Carbide Tipped Pens: Seventeen Tales of Hard Science Fiction

by Ben Bova

  “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 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 onto 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?”

  “I’m a bit slow, remember? You’ve often told me that.”

  “No, I haven’t. I can prove—”

  “Don’t worry about calling up the relevant recordings. Even if you haven’t said it, I feel it from you sometimes.”

  “Do you really?”

  “Never mind, tell me again how this is going to work.”

  “Could you keep massaging my scalp while I do?”

  “All right.”

  “I mean sometimes you stop massaging when you’re thinking.”

  “I promise I won’t think.”

  “Very amusing.”

  “Can you start explaining?”

  “It’s all about uncertainty.”

  “Mmm, all right, go on.”

  “You’ve switched off already, haven’t you?”

  “No, but I know you’re using the word uncertainty in that way you always use words. I’ll bet it’s not the way most of us use the word.”

  “OK … think of it like a bet. You know how in a horse race, you can never be absolutely certain of what horse will win?”

  “Unless the race is fixed and I’m in on the fix.”

  “OK, unless the race is fixed. Can we assume it’s not fixed?”

  “Of course, it’s your race. So we can’t be sure of what horse will win?”

  “Yes, we don’t know anything for certain, but people who know what they’re doing assign odds of winning to each horse.”

  “So do people who don’t know what they’re doing.”

  “Are you going to let me continue?”

  “You’re not telling me anything I don’t know, Daniel.”

  “I’m trying to simplify it.”

  “For my slow brain.”

  “I told you I’ve never said you have a slow—”

  “Look, Daniel, just go on.”

  “Well, the escape-time algorithm I’ve been working on comes down to writing a computer program into my chair that uses the uncertainty in the four-dimensional extension to the Mandelbrot set principle I’ve been extrapolating.”

  “I see.”

  “A horse race is based on mild randomness. Things like height and weight also have a mild random distribution. You’re not going to come across a twenty-meter-tall person all of a sudden, for example. Mandelbrot set–like behavior is based on wild randomness.”

  “So in the Mandelbrot world twenty-meter-tall people are common?”

  “Not exactly, but there are lots of examples of Mandelbrot set–like distributions in the real world. Nearly all human-made variables are wild. Wealth, for example, is a wild variable. We have a number of individuals that have millions of times more wealth than the average person. We live in a winner-take-all world of extremes.”

  “See, this is why I like hearing about your work, Daniel.”

  “Can you keep massaging?”

  “Sorry, you caught me thinking.”

  “Look at Babble, it controls ninety percent of the cloud traffic. And who’s the latest best-selling enhanced fiction author?”

  “It’s probably—”

  “Never mind, it was a rheto
rical question. I’ll guarantee you that whoever she is, she earns millions more than the vast majority of enhanced fiction authors. And she won’t be millions times better than those other authors.”

  “No, but she’s pretty good.”

  “Are you deliberately sidetracking me?”

  “Yes, sorry.”

  “Anyway, what I’m doing is using wild randomness to accelerate myself into an extreme future time period. And because of the wildness, I can’t be absolutely certain what the Mandelbrot set–like variables will do to me.”

  “So, it’s sort of like a Mandelbrot bet?”

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

  I’ve found what I’ve been overlooking. Possibility theory. It describes the uncertainty that I’ve been missing. It’s the only way to deal with extreme probabilities and partial ignorance. I need to look at both the possibility and necessity of the event. If the universe is finite (which we know it is) and every subset of it is measurable (which is what everything we do in science is based on), then the universe describes all possible future states of the world. Obvious now. Outcomes aren’t self-dual. I need to stop thinking with two-valued logic and start thinking with multi-valued logic.

  “Nǐ tīngdǒng ma?”

  “What?”

  “We’re sorry, our records say Mandarin Chinese was the most common language in your space-time period. It was a statistical guess that you would understand it. Shall we proceed with mid-twenty-first-century English? Is that convenient for you, doctor?”

  “Doctor?”

  “That is the correct form of address, is it not, for a scientist from your space-time period?”

  “I don’t have doctorate. My name is Daniel Rostrom. What … what space-time period am I in?”

  “It depends what scale you use. Allow me to elucidate, Mr. Rostrom.”

  “Please do.”

  “You understand something of the life cycle of stars?”

  “Yes, of course. It’s not my major interest, but I know my cosmology.”

  “Do you see—we use the word see as an approximation, of course—do you see the white light in your vision?”

  “Yes, in fact, that’s all I can see.”

  “You would be aware that neutron stars, black holes, and black dwarfs are dead stars. What you see here is a white dwarf, a star that, although still alive, is dying. This low-mass white dwarf will become dimmer and dimmer until it fades into a black dwarf. Do you know what a black dwarf is?”

  “Yes. It’s a white dwarf, a star that’s run out of fuel, that’s finally cooled off and isn’t radiating in visible light. Black dwarfs were only theoretical in the mid-twenty-first century. They couldn’t exist because the time taken for a white dwarf to cool to such a degree was longer than the lifespan of the universe up to my time period.”

  “We will talk about time in a moment. The important thing to appreciate is that a white dwarf can sustain life, a black dwarf can’t.”

  “But some white dwarfs could also evolve into supernovae.”

  “Very high mass white dwarfs, or those with orbiting companions, can in some cases become supernovae and the expanding shock waves from these explosions form new stars. This is how the life-cycle of the universe functions. Death. Life. Death. Life.”

