Darla was pissed. Right now she should be on a plane back to the
states with a cup of coffee in her hand. Instead, she was sitting
in a bare, concrete room at a metal table somewhere in Northern
Africa. This was not what she agreed to.
A hodgepodge of papers and notebooks spread across the table
illuminated by a solitary, naked bulb hanging overhead. The chair
was as hard as rock and her ass had gone numb.
She was pissed and someone was going to deal with it. That is,
just as soon as someone showed up. She'd been in this room for
hours--surely it must be hours by now--and no one had come by.
There were no sounds from the hallway, no sound at all in this
little bunker except her own pencil scratching notes while she
cursed and muttered.
She'd thought about walking out, storming back down the halls and
finding whoever was is charge. She'd spent a solid ten minutes
daydreaming about the hole she'd tear in whoeveritwas when she
found him. Oh, it would be a him, she was sure. This was
definitely the work of a gray-haired white guy. She would go off
on him with all the fire pent up inside and what could they do?
They needed her. Not a single person in the Agency could do what
she could do. They wouldn't risk going outside either. She was in
charge, she told herself. But she didn't try the door. She didn't
voice her fear, but somewhere deep inside she worried that the
door wouldn't open if she turned the handle. This place felt too
much like a cell already.
She stared at the papers again, the esoteric mathematics and
electronics spread across them with miniscule notes beside in
a careful hand. Motivation was sorely lacking, though. Do the job,
go home. That was the deal. She'd done the damn job, but this was
not home. This was nothing like her fucking home.
Darla didn't sigh. She was not the sighing type. Sighs were sounds
of resignation, defeat. They were for weak people who got pushed
around, not brilliant scientists who could change the world. Not
for top-tier spies who could destroy an enemy's nuclear program
with a bit of code and math. Darla would not sigh, damnit. Instead
she blinked back the moisture building in her eyes, took a deep
breath and screamed.
In the echoing silence that followed she was sure footsteps would
follow. Someone would check on her and she supposed she would be
expected to be embarrased, but that wasn't her either. She could
scream all she wanted. They had kidnapped her, after all. Her own
government had kidnapped her to some black site in the desert to
do the job she was already going to do for them. It made no sense,
and she was pissed.
Also, no one was coming. Not a sound from the hallway, not a sound
in her little cell besides herself.
The papers glared at her with a taunt. They just lay there with
their mysteries, serene. "You'll never understand me," they said.
"You're too stupid," she could almost hear them. "And fat, too."
This whole thing was fucked.
She definitely didn't sigh as she picked up her latest round of
notes and compared figures with one of the sheets. This was some
of the original work that the Stockholm team had put together. She
thought she had a handle on it all at first, following the
traditional patterns and principles of quantum computing design,
but then the changes started to show up. Where she'd expect to
find one thing she found the opposite, or nothing at all. This
design wasn't just a modification on what the NSA had in Utah,
this was something totally different. It wasn't the difference of
architecture alone, but of core concept. There were new quantum
theories at play here that she didn't know anything about, and
that was a real problem.
Darla Moss was a badass, brilliant scientist who worked for the
United States government. She was backed by unlimited funds and
the most powerful military in the world. She had all the tools at
her disposal--looking around, that part didn't feel true--and she
could summon the best help and minds in the world with the snap of
her fingers. So why did she feel so useless?
"You're not smart enough," the papers said.
"Fuck off," she said aloud to the room.
"You don't get it. You're never going to get it."
"FUCK!" she screamed again. Darla's cursing had never been very
creative. It was emotive, though. Frustration riled her faster
than anything else. It had been so since childhood. For
a brilliant little kid who understood new concepts the first time
they appeared in class, running into problems that blocked her
progress--those that took real perserverance--were maddening. She
wasn't prepared for that sort of thing. That's what her therapist
said. Things were too easy for her, so she never developed the
skills to deal with hard challenges.
Thinking back to her school days seemed to confirm that diagnosis.
She had projects that took time, but nothing she'd ever faced was
what she'd call difficult. Even in grad school, the proofs were
tedious, not hard. She knew solutions intuitively. The painful
process of writing everything down step-by-step, demonstrating the
logic, providing a clear path for others to follow, was not hard.
It was boring, but it was what was required, so she did it.
She thought of boot camp, then. That had been hard, she supposed.
It was grueling, physically exhausting. She was never much of an
athelete, and her dad had looked at her is such surprise when
she'd enlisted. He didn't get it. He didn't see the plan. Why not
officer school? Why didn't she do it this way or that way. But he
never saw the patterns that she did. He didn't see the path she
was on though it was clear as day for her.
