New Eden

by Kishore Tipirneni

  “Come on in guys. I’m in the study.” He pressed another key to release the deadbolt.

  Joshua had impressed him as a model of punctuality, and he hadn’t been disappointed. There was obvious chemistry between the couple now proceeding down the hallway, but he thought that the particle physicist was a bit too uptight for Rachael. He’d always pictured her with a scientist, but one who was a rock climber or adventurist on the weekends—he and Rachael had been skydiving many times together—since she was an iconoclast and liked to push boundaries. Well, there was no accounting for taste—or the human heart.

  “I thought you were racing against the clock,” Joshua said, surprised to see Vinod studying classic album covers with his left leg draped over the arm of the couch.

  “I was, but the clock lost. I finished the interface”—he looked at his wristwatch— “thirteen minutes ago. It appears to be successful.”

  “Appears to be?” Joshua said.

  “Based on that barely legible piece of paper you left with me, I was able to create what I believe to be a stable link with the detector—assuming, that is, that the device’s LED lights match what color the sphere is glowing.”

  “You actually managed to turn on the detector’s lights?” Rachael asked.

  “Hey, Rach, it’s me—Vinod. Plus, I accessed information on the detector as well as its transmission and protocol pins thanks to some help from a Thunderbolt 3 pin-out diagram so that I’d know how to interface the algorithm.”

  “Hold on a minute,” Joshua said, mildly alarmed. “You mean that you accessed the low-level detector firmware? I mean—” Joshua wasn’t sure whether he should be pleasantly surprised or peeved that someone had violated his sensitive lab equipment. Had that really been necessary?

  “Relax, dude. It wasn’t that hard, and I was under the gun. I can’t write an interface unless I know what the heck I’m interfacing with.” He was on his second Dos Equis and lifted the bottle high in the air to drain the final ounce. “Don’t worry. I don’t think I did anything that could have fried your equipment or will cause the sphere to explode once it’s in place. Looks like the detector’s in good shape.”

  Fry? Explode? Joshua thought Vinod’s speech to be too cavalier regardless of how much Rachael trusted him. Did he really understand the nature of what he and Rachael were attempting, or did he still think he was being punked and had been playing along?

  “I was working on the assumption that if the detector can talk to my computer, and vice versa, then everything’s cool. If they can’t, then we can’t dial in ET. I assume that the sphere and the detector are totally synced. Otherwise, my algorithm would hit serious configuration issues pretty fast.”

  “Josh, I think he’s messing with you a little,” Rachael said, elbowing the scientist. “He’s a pretty savvy guy, and I’m sure the detector is okay.” She shot Vinod an approving look tinged with the slightest hint of reprimand that only two close friends could interpret.

  “The sphere and the detector are perfectly calibrated,” Joshua assured the information theorist with a penchant for classic rock and disquieting informality.

  Vinod got up, patted Joshua on the shoulder, and took a seat in front of the three monitors at the back of the room. Rachael and Joshua stood behind him looking at the monitors. “Rach’s right. I tend to be informal, in case you haven’t noticed. And I know the ramifications of this experiment, especially if we’re successful. Let’s put the sphere into the detector and light that sucker up. I’m ready to rock if you are.”

  Joshua gave Rachael another searching glance. Are you sure this is safe?

  Rachael replied with a dismissive wave of her hand. “Time and tide. Let’s do it.”

  Joshua opened the case and carefully installed the Bowman sphere in the circular band of the detector, clamping it in place and attaching wires from the detector to the metal cap on top of the glass. He double-checked the connections, took a cursory glance at the cables running from the detector to Vinod’s computers, and stepped back. There was now a three-way hookup: sphere to detector to Vinod’s computer that would run an algorithm that, if it performed as touted, was nothing less than a cyber version of the Rosetta Stone. “Okay, the sphere is installed onto the detector,” he announced.

