A Glint In Time (History and Time)

by Frank J. Derfler

  Her engineering courses at Georgia Tech had more students from outside the US than from inside, and most of them were oriental, but she couldn't match Woo to her models of the Chinese, Korean, or Japanese students. Woo shook her hand with a smile and a slight bow. He did the same thing when he shook hands with Bill and Linda, but there was no bow when he shook hands with Ted. They stared into each other's eyes.

  Woo didn't introduce the chauffeur or the other man, but he said, “These men will help you collect your luggage. We must visit customs and immigration, but it will be quick."

  After they gathered their bags, Woo knocked on a side door and a uniformed customs official came out of a small office wreathed in a cloud of clove cigarette smoke. He nodded at Woo and led the party past the lines of people queuing up for inspections. He smiled and ushered them out through the opaque automatic doors leading to the airport's public lobby. Sally noticed that the other people waiting for passengers were kept out of the customs area.

  "Some treatment!" she said to Ted as they walked out through the outside doors. Then suddenly they were forcibly struck by the heat.

  "Wow," Bill said. "Florida is never like this!" "This really is the tropics." Ted said. Janet said, "Look at that."

  Two identical dark Mercedes limousines idled at the curb. Three men stood by the cars. They stood with their hands loosely at their sides and kept looking around the terminal area and the traffic lanes even as Woo led them all to the cars.

  "Looks like the President of the United States is here or something." Sally observed.

  "Nope, just us." Ted said. "But you're right, those guys do have all the nervous habits of the Secret Service."

  Ted and Sally arbitrarily got into the first car. Sally was surprised when Woo joined them instead of joining Bill and Janet in the second car. Woo sat in a jump seat facing them. "I think you will enjoy your stay." he said softly. Ted and Sally busied themselves looking out the windows as they traveled in what the sun told Sally was generally a South Easterly direction.

  "So, Mr. Woo," Sally began as the cars moved onto a broad highway, "What are we doing here?"

  "Ah, the direct approach Miss Langley. Just what I would expect from you. As I told Doctor Wirtz, we want to consult with you more closely as you fine tune your scenario. We need to interact as we plan our game."

  "The game". Sally stated blandly, "What do you call it?"

  "Domination is the working title, Miss Langley. Domination."

  Sally had a whole set of questions about game publishing and distribution she wanted to ask, but the title of Woo's game set her back in her seat. Behind her jet lag and fatigue, more questions merged and blurred in her mind. After a ride of about forty minutes, the broad highway led them to an industrial campus isolated from the city. The buildings looked better from a distance than they did from closer up. They were new, but the finish was rougher than Sally thought it should be. To her, it looked as if the workmen had quit before they added the touches that would make the buildings look finished.

  Woo showed them to a set of rooms in a cement-sided building that were a little nicer than a suburban motel. Everything was new and clean and a few elements, like the beds, were very nice. As the drivers brought up their bags, Woo addressed them in the hallway. "Welcome to the world headquarters of the Ammero Group. The entire headquarters complex and all of our resources are at your disposal. Would you like to rest, eat, or see our computer installation?" he asked.

  "I'm for a shower before anything." Sally replied.

  "After that, I'd like to see the computer center." Wirtz replied.

  "Then I will meet you here in one hour and we can begin our tour. In the meantime, if you need anything you have only to pick up the phone in your room and ask for it."

  It took Sally half the allotted time to take a shower and get dressed. She knocked on the door to Bill's room. When he opened it, she saw that Ted was there already.

  "So, what do you think now, guys?" she asked.

  "Why don't we go for a walk and stretch our legs?" Ted said before Bill even replied.

  They knocked on Janet's door. She opened it quickly. It looked to Sally as if Janet hadn't taken a shower and through the open door Sally saw Janet's bags open on the bed. "Give me just a sec." she said and then she closed the door.

  After Janet joined them, they went down the hall and found an outside staircase, proceeded down a flight of stairs, and ended up on a sidewalk leading around the building. The campus consisted of a group of two and three story buildings surrounding a central administrative building which could have been a corporate or institutional headquarters, complete with flag poles and a circular drive, anywhere on earth. However, the image was distorted by a string of high tension power line towers that marched up to the back of the administrative building. Sally was somehow sure that those towers weren't in the mind of the architect who designed the building.

  There was very little traffic on the roads, but occasionally someone would leave one building and walk briskly to another building. They saw two men in a golf cart parked in

  the shade of a large banyan tree. The men were sitting and smoking. Sally could smell their clove cigarettes on the breeze. The landscaping consisted mainly of beautifully manicured hedges. The general impression was an organization that worked hard and wasn't lavish.

  "I've never seen or heard of a computer game outfit that looked like this." Ted said quietly as they strolled.

  Bill seemed subdued, but his humor showed through. "You're right. I see money at work, but I haven't seen a wacko wired programmer yet."

  As they walked, they shied away from the administrative edifice and wound up in a little park overlooking a broad river. "At least I don't smell any more cigarette smoke." Sally said.

  "Yeah," Ted agreed, "but there are probably things in that water that you don't want to smell either." The river was dark and not an appealing place for a swim despite the heat and humidity.

