by Andy Weir
“Quantum physics is a confusing, nonintuitive thing,” she said. “The rules that govern the universe at the small scale are nothing like what we expect. Suffice it to say that two qbits can be set up such that if you randomize one, the other will become the same value. Once you set them up like this, they are ‘entangled,’ and it doesn’t matter how long you wait before using them or how far apart and unconnected they are at the time. Once they’re entangled, they are guaranteed to be the same when randomized.”
He pointed to the storage units. “So we have two copies of some data?”
“No, don’t think of it as data. Think of these storage units as two piles of dice, but the dice are magically linked, so if you roll a die and roll its counterpart in the other pile, they are guaranteed to have the same result.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Quantum physics doesn’t make any sense,” she said. “Please don’t try to think about it too much. It can be very distressing.”
“Once they’re entangled, they are guaranteed to be the same when randomized.”
He fidgeted in his chair. “Their storage unit and our storage unit are linked. So they’ll basically be talking to each other across the country. But didn’t you tell me once that quantum entanglement can’t be used for communication?”
She typed on the keyboard and ran a quick self-test. “I did, yes. And it’s true. But we’re using a loophole,” she said. “Two parties can’t communicate via quantum measurements. But they can both observe their respective results and act accordingly.”
“That seems like communication.”
“Not quite. Think of an intersection with stoplights. The stoplights are, functionally, entangled. If I see that one light is green, I know the other light is red.”
“With you so far,” he said.
“Let’s say two cars approach at cross-directions. One driver sees a red light, and the other sees green. The drivers don’t talk to each other or communicate in any way. But they each observe their own lights, which lets them know what to do and what the other driver will do. There was no communication, just an agreement in advance on what red and green lights mean.”
“Okay, so do we have an ‘agreement in advance’ with the casino on what these qbits mean?”
“We do.” She returned to the kitchenette and stirred the kheer. “The Babylon Casino has a keno computer from 2002. Old but reliable—just what casinos like. The manufacturer has excellent documentation online, so I know exactly how the random qbit values will be made into random numbers. Running that operation on our own qbits will give us those same random numbers. That algorithm is the ‘agreement in advance.’”
“Why not entangle all the qbits and not just the long-term storage ones?”
She tasted the kheer. Just right. “Entanglement isn’t permanent. Those magic dice I was talking about? They only work once. After that roll, the spell is broken, and they have nothing to do with each other. If you roll them again, there will be no magic. Just two random numbers. So you get one roll—just one—where you know how the other die will be affected.”
“I see,” Prashant said. “So I assume the normal function of the 707 reuses qbits over and over?”
She served a generous portion of kheer into a bowl. Prashant loved sweet food and always wanted more than he claimed. “Yes. The casino’s keno machine would exhaust our supply of entangled qbits in seconds. So the trick is making them use the long-term memory as RAM and striking right at that moment.”
Prashant pushed his plate aside to make room for the bowl. “How do we do that?”
“The 707 does a coherence self-check once a week. When you install the system, make sure those settings are set to do the self-check this Sunday night at 11:58 p.m.”
She adjusted her sari. American clothes certainly looked nice on Americans, but she preferred traditional clothing. “The self-check takes about five minutes. During that time, if the system is asked to do qbit operations, it uses the qbits in the long-term storage unit because the normal RAM is busy. The Babylon does keno draws every fifteen minutes—there’ll be a draw at precisely midnight on Sunday. That’s when we strike. We only have one attempt, though. The long-term memory has 512 qbits, and a keno draw is twenty eight-bit numbers.”
Prashant raised a finger. “Twenty numbers would only be 160 qbits. So we have, like, three tries before it eats all 512.”
She shook her head. “The numbers each have to be unique, and they’re all in the range of one through eighty. There will be a lot of duplicates drawn. The computer will have to generate random numbers until twenty unique numbers are drawn.”
“Ah.”
“Once the system hits the end of the long-term memory, it’ll loop around, re-randomizing, and reusing the already-measured qbits. We’ll have no information on any of that.” She sighed. “This all would be much simpler if I could modify the computer itself before you install it.”
“We’d never get away with it,” said Prashant. “There’s a factory seal over every entry point, and the OS is on a ROM. Same with the long-term memory module. It was easy enough to sneak it here for you to prepare it, but if we try to open it or modify the hardware, the casino will know when they look over the system.”
She set the kheer in front of him, along with a fresh spoon. “Are you sure they would even notice?”
He nodded. “Pretty sure. I spoke to the Babylon’s IT manager on the phone. He’s . . . very diligent. He’s extremely thorough.”
“Then this is the only way,” she said. “Fortunately, the long-term memory comes pre-superpositioned. The system will skip the Hadamard operation on first use.”
“I didn’t understand that at all.”
“All that matters is that the system has a minor performance optimization that creates the security hole we’re going to take advantage of.” She returned to the living room and sat at the computer. “Now is as good a time as any to get the numbers . . .”
“Wait, what?” he said. “Now? I don’t understand.”