  “Great,” Vinod replied. “I’m going to power on the Thunderbolt 3 bus.” Vinod typed some keys on his computer that caused the sphere to start glowing. “Pretty amazing,” Vinod remarked as the sphere once again glowed blue and yellow over and over again. “And I’m not easy to impress when it comes to technology.” He paused and looked at the black cylinder on the table.

  In silence, the three figures watched the sphere in wonder as it repeated the same sequence and time intervals as before.

  “Radically cool,” Vinod said. “You really weren’t kidding. A group of physicists from Princeton approached SETI back in 2017 about using quantum entanglement to communicate with aliens, but they weren’t taken seriously. They were practically laughed out of the building. Anything else I should know before we start?”

  Joshua shook his head nervously. “No.”

  “Okay then,” Vinod continued. “Here’s the game plan. The left screen will register the progress of the algorithm’s function depending on how fast your distant friends can assimilate the data we’ll send.”

  Vinod pointed to a horizontal timeline at the bottom of the monitor that ran the width of the screen, from ARITHMETIC CONSTANTS to SENTENCE STRUCTURE with multiple points in between marked by dots. A message at the top of the screen read PROGRESS: NOT INITIALIZED.

  Vinod rubbed his hands together and lifted his hands above the keyboard like a pianist ready to play a concerto. The letters EXEC appeared on the screen as Vinod typed a brief command on the keyboard. “Is everybody ready?” he asked.

  “Go for it,” Joshua said, his tone steady and emotionless as he gazed at the monitor. Inwardly, he was more than a little anxious. A chill ran down his spine as he wondered what lay beyond the mathematical constants—if anything. He’d developed a certain level of confidence in Vinod—he was cautiously optimistic at this point—but the algorithm hadn’t yet proven itself. If it worked, however, they were moments from changing history.

  Rachael instinctively ran her hand over Joshua’s back in a circle, whispering, “Calm down and let Vinod do his thing. The university would have taken months to decide to let you try this.”

  Vinod hit the RETURN key, starting the algorithm. All three waited, the breath suspended in their chests. Vinod was now all focus, all concentration as he awaited the results. He had high confidence in his algorithm, but he’d never expected it to undergo this kind of test. Indeed, it wasn’t a dry run at all. This was a real-time application that had the potential to change how man viewed his place in the universe. If successful, the entire field of information theory might leap a hundred years into the future, not to mention the societal repercussions that might ripple across the globe. The lights of the sphere started flashing a faster pattern of yellow and blue.

  The voice of Layla sounded unexpectedly. “It is time for movie The Matrix. Do you wish me to begin playback?”

  “Layla, silence!” Vinod snapped.

  Ten seconds passed, and nothing else seemed to be happening. No display on any of the monitors changed by so much as a single character.

  “Is everything okay?” Joshua asked. “Shouldn’t—”

  “I think it’s going through the packet protocol I developed,” Vinod replied. “It wasn’t part of my original algorithm, just something I did to speed up communication.”

  “Whoa, look at that,” Vinod said, barely audible. “The sphere’s blue-yellow sequence has accelerated considerably. The colors are changing faster and faster. If it ramps up even more, the sphere will be strobing like a disco joint from the seventies. Someone’s in a hurry to communicate with you guys.”

  Rachael clasped her hands together chest-high. Joshua wondered if it were a mere gesture of anticipation or genuine
prayer.

  The sphere now started glowing green and was blinking at a slow steady rate.

  “Jesus, It’s green!” Joshua exclaimed.

  “Sweet!” Vinod replied.

  “They’ve established a bidirectional transmission protocol,” Joshua remarked. He was becoming more impressed with Vinod’s abilities by the second. “How did you this teach them about this Vinod?”

  “I created a simple packet structure that de-emphasizes timing in the communication protocol,” Vinod explained. “It looks like they get it. The bandwidth on this connection should significantly increase now.”

  A green arrow was now displayed on the timeline under ARITHMETIC CONSTANTS.