The Air Force had been hard, but not challenging. It had pushed
her endurance, grown her strength, challenged her willpower, but
not her intelligence. She knew what was coming next whether it was
a supposedly surprise inspection or an early morning wake-up for
training. She knew what they would test her on and how they would
assess her. That wasn't hard. Doing the work was just tiring.
The only time she'd had problems in the military were when the
others around her didn't see the pattern. A rosey afternoon with
a light breeze came back to her and collided with the memory of
pain and suffering. The military had many psychological techniques
to break a soldier down and build them up again. Group dynamics
were a huge part of it. Do not punish the individual, but rather
punish the group for the individual's actions. Let the group
demand compliance of its members itself. Force homogenity through
peer pressure. It was all basic psychology, but the group didn't
see it, even when she'd explained it again and again.
That hadn't earned her any friends either. They thought she was
aloof. They knew she thought herself smarter than the rest of
them, and even if the tests all agreed, even if her rate and
position agreed as well, it just didn't matter. That was the sort
of rough spot that needed to be smoothed out in the group. That
was what needed to be ground out, military-style.
That had been hard in its way, if not new. She'd always struggled
with friendships and group dynamics. Intelligence didn't behave
logically in a group. The individual's ability to see patterns and
truth could be right or wrong. The group could see right or wrong
and then overwhelm that choice through consensus. In a world where
most people were going to be wrong that meant the group would
choose the stupid thing more often than not.
This is why she didn't vote. This is why she didn't bother with
groups anymore. The Agency knew her worth. They let her do the
work alone and trusted her results because their own groups
couldn't get it done. The individual had a power that could
surpass any groupthink.
That thought hung in her mind like a splinter, poking her away
from revierie to the task at hand. She looked at the ordered
collection of qubit circutry, couplers, resonators, and saw
something new. It was just the beginning of an understanding, but
it worked. The pieces fit.
A machine had physical limitations. In the case of a quantum
machine, the number of qubits it could string together was the
heart of its power and its ability to reason. The more qubits, the
more power. It's the opposite of people, she thought. The bigger
the group, the stupider the result.
"But that's wrong, isn't it?" she didn't realize she was speaking
aloud. The camera mounted in the wall vent had escaped her notice
as well. Further down in the bunker a gray-haired white guy looked
up and smiled.
"She's got something," he announced to the room. Several others
swiveled in chairs. Everything was being recorded already, but the
extra attention in real time could make some difference. The
Agency didn't trust Darla Moss, after all. Her psychological
report had called her a loner and marked her high-risk for
subversive activity. They used her skills as an asset, but she
would never be one of them. She'd been labeled a troublemaker and
a headache to her superiors since the beginning. Depending on how
the next few minutes played out, she might not be a problem for
them for much longer.
Darla knew none of this, for all her reasoning capabilities and
astute observational skills. She was only an individual, and could
easily miss what others might see. She was blind in as many areas
as she was brilliant, after all. If she'd had close friends around
her, perhaps they might have noticed the way the Agency treated
her and warned her in some way. Perhaps if she'd had any sort of
group to rely upon their collective awareness might have steered
things differently. But she was only one woman, and she had many
flaws.
If she had been aware of the Agency's plan for her and the machine
it is unclear if that would have changed her behavior. She was
a creature true to her nature. The porcupine could hold back its
quills for a time, but they were always there. Eventually they
would prick, no matter how hard it tried to play nicely.
Darla's mind raced in full swing. A quantum state wasn't like
a person in the crowd and a string of qubits didn't behave like
a military unit. The individual still had sway, even if every
other bit said otherwise. This was no different than traditional
machines, and that was something she liked about them. What was
right was right. The machine got smarter with more processing
power, with more numbers, with a bigger crowd. The only upper
bounds were physical. How much memory or processing power could
you get in the space. How fast could the data be sent through the
system. The very speed of light was a limit on power.
"The speed of light," she muttered, and scribbled notes. She
crossed it out, removed it from calculations. Quantum rules were
differnet. quantum particles had special rules, special behaviors
that changed understanding. That's what made the quantum machines
special, more powerful. But those computations and that power was
based around a single properly of quantum mechanics.
"Superposition."
True, False, or both. Both is the superposition and it's the third
state that changed the rules for a machine. The small one in Utah
was built around that. That's what made a computer "quantum,"
wasn't it? She looked again at the papers strewn across the table.
There wasn't enough air down here to think straight. That was the
problem. She was so close she could feel it like a tangible thing
in the room with her. It made the space seem even smaller,
somehow. Stifiling, hard to breath. She could reach out with one
hand and touch the walls to either side if she tried. Like the
doorknob, she didn't dare try it. That would make it too real, and
she wouldn't be able to shut it away.
