Carbide Tipped Pens

by Ben Bova

  Albert snapped to his feet. “Could he be in the bathroom?”

  “No. And I’ve looked everywhere.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t worry,” said Ralph as he retrieved a flashlight. “He’s a boy. He probably just went out to explore.”

  “The desert’s dangerous at night,” said Kimberly. “He knows that.”

  “You’re sure he’s not in the building?” said Albert.

  “Yes. Positive.”

  “All right,” said Albert, trying to keep worry out of his voice for Kimberly’s sake. “Let’s go out and get him.” Ralph handed him a second flashlight. “He had to have gone out the back way. Let’s go.”

  “Wait a sec.” Ralph went to a cabinet and withdrew a pair of binoculars, which he handed to Albert. “Normally, for bird watching.”

  With Ralph in the lead, they padded then through the building to the back door, and out into the night where, even though the Sun had long since set, they were met with a wall of desert heat.

  Albert slowly scanned the horizon. On one side was the barren desert and on the other, the dim outlines of hundreds of radio dishes. If he’s wandered out there, he won’t be easy to find.

  “Let’s see if he’s within cooee,” said Ralph. He cupped his hands around his mouth in the way of a megaphone, and shouted a long “Cooooeeee,” the Australian call to find someone lost in the bush.

  Nothing.

  “At least the wind’s died down,” said Albert. “He should be able to hear us.”

  “But it means,” said Ralph, casting a glance at the sky, “the rain will come soon.” He cooeed again. Still nothing.

  Albert shined his light along the ground, looking for tracks, but couldn’t find any.

  “Here, let me,” said Ralph, adding his beam to Albert’s. “I’ve had practice.” He peered hard at the sandy ground.

  Watching Ralph, crouched low, eyes intent with a feral gleam, Albert could well understand how Ralph had come by his Dingo sobriquet.

  Albert followed Ralph’s gaze off into the darkness and was seized with an impression that all the creatures of the desert floor were looking at him, and that he could sense their minds: the lizards, the rats, and, worst of all, the snakes. Despite the heat, Albert shivered. Irrational. This is completely irrational.

  A lightning flash illuminated the ground.

  “Yes!” said Ralph, his exclamation punctuated by thunder. “He’s left us some breadcrumbs to follow.” Still in a crouch, Ralph moved slowly off toward the telescope array. Albert and Kimberly followed.

  “He’s running,” said Ralph, pointing to a footprint. “Makes it easier.” Ralph picked up the pace. “He’s less likely to change direction.

  “Where is he running to?” said Kimberly, breathlessly as she struggled to keep up.

  “Look!” Albert pointed to a sign staked into the ground:

  WARNING

  NO DIG ZONE

  UNDERGROUND CABLE

  “He seems to be running,” Albert paused for breath, “along the route of the signal conduit.”

  The sky, which had been threatening, began to deliver on the threat—first with a few drops, and then with a deluge. After experiencing the heat of the desert, Albert welcomed the cooling rain.

  “Damn!” Ralph stopped as did the others behind him. “It’s washing out the track.”

  “Let’s keep going along the conduit path,” said Albert, mentally rescinding his welcome.

  “May as well,” said Ralph.

  “Liam’s surely getting soaked,” said Kimberly in a mother’s voice of concern.

  There came another flash of lightning and Albert flinched, his eyes bleached by the flash.

  “There!” shouted Kimberly. “There he is. Standing on that thing over there.” Kimberly started running. Ralph and Albert followed. Albert, more worried than he’d admitted even to himself, ran full-out, overtaking Kimberly and Ralph.

  Thunder pealed. “Five seconds between lightning and thunder,” Ralph managed as he ran. “Storm’s about a mile from us—and moving away.”

  The data from each of the radio dishes were transmitted by underground cables to the Cable Breakout Unit. There, the data were collected and sent on by a single cable to the observatory control building. The Breakout Unit, a three-foot-diameter round cabinet some four feet high, stood on a raised concrete platform. Stone steps and a ladder gave access to the top.