  “So it’s working?” Rachael asked.

  “Oh, it’s working alright. So far, so good. Right now they’re working on the first step, arithmetic constants,” Vinod said pointing to the green arrow on the monitor. “Theoretically, it could hit a snag at any of several junctures, but I think that depends on who we’re talking with and not the algorithm itself.”

  “How long do you think this will take?” Joshua asked, trying to hide his impatience.

  Vinod took a deep breath and exhaled. “That all depends. I originally designed the algorithm to function with radio waves. While I’ve always theorized that aliens would have progressed beyond radio transmissions—not a popular notion among some of the gurus at SETI—I had no idea what extraterrestrials might be using, so I was forced to make the algorithm compatible with existing technology that might be applied to talking with ET. That meant radio. I didn’t think it likely that SETI would ever receive a radio signal, but I had to base my program on something.”

  “Then why design the algorithm at all?’ Joshua asked. “Sounds like a waste of time given your doubts.”

  “Not entirely. SETI periodically runs simulations, programming computers to give them a false positive so they’ll know how to proceed should they ever confirm that they have a bona fide signal. I was planning on testing this at their upstate headquarters in Mountain View when they had some down-time for maintenance.”

  “So how long?” Joshua repeated.

  Vinod leaned back in his chair and scratched his head, eyes still focused on the timeline. “My original estimate based on beta testing with another computer was that it would take decades for the algorithm to run and be fully completed. It would, of course, depend on the distance to the star where aliens have been detected. If they aren’t in the local neighborhood—let’s say they’re a hundred light years away—then the estimate is more like millennia even at the speed of light.”

  Joshua leaned forward, frustration etched on his features.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked. “I’ve been riding an adrenaline high for the past four hours, and now you’re telling me that my great grandkids might see the results of what we’re about to start?”

  “Not to worry,” Vinod said reassuringly. “Those estimates are based on light-speed communications. With instantaneous transmission via spookyons—not something I factored into this gem when I wrote it—the time will be drastically reduced. I estimate it should only take a few weeks. That’s assuming that the aliens are at least as intelligent as we are, and they’d have to be if they’re aware of quantum entanglement.”

  Joshua walked around the room anxiously before standing near the computers again. “Weeks? Seriously? Still too long. I’d need an entirely new grant from the university board to shift the focus of my research, and that could entail mountains of paperwork. I thought this was real-time transmission.”

  “It is,” Vinod said, appearing somewhat annoyed, “How long did it take you to learn English? It didn’t happen overnight, right? I can send aliens a linguistic database with relative ease, but how fast they learn it is completely out of my hands.”

  “Wait, guys,” Rachael interjected. “We don’t know anything about the aliens or how good they are at accepting and interpreting data. That’s the big unknown here. We need to be patient and let the algorithm run its course. It’s a little premature for predictions or expectations. We’re in unknown territory.”

  “What she said,” Vinod said.

  “I know, I know,” Joshua said with resignation. “It’s just that the uncertainty and waiting is killing me.”

  “I totally get it,” Vinod said. “You got thrown a pretty big curve ball this afternoon, and who the hell knows where the mound is.”

  The sound of a computerized ding came from speakers connected to Vinod’s computer.

  “I think it’s a moot point, gentlemen,” Rachael remarked with an almost flat affect. “Notice the progress bar.”

  The words PROGRESS: ARITHMETIC OPERATIONS were displayed, and the green arrow had progressed to the next dot. The lights on the storage devices in the server rack started blinking faster.

  “Holy shit!” Vinod exclaimed. “They’re already past the first milestone. Excellent!”

  “Arithmetic operations?” Rachael noted. “As in addition, subtraction, and multiplication?”

  “Basically,” Vinod said, “although basic operations and logical operators can be a bit more advanced than that.”

  The sphere was blinking so rapidly that it was on the verge of displaying a solid color.