She typed a few commands on the console. “Entanglement is a two-way street. I can measure one storage unit’s values right now, and the others will be the same whenever the Babylon measures them.”
“So you’re basically . . . generating the keno numbers for Sunday night right now?”
“Yes.” She hit the “Enter” key. A stream of numbers showed up on-screen. She stared at the screen intently, memorizing the output. Ganesh had blessed her with an excellent memory.
“Those are it? The numbers?”
“Yes,” she said, keeping her eyes locked on the screen.
“You’re memorizing them?” he asked. “Why not just save them to a file or take a pic with your phone?”
“No.” She shook her head. “No digital trail. Everything is purely in my mind from here on out.”
“Ah, right. Makes sense.”
She closed her eyes and visualized the numbers. All twenty of them were clear in her mind. She opened her eyes to double-check against the screen, and she’d gotten them all correct. Perfect.
Prashant stirred his kheer. Uncharacteristic of him not to dig right in.
She turned the swivel chair toward her husband. “What’s wrong, honey? You still seem unsettled.”
He fiddled with the spoon. “Does it have to be you placing the bet?”
“Of course it does,” she said. “They will know you as the man who set up their computer.”
“Couldn’t we just pay a college student to do it or something?”
She frowned and shook her head. “Accomplices add complications. I’m the only one we can trust to place the bet.”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“It will be fine, husband. Eat your kheer.”
“Okay.” He took a bite and loosened up. Sweet food put him in a good mood.
At times he was a complicated man, but at other times he could be very simple. Finding those simple moments and bringing him joy was one
of Sumi’s greatest pleasures.
She smiled as she watched her husband eat.
Sumi sipped her lemonade in the keno lounge. The crowd was a little lighter than it would be at peak hours. Though midnight was still a very active time in a Vegas casino. The usual cacophony of dings, beeps, and buzzes filled the air.
She held the winning ticket—well, what would hopefully become the winning ticket—in her hand among a sheaf of other tickets that would surely lose. It would be suspicious if she bought only one.
Any number of things could go wrong. The long-term storage unit or the computer itself could have a software glitch that would require re-randomizing all the qbits. The settings for the coherence check could be wrong, and it might have already happened or not started yet. Then her numbers would be no more likely to win than any others.
To blend in as a tourist, she wore an even more traditional sari than usual. A little more Old World, with brass jewelry here and there. She took photos with her phone. What tourist wouldn’t?
A peal of MIDI music filled the lounge to announce the next draw was about to begin. She glanced at the big display above the keno betting desk. She gripped the sheaf of tickets tighter.
The cheesy animated display showed a grid of keno numbers drawn in a cuneiform style—like a clay tablet from the ancient world. The numbers wiggled around in their boxes while a Babylonian archer beside the grid nocked an arrow and took aim. It was cartoonish and silly. If all went well, the first number would be a nine.
The animated archer loosed his arrow, and it flew in an arc over the grid. It struck the nine. Sumi breathed a sigh of relief.
After that, things proceeded according to plan. The rest of the numbers fell into place as expected. Sumi played the shocked-and-overjoyed-winner role and excitedly ran to the betting desk to report her win.
The win was large enough to warrant calling over the floor manager, who verified the ticket. And then the security tape was reviewed to make sure she was the one who had purchased it. They asked her to wait while they set up a photo shoot. The manager of the casino even came down.
Rutledge, the manager, shook Sumi’s hand. “Congratulations,” he said.
The pair stood in front of a bright sign that read KENO 9-SPOT PROGRESSIVE JACKPOT: $741,299. A casino photographer took pictures.
“Thank you,” she said in a thick Indian accent.
“How did you pick the winning numbers?” asked Rutledge.
“I just pick random,” she said. “I only wanted a tickets to show the friends of mine in Mumbai. I never think I would win.”
“What do you plan to do with the money?”
She smiled. “I will give many of it to my family. They are poor. It will help them very a lot. And I will buy a big American car for driving with back in India.”
“That will be all for now,” Rutledge said to the photographer.
The photographer headed off, and Rutledge led Sumi to the elevator banks. “Ms. Singh, I’m sure this is all unfamiliar territory to you. I’ll help guide you through it.”
“You are important man,” Sumi said. “I do not need such an important man to help.”
“It’s my pleasure,” he said. “And it’s good publicity for the Babylon. A big win is the best advertising a casino can have.”
“Thank you, Mr. Rutledge,” she said. “What are we now to do?”
He pressed the elevator button. “First you’ll have to speak to a representative from the IRS. They’ll want their share right now. We’ll pay them their portion directly and issue you a cashier’s check for the rest. Or, if you prefer, we can give you cash.”
She laughed. “Oh no. Not cash. I cannot walk under so much cash.”
The doors opened and the pair entered. He swiped his key card on the reader. Various floor buttons that had been illuminated all shut off, and the highest button lit up. They rode to the top of the building without interruption.
