed a material that has the same effect on visible light.

  Despite the accelerated progress in these last few years, a few significant challenges remain. None of these early incarnations would work with moving objects. They couldn’t make someone the size of Santa disappear. They generate distortions that someone with decent vision would have no trouble discerning. Plus, the designs are generally optimized for specific frequencies. This is a problem because visible light—the stuff that our eyes pick up—includes a wide range of wavelengths. Blocking out just one frequency wouldn’t be enough. Santa wouldn’t feel very safe if only the red portions of his suit became invisible and not the black belt and white trim. Currently, though, there is no design that can manipulate more than one kind of light.

  Yet Santa’s suit works across the spectrum. When Dad initially steps into the living room, he sees Santa because the light in the room is reflecting off the suit, and the OC, and traveling toward his eyes. Dad’s brain then makes sense of this colorful picture and tells him there’s a guy kneeling before his tree, sorting through his kids’ presents.

  Now, how does Santa disappear? Normally, one of three things happens to light when it strikes an object. The light is either reflected, absorbed, in which case it turns into heat, or transmitted, meaning that it passes straight through. Windows mostly transmit light; mirrors reflect it. But metamaterials actually bend the light.

  Imagine that Santa is crouched directly between Dad and the tree. Before he disappears, light from different sources—a lamp on the table, the tree lights, the moon—strikes his suit and reflects in different directions, including right at Dad’s eyes. When the metamaterials in Santa’s suit are activated, however, this light actually flows around the OC, like the water in a river flowing around a boulder.

  If Dad were to take two flashlights, hold them side by side, and shine them right at Santa’s midsection, the suit would channel the two beams around him, one to the left and the other to the right, then allow them to re-emerge and resume their course, and their parallel alignment, on the other side of him. The light would effectively ignore Santa Claus.

  Eventually the beams would bounce off the needles and ornaments of the tree behind him. Some of the light would head back the way it came and loop around Santa, once more acting as if he wasn’t there, before finally reaching Dad’s eyes. At this point, Dad’s brain would process the visual data and inform him that there was only a tree before him and not an intruder. In effect, the metamaterials make the scene behind Santa (the section of the tree he’s blocking) visible, so that it looks like he’s not there.

  Standing now in what would seem to be an entirely empty room, this very defensive father uncocks his shotgun and rubs his eyes. This proves ineffective, as metamaterials are even impervious to eye rubbing. He questions his sobriety and his sanity. He thinks back to earlier that night. How many glasses of eggnog did he have? Hmmmm. And then there was the champagne later in the night as they were sorting the presents, after the kids had gone to sleep.

  Confused, Dad returns to bed. Santa, still cloaked, hurries away and makes a note not to return. Yet he survives. He avoids a shotgun blast and preserves his life.

  Such encounters are rare. More often than not, Santa is aware of sleepwalking parents and kids long before they make it into the living room, thanks in large part to the all-seeing eye at the top of each tree.

  29

  Quiet, the Ornaments Are Listening

  SCANNING FOR INTRUDERS AND WITNESSES VIA AUDIO AND VIDEO SURVEILLANCE

  The star atop the average Christmas tree appears to be just another ornament, but it’s actually a highly advanced surveillance device designed to ensure that Santa minimizes unanticipated run-ins during his deliveries. These devices are also crucial for the time-traveling lieutenants. They pick up on children sneaking out to peek under the tree and alert the elves, who can block out that time period and ensure that no lieutenants attempt to visit that home and risk bumping into the aforementioned causality issue.

  Santa has ties to an astonishing number of companies, but thanks to Mrs. Claus, he’s always been particularly involved in the ornament industry. (The popular designer Christopher Radko and he are very good friends, for example.) This is partially a Christmas-spirit issue; he wants to ensure that ornaments convey holiday cheer and charity. But, as described in previous chapters, many of these decorative elements also contain highly sensitive listening devices. Still, for Christmas Eve, Santa relies on much more versatile technology.

  Typically, the equipment is embedded in treetop ornaments, since these offer the best vantage point. Each one of these has two main sensors. One is optical, the other auditory. Take the standard treetop angel. The figure’s eyes double as miniature stereo cameras. With each lens acting as a different “eye” and recording an event from a different perspective, they can capture both 3-D video and still images. When the technology is built into a decorative star, each camera lens, or eye, is situated on an opposing point and concealed by a decorative element, such as an imitation gemstone. The function, though, remains the same.

  Typically the video data is processed inside the ornament, in a miniature computer. Certain events—a little girl checking out what’s been left under the tree, for example—are red-flagged, and the relevant image or video clip is then routed back to the North Pole for analysis. These devices have proven effective, but Santa has also begun releasing models that take advantage of home Wi-Fi systems. Rather than process all the information internally, the angel sends the raw data back to the North Pole via the homeowner’s Wi-Fi connection. The advantage here is threefold. Santa can package the surveillance equipment in smaller ornaments, since there’s no need for a robust processor. The devices also burn less energy, given that they don’t have to crunch all that data on-site, so they extend their battery life. Finally, they don’t need very powerful antennae, since they’re only sending data across a room and not halfway around the world. (There are rumors up at the Pole about the possibility of Santa leaving fewer presents at homes without Wi-Fi networks because of the headaches these tech-averse destinations create.)

  This video information, which Santa also uses for performance-review purposes, running through little missteps or oversights on the part of his lieutenants (which the elves are only too happy to point out), is crucial. It can provide clear-cut evidence that a child or adult is present in Santa’s target landing area, the living room. But on its own it would not suffice.

  The OC needs to know when people are in the room, yes, but he also needs to know when they are on their way. If he’s about to land his warp-drive ship on someone’s roof, rappel down the wall, and climb in through a window (the whole squeezing-through-the-chimney bit is a myth; honestly, does anyone think that’s really even re
motely possible?), he wants to be warned if a little girl is tiptoeing down the hall at the same moment, or if an overaggressive father is awake and on guard.

  To pick up these often gentle footfalls, the ornaments use a sensor system very similar to one that’s currently being tested as a military sniper detector. The RedOwl system features laser range finders, thermal imagers, and more, but the key element is a listening device developed by Boston University scientist Socrates Deligeorges. It consists of a microphone array and a processor that can almost instantly determine the source and nature of a given sound. A series of four microphones sit at the four corners of the boxlike device. If someone fires a gun within its hearing range, the pressure waves generated by the event register in each of the four microphones. An onboard computer then translates this data and estimates, based on the time each microphone received the signal, where the sound originated. The first incarnations of the RedOwl’s sniper finder fit inside a hardcover-book-sized package, but the researchers estimate that they’ll be able to scale that down to something the size of two cigarette packs.

  Santa’s version is smaller still, and highly sensitive. Whereas the angel’s “eyes” can only pick up people inside the room, its “ears” can hear them approaching. Deligeorges and his colleagues trained Red-Owl to distinguish between different sounds; it can correctly identify not just where a gun was fired, but what kind of gun was fired. Similarly, Santa’s in-house ears can estimate whether footsteps belong to a parent or child, and if they’re the hesitant, creeping brand taken by someone on an illicit mission or the heavy, sleepy kind that occur when someone is simply headed to the bathroom in the middle of the night.