The Genesis Machine

by James P. Hogan

  "Just a second, before you say any more," she said excitedly. "Let's see if I can fill some of it in for myself. If you didn't just rotate that, but spun it over and over all the time, the shadow people would see it disappearing and reappearing all the time, wouldn't they? That's the thing that Aub and you were getting worked up about when Aub was at Berkeley . . . those things you called k-space rotations. He showed us a picture of a particle doing just that."

  "Absolutely right," Clifford confirmed. "It was doing just that. And that was the first concrete proof that it all really was real." Sarah had nothing to add at that point and seemed eager for more, so Clifford went on. "Now suppose we have two objects, both of which exist purely in hi-space . . ." he picked up a second coaster and held it parallel to the first so that they were both standing edge-on to the table. "We don't see anything in the shadow universe . . . normal space, right?"

  "Right," Sarah agreed.

  "Now, if they collide and one or both of them flip over . . ." He went through the action and left her to complete the sentence.

  "We'd see one or two of them appear from nowhere," she observed at once. "Hey, this is fun. More, please."

  "Yes, exactly. In fact that machine that Al Morelli built does both those things. It makes lots of particles flip from normal space into hi-space . . . vanish . . ."

  "Which makes gravity."

  "Right. And it also generates a big output of pure hi-space particles that aren't detectable—or weren't until Aub made his detector . . ." He paused as he realized that Sarah was signaling again.

  "Uh?"

  "How does that thing work?" she asked. "I thought you said that nothing in the hi-space place could be detected by senses or instruments. . . . Doesn't Aub's thing do just that?"

  "You're right," Clifford conceded. "But before that there was no known way of doing it. What Aub found was that he could set up a system of spinning particles—appearing and disappearing in the way you said a minute ago—and that the way in which they spin . . . the spin mode . . . changes when pure hi-particles interact with it. That's what we call hi-radiation. By monitoring the changes in spin modes, Aub can measure certain things about the hi-radiation that's causing the changes."

  "Okay," Sarah said slowly. "I don't get all of that, but I see the general idea. Where were we?"

  "Morelli's GRASER makes lots of hi-radiation."

  "Yes, that was it," she said. "So this machine of Al's is throwing out these hi-particle things that nobody can know about except by using Aub's detector thing. Joe told me that you'd calculated what the detector should have detected, and sure enough it did. So what's the problem?"

  "Up to that point, no problem," Clifford agreed. "I worked out a math model of black-hole conditions and you're quite right—as far as the predicted hi-radiation went, sure, it checked out fine with what we measured when Aub finally got the detector working."

  "So?"

  "But pure hi-radiation wasn't the only thing that the model predicted. Remember the collisions . . . ?" Clifford repeated the action of colliding and flipping over the coasters. "The hi-particles can interact among themselves to produce particles that we can detect by ordinary methods . . . in other words, ordinary, conventional radiation. So we ought to see conventional radiation—apparently coming from nowhere—around Morelli's black holes."

  "And you don't," she guessed.

  "We do, but the pattern and the amount are wrong. The frequency spectrum is wrong, and there's more of it than the model says there should be."

  Sarah looked slightly disappointed.

  "Is that all?" she said, raising her eyebrows. "I mean, that doesn't sound like the end of the world. You've proved the main point. Are the exact numbers that important?"

  "Yes, they are," Clifford told her. "For one thing, the only way you can be sure you've got the theory right is if the numbers come out the way the theory says they should. If they don't, that means there's something there you don't understand that you should understand. And the second thing is that there is another possible explanation for the radiation around the black holes that doesn't require k-theory at all; it's called 'Hawking Effect' and involves just conventional physics. You have to get the numbers right to be able to choose which explanation fits. Otherwise you'll never know. Right now we've tested both predictions and neither fits. K-theory comes closer to the number that we actually measure, but it still predicts less radiation than is there. That's the problem."