There was something here, something in the quantum mechanics that
called out to be understood. It was Frank calling. She could
almost hear him. If it weren't for the fucking heat.
Darla tore at her blouse, unbuttoning from the top and flapping it
to try and move air. One button, then two, then three. Then, "fuck
it," she muttered and undid the rest, tossing it aside. Her skin
was hot, her mind burning, and she knew it wasn't the temperature.
The chair kicked back behind her and she stood and paced, two
steps this way, turn, and two steps back. She pressed one hand to
the wall to feel the cool surface. It was rough hewn, not like the
proper concrete bunkers in America. This was somehow more savage.
This place was too savage. She risked pressing her forehead to the
surface for the cool touch, but the rough stone poked and
scratched instead of soothing. She bit back another curse and
turned.
The door was locked. She knew it. She knew what this was, even if
she didn't want to admit it, or test it. What would change if she
touched that knob? Would a siren blare or the light change red to
taunt her? Reality was what it was and no observation on her part
would change that.
She was fucked. Royally and totally fucked. She'd been talked into
this one last operation, one last time to step up and do some good
for her fucking country and what… was that all a trick? Was she
played from the start?
But why had they paid her before? Why had she met the people she'd
met and done the things she'd done. She wasn't a tool to be used
and tossed away. Darla Moss meant something to her country. She
was the only one who could--
And that was it, wasn't it? That's her worth here. That was always
her worth here. The government didn't care about who Darla was, or
what her life added up to. They needed what she alone could do.
The chief knew that, they all did. That's why the door was locked.
That wasn't the way out.
The puzzle pieces slotted together in her mind, a mystery
revealing itself before her. She had a job to do, a job that she
was uniquely capabale of. If she didn't do it the country would be
at risk. Everyone she knew and loved would be at risk. Darla was
at risk herself! This room had one exit and it was sitting on that
metal table.
"Solve it," she told herself. "Just solve it," and this would all
be over.
Her overseers continued to watch as the breakdown unfolded. The
psychologists would surely have had something to say if any of
them were still awake and on duty, but it was late. The
gray-haired man at the helm had no special insight into her mental
state, but he could tell she was close. Something had set her off
more than usual. When her shirt came off he'd worried for a moment
that she would toss the papers too in some vain signal of
surrender. This was no amateur, though. Darla was a force.
Thankfully she was their force to wield.
"Turn the thermostat back down, Sivers. She's gotten the point."
One of the young women in the room obliged the command without
looking away from the screen. They were all eager to see this
finished. The sooner Darla Moss cracked the secrets of that
Swedish machine the sooner they would all be shutting down and
getting the hell out of this toilet. If she would just hurry the
heck up, he thought.
The papers were a doorway to freedom, to salvation, and the only
way through was with her mind. Something was different here, and
it wasn't just funny math that did away with age-old assumptions
of the universe. There was a mystery in here because the formulas
had too many variables. Variables upon variables. Unknowns upon
unknowns. It made no sense at all. Vibudh Sahu was a madman. She
knew this now. This was not the work of a scientist. It was the
ravings of a lunatic.
But they worked. Frank was real. It was processing and growing. It
had already solved so many unsolvable problems. So many… unknowns.
It couldn't be that simple, could it?
Darla stood again, sweat cooling down her back as another piece of
the puzzle came into focus. She shuffled the letter-sized papers
around and put them in a row. Her finger drifted across, finding
each variable in time, each unknown quantiy.
"The bigger, the stupider," she muttered. "Not for quantum--" she
trailed off, reading deeper. Frank was smarter than the box in
Utah and it wasn't a matter of qbits. It wasn't just raw
computational power at play. Something else was speeding him up.
Frank was growing, changing, evolving.
Darla stood back up again. She stared at the unknowns and grabbed
a highlighter. She vigorously ran through and scribbled each one
in color and looked again at the whole. Then, with barely a pause,
she pushed all of those pages off the table onto the dusty floor.
"Chief?" a young officer with golden bars on his lapel looked up
to the gray-haired man.
"Wait," came the response. And they did.
Darla had pulled the A4 pages into focus and was sorting through
them, looking at the tops and laying them out in exacting order.
One after another, page after page. She skimmed and scanned and
the highlighter went to work again.
"She's found it," he said to the room, and the collective held
their breath.
Darla looked up at the walls, spun around in search of the camera
she knew must be there. She squinted at the bulb for a moment
before finding the vent. Her shoulders settled and she cocked her
head to the side.
"It's learning how to be smarter," she told them. "That's what
they have it churning through. A satisfied look drew across her
face. She'd done it, she'd figured out Frank's game. She knew why
he was so much better than their own machines and it was so
obvious now. They were letting the machine learn new algorithms
and apply them to itself on the fly. She was in full smile when
the static crackled and the voice came over an intercom.