He led her from the elevator bank through an empty mahogany office. “Sorry, my secretary is home right now,” he explained. “It’s almost one a.m., after all.”
“Of course,” she said.
He opened one of the ornate double doors to his office, and the lights turned on automatically. He beelined to the wet bar. “Can I offer you a drink?”
She followed him in. “I do not drink, thank you.”
“What a pity.”
“Where is IRS man?” she asked.
He gestured for her to sit on the plush leather couch. “Oh, he’s not here.” He poured himself two fingers of scotch.
“Why not? Does the government not want their money?”
“There won’t be any money.” He sipped his drink and picked up a folder from his desk. “I have very thorough security people. Did you know we do a full background check on anyone who wins more than one hundred thousand dollars?”
She pursed her lips. “I didn’t know that.”
“Your accent seems to have disappeared.” He opened the folder. “Do you have any idea how many Sumi Singhs there are in the world? A lot, believe me. But only one of them was a child genius who went on to earn PhDs in physics, mathematics, and quantum theory. Hell of a coincidence, don’t you think? A talented quantum physicist winning my nine-spot keno progressive four days after we install a quantum computer. Oh, and side note, you’re married to the guy who installed it.”
She looked away.
He sat at his desk. “Vegas gets a lot of smart people trying to cheat. Very smart people. Geniuses, scientists, electrical engineers, you name it. They come from all over the world to try their schemes. And they always have some angle we never thought of. Because they’re smart. Like you.”
He leaned forward. “You’re more intelligent than I could ever hope to be. I feel no shame in admitting it. But there’s no substitute for experience. You know all there is to know about quantum physics, but I have twenty years of running this casino. And Vegas has a hundred years of catching extremely smart cheaters.”
“You can’t prove anything,” she said. “And if you don’t pay me the money I won, I’ll take you to court.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Wow. You’re bold, I’ll grant you that.”
“This is a trivial sum of money compared to your casino’s profits,” she said. “It is not worth your time to pursue this.”
He raised his voice. “If someone stole a nickel from me, I’d spend a hundred thousand dollars tracking him down! It’s not about profit; it’s about protecting this establishment. There are a hundred other casinos out there, ready to take my customers. Any whiff of fraud or mismanagement here will blot our name and make us look second-rate. And there’s no room for second-rate on the Strip. People don’t come here for so-so casinos. They want the best.”
He took a breath and returned to his normal voice. “According to my IT manager—who is very upset right now, by the way—there’s something called entanglement that might be to blame? I can’t begin to comprehend what that’s all about, but he said our computer’s long-term storage unit must have been hooked up to the same computer as someone else’s. I’m guessing your hubby brought it to you before he brought it to us.”
“Theoretically, if that were to have happened,” she said, “the qbits on both drives would no longer be entangled, and there would be no way to see that they ever were.”
“See, there you go, being all smart again. Thinking like a quantum physicist.” Rutledge sloshed the scotch around in his glass. “I tend to think more like a criminal. Our long-term storage unit is in our vault. You’ve never been in our vault. But I bet there’s some skin cells of yours on it from when you handled it before.”
She widened her eyes.
“Yeah, the clever ones get tripped up by the simplest things. Anyway, the police are on their way.”
“What?”
“I could have security detain you, of course. But then tomorrow’s news would say ‘Vegas Billionaire Has Goons Bully a Confused Foreign Woman.’ Much better to lure
you here and have the police pick you up.”
She bolted to her feet.
“That elevator only works with a key card. You’re not going anywhere.” He raised his glass to her. “Sure you don’t want a drink?”
“Give me a second . . . ,” she said. “I’m thinking.”
“About what?”
“A way out of this.”
“Um,” he said. “There isn’t a way out. The police will be here in a few minutes.”
“Then I have a few minutes to think.”
“See, there you go, being all smart again. Thinking like a quantum physicist. I tend to think more like a criminal.”
He shrugged. To his credit, he didn’t gloat. He didn’t seem to take pleasure in it at all. He wasn’t about revenge or money. He was about respect.
She furrowed her brow. This was getting somewhere.
His casino was his life. It was his baby. A billionaire like him didn’t need to oversee the day-to-day operations of a company. He could easily hire someone to do it and spend his life gallivanting around European ski slopes or whatever. A man with his means could do anything he wanted. And what he wanted was to run this casino.
And to be respected. No, not quite. It wasn’t about his ego. It was about the casino being respected. Why? Because without that respect, the business suffered. So it was all about the business success. And her scam had put that all at risk.
There it was. The answer.
“I have a proposal,” she said.
“Pardon?”
She sat back down and folded her hands on her lap. “You call off the police and pay me the winnings.”
“And why would I do that?”
“My husband will quit his job at QuanaTech, and the two of us will start a new company—one dedicated to making specialty quantum devices for the gambling industry. It makes perfect sense with his background on the business side and my expertise of the technology.”
“I’m still waiting for why I would do this.”
“It would cost more than our winnings to start a company,” she mused. “So you would have to be an anonymous angel investor.”