  Woo was standing on the sidewalk, apparently patiently waiting for them, when they returned. "I hope you had a nice walk." he said. "Now, if I can ask you to come this way?"

  He led them to the next building. Sally saw that the dish of a satellite terminal, similar to the one in Florida, was peeking over the roof. Woo showed them a metal door with an electronic keypad lock. "The code for the door is 1347." he said. "The building is open twenty-four hours a

  day for your use. There is a small kitchen, dining room, and recreation room here too. The staff will prepare meals for you on whatever schedule you wish to keep."

  "What does the Ammero Group do, Mr. Woo?" Sally was back in her question asking mood.

  "It is a family owned trading company. We buy commodities in one country and sell them in another. We own transportation capabilities and have distribution contacts throughout the area from Australia to Japan."

  This time, it was Janet who couldn't resist the question. " Are you part of the family?"

  "Indeed, yes. I am one of three brothers. Our father is retired. Our oldest brother is company president. Our youngest brother is, as I believe you would call him, an egghead. He studied physics at MIT. I run the new business division. I received my degree in economics from Emory University."

  "In Atlanta?" Sally blurted.

  "Oh yes. One of the reasons I have such high hopes for our enterprise is because of my fond memories of Atlanta and even of Destin where I spent some vacation time. By the way, my friends at Emory called me Sonny. I hope you will too."

  Behind the locked door, they found a more spacious duplicate of their facility on the beach. "This facility is yours."

  he said. Woo introduced them to two men, both Russians who spoke halting English, who were computer technicians. "Please set your own schedule for the rest of today. The kitchen is through that door. I will come to get you at nine o'clock tomorrow morning and we will have a business meeting. "

  The four Americans spent the next few hours going through databases, checking circuit
s, and conversing with the Russians. They were impressed with everything they found.

  REAL TIME

  August 12, 1995

  0830 Indonesian Western Standard Time

  The Ammero Compound

  Indonesia

  * * *

  Excerpt from the Personal Narrative

  of Brigadier General Ted Arthurs

  Recorded May 2006

  CLASSIFIED SECRET / TA

  "Yeah, that report turned on some lights at Langley, the Pentagon, and a lot of other places. Some people took it seriously and others took it as an opportunity to gather some intelligence on the inside happenings of an Indonesian company. I suddenly had a lot of "higher level guidance" that I really didn't need."

  * * *

  The next morning Sally looked out her window and laughed. Bill Wirtz was riding down the sidewalk on a bicycle with balloon tires and wide handlebars. It was very different from the multi-speed super lightweight mountain bike he rode in Florida. She went down the hall and watched him from the top of the outside stairs. "Hey, "she said, "did you have a good time?"

  "Yeah," he replied as he put the bike under the stairs. "I tested Sonny Woo's sunny hospitality system. I picked up the

  phone and said I wanted to go for a bike ride. This is what I got. Somehow, I don't think the idea of riding a bicycle for exercise has caught on here yet."

  At nine on the dot, Sonny Woo showed up at their door and escorted them to the administrative building. That building stayed to the pattern of being more utilitarian than luxurious. After they were seated around a conference table, an older version of their "Mr. Woo," followed by a younger version of both men, entered the room and took places at the of the table. The older man, who sat at the head of the table, spoke English with more of an accent than his younger brother.

  "Good morning. My name is Jaya Woo. This is our brother James. Our brother Sanyoto has told me about each of you and I give you my thanks for coming here. The purpose of our meeting this morning is to discuss your work and our work. We know that you are honest people who have lived up to your commitments. It is now time for us to be totally honest with you. I will not waste words. We are not here to create a computer game. We are here to change the world."

  This blunt approach caused a stir among the Americans. Janet was visibly wide eyed. Bill twisted in his chair and seemed to be forming something to say. Ted sunk a little lower in his chair and narrowed his eyes. Internally, Sally said, "I told you so!" but externally she was afraid her mouth still hung open after her jaw dropped.

  Jaya Woo motioned to Sanyato and he took over. His English was fast and idiomatic, but he seemed tense.

  "I am sorry for this surprise. As my brother said, we wish to change the world. It is difficult to know what to tell you first, but we think we should first convince you that we have the means and then all else will follow."

  "Nearly five years ago," Sanyato continued,"our brother James was a graduate student in physics at MIT. He worked on a project to develop temperatures of absolute zero in order to study the properties of materials when the forces between the molecules and atoms change state as a result of quantum effects. Believe me, I'm talking way above my level of understanding, but these are the right ideas." Woo gave a little grin to show that he was still their friend despite deceiving them and now telling them fantastic stories.

  "As I understand it," Sanyato continued, "a law of physics called Heisenberg's uncertainty principle describes the relationship between the position of an atom and its momentum. As atoms stop moving at absolute zero, their momentum falls to zero, then Heisenberg's principle dictates that their position becomes unknown. James, do you want to continue?"

  Obviously, James did not like to talk much -at least not to people who needed such simplistic explanations. But he looked at the Americans and picked up his brother's story."

