After this, there’s one more jump cut to a final testimonial, although its intent is debatable, as it might have simply been an accidental recording. Reidier faces the camera, but his eyes are focused below it, on the computer screen. He shifts from right to left. His eyes similarly shift in the opposite direction. It is unclear as to what he is looking at, but his behavior suggests that he’s staring at his own live video image in a webcam window. This interpretation is further bolstered by Reidier’s parting whisper, “We are never who we were.”
That’s the last shot of the discombobulated montage. The only other recorded activity that night is Reidier walking up the stairs, shuffling down the quiet hallways between the upstairs bedrooms, and climbing into bed with Eve.
During one of my visits to the Reidier house, after the Test day, I think I found the photo Reidier was looking at that night. It was face down in the wok. The magnetic marbles were still holding each other up against the conical sides, about an inch above the center.
The photograph was taken a few years ago when they were living in Chicago. Reidier and Eve are standing in Navy Pier Park with the Great Lake behind them. It’s a sunny day. Reidier and Eve hold hands. Reidier smiles at the camera, his head tilted toward his wife. Eve is looking down at one of the boys, dangling in front of Reidier, fast asleep in a Baby Björn.
In interpreting the webcam footage, especially compared to the previous mundane Eve packing moment, one wonders about Reidier’s psychological state. Indeed this suspicion has already been explored in numerous intra-Departmental e-mails under the guise (and sometimes outright accusation) of inquiring about the connections between genius and madness.10
The hypothesis that these two are related has existed for centuries. Historical and psychiatric research shows higher rates and intensities of psychopathological symptoms in creative individuals. Or more properly put, that individuals with creative, “outside of the box” thinking exhibit a higher incidence of symptoms associated with mental illness. Still, a trend does not signify correlation or causation with any statistical significance.
Dean Keith Simonton, PhD addresses and classifies these trends in his May 31, 2005 article for the Psychiatric Times, “Are Genius and Madness Related? Contemporary Answers to an Ancient Question” (http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/cultural-psychiatry/are-genius-and-madness-related-contemporary-answers-ancient-question). Simonton summarizes the three basic conclusions in this matter:
“The rate and intensity of psychopathological symptoms appear to be higher among eminent creators than in the general population . . . On average, the more eminent the creator, the higher is the expected rate and intensity of the psychopathological symptoms . . . Depression seems to be the most common symptom, along with the correlates of alcoholism and suicide.”
“The rate and intensity of symptoms varies according to the specific domain of creativity. For example, psychopathology is higher among artistic creators than among scientific creators.”11
“Family lines that produce the most eminent creators also tend to be characterized by a higher rate and intensity of psychopathological symptoms.”12
Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, known for his work on flow, has spent over forty years studying creatives and their processes. What he has found common to all “geniuses” is not madness, but rather discipline. Perseverance through bout after bout of trial and error—this is what’s required of the mind of a genius. “Discipline is not a hallmark of minds in the throes of emotional distress. ‘Despite the carefree air that many creative people affect,’ writes Csikszentmihalyi, ‘most of them work late into the night and persist when less driven individuals would not.’”13
All of this is a grant-fueled, academic way of saying that at best the link between genius and madness is inconclusive. Nevertheless, Reidier does not seem to be exhibiting any symptoms of a psychotic episode or suicidal depression. This is supported by the previously described lab footage the day of the Test. Reidier seems focused, in control, and disciplined. In spite of the “absurdity” of his behavior in his home office, he seems to behave in as normal a manner as anyone would alone, in the middle of the night, before a possibly monumental, career-making day.
These moments are not the meaningless testimonials of a lunatic. They are the private utterances of a focused, albeit anxious, man.
This is bound to unsettle some within the Department as it leaves several crucial questions unanswered.
Who is Kai?
What and where are Leo’s Notebooks?
What’s the significance of the wok and the magnets?
And why is there only one boy in the photograph?
