The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.

by Neal Stephenson

  Aimed, that is, at the cat inside the box. For resting on the box’s floor was a flat circular pillow upholstered in red velvet that had become permeated with cat hair down to the molecular level. A tiny saucer of spun stainless steel sat next to it, a thin disk of brown residue congealed in its bottom. I needed no forensic analysis to know that it had once contained cream.

  Tristan had a look on his face as if all this was exactly what he’d been expecting. I confess, it mystified me.

  “Call me stupid,” I said, “but I don’t understand the connection to photography.”

  “Photography?” Oda asked, puzzled. As if I had just wandered into the wrong eccentric professor’s basement.

  “There’s a connection,” Tristan reassured him. “I give you my word I’ll explain it—once you have completed certain paperwork that, I regret to say, is mandatory. In the meantime, I wonder if you could explain the ODEC to us.”

  Oda-sensei shrugged. “In a nutshell,” he said, now entirely immersed in the science of the moment, “here is the premise. You insert living nerve tissue. You close the lid, creating a sealed environment. You pump in the liquid helium . . .”

  “Wait, wait!” Tristan protested. “This is the first you’ve mentioned cryogenics.”

  “You freeze the cat?” I exclaimed, aghast.

  “No, no,” Oda scolded us. “That would just be mean. See for yourself, the box itself is super-insulated! And it has its own air supply, enough to keep a cat alive for an hour.” He was directing my attention to the thick foam mounted to the outer surface of the plywood. Then he moved his hand a couple of inches outward and patted the inner surface of the enclosing fiberglass tub. “The inner box is completely surrounded by a bath of liquid helium, chilled to a few Kelvins above absolute zero.”

  “Cold enough,” Tristan hazarded, “to form a Bose-Einstein condensate?”

  “I love it when you talk dirty,” Oda said, so perfectly deadpan that I did a double take. “Yes, we begin by isolating the subject—”

  “Within a jacket of matter that all exists in the same quantum state,” Tristan said.

  “You’re completing each other’s sentences. Great,” I said.

  “I’ll explain later,” Tristan returned.

  “Conveniently, the low temperature also brings some of the coils down to the point where they become superconductors,” Oda added, tapping a fingertip against some of the things that I had identified as big magnets. “A continuously recirculating and self-reinforcing current pattern establishes itself in these. Its state can be read continuously by analog-to-digital converters at a sampling rate of about a megahertz. Which we used to think was fast.”

  “So you’re reading the cat’s mind?”

  “Not so much that,” Oda said, “as looking for the signatures of nascent wave collapse events.”

  Tristan stood frozen for a few moments, then shaped his hand into a blade and whooshed it past his head. Good, I thought. Have a taste of what I’m experiencing.

  “I lost you?” Oda inquired.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’m messing around with renormalization.”

  “Oh.”

  “That’s what determines what the wave function is most likely to collapse into. By messing around with it, I can alter the probabilities.”

  “You can do magic,” I blurted.

  “Sort of,” Oda said. Then, in a curious, polite tone, he asked, “Is that what you’re here to talk about? Magic?”

  “Classified,” Tristan said, and gave me the stink-eye. Then he turned to Oda. “Under normal circumstances we can make educated guesses about what is likely to happen when the wave function collapses. You’re screwing around with that.”

  Oda nodded ruefully. “But only sometimes. And I can’t account for the variations. That’s why the patent was rejected. Why DARPA didn’t renew my grant.”

  “What’s the computer doing?” Tristan asked.

  Oda sighed. “Not enough, unfortunately. As I said, it was a fine machine for its time. Even so—despite a lot of code optimization—it wasn’t up to the job, even when it was running flat-out.”

  “So it’s of the essence. It’s not just a data logger.”

  “It is very much in the control loop,” Oda said. Glancing at me, he explained: “For the ODEC to work, it has to take in sensor data, perform certain calculations that are highly non-trivial, and make decisions about how to alter the current flowing through the coils. It has to do so quickly, or else the whole project fails. And it wasn’t quick enough.”