  “What’s with the sphere?” Rachael asked. “This is the fastest I’ve ever seen it cycle.”

  “Simulated full-duplex communication,” Joshua explained. “The data flow is going back and forth at a tremendously high speed. Unbelievable.”

  “Believe it, dude,” Vinod said. “These beings are putting on one hell of a show.”

  “This is far more incredible than anything we witnessed in the bat cave,” Rachael observed. “And this certainly answers our concerns that they might sign off at some point if we didn’t respond fast enough. It appears, just as we predicted at the restaurant, that they were waiting for us. Almost eager to re-establish contact. I don’t know whether that’s good or bad. Hard to interpret their intentions.”

  Another ding sounded.

  “Look at the progress bar!” Vinod said, unable to suppress the widest of self-satisfied grins. “They’re up to calculus already. These creatures go to school pretty fast. Even with instantaneous transmission, how can you jump from simple arithmetic to calculus in just sixty seconds? Even Einstein didn’t learn that quickly. Who the hell is on the other end of this?”

  Yet another ding was heard in the study, and a new progress report appeared on the screen.

  “Check it out,” Rachael said. “They’ve moved on to physics in pretty short order.”

  “Looks like they’re ready to work their way through the natural sciences,” Joshua said. “Vinod, the algorithm is working exactly as you predicted it would. Sorry for my caution, man. I never dreamed anything like this was possible even with spookyons. You’ve enabled us to take this kind of communication to the next level. When Rachael said you might be able to help, I never . . . well, I never imagined that you had something custom-made to solve our conundrum in the bat cave.”

  Mouth open as he stared at the screen, Vinod was too startled to reply. Another ding sounded from the computer, and the status now read PROGRESS: CHEMISTRY.

  “Gotta be machine intelligence,” he said at last. “Has to be. Only a machine could consume information this fast.”

  “Not necessarily,” Joshua speculated. “Maybe their brains, or whatever organs they use to process information, are thousands of years—maybe millions—beyond the capabilities of the human brain. They may have organic neural networks that would make hard drives look primitive.”

  “Vinod, are you sure they’re understanding all of this?” Rachael asked. “Maybe they’re just downloading the information and are going to look at it later.”

  “Not possible,” Vinod replied. “The algorithm is meant to be progressive in that it builds on the understanding of a previous segment to teach them the next segment. To ensure their understanding before the next segment is initiated, th
ere are mini-tests built in, which must be passed before the algorithm progresses. They’re definitely learning this material and at an incredible rate.”

  The sphere no longer flickered but was now a sold bright green as the data exchange continued to accelerate. The lights on the storage devices in the server racks were also on continuously, and cooling fans in the servers increased their speeds to handle the additional thermal load.

  “Can the sphere handle this kind of speed?” Rachael asked.

  “Absolutely,” Joshua answered. “The spookyon is doing the heavy lifting and remember that it can be measured millions—if not billions—of times per second.”

  “Yeah, but they’re sucking up information at a rate that nobody—not even an information theorist—could have predicted,” Vinod pointed out. “What’s the bandwidth of the sphere itself? Are you sure it can handle this load?”

  “Don’t really know the max,” Joshua said tentatively. “Henry and I were limited by the nature of our equipment when we transmitted signals to the Martian Rover. Back then, the max bandwidth we achieved was about one terabit per second.”

  “Did you say terabit?’ Vinod asked incredulously. “Damn! That’s one fat pipe!”

  “Fat pipe?” Rachael asked.

  “It’s slang for a high-speed communications network, which usually has one hell of a bandwidth,” Vinod explained. “One terabit is pretty fat. And this? Who knows what the operational bandwidth might be given what we’re seeing. I wouldn’t believe any of this if I weren’t sitting here watching it for myself.”

  A look of concern crossed Joshua’s face as he looked from the computer screen to Vinod. “At one terabit, the sphere can definitely handle the bandwidth, but the data transfer might be limited by the drive speeds of your computers.”