Public interest in the Gould Island incident/accident barely took hold in the public consciousness and waned in the weeks following The Reidier Test. Gould Island was uninhabited and sold to the State of Rhode Island and the Providence Plantation. Cleanup of the marine-animal carcasses was completed within ten days. Human casualties were never reported by the Department. The structural survey of the nearby Newport Bridge revealed no damage. And the busy season of summer had been over for weeks.
Probably the most significant reason for The Reidier Test’s lack of prominence on the nation’s radar was the date: September 14, 2008. Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy only a few hours later at 1:45 a.m. on September 15. The national news networks ran the story all day, cutting back from images of Lehman employees removing files and belongings from 745 Seventh Avenue to shots of the Stock Exchange as its shares tumbled over 90 percent. The country was overwrought about economic implosion and unconcerned about an actual explosion (incidental or accidental) a couple hundred miles up the Eastern seaboard.
There was a follow-up piece to Reidier’s obituary, noting the contributions he had made in the world of quantum cryptography while working for Centre Spatial Guyanis (CSG),14 the French spaceport near Kourou in French Guiana. It mentioned how Reidier created the R00 protocol,15 which improved the information reconciliation and privacy amplification of the previous BB84 and E91 protocols. There were no letters to the editors in response to this piece or any printings of eulogies from colleagues.
This last point brings up a unique aspect to Reidier’s work. Even with all of the corporate investment, intellectual property stakes, and consequent gag orders within the scientific community, it has continued to maintain open communication and a collaborative spirit. Reidier’s work, however, was and remains a completely isolated and insulated pursuit. As of yet, no one in the Department has clarified whether this was solely at DARPA’s insistence or due to Reidier’s own preference. It’s difficult to assign the proper term without understanding his motivation, which could range from paranoia to competitiveness to insecurity to pathological self-reliance. Interviews with friends and colleagues suggest that Reidier was eager to discuss colleagues’ work but consistently dismissive or cryptic about his own. He did, however, have a tendency to “drop in” on friends and coworkers with seemingly random but incisive questions about their respective specialties.
Regardless of the motivation, it is clear that advanced measures and protocols were instituted in order to maintain the highest level of secrecy. All outside intellectual input and mechanical production was compartmentalized into fractured and redundant tasks, and then outsourced to a wide array of independent contractors with no classification access. I suspect that the five Deputies of the Department insisted on exceptional, top-secret status for two reasons. One, obviously, to protect the Department’s investment and maximize its strategic utility if successfully developed. And, two, there was no foreseeable benefit to sharing information: Reidier was ahead of all of his colleagues working in the field of teleportation.
While other scientists, mathematicians, and engineers were still trying to understand, create, and harness teleportation of information, Reidier was already fine tuning what we can approximate as matter transmission.
Curiously, among teleportation researchers, Reidier was solely known for his cry
ptographic contributions and his entertaining philosophical lectures. He published no papers or articles in the field and is rarely referenced by colleagues in their publications. Still, although less than a few dozen people with the highest clearance may know it, Reidier was the teleportation expert. In 1967, Star Trek introduced the idea of teleportation to the masses, but, until Reidier, no one had come anywhere close to making this a reality.
Of course others were making significant contributions in the field. In 1997, while Reidier was working on his PhD, Anton Zeilinger, at the University of Innsbruck in Austria, performed the first practical demonstration of teleportation using entangled photons to “transmit” Bell polarization states.16 In that experiment, 75 percent of the teleporting events still couldn’t be measured. To this day, no one has managed to devise a complete Bell-state analyzer. Independently, at the University of Rome, Francesco DeMartini had developed a way around this 75 percent problem by riding information shotgun on an auxiliary photon.