  And there, on the top of the cabinet, some seven feet above the ground, stood Liam.

  He was looking upward, seemingly oblivious to the rain.

  When Albert got to the base of the platform, he heard Liam continuously repeating, “I am not afraid.”

  “Liam!” Albert called out. “Come down. What are you doing out here?”

  Abruptly, as if broken from a trance, Liam looked down. “I’ve been mind-talking to the sky people.”

  “You’ve been what?”

  “Talking to the sky people.”

  Ralph and Kimberly joined Albert at the platform.

  “Sky people?” said Albert, under his breath.

  “I’ve told him the Anangu story,” said Ralph, softly, “that the stars are the campfires of the sky people.”

  “He’s always had an overactive imagination,” Kimberly whispered, her breath labored from the running.

  “Come down!” Albert called out over the noise of the rain.

  “Are you mad at me?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t believe me, do you?”

  “I…” Albert didn’t know what to say. He’d made it a practice not to lie to his son. “What … what did you talk about?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?” said Albert, trying to keep annoyance out of his voice. Liam was always using “nothing” as an answer.

  “Well … They just wanted to say hello.”

  “Not much of a message,” Ralph whispered.

  “They talked about,” came Liam’s treble voice from above, “funny numbers.”

  “Prime numbers?” said Ralph.

  “Yeah.”

  “My god!” Albert exclaimed under his breath. He turned to Ralph. “Liam doesn’t even know what a prime is.” He looked back up. “How did you hear about prime numbers?”

  “It just popped into my head.”

  Albert and Ralph exchanged a glance.

  “Liam Griffen,” Kimberly barked out. “You come down here at once.”

  Sullenly, and without answering his mother, Liam very slowly descended the ladders.

  As Liam climbed down, Albert said, “He must have heard us talking.”

  “From the lounge?” Ralph shook his head. “He’d need the ears of an owl. It’s more like something’s tapped into his mind.” He paused. “Guriada. Extrasensory perception.”

  “Extrasensory perception?” said Albert, dismissively. “At the worst, it’s unknown sensory.”

  “Same difference.”

  “Something has happened here,” said Kimberly. “I think it has, anyway. Something not easy to explain.”

  “The brain as a quantum detector,” said Ralph softly, as if to himself. “Could be that young brains are more efficient. Synapses are still developing.”

  When Liam had stepped to the ground and Albert could look down on him rather than up, he asked, “What else just popped into your head?”

  “Talking faster than light.”

  Albert’s eyes went wide.

  “But I don’t know what that means.”

  “Our theory,” said Ralph at a whisper to no one in particular. “Quantum spreading as the facilitator of communication.”

  Liam looked innocently up at his dad. “Don’t you believe me? I mean about hello.”

  “I … Does Rex Snoopy Biscuit believe you?” Why did I say that?

  “I couldn’t really understand the sky people,” said Liam, “but Rex Snoopy Biscuit could. He told me what they were saying.”

  “Oh,” Albert managed, struggling to put it all into a logical
context.

  “I believe you, Bluey,” said Ralph.

  Liam returned a smiled, then looked back at Albert. “Do you believe me, Dad?”

  Albert hesitated, then said, “I think so.” He felt he had to give that comfort to his son. Or rather I can’t say I disbelieve you.

  “Let’s go back and dry off,” said Kimberly. “I’d hate to see us all come down with colds.” She put an arm around Liam and urged him toward the observatory building.

  “We can commandeer one of the visiting scientist apartments,” said Albert. “There’s a communal laundry. We can throw our clothes in the dryer.”

  Liam protested. “I can’t go around without any clothes on.”

  “While our clothes are drying,” said Kimberly, “we can dress in sheets, togas, like the Romans did.”

  “Well,” said Liam in tacit acceptance.