  “What are the specs on that Indigo?” Tristan asked.

  Oda sighed. “I don’t even want to tell you.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you’re going to laugh.”

  “I won’t laugh.”

  “One processor; 175 megahertz; 512 megabytes of RAM.”

  Tristan laughed.

  “I told you,” Oda said.

  Tristan stood there a moment, eyeing the contraption. “With modern computers . . . or a cluster of them . . . some GPUs cranking the numbers . . . faster clocks . . . all of your problems on that front would be solved.”

  “Possibly,” said Oda with a nod. “But I had neither the funds nor the space for that, and the Howler article pretty much made me a laughingstock in the academic community, so I’ll never get funding again.”

  “Sorry to hear that,” I said, “especially if the theory is sound.”

  “No one funds theories. They fund results,” said Oda. “The results were not reliably reproducible. Using cats was a mistake; the premise was very easy to mock among lay people.”

  “What if you were given the funding to rebuild this the way I just described it, room-sized?” Tristan said.

  Oda gave him a cautious, wise-old-man smile. “Scaling issues would become huge. The amount of computational power required goes up as the square of the cavity’s volume.”

  Tristan made a quick mental calculation. “So, as the sixth power of the box’s size. That’s okay. We’ll make it a small room. Moore’s law will take care of the rest.”

  “Don’t even suggest this in Rebecca’s hearing or she will chase you out of the house with her gardening shears. It was a very draining and humiliating period. She would never endure it being brought back to life.”

  “This would all happen under a cloak of secrecy. The Howler would never hear about it. Nobody would.”

  Oda pondered it.

  “If Rebecca said yes?” I asked.

  Oda shrugged. “It was my pet project, of course I would love to see it work. And I tend to say yes to things. But I would want to know why you were pursuing this.”

  “I can tell you all about it as soon as you sign a nondisclosure form,” Tristan said.

  Oda smiled to himself a moment, then returned his attention to Tristan. “Well, then you must ask Becca to sign the form as well,” he said. “I could not keep this from her.”

  “Go on upstairs and work on that, Stokes,” said Tristan, without even looking at me. “I want to talk shop with the professor for a few minutes.”

  Journal Entry of

  Rebecca East-Oda

  MARCH 6

  Temperature today about 43F, fair and dry, with slight breeze from the west. Barometer steady.

  Snowdrops blooming. Crocuses will bud soon, Buddleia just cut back, Hellebore has just come up. Witchhazel blooming and lilacs have tight buds. Planted the first of the basil, peppers, and tomatoes inside (under the grow lights) and harvested the last of the kale. Harvested the parsnips, sweeter for enduring the hard winter.

  Strange event today. Frank received visitors, a couple named Tristan and Melisande who somehow happened upon his old ODEC patent application from DARPA, something I would just as soon forget ever existed. They appeared at the door without warning this afternoon. He is clearly military, has the energy of a Labrador retriever (thinking in particular of the one Uncle Victor trained for duck hunting). She milder, more reserved, better-spoken th
an he.

  Frank received them in his current study, the dining room. (Melisande was charmed that although that chandelier was wired for electric lights about a century ago, and outfitted for gas light before that, it can still be lowered by a pulley system from the days of candle-lighting. Tristan was not as charmed, because the chandelier wasn’t the duck he was here to hunt.)

  They told Frank they believe that they know why the patent application failed and that furthermore, they know how to rectify this—that, with his assistance, they can actually create an ODEC that will successfully suppress the collapse of the wave function. I was not sure how I felt about hearing this, remembering the stress and bother that went into our last go-round with this enterprise. Frank said they would have to convince me. Melisande was tasked with doing this. I could tell from the way she approached me in the kitchen that she did not expect to succeed. She was surprised.

  I will support Frank in anything he does and any decision he makes. Since he did not immediately say no to them, it means he is excited by the prospect of being vindicated all these years later. I truly wish he wasn’t. But he is. And I understand that. To make a short story shorter, we both signed a nondisclosure agreement, and they joined us for tea.