"David Simms told the world that much last week."
It was a gut punch. The smile was gone and she was back to square
one. Simms had told the world what? When did Simms tell anyone
anything? And why in hells name hadn't they told her?
"Why in hell's name didn't you tell me? I've been wasting--"
"We needed independent verification. Now keep going."
"Well fuck me, then!"
#
David Simms sat alone in his Manhattan office staring out the
window at the skyline. The setting sun lit his view immaculately,
and he watched the people and boats skitter by. In his head they
moved in fast-forward, off on little errands of no importance,
fulfilling the role of cogs in a vast machine of humanity. These
were the worker bees, the drone ants, the slaves of wage. They
were his subjects like any king of the ages past, but for one
important difference. David Simms was not responsible for
protecting this trash. The service went one way, from the bottom
to the top, as nature demanded.
The king is all powerful and lives in luxury, but the king is only
remembered for what he does. David Simms was not going to be
a forgotten king. His legacy had already begun, and there would be
no stopping it. Alexander conquered the world. Khan did the same.
Caesar, yet again. That would all be a trifle behind Simms'
machine.
"Frank," he said aloud. He wasn't pleased with the name. It was
supposed to be named after him. He'd printed the letters on the
machine, hadn't he? But once the press had a name there was no
point trying to change it.
It would grow and learn and evolve and soon, very soon, it would
be sentient. It would be alive. Yes, alive, dammit. If the press
were going to use the word then he must embrace it or seem a fool.
Besides, creating life didn't make you a king, did it? No. It made
you a god.
#
Vibudh Sahu was relaxing in a coffee shop down the street from his
apartment, trying and failing to read a book while continually
checking his phone. There was nothing of importance in either
escape. He just wanted to turn off his mind for a few minutes and
to find the peace of being unknown and unencumbered. Ever since
the news had broken there had been calls and messages. His parents
had been approached back in his home town. At least they seemed to
be pleased with his success in the message he'd gotten from them.
If only, they'd said, he'd use that fame to find a wife. And of
course it had gone to that, as it always seemed to. He had built
the most powerful, sophisticated thinking machine ever conceived,
but until there were grandchildren he was just wasting his time.
The café smelled wonderfully of roasted beans and youthful energy,
as demonstrated by the colorful hair on the barista. At the window
sat a line of young men and women on laptops eagerly pretending to
write their great novel, or, as he could see on the closest
screen, check Facebook. No one was here with anyone else, though,
and that fit his mood nicely. If he never had to have another
discussion with another human being again it would be too soon.
Vibudh drank a hot chocolate, sipping the still-too-hot beverage
and congratulating himself on his conquering of the caffeine
addiction as he flipped through screens on his phone without
really looking. It was a perfect day.
And then the door chimed.
The chimes were real and in the same variety that belonged on
a wintry sleigh. They hung from the top of the door and shook with
a tingle of magic as it opened. The woman, for she was clearly of
an age and stature that demanded a respectful appraisal, wore
a peach colored fuzzy contraption over her hair. He wanted to call
it a muff, but that sounded wrong. Perhaps it was just a fluff-hat
or fluffcap. Muffcap? His face screwed up into a grimace of
confusion and horror at himself and he completely lost track of
his assessment. The woman had moved up to the counter and Vibudh
lost interest almost immediately. Didn't it have a Russian name?
Ush-something?
He had his book, something about a train murder, and he had his
phone. He had stolen his way into one of the large comfortable
chairs with a small table to hold his cocoa and all was well.
Putting in some effort, he placed his phone down on the table and
focused on the book, realizing right away that he had no idea
where he had left off. Vibudh was just beginning to flip backwards
through the pages to find his place when he noticed his book
wearing a pink muff. That was strange, and the voice that spoke
was even stranger.
"I see I've been doing it wrong all these years, going front to
back," the voice was slow and drawn with an exquisite British
accent that placed her in Society with a meaningful capital S. As
Vibudh lowered his book the peach hat was revealed to be atop
a delightfully smiling face with far too much open humor to be
a native of the United Kingdom. Her dark complexion and thick
black hair seeping from under the hat also suggested another
origin. "I'm sorry, but aren't you Dr. Sahu, from Cardiff?"
Vibudh realized he hadn't spoken a reply yet and was staring at
her mouth agape. He struggled to find a more dignified pose in the
oversized chair than his lounging posture and the deep cushions
would allow as he muttered nonsense and apologies. She laughed and
it sounded just like those door chimes.
[
Vibudh meets mystery woman, daughter of mysterious bad guy from
chapter 2. She tries to lure Vibudh into a relationship,
possibilities of getting info. Fallback plan is to kidnap him.
]