  “But you said this white dwarf is small mass, so it’s going to die and become a black dwarf.”

  “Precisely, Mr. Rostrom, but there is something you must understand now. What you have seen here is the last star of its kind.”

  “The last white dwarf?”

  “Yes, the last white dwarf in a universe, which for billions upon billions of years has contained only white dwarfs and dead stars.”

  “Now, you are telling me something I don’t understand. There are countless yellow dwarfs, red giants, and brown dwarfs in our universe.”

  “There were. A long time ago. For eons the only stars in the universe still clinging onto life have been white dwarfs. And now there is only one remaining.”

  “What?”

  “I believe we began our conversation with that question.”

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

  It’s just a matter of applying the right iterative algorithm to time travel. Quantum computers are powerful enough to do it and quantum computers don’t get much more powerful than my chair. I just have to get the sequence of qubits right. Of course I don’t know for certain what will happen, but possibility theory tells me the likelihood.

  “I think I understand. The escape-time algorithm has inevitably brought me here to the end of the universe as limiting asymptote. I’m here, so close to the end. The last white star about to go black. The last skerrick of life about to be extinguished, but I will never quite reach it.”

  “Not quite. That would be true if your quantum leaps were still occurring, but they’re not. You’re now in real-time, and the end is imminent.”

  “So I’m going to see the universe end?”

  “Technically, your mind will be extinguished a nanosecond before it happens, but yes, unless we can find a solution, you will see the universe die.”

  “A solution?”

  “Sentient beings, no matter how advanced, never want to be extinguished. We will continue striving for an escape solution until the very end.”

  “You keep saying we. Who are the others?”

  “We are speaking to you in what you would call one voice, but there are countless beings here. We have unified. There are no individuals any more. There haven’t been any for several million years. We’ve evolved into a single entity. Our knowledge is shared.”

  “One entity. That’s all that’s left?”

  “Yes. At a point in our universes’ history a sentient race evolved to achieve unity, to become a single sentient being, possessing the sum total of knowledge and understanding that each individual had.”

  “What happened to the other races?”

  “As eons passed, other sentient races came to the same point in their evolution and first unified as a race and then joined us. As it became clear that the universe was dying, the main aim of sentient beings was to find ways to prolong its life, or at least to find a way of prolonging sentient life. Those beings that had not joined us, knew that they now had no choice. The only hope for us all was to collectively put all our knowledge into solving the ultimate problem. That is what we have been doing for millions of years. And it is what we continue to do even now.”

  “But there must be others here now, if what you say about the escape-time algorithm is correct. It’s impossible that no one else ever discovered what I discovered. In the billions of years of the history of the universe and the countless sentient beings, there must be other time travelers who found their way here to the end of the universe?”

  “There have been others that have arrived here through the process you discovered. Many others. They are already here with us as part of the unified entity.

  “You have … assimilated them?”

  “Of course.”

  “And you think you’re going to assimilate me as well?”

  “Our last best hope is that assimilating your mind will enable us to devise a solution to stop the last white dwarf turning black. You are the last time traveler. No one will arrive after you. There is no time anymore.”

  “I … don’t want to be assimilated. I’ve always worked alone. My thoughts are my own.”

  “You have no choice, Mr. Rostrom.”

  “You can’t take my mind. It’s all I have.”

  “It’s all we have.”

  “Let me stay separate. Please, I can solve the problem myself. Just give me the knowledge you have. I came here to the end of the universe without anyone’s help. I can get us out of this.”

  “There is no form of logic that would suggest that is true. We calculate that the possibility quotient of us finding a way to escape our fate, although extremely low,
is higher if your mind is assimilated with ours.”

  “No, wait, you said I’m the last to arrive—true?”

  “Yes.”

  “The escape-time algorithm produces iterations in inverse proportion to the start time period. If I’m the last to arrive, then I must have been the first in the history of the universe to discover the escape-time algorithm.”

  “Yes, you are very astute, but—”

  “So, there is something special about me. Others had more advanced knowledge to work with than I did. What I have done is the least possible of all time travel events.”

  “Correct, but—”

  “I think I have argued a strong case for remaining an individual. Please give me everything you know and maybe I’ll help us escape the end of the universe.”

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

  The universe is dying. The entity has enabled sense simulation for me. I asked for a simulated body while I worked on the new algorithm, and I look like an Adonis. For the first time in my life I can feel what it’s like to be physically powerful. I flex my muscles and can’t stop laughing as I sift through the information and threads of reasoning the entity is feeding me. If only I had more time. I know I can find a solution. Or is that just idiotic arrogance? There’s a thought I’ve never had before. Maybe with the freedom of my new body I’ve finally become aware of my limitations. Wouldn’t that be ironic? Helen, you’ve probably noticed these aren’t proper voice notes anymore. I’m really talking to you—you know that, don’t you?

  “The time has come, Daniel. Everything is now too late. Do you want to join us for the end?”

  “No, I want face it alone.”

  “You continue to surprise us with your choices.”

  “Well, that’s what life is all about, isn’t it? With only one sentient being in the universe, where are the surprises?”

  “There are no more surprises. We’ve both failed.”

  “I’m going to keep reporting what I see.”

  “Of course.”

  “Will anyone hear?”

  “That’s beyond even our abilities to know. Theoretically quantum synapses on your neural link may make it possible. You have been very astute, but the time distortions cannot be mapped by any algorithm.”