A Ruby Beam of Light

by Tom DeMarco

  It was Homer. He was seated in the chair at the end of the bed. “A familiar universe, but different in one way, because in this universe the quantum constant is changed. There is a different value for Planck’s Constant. Wouldn’t Max Planck be a surprised old boy,” he laughed again. “Because in this universe, the value of Planck’s Constant is increased to one-point-zero-zero.”

  There was a light on the dresser. Loren remembered now that he had neglected the light as he’d put himself into bed. The light picked up the familiar yellow glint of Homer’s eyes. “What a place, that universe. What a place! Do you know what it would be like, my young friend?”

  Loren sat up, trying to clear his head. Sonia was gone or had never been there.

  “What would it be like if the quantum constant were set to one?” Homer prodded.

  Loren tried to recall. He remembered that the Colorado physicist George Gamow had written a book in the forties for young science students, to help them understand some of the concepts of modern physics. He even remembered the title, Mr. Tompkins Goes to Wonderland. In the book, Mr. Tompkins would go to one alternate universe after another, and in each of these universes one of the physical constants would be different. In one universe, the speed of light was 15 miles per hour so that Mr. Tompkins could experience relativistic effects on his bicycle: As he pedaled faster, he got heavier and thinner. And in another of the universes, the quantum constant had been one. What had that been like?

  “If the constant were one, quantum effects would be noticeable to the naked eye,” Loren answered finally. His own voice sounded remote and tinny in his ear, as though it were someone else’s. His mind was still in fog, but he went on, describing Mr. Tompkins’ universe. “A billiard ball would take up discreet positions as it moved, it would not roll continuously. Its positions would be indeterminate, so the image would be fuzzy.”

  “A fabulous place, that universe! If only we could go there. Our problems would be over. We would not have to guess about Peculiar Motion of electrons, we could simply observe Peculiar Motion of billiard balls. We could measure whether their positions were erratic or orderly, we could see if they ever existed simultaneously with their own past instances.”

  “Yes.” Loren looked over at the bedside clock. It was 3 A.M. Or perhaps it was 3 P.M. The shade was closed and he couldn’t see if it was light out. He had no idea.

  Homer caught the look. “You’re wondering why I’m here.”

  “Yes, a bit.”

  “Not to talk about physics. I have come for some advice. I have given you much advice, I think, I never stinted on advice.” Another laugh.

  “I owe you, Homer.”

  “Well, I ask for some advice, as a friend. I need advice on a subject that you know everything and I know nothing about.”

  “What could that be?”

  “Women.”

  “Ah. I am an expert on that Homer.”

  “I thought so. Because you are young. Young people know it all and we old goats don’t know anything. Just not anything! It’s all upside down because we were brought up with our eyes closed to women.”

  “So ask.”

  “Yes. It’s an embarrassment, though. To be such a novice.” Homer paused to frame his question. “What does it mean when a perfectly rational woman acts irrational and silly?”

  “Sonia?”

  “No, not Sonia. I am talking about someone else. Maria if you want to know. Dean Sawyer. She gets mad at me sometimes when I am acting just like other times. I don’t know what to think.”

  “Maybe she is in love with you, Homer. I have always thought so.”

  “Ah, love. So that is what it’s like.”

  “Yes, love.”

  Homer thought it over. “Not so great as it’s cracked up to be.”

  “Not always.”

  Loren was suddenly very tired. He lay back down and when he woke again Homer was gone.

  5

  HARD BODIES

  “Now Miss Corsayer, you needn’t be frightened of me. I am really a very decent fellow.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I am.” Burlingame looked at her with what he suspected was a professional, but not unkind expression. Kelly was squirming in her seat, conscious that she, as well as the rest of the staff, was being called on the carpet this afternoon. He didn’t mind watching her squirm. It was even something of a turn-on. She was all right to look at, in fact (now that he thought of it) rather his type. He allowed himself to glance at her breasts. Kelly reddened. It was fine with Burlingame if she noticed where his eyes had been. Women wore their sexuality for all to see, and they could hardly complain if you took a good direct look every now and then.

  “As you may have noticed, Miss Corsayer, the entire group is here this afternoon, because I have called this meeting. Of course, I did hate to have them miss their beauty sleep, but…” He paused to let her draw the obvious conclusion about which was more important, their sleep or his own official needs. Burlingame looked down at his watch. Quarter past one. Let them wait a bit longer, stewing outside his door. It would do them good. “I wanted to ask you some questions, my dear, before going ahead with the meeting.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, it’s a bit of a delicate matter, actually. I wanted you to tell me, in the strictest confidence, of course, whether you thought that Doctor Layton and his staff ever altered the simulation in order to get it to predict something that was…how shall I put this? to get it to predict something more congenial to their own way of thinking?”

  “They’re altering it all the time to make it more accurate.”

  “Yes, I’m sure they are. But what I’m asking is a little different though. Do you think they ever put in specific changes to make it perform in a way that gives credence to their own political agenda?”

  “That is outrageous. Of course not.”

  “No offense, no offense. I was just wondering.”