  "But you're closer, you said," Sarah pointed out. "Isn't that good enough for you to choose?" Clifford shook his head.

  "'Fraid not," he said. "The error's too big. Until we know why, both theories could be equally wrong and the fact that one comes nearer could be just a coincidence . . . certainly not grounds for saying it's right." He sighed. "As I said, you have to get the numbers right."

  Chapter 13

  Aub, however, was as usual completely unperturbed by such academic details. Leaving Clifford to ponder them, he abandoned himself ecstatically to the task of fully mastering and further refining his latest toy. Gradually he found ways of improving the sensitivity of the instrument so that it would register reliably the levels of annihilation-generated hi-radiation even when the GRASER was running at comparatively moderate power, and the mass concentrations simulated inside the reactor sphere were nowhere near black-hole intensities.

  * * *

  Aub was busy in his office when he received a call from Alice, who was downstairs on the reactor floor debugging a program that had recently been added to the system.

  "There's something unusual happening here, Aub," she said, looking puzzled. "I don't understand it. Can you come down and have a look?"

  Fifteen minutes later, Aub joined her beside the reactor sphere, at the master console of the detector and cast an eye quickly over the familiar clutter of equipment around them.

  "What's the problem?" he asked cheerfully. She pointed at a column of numbers on the main monitor screen. Almost at once Aub's face knotted into a puzzled frown as he realized that it was unusually quiet; there was none of the humming and whining that signaled when the GRASER was running.

  But before he could speak, Alice offered an explanation. "I had to switch on the detector to run the program. It seems to be measuring hi-radiation, but the GRASER is shut down this morning. What do you make of it?"

  Aub sighed and sank into the operator's chair. Late the night before he had installed an additional rack of hardware to improve the sensitivity of the instrument still further and had gone home without testing it out, having wasted half the night tracing an intermittent fault.

  "I guess I musta screwed up somewhere last night," he said in a resigned voice. "It looks like we're in for another day of trouble-shooting. Better hook into the main computer and start calling down the diagnostics."

  * * *

  But by mid-afternoon, at which time they had been joined by a curious Sandra, Joe, and Art, Aub was still disturbed. "This is crazy. The system checks out okay, the GRASER's not running, so we're not generating any hi-waves, but we're still measuring them. Let's start up the GRASER and run a few standard calibration routines. There has to be something screwy somewhere."

  Later that evening the whole team, including Clifford, was gathered round the console while Aub repeated the tests that he had performed time and time again. Still the results came out the same. They were detecting hi-waves where there were no hi-waves to be detected. Clifford took the logical view that if the waves were there and they were definitely not coming from the GRASER, then they had to be coming from somewhere else. No sooner had he said it when the truth dawned on him. Five minutes later he was on the line to an astounded Al Morelli, who was half-shaved and wearing a bathrobe.

  "The detector is definitely responding, Al," he said, his voice quivering with excitement. "But what it's responding to has got nothing to do with the GRASER at all. It's coming from the whole of the universe!"

  "Universe? What universe?" Morelli looked bewi
ldered. "Brad, just what are you talking about?"

  "The universe!" Clifford exclaimed. "All over the universe you've got particle transitions going on all the time, right? You've got creations happening all the time, everywhere, and you've got annihilations happening mainly inside masses."

  "Sure, but . . ." Morelli's eyes widened. "You're not saying . . . ?"

  "That's just what I'm saying," Clifford affirmed, nodding violently. "Every single one of those events generates hi-waves just as surely as those same events taking place inside the GRASER do. What Aub's done is wind the sensitivity up so high that we're actually getting a reading from it. We're reading the hi-wave background noise from the whole universe.

  Morelli's face just gaped out of the screen.

  Before he could formulate a coherent reply, Clifford went on. "I'll tell you another thing too. There's every reason to suppose that the background hi-wave noise also produces a background of ordinary radiation through secondary reactions. That gives us a possible alternative explanation for the three-degree thermal background radiation, so maybe we don't need the Big Bang model to account for it at all now. How about that? Here's something we've got to talk to Zimmermann about right away."