  Ralph whispered to Albert. “Do we announce any of this to the SETI Foundation?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  * * *

  “I don’t know if anything really happened, but if it did, it was profound,” said Albert, as he and Ralph, dressed in ersatz togas, walked into the control room. Kimberly was in a visiting scientist bedroom, trying to coax Liam to sleep.

  “How do you feel now about … Guriada?”

  “Extrasensory perception is…” Albert began, heatedly, primed to deliver the strong denial that he’d so often given in the past. “It’s…” He paused. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

  “Excellent!” said Ralph as he padded over to the astronomy monitor. “Welcome to Club Heisenberg.”

  “Yeah. Right.”

  Albert and Ralph leaned in over the display.

  “The signal is gone,” said Ralph, sadly. “I’m afraid there’s no way we can verify our alien encounter.”

  “We have the data recordings.”

  “Not precisely what I’d call a verification.”

  Albert smiled at the incongruity of two scientists dressed as Roman senators talking philosophy. “Some things that are real aren’t verifiable.”

  “True,” said Senator Ralph. “And there are many modes of communication, not just at the higher cerebral level.”

  Albert nodded. “I’d always thought that if it weren’t repeatable and verifiable, it wasn’t science. But…”

  “Nature is uncertain, mate. Ambiguous.”

  “Ambiguity. Yes.” Albert gave a sad smile. “But I really have to ask: was it a genuine SETI positive or just a spurious signal and the rich imagination of a child?” He slumped into a chair.

  Ralph shrugged. “In any case,” he said, “we’ve come up with a really spiffy theory. We should publish.”

  Albert sighed. “And keep searching.”

  The phone rang and Albert looked idly at the caller ID, then snapped erect. “The Murchison Array!” With the speed of a cobra, Albert snaked out his hand to the phone.

  THE MANDELBROT BET

  Dirk Strasser

  * * *

  What is reality?

  Does the physical universe actually exist or is it, in the words of Edgar Allan Poe, “a dream within a dream”?

  Or look at it another way. Does mathematics truly describe the physical universe, or is the world of mathematics actually the universe itself?

  And what do these concepts have to do with the hopes and fears and passions that we human beings feel with every beat of our hearts?

  Thereby hangs Dirk Strasser’s tale.

  * * *

  There are lines which are monsters.

  Eugène Delacroix

  Voice notes to self on the development of the escape-time algorithm—Daniel Rostrom

  Remember, the answer is always simple. That’s not to say the simple answer is the correct one. The danger to avoid is the assumption that the simple answer, by the sole nature of its simplicity, is the correct one.

  The escape-time algorithm is the simplest algorithm for generating a representation of the Mandelbrot set. The answer lies in the infinity of the escape-time algorithm. Repeat the calculation for each x, y, z, t point and make your decisions based on the behavior of that calculation. Pick a value for time, t, square it, add a constant. Take the new number, square it, and add the same constant. Forever, do it forever. Simple.

  “Give me a moment before you shove any more of that stuff in my mouth.”

  “Sorry, Daniel, it’s hard for me to guess when you’re ready for another spoonful.”

  “You asked me a question, so give me a chance to answer it.”

  “You must have gotten stuck today. You’re always grumpy when you get stuck.”

  “And you’re the only one here I can be grumpy with, Helen. Sorry, it’s because I can’t move my body that it gets to me when I can’t get my mind moving as well.”

  “All right, how about having another go at explaining to me what you were thinking about today? Even if I don’t understand it, it may help you gain some insight.”

  “I suppose there’s always a chance. Do you remember what I was saying about the Mandelbrot set and how I have developed the idea to include a time dimension?”

  “Er, yes, I remember good old Benoît B. Mandelbrot. French, wasn’t he?”

  “No, technically Lithuanian. Lived and worked most of his life in the U.S., but that’s not really important, is it?”

  “I just like a bit of a context, Daniel.”

  “OK, well the important thing is I’ve tied the behavior of Mandelbrot-like time dimensions to quantum computing.”