  “These people are scientists. They don’t have an ‘agenda,’ as you call it.”

  “No, I suppose not. There was just this one thing I came across that made me think there might be a bit of tampering.” He took a printout from one of his desk drawers and began spreading it out. “I can’t reveal to you where I got this, so please don’t ask for my source.”

  Kelly saw the stain of coffee grounds across the top of the listing. “You haven’t been going through the trash again, have you, Mr. Burlingame?”

  “The important thing is what is printed here. Now please don’t ask me how I know what it means…”

  “It’s printed in plain English so that anyone could understand it.”

  “…or how I know that there is something about this one that makes it very different from the others.”

  She reached for the sheet and looked at the final summary. “Very perceptive of you sir, to see that this was an unusual scenario. The clue, I guess, is the fact that the Spanish Air Force blows up most of the U.S., while Spanish infantry is conquering Europe and part of Asia.”

  “Spain doesn’t even have a goddamned strategic air arm.”

  “It was a surprise. Perhaps it was all those Spanish school children pasting defense bond stamps in their little books to raise funds.”

  “Miss Corsayer, how do you explain this extraordinary scenario? How do you explain that the Simula-7 program, a piece of government owned software produced this ridiculous result?”

  “It was a joke. Couldn’t you have guessed? It was a joke on Loren. The others just let it run and kept looking over at him as if he was suddenly a security risk because his native country was becoming an enemy. It was very funny, actually. Loren was completely taken in. Doctor Layton and Edward and Sonia had come in early and cooked up the input data set…”

  Burlingame pounced on the words. “Ah! They cooked it up, did they?”

  “For a joke.”

  “Most amusing. Most amusing. Well, this little chat has cleared things up considerably. I think, my dear, you might send the
others in now. And...” he looked down at his coffee cup, “perhaps you’d run and fetch me some fresh coffee before they come in. It may be a long afternoon.”

  As she lifted the saucer in annoyance, the cup upset and a thin stream of creamy liquid tricked down over the blotter toward the edge of the desk. Burlingame stood up with a yelp, leaping back to protect his trousers. “Stupid twat,” he said.

  There was a long silence. Kelly steadied her hands by pressing them down onto the desk top. She was uncomfortably aware that her color had risen. Above all, be calm. “Mr. Burlingame,” she said, evenly. “I have two things to say to you, two important things. One: There is never any excuse for abusive language. Never. Not under any circumstances. That is the first thing.” She paused for a moment to let her words sink in. “And the second thing is go fuck yourself.”

  The famous Doctor Homer Layton sat through the whole meeting with his eyes closed. It was damned disconcerting. Even when he spoke he kept his eyes shut. It wasn’t at all obvious who Burlingame was supposed to address his remarks to. He finally settled on Dr. Barodin, as the senior person among those with their eyes open, but it put him off his stride a bit.

  Burlingame was unconsciously raising his voice, in the hopes that Layton would hear: “…when a scenario gets back to the Pentagon and it seems to imply that there is no action whatsoever that our side can take. Well, you can see that that is going to dampen our people’s enthusiasm more than a little. This winter’s whole European series is a perfect example. In each scenario where we use battlefield nuclear weapons, the M88s for instance with small nuclear shells, your scenario showed the other side escalating. As far as I can see, if we believe these simulations, we can never use the M88s at all.”

  “Good thinking,” said Barodin.

  “Do you know what we paid for those things?” Burlingame screeched. “They are a major component of the American defense effort. And you’re making them useless. It’s the equivalent of sabotage. It’s just as though you snuck into the armory and blew them up. We can’t use them. They might as well have been destroyed by an enemy force. What’s the difference?”

  “The difference,” Barodin suggested, “is that now that you’ve seen the scenarios, you’re less likely to blow away the whole rest of the world.”

  “There’s no difference at all. Our weapons might as well have been destroyed by a foreign power. We can’t use them for shit. Nine hundred million goddamn dollars. And you’re sitting there smirking. You people aren’t even taking this seriously. You think it’s some big joke. Everything’s a joke. What the hell is this that you’ve written in the daybook for April 7?” He shoved the book indignantly at Barodin.

  Ed looked at the page, “It’s a joke, Curly.”

  “Hah hah. How am I supposed to know that? I mean, what do I think when I come in in the morning and see April 7: coitus interruptus?”

  “You’re supposed to think that we had a lousy, frustrating night, and that was just a light way of putting it.”

  “What do I know? There you are holed up here all night, two males and two females and Doctor Layton…”

  “Doctor Layton is also male,” said Homer. His eyes were still shut.

  “But you see what I mean, don’t you?”

  All five solemnly shook their heads side to side. “Nope.” “Uh uh.” “I certainly don’t.” “Me neither.” “Nor me.”

  Burlingame was starting to get red in the face. “This is not a joke, gentlemen…um, people. Not a joke at all. This is the most serious possible matter. It is the nation’s security that is at risk here. Your scenarios are stripping away our capacity to defend the nation. And I for one just don’t know whether or not to believe them. I don’t know if they are the result of honest simulation or if they are…” he looked down at the text of the note from General Buxtehude to get the phrase right, “or if they are what we think of as ‘pernicious politicking.’”