In 1998, Jeff Kimble managed to teleport complete light particles (not just their quantum states) at CalTech’s Norman Bridge Laboratory across a lab bench of about a meter. The year 1999 witnessed the development of the 3-qubit quantum computer17; 2000 saw the creation of the 7-qubit quantum computer. In 2002, a quantum key was transported across twenty-three kilometers of open air by the UK Defense Research Agency. In that same year, Indian physicists Sougato Sharma and Dipankar Home at the Bose Institute in Calcutta showed how it might be possible to entangle any kind of particle, not just photons, electrons, and atoms.
While all of this was both impressive and slightly impenetrable, it all seemed amateurish compared to what Reidier was allegedly working on. And what exactly was that? It’s been more than a little challenging to put the pieces together and arrive at a clear picture in light of the paucity of public records, the overzealous Department censorship of Reidier’s documents (even though I’m expected to learn Reidier’s mind, I’m not privileged enough to be able to read his thoughts), and the tragic reality that everyone who had enough clearance to understand or at least see Reidier’s work was killed while attending The Reidier Test.
I’m alone in this without a map.
Obviously, the Department has not brought me in to interpolate and analyze Reidier’s physics. I’m sure that’s been fractured apart and dispersed to thousands of scientists for segmented analysis, none of them remotely aware of how the whole is truly greater than the sum of its parts.
In any case, it’s not the physics that’s important here. If it were, I wouldn’t know any of this. No, it’s Reidier. He’s the key. Something he did or didn’t do. Something hidden except to him.
The Reidier Test wasn’t about physics. It was about Reidier. And Eve and Otto and Ecco. Only through them will we ever know what happened. Accident or incident. Tragedy or miracle.
TITLE CARD: GALILEE 6:21
TITLE CARD: EXPERIMENT 7
CONTROL ROOM, GOULD ISLAND FACILITY - 2007-07-17 09:44
Dr. Reidier at console. Wears tweed sport coat - brown, elbow patches, lapel pin, size 42 regular
Addresses camera . . .
DR. REIDIER
(sighs)
Experiment seven, Inanimate Transfer. While attempts four through six did successfully teleport whole atoms and molecules, the macro, cubic structure was not preserved. Instead of reconstituting a cube, a pile of remarkably fine graphite dust was received.
INT. MIRROR LAB - SAME TIME
As Dr. Reidier continues, the Mirror Lab comes to life. Fiber-optic cables, circumscribing the Entanglement Channel, flare red for several seconds, then morph into an orbiting white light as the Entanglement Channel opens.
DR. REIDIER (OS)
In an effort to counteract the dissociation, the catalyzing quark burst has been raised to ███████ ███████
The Boson Cannons and Pion Beams twitch to life. SOUNDS of the rapid ACCELERATION and DECELERATION of GEARS as they take a series of readings. Once complete, they settle into optimized focal positions.
DR. REIDIER (OS) (CONT’D)
Furthermore, the quark color wavelength has been altered ███████ ████
The Quark Resonator emits a SOFT, HIGH-PITCHED DRONE as it powers up.
DR. REIDIER (OS) (CONT’D)
As with previous attempts, Inanimate is uniform carbon, graphite-layered, planar structure in a cube with sides measuring 81 mm.
INT. CONTROL ROOM - SAME TIME
Dr. Reidier tilts open the Plexiglas cover of Contact Button Alpha. While at far end of console, IS1 O’Brien does the same with Contact Button Bravo. Dr. Reidier absentmindedly taps his lapel pin twice, in a ritualized manner.
Dr. Reidier and IS1 O’Brien simultaneously engage Contacts.
CUT TO:
MIRROR LAB - SAME TIME
SPLIT SCREEN, on right side CLOSE-UP of an empty reinforced-acrylic sphere over target pad.
LEFT SIDE, CLOSE-UP: graphite cube sits inside reinforced-acrylic sphere over the transmission pad.
Cube remains perfectly still.
At 2007-07-17 09:47:11.5709411 a quiet THRUM coincides with the inside of the transmission acrylic sphere being suddenly coated with residue [subsequently determined to be a heterogeneous mixture of atoms and molecules ranging from P to Rb (including a variety of compounds within this range); the lowest concentration of elements consisting of Al and Y, whereas the concentrations increased from both extremes toward Fe, which had the highest].