  “Here, eat this before you go on. I need a moment to digest what you’ve said.”

  “Ha ha.”

  “Just chew on this, Daniel.”

  * * *

  The loner in physics—Eleanora Schmidt

  Is it possible for a non-physics trained person to make a fundamental breakthrough in physics? Does nature speak in a language that an intelligent, determined non-specialist can decipher? Self-taught artists can sometimes create something truly extraordinary that a fully trained artist can’t. It can be argued that the training itself limits thought patterns and inhibits creative leaps.

  The loner physicist has the added handicap that he or she is not working as part of a team. Are great discoveries still achievable by individuals working alone? Some would argue that this is still possible. A case in point is the work of Daniel Rostrom, a man with little formal physics training who brought his skills from other fields such as computer science, art, and geography to bear on the complex field of time travel speculation.

  The jury is still out on whether Daniel Rostrom was the greatest polymath and deepest thinker of our century, a brilliant hoaxer, or a fringe-dwelling crackpot. Rostrom, whose muscular dystrophy meant he was wheelchair-bound for much of his life, presents us with the most detailed insight into the loner physicist. As a young man he had a bionic recording device implanted into his brain which he could switch on and off at will. The original intention was to use it to play podcasts of scientific papers that he would otherwise have physical difficulty in reading and to keep a verbal record of his thoughts. In practice he kept the device recording most of the time with a cloud-sync to his computerized chair, so we have a full record of everything he said and heard. The later recordings which are dated after his disappearance are the subject of much debate. Most in the scientific community believe them to be an elaborate hoax, but there are those who believe they are genuine. The question always arises as to how a wheelchair-bound man with late-stage muscular dystrophy could simply disappear without his caregiver or any family members having any idea where he had gone. There are, of course, myriad conspiracy theories, but there are also physicists who have argued cogently that the most likely series of events was that he simply did what he said he would do.

  “That’s not what you said last time, Helen.”

  “So now you’re going to play back my words again, are you, Daniel? Just to make me look bad.”

  “No. I don’t want to make
you look bad.”

  “Look, Daniel, that bionic recorder drives me insane. Can’t you turn it off for conversations with me?”

  “I could, but it would make it harder to get to the truth.”

  “I might just quit. How would you like that sort of truth?”

  “You’ve said that…”

  “Don’t give me a precise count of how often I’ve said I’d quit.”

  “I’m sorry, Helen. I never mean to upset you.”

  “Being your full-time caregiver isn’t a picnic, and it’s not exactly pleasant when you have a digitized record of everything I’ve ever said to you inside your head.”

  “You know I’m after the truth. What else have I got sitting here in this wheelchair with nothing but numbness below my neck?”

  “Yes, well, you stick to scientific truth. The rest of us only have the fuzzy truth we deal with day to day.”

  “There’s only one sort of truth, Helen.”

  “And you’re going to find it.”

  “That’s right, I’m going to find it.”

  * * *

  Voice notes to self on the development of the escape-time algorithm—Daniel Rostrom

  One of two things always happens in a Mandelbrot set: either an iterated point jumps up to two units away from the origin or it jumps further away. The result is a shape that is finite but an edge that is infinite. It’s all about the edge. The line. It’s a monster. The more you magnify it, the more complex it becomes. It never settles down. Ever. I know this is the key. Somehow a Mandelbrot set has only two dimensions, yet it also possesses another dimension. What if that other dimension was time? With the right procedure it must be possible to both orbit close to an origin and jump in ever-increasing spans. I know I’m on to something. Think.

  This isn’t just a computer-generated image, it’s real life. Coastlines. You can see it in coastlines. They are infinitely long. Magnify them and you will see more twists and kinks. Magnify them again, and you see even more. It never stops.

  There is no arrow of time, it’s a coastline of time.

  “So, this chair of yours is going to be your so-called time machine?”

  “Yes, like in the H. G. Wells novel. Except it won’t be coming with me. You’ve only just realized that, Helen?”