  Then things got quite strange.

  They shared something preposterous, which is hard for me to write down without shaking my head. They claim to be interested in the ODEC not for its defensive capabilities, but because they believe it can be used to perform acts of—I cannot write this steadily—magic. Not sleight-of-hand; not wishful thinking. Sorcery. They are sincere about this. She attempted to validate the claim by citing ancient documents she has been translating. He gave a passing technical explanation, which I admit sounded as plausible as anything else re: quantum theory, but that’s not saying much, is it?

  But Tristan played the winning card re: Frank’s mental constitution: he said that ultimately it should not matter if we believed about the magic or not, we should sign on to this for the sake of the science itself. That is like offering catnip to a cat. Of course Frank said he would assist however he could.

  They’d explained why magic is no longer possible today, and further, why, even were magic to become possible (within the ODEC), it would require the application of specific people (“witches”) who could “perform magic.” So naturally, I asked them who they were expecting to “perform” it. It was the only time I saw them at a loss: this most obvious and basic of concerns had never crossed their minds.

  I don’t know who they are, or where their funding comes from—it definitely isn’t MIT this time. God forbid MIT even suspect he’s tinkering with this nonsense.

  Diachronicle

  DAY 221 (CONTD.; EARLY MARCH, YEAR 1)

  In which we divide to conquer

  REBECCA EAST-ODA SERVED TEA LIKE a proper New England matriarch—not mugs with teabags, but loose-leaf tea steeped in and poured from a china teapot into teacups resting on saucers, with rock sugar on sticks and a little porcelain pitcher of milk, all set out on a wicker tray. She also presented a plate of biscuits both ginger and savory, which of course at the time I’d have called cookies and crackers. I spirited these to my side of the tea table so that Tristan would not swallow them whole.

  For early March in New England, it was uncharacteristically gorgeous, and crisp afternoon sunlight streamed at a low angle through the bay transom windows, hitting the dangling crystals of the fancy old chandelier that hung incongruously above us all, throwing dozens of little rainbows around the walls.

  “So we have this space. Not far away from here actually,” Tristan was saying, and on reflex glanced around for sweets.

  “Have some more tea,” Rebecca offered Tristan, who of course had downed his almost instantly. She held out her hand for his teacup and saucer.

  He gave it to her with a nod of thanks, but then his attention returned to Frank Oda, talking amps and circuitry requirements—

  “How does he take it?” Rebecca asked me.

  How odd that she assumed I’d know this. “Based on his dietary habits, probably milk and sugar,” I said.

  “All right then,” said Tristan, staring fixedly at a blank place on the wall. “The human-rated ODEC has to be built . . . this becomes a four-part strategy.” (I had not realized he’d fashioned even a three-part strategy.) He held up a fist and stuck out his thumb: “One, extensive modifications to our building.”

  “Hang on,” I said, “it’s not DODO’s building!”

  “What is DODO?” Rebecca asked.

  “Department of Diabolical Obscurantism,” I guessed.

  Tristan was still frozen in midsentence, like a video when you hit the “pause” button, thumb in the air, gazing at me patiently while he chewed a biscuit he had somehow snagged from my side of the table. “Anyway,” I continued, “you can’t just modify someone else’s building . . . can you?”

  “We will acquire the building,” he announced. Then he extended his index finger. “Two, design of the human-rated ODEC. Three, its construction. Four, find somebody who can do magic.” He looked around at us. “Conveniently, there’s four of us. Professor, you work up a design, then oversee the construction. My bosses can fly up some fellows from DC to work with us, Stokes and I will help—you can manage a screw gun, can’t you, Stokes?” This was a throwaway, almost rhetorical, question; he did not even glance at me.

  Oda nodded, his face still but radiant. I could see him restraining himself from glancing at his wife. Her face was also still, but not so radiant. “We’ll need people with expertise in bulk cryogenics.”