  * * *

  "What do you mean—'k-astronomy'?" Peter Hughes looked suspiciously over his desk at Aub and Morelli, who hadn't stopped babbling excitedly since they sat down. "If you're telling me you want more money for the project . . ."

  "Hear us out first, Pete," Morelli said. "This could be the greatest thing since Galileo. That machine over in the GRASER building is picking up hi-waves from everywhere in the universe—stars, black holes—everything everywhere . . ."

  "I know that," Hughes replied. "But . . ."

  "It wasn't designed for anything like that, but it works," Morelli went on.

  "Now, suppose we developed an instrument specially to do that kind of thing," Aub chimed in. "An instrument to observe the universe in terms of its hi-wave radiation instead of its electromagnetic spectrum . . . by 'hi-light.' "

  "But I still don't see . . ." Hughes began again, but Morelli cut him off again.

  "We think this could open up possibilities you never dreamed of. Brad's come up with an analysis of how hi-waves propagate through k-space. It's enough to blow your mind."

  "K-space points don't correlate with geometric points in normal space," Aub said. "Or even with Einsteinian point-events. There's no tie-in between the separation of k-points and everyday 'distance'. . ."

  "So velocity doesn't transform up from lo-space," Morelli said.

  "Not in any physically meaningful way, anyhow," Aub added, just to make it clear. Hughes looked helplessly from one to the other and suddenly held both bands up protectively in front of his face.

  "Stop!" he bawled. The office at once fell silent. "Thank you," he said in a calmer voice. "Now, why don't you just calm down, think about it, and then tell me from the beginning exactly what the hell you're talking about?"

  Aub and Morelli turned toward each other with questioning expressions.

  "You tell him," Morelli suggested.

  "No, you tell him," Aub answered. They both began speaking at once and Hughes stopped them again. Eventually Aub began the explanation.

  "A hi-wave can be generated at some particular point in normal space . . . such as inside the reaction chamber of the GRASER. It can also be observed—or at least its effects can—at some other particular point in normal space . . ."

  "Such as in your detector," Hughes completed. "Fine. Go on."

  "That's right," Aub nodded. "But what happens in between is not something you can visualize. It doesn't mean anything to say that a hi-wave goes from point A to point B at any particular speed."

  "You mean it just happens . . ." Hughes looked mystified. "How can something get from A to B without going from A to B?"

  "That's the whole point that comes out of Brad's analysis," Morelli supplied. "To talk about going from A to B in the everyday sense implies the notions of direction, distance, and time. Brad's equations do contain variables that play similar roles, but they relate to k-space. . . . They don't have any direct interpretation in ordinary spacetime."

  Aub waited a few seconds and then elaborated. "Direction, distance, and time come out simply as projections into the lo-order domain of normal space, of quantities that exist in k-space but which can't be experienced as total impressions. The only way, for example, that a two-dimensional being could perceive a 3-D object—a sphere, say—would be to cut it up into slices and attempt to integrate all the pictures into one total concept, but he couldn't really do it accurately since he wouldn't have the right mental equipment to construct 3-D models."

  "What he'd have to do would be to inspect each separate slice in sequence," Morelli came in. "That implies he could only perceive the object as a series of impressions. In other words, he would have to manufacture the illusion of time, in order to make up for his inadequate sensory equipment."

  In spite of himself, Hughes began to look interested.

  "So what are you saying then?" he asked. "We're like that, but with regard to k-space? Time and all the rest of it are subjective illusions?"

  "In terms of the real k-universe, yes," Morelli said simply. "The conceptual model of the universe that we perceive is a product of the limited awareness that we've so far evolved."

