Carbide Tipped Pens: Seventeen Tales of Hard Science Fiction

by Ben Bova

  Albert threw up his hands. “I appeal to Gell-Mann’s Totalitarian Principle.”

  “You mean the idea that if it’s not expressly forbidden by physics, it must happen?”

  “Precisely! So the cosmos might not be so isolated after all.”

  They looked silently at each other for a minute or so. Then Ralph said, “Where did you get this spiffy notion?”

  “It just popped into my head.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Theoretically,” Albert went on, “we might even be able to hold a conversation with our aliens in real-time, or close to it.”

  “Imagine,” said Ralph with a distant look in his eyes, “a one-minute phone call with two … two creatures who don’t speak each other’s language. Could they really communicate? Could they relate anything really important?”

  “Yes. Certainly. That they exist and that they want to communicate. Our alien friends probably didn’t have the time or bandwidth to send a teach-yourself-to-speak-alien book.”

  “Then you genuinely think the signals are SETI positive?” said Ralph almost at a whisper.

  Albert nodded.

  “But how can it be done, then?” said Ralph. “If there’s to be any reality at all to this, you’ll have to explain how the signals can come from all over.”

  “You tell me. You’re the quantum theorist. It feels like a quantum mechanics question.”

  Ralph didn’t respond, so Albert went on. “Although, I must say I side with Einstein’s feeling that God doesn’t play with dice. I think we need quantum mechanics here.”

  “God doesn’t play with dice?” Ralph laughed. “On the contrary: God is dice.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I mean dice, uncertainty, ambiguity. It’s built into nature, as evidenced by us being thinking beings. Without the uncertainty, a brain would just be a piece of clockwork—in theory, completely predictable.”

  “OK,” said Albert, “give me a theory to explain these signals.” His voice held a hint of challenge.

  “Let me think,” said Ralph. “Will a wild theory do?”

  “It would have to be.”

  After a few minutes where nobody spoke, Kimberly said, “I’m feeling a sort of tingling on my skin.”

  “Funny thing,” said Albert, “I was just about to say the same thing.”

  “Me too,” said Ralph.

  “It’s like we’re reading each other’s minds,” said Kimberly. “Telepathy.”

  “Hardly that.” said Albert, some scorn and amusement in his voice. “The three of us are probably just reacting to the same external stimulus—probably something to do with the high electrical potential of the storm clouds.” As soon as he said it, he regretted his words. He and Kimberly argued a lot about the possibility of telepathy.

  Kimberly stood. She seemed offended. “I think I’ll go and check up on Liam.” Without waiting for an acknowledgement, she strode from the room.

  Ralph watched her go, then turned to Albert. “About a theory, then. I believe points in space-time have extent, sort of like tiny discrete marbles, and space-time itself is not well-defined.” He nodded to himself. “I could imagine that a particular kind of signal could spread out.” He bit his lip. “I would think that sending real data on the marbles would be hard. The marbles would mostly arrive out of order. And that might be why they only can get a few primes through.”

  “Cosmic isolation?”

  “Maybe…” Again Ralph bit his lip. “But maybe the marbles could be numbered. And we could send a message by following the numbered breadcrumbs.”

  “Would we want to,” said Albert, retreating into a physicist’s land of what-ifs. Could we be inviting invasion? Maybe there’s a cosmic reason for the isolation.”

  “We, as a culture, can’t keep our heads in the sand,” said Ralph. “Are we going to be”—he smiled—“the scaredy-cats of the universe?” Ralph leaned back in his chair. “So there you have it,” he said. “A theory … of sorts.”

  “Yeah.” Albert shook his head. “And it’s wild, all right.”

  “Thanks, heaps. But it could explain a lot of phenomena … even telepathy.”

  “Not you, too!” Albert wrinkled his nose. “I said a wild theory, not pseudoscience.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Ralph. “I think the brain could well be a quantum detector of sorts, of lateral detection.”

  Albert pursed his lips. “Telepathy, you mean.”

  “Gurriada,” said Ralph. “It’s a Pitjantjatjara word meaning thought or magic at a distance.”

  “Telepathy by any other name,” said Albert, “would still smell as … would still smell.”

  “Don’t you think you’re being a bit…” Ralph turned to look toward the sound of rapid footsteps.

  Kimberly ran into the control room, her face contorted in worry, her movements frantic. “I can’t find Liam!”

  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 del
iver 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?”