NOTE: While undetectable to the naked eye, when high-speed footage was slowed down, a phenomenon was detected for the last 800 picoseconds on the left side. During this increment, a seeming digital artifact appears on screen as the cube seems to tessellate then (slightly) shudder.
RIGHT SIDE, at 2007-07-17 09:47:11.5709411, the graphite cube appears. On the outside of the acrylic sphere, frost immediately accumulates.
CONTROL ROOM - 09:47:17
IS1 O’Brien reads information off a screen.
IS1 O’BRIEN
Initial scan, structural integrity intact.
Dr. Reidier nods, sighs, collapses back into his chair.
INT. MIRROR LAB -
The HIGH PITCH of the Quark Resonator fades out as the machine powers down.
GEARS SPINNING NOISE ramps up and down as the Boson Cannons and Pion Beams retract.
The circling indicator lights surrounding the Entanglement Channel orbit to a standstill, flash green, and then switch off.
II
A house is not a home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body.
~Benjamin Franklin
Where thou art—that—is Home.
~Emily Dickinson
Excerpts of Interview Transcript and Author’s Psynar® Notes with Clyde Palmore, Professor of Materials Engineering, Brown University
April 3, 2009
“It was the second time he had broken the basement. Eve was gone for the weekend. She had taken the kids to New York, I believe. See some family, catch a show, you know the drill. Anyhow, she was gone, and Reidier was working down in the basement. He had set up a makeshift lab down there—well, a pretty high-end makeshift lab actually. I imagine Eve had been getting on him about late hours and staying in the office too much. The basement workshop was sort of a compromise. At least it was Reidier’s attempt at a compromise.”
Clyde lets out a curt snort and shakes his head. More a befuddled amusement than a gesture of judgment. He’s a cherubic, middle-aged man with a shock of wavy gray hair. He carries his weight mostly in his gut but wears it well. It sort of lends an outward physical softness to his easy, welcoming demeanor. This is further emphasized by his rumpled casual attire: dark blue Polo shirt, wrinkled khakis, and a limp sport coat that dangles off the back of his chair.
Clyde rubs the back of his right thumb along the crease in his Polo shirt where his belly dives into his chest. A dark patch of sweat bleeds out, demarcating the change in topography
. “I sort of got the feeling that it was more of a jury-rigged gesture than an actual solution.”
“How’s that?” I ask.
“Well,” he leans back in his chair, securing his sport coat’s precarious position, “I guess it was his tone. Very curt. Tense. Urgent, bordering on panic. Clearly, there was a lot of tension down in that basement.”
“That’s pretty specific of you.”
“Somebody calls you in the middle of a Sox game on Saturday afternoon about how he broke the house and how quickly could you get there, it tends to stay with you.”
“I’d imagine so. So you went over?”
“Right over. Anybody else calls you, saying something like that, you laugh and hang up. But Reidier, well he just wasn’t a prankster. Yeah, let’s leave it at that. Plus, you always knew that with Reidier it was going to make a great story.”
“Broken homes often do. At least according to Tolstoy.”
Clyde laughs. “Anna Karenina, right?”
“I’m impressed.”
“What, you think just ’cause I’m an expert at load engineering stress I don’t dabble in literature?”
“Not at all, Professor Palmore.”
He chuckles some more and winks at me. “I had a fifty-fifty shot, it was either that or War and Peace. Anyhow, this was a more literal predicament, not literary, otherwise that would have been right up Eve’s alley.”18 He winks again. “There was a crack with an amplitude of up to nine centimeters at points that ran about three and a half meters laterally through the concrete foundation of Reidier’s basement.”
“How did he do that?”
“That’s exactly what I asked . . . But Reidier, he had this frantic look in his eye. He just stared at the wall and asked ‘Can you fix it by six p.m., Sunday?’”
Here & There Page 4