  “What the hell is pernicious politicking?” said Barodin, starting to heat up a bit as well.

  “That’s politicking that is, well…”

  “Pernicious?”

  “Exactly.” Fucking physicists. You had to spell everything out for them.

  “Oswald. We don’t have any politics at all. We are researchers. We are trying to build you a simulation that lets you look into the future to see the likely outcome of any possible action. It lets you try things out before taking the actual steps. You can test run a number of alternative plans and then use the one that works best for you. How can that be a bad thing? It’s a tool that let’s you know what’s going to happen. Like a crystal ball. It can help you keep your ass out of a sling.”

  “It can help to keep us from ever doing anything! The stupid simulation seems to think that the very things we want to do are going to blow up the world.”

  “It’s better to find out through the simulation than by letting it happen.”

  “If we can believe the damn thing.”

  “How can you not believe it? You were here for the Honduras simulation. You saw it with your own eyes. You told us to hypothecize an American surgical strike on the Gloria Verde rebels and find out what the response would be. And Simula-7 came right back and said the Cubans would use a proxy, probably green activists somewhere to damage an American company. It specifically suggested an oil company. And they would do it within hours. Could it have been any more on the money?”

  Burlingame sat back in his chair, looking smug. “Besides, that is all irrelevant now. Some things have happened that I know about that change everything. The simulation doesn’t know about these very recent and very important happenings. I know about them. And they invalidate all its present findings. Even the Congress doesn’t know.”

  “Well tell us.”

  “What?! I can’t tell you. This is classified, even beyond my own rating.”

  “What’s the use of us running a simulation without all the facts. Tell us and we’ll put it in.”

  “Impossible.”

  “Of course, if we don’t have the new facts, we are just wasting the government’s money. And, it goes without saying, we’ll have to continue to provide inaccurate simulations that can only be a hindrance to you.”

  The others hadn’t said a word. Homer appeared to be asleep. Burlingame turned his face away from Barodin to think what he ought to do. It was tempting to let them in on the secret, just to wipe away some of their smug superiority. And, it might get them to generate some scenarios that held out the promise of successful action, for a change. A handful of those could make him a very popular man in Washington. “Well…”

  A long pause. Barodin encouraged him, “You have to tell us, Curly. It’s the only way we’re going to be able to help. And we want to help.”

  “Well.” Burlingame was weakening. What the hell, it hardly mattered now anyway. He glanced to each side and then, lowering his voice said, “What the simulator doesn’t know, and this changes everything, what the simulator doesn’t know is that…” He was too great a ham not to pause for effect.

  “Yes?”

  “The Shield is up!”

  Homer opened his eyes.

  “The Star Wars laser missile defense shield is in place.” Burlingame could barely suppress his grin. “It’s operational!”

  The others stared at him silently.

  The Pentagon liaison officer gushed on enthusiastically. “Don’t you see, this is the ultimate trump card. With the missile shield in place, nobody can escalate on us. We can take them right to nuclear exchange and then knock their best shot right out of the sky. It’s all very hush hush. As I say, even the House and Senate don’t know about it. They can’t really, because they would have conniptions over the funding. Can you imagine the pissing and moaning? We held back some funds from the domestic space program budget, and then last month, NASA launched the Hard Bodies.” He said it with a flourish, and waited to take in their astonishment.

  “Right.” said Sonia without expression. “Three of them.�
��

  Burlingame stared at her. “Well, how the f…? How could you possibly know that there were three?”

  “It’s on the configuration map that SHIELA maintains,” she said. “They couldn’t have been launched without SHIELA, that’s what she was originally intended for. And she keeps track of where they are. We noticed last week that the total available memory was slightly less than it had been. So Kelly displayed the map and there they were. Three Hard Body satellites.”

  “This is extraordinary. The lapse of security in letting you people use SHIELA at all…well, I argued against it. To think that Miss Corsayer, an untrained woman with the lowest listed security rating, should be able to display the configuration maps and see information that our own legislators can’t have! I don’t know what people were thinking when they accepted this stupid Simula project. I mean, with no disrespect to you people, you just aren’t secure enough to be allowed to see such things.”

  Edward looked pained. “We seem to be secure enough for you to have told us not two minutes ago that NASA had launched the Hard Bodies.”

  “That was in the strictest confidence. That information cannot ever leave this room. Never. Oh, what does it matter? The important thing is that this changes everything.”

  “It doesn’t change anything,” said Homer. “The HBs are in orbit, but they can’t do anything.”

  “Of course they can do things. They can shoot laser beams. They can knock down anything that our enemies try to throw at us.”

  “There’s no control program. There is no way to guide them. The control program is supposed to be resident in SHIELA. It isn’t there. We would have seen it.”

  “Of course it’s there! You just missed it.”

  “No need to argue over a question of fact, let’s go look.” Homer stood up. The others followed him into the computer room, with Burlingame still muttering. They found Kelly loading fresh paper into one of the laser printers. Homer asked her to display the memory map.