  "But the important point is that ideas of time, direction, and distance are products of our universe, not realities of the true universe," Aub said. "If you like, k-waves aren't restricted by things that are really constructions of evolving but imperfect minds. Hence, those quantities are irrelevant when you talk about k-space propagation. A light wave is a projection of a k-wave into normal space, and its finite velocity results from the restrictions of the lo-domain that it's projected into. A pure hi-wave doesn't project into lo-domain space at all, and therefore its observed propagation isn't restricted."

  "What Aub is saying, Pete, is that when a hi-wave is generated, say, in the GRASER, and picked up, say, in the detector, the time delay between the two events is zero . . . to an observer in normal space who records it as two events. The propagation is instantaneous!"

  Hughes looked at them incredulously. The reason for their excitement when they had first burst into his office was now becoming clear.

  "And you say you're now receiving hi-waves from all over the universe," he said slowly. "Are you getting at what I think you're getting at?"

  "K-astronomy!" Aub confirmed. "Or hi-astronomy, whatever you want to call it—yes, that's exactly what we're getting at. With telescopes you can get information from stars and galaxies and stuff, but most of it's millions of years out of date. But with hi-waves you can get information on what's going on out there now . . . without any time delays! And distance is no object either, since the same thing applies!"

  Hughes frowned disbelievingly.

  "But that's faster-than-light," he told them. "It implies all kinds of causality paradoxes. Relatively says so. You're being absurd."

  "No, Pete," Morelli answered. "We're not talking about something moving through normal space at some high velocity. We're not talking about anything moving through normal space at all. Think of it in an instantaneous . . . transformation, if you will . . . from one point in space to another. Forget anything like 'velocity' being involved at all."

  Aub thought about that for a moment then turned to Morelli. "Relativistic causality paradoxes all stem from the fact that two observers moving faster-than-light couldn't even agree on the order in which two events happen, let alone on the time-interval between them."

  "Well, doesn't that apply here?" Hughes asked.

  "No," Morelli replied. "You see Pete, for paradoxical events to be observable, there'd have to be some period of time for them to be observed in. In the process we're talking about, the transformation happens in zero time, and there's no opportunity for paradoxical events to happen." He shrugged. "If there's no way you can detect a paradox, then there isn't
any paradox."

  "And since we're not introducing the notion of velocity, there's no problem with acceleration either," Aub added. "All the problems about an infinite mass needing infinite energy to accelerate it—they go away too."

  Hughes blinked at him in astonishment. For a while his mind struggled to come to terms with the things he had been told, but when he spoke his tone betrayed that he was as good as sold on the idea.

  "So what happens next?" he asked. "Where do we go from here?"

  "Well, you can't just make a telescope or something you can point at places in the sky," Aub answered. "From the things we've been saying, a hi-wave doesn't do anything simple like come at you from any particular direction. That background noise that we've been picking up contains information from everywhere and every direction all at once . . . all scrambled up together."

  "So what do you do to get round that?" Hughes queried.

  "Aub's not sure yet," Morelli said. "But he's been talking to Brad about it, and Brad thinks there might be ways of processing the information to somehow isolate the part of the signal that comes from a given object of interest—say, a star. Then it might be possible to construct some kind of image out of it . . . we don't know yet. Brad's still working on it." Morelli paused and rubbed his chin for a moment. "They proposed a schedule of modifications to the detector to make it better suited for responding to external hi-waves rather than GRASER hi-waves, but when Aub and I discussed it, we figured we'd do a lot better if we started out from scratch with something new, designed especially for the job."

  "A Mark II detector," Aub came in. "One built for just this kind of work. It would give us a chance to cash in on all the lessons we've learned with the one we've got and to add some features that we haven't got."

  "So we came to see you to talk about it," Morelli added needlessly.

  "You want to build another machine," Hughes finished for them.

  Morelli and Aub glanced at each other.

  "Yes," they said both together. Hughes sat back in his chair and nodded slowly as if his worst suspicions had just been confirmed.