  “NASA,” Tristan said dismissively. “Those guys don’t have enough to do. Then there’s procuring and installing all the hardware. We can get as much computational muscle as we need from cheap off-the-shelf hardware. Weird fabrication can be sourced from Los Alamos. Witches is you, Stokes. Ask around at New Agey places. Yoga studios or whatever. That should be easy enough, and you look the part.”

  “What does that mean?” I demanded.

  “Grad student. Primary demographic for magical thinking.”

  “Tristan. It’s the twenty-first century. Get a clue. I will look for witches online.”

  He was already shaking his head. “No. You can’t leave a paper or electronic trail. You have to show up somewhere witchy in person and ask questions, without giving them any information about yourself.” Before I could respond he turned to Rebecca. “Wanna help Stokes find a witch?”

  Rebecca said, “No.” She said it politely, calmly stroking a calico cat that was curled placidly on her lap. It was clear that she would not be changing her mind about it.

  “You’re the one who gets credit for thinking of it,” he said, almost (by Tristan standards) cajoling.

  “I am here for Frank,” she said. “I’m not a soldier in your army, Mr. Lyons.”

  “All right then,” Tristan said, after a pause. He suddenly brightened, grinned at me. “Stokes, you own witches.”

  “What the hell, Tristan. How does one find a witch, anyhow? Not in a yoga studio, that’s for sure. Nobody’s been able to do magic for about a hundred and seventy-five years, so what does that even mean, for somebody to ‘be a witch’?”

  “In Japan, still today, there are tsukimono-suji,” said Oda, as casually as if he were discussing lunch. “Witch families. Witchcraft is considered hereditary—matrilineal—and I don’t know what kind of magic they claim to do, but the witch identity remains.” He grinned slightly. “Maybe if you find the descendant of a witch, you’ve found a witch waiting for her broomstick.”

  “Very funny,” said Rebecca. When Tristan and I turned curious eyes upon her, she explained in a desultory tone, “An ancestress of mine was hanged in the Salem witch trials. Frank finds that exotic.”

  “Salem doesn’t count,” I said. “That was mass hysteria induced by ergot-tainted rye.”

  “Correct,” said Rebecca in a so-there tone, her eyes darting toward her husband.

  “But Salem is the
epicenter of modern American witchiness,” said Tristan.

  “That’s a bunch of commercial tourist-trap nonsense, and anyhow, what would I be looking for?” I asked again.

  “If there really were witches,” Oda-sensei suggested, “maybe there are people today who know they were descended from them, and who continue some of the ritual elements even if the magic isn’t active. That is probably the case with the tsukimono-suji.”

  “We can work with that,” said Tristan. “Stokes, get on it.”

  “Salem won’t have any witch-descendants because—as I just said—Salem never had witches to start with,” I insisted. “If we’re looking for witch-spawn, we should check out someplace like New Orleans.”

  Tristan considered this. “Go poke around Salem first. If you don’t find anything, maybe I’ll send you to New Orleans.”

  Crikey, that was easy. And a perk I’d never get under Blevins! “Is this taxpayer-funded?” I asked. “No judgment. Just curious.”

  “Classified,” he said, and gave me a wink.

  Diachronicle

  DAYS 222–244 (MARCH, YEAR 1)

  In which there are constructive developments

  TRISTAN LATER MODIFIED HIS PLAN, deciding not to send me witch-hunting until we had a feasible chamber in which to put our witch. As there was nothing to occupy me, and I’d let slip that I had taken (one semester-long) shop class in high school, he declared me his aide-de-camp for the campaign of Office Reform that was to come.

  During the next few weeks the office, as I had known it, rapidly ceased to exist. Even before taking ownership of the building, Tristan had, with sledgehammer and Sawzall, wrought changes on it that, at the time, had struck me as quite material. He had perfected the art of gazing thoughtfully at a wall between office suites, casting his gaze hither and yon, and blithely announcing that it was not load-bearing and hence a candidate for being knocked out. In this manner the original DODO office had tripled its square footage during the time I had been working there, with several of its walls already marked for death whenever the neighboring start-ups went “Tango Uniform.”