  He spoke rapidly, "I was measuring the density of a Bose-Einstein condensation...

  "That's a special kind of ice that forms at near absolute zero." his older brother supplied.

  "Yeah, rubidium ice at 10 nanokelvins, "James continued. "I was working with this stuff with a strong filtered laser because I was trying to get a better image of the crystal. But when I shot the laser, a couple of things happened. First, the temperature in the evaporative cooler shot up to almost 100 kilokelvins, so I lost the Bose-Einsten ice. The heat of the laser shouldn't have caused that. Then, when I cranked in enough cooling to keep the Bose-Einstein ice, it lasted way longer than it should have. With the laser on, I could literally leave it there forever, but as everybody knows, it's supposed to go to rubidium crystal ice after a few seconds. Well, eventually I figured it out. Since the entire condensate was at zero momentum, the atoms could be anywhere. The laser was pushing them back into time, just a few milliseconds, but they were always kind of cycling through present time and back again. The movement created heat, but with the heat taken care of, they could just keep on cycling. I didn't know exactly what I had, but I knew it was too good to publish." James sat back with a wave of his hand at his brother."

  "So," Sanyato continued, "James came home and called a family meeting. We thought, perhaps like you, that he was crazy when he told us he had found a time machine. But each of us immediately understood its potential value."

  Bill Wirtz couldn't contain himself any longer. "Wait a minute. So you expect us to believe what you sent us in the scenarios is true? You can send a small item back in time to some general place?"

  "That is absolutely true, Dr. Wirtz." Sanyato continued. "The parameters we gave you are quite correct. We have built the facilities here that can take small items down to zero degrees and kick them with a laser back through time. James has been working on this project for five years along with the best Russian physicists we could buy. Through a combination of lasers and magnetic doughnuts they can control the position in time and physical direction of the object. The object suffers nearly infinite cooling and then immense heating and the control is not precise, but it can be done. As you have suspected by now, the job of your group is to tell us exactly what to do in order to meet our goal."

  "Which is?" Sally asked.

  "You know the scenario. The goal is to somehow avoid the horrendous Vietnam War. A goal I should think you would support."

  "I don't believe it." Janet said. "Show me."

  Woo smiled. "I have no direct control over that demonstration at this moment, but let me note that the time is exactly nine fourteen.... ah!"

  At that instant, the air over the conference table turned a milky color and four glass beads dropped from a point about a foot in the air onto the table in front of each of the Americans. The members of the Woo family in the room watched impassively as the Americans jumped. When he noticed that there were four beads, James grimaced.

  Woo continued, "Be careful, they are hot. I see from the accuracy of placement that James must leave the room in a few moments to begin sending the beads back here in time. The longer we wait, the more difficult placement becomes. If you've read the scenario, you know that the uncertainty effect is not linear. It gets much worse as time passes in both directions. So, why don't we go with James to the laboratory? He will, I assure you, spend the rest of the day sending each of those four glass beads back to this time one by one. Please give him the beads."

  The laboratory turned out to be in the basement of the administration building. It looked like a power plant. Huge copper power cables snaked around a metal sphere in the center of the room. Monitors and meters were everywhere. There was a shielded area, not unlike a dentist or doctor's x-ray booth, with some controls and a thick window.

  They spent more than hour watching James and his Russian assistants prepare the first glass bead for its shot in time. Then they huddled behind the lead wall. "You wouldn't get an exposure of even a full Rad if you stood right next to the thing, James said. "But if you're going to be around for a while it adds up." At James's invitation, Bill Wirtz pushed a button on th
e wall, there was a loud bang, and the bead was gone. "That was the bead that appeared in front of you, Dr. Wirtz." James informed them.

  "You're using a lot of power." Sally observed.

  "Yes," James replied. "We pay dearly for megawatt primary feeders. We have our own transformer substation here and

  it feeds a large capacitor bank. I think it's the largest laser capacitor bank in the world." Sally was impressed, although again the installation she saw had an unfinished look that spoke of less than optimal engineering.

  The Americans and the two older Woo brothers were back in the conference room just before noon.

  "Okay," Bill Wirtz lead off "let's say we believe that you have these capabilities. Why are you spending all of this money to stop a war?"

  "What is in it for us?" The oldest Woo replied with a smile at his own idiom. "It is simple. We are an international family. Our father was sent to Indonesia by his father over 60 years ago. But our Father's Father and his brothers had enterprises in throughout Vietnam and Laos. In the end, they lost everything and none of our family survived. We now face an uncertain future. China claims more than 80 percent of the South China Sea where we trade. We believe, and without the benefit of your computers, Dr. Wirtz, that Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Philippines will all come into conflict with China. Who knows what the Japanese or Americans will do? We can and do trade with all sides, but no good really comes from war."

  The younger Woo then continued, "But, Dr. Wirtz, we asked you early in your research for forward projections based on a strong Vietnam in the 1970s. Those projections showed robust commercial and trading ties between the nations South of China. We believe those projections. We believe that a strong Vietnam, one without what is called

  the American War, would have served as a building block for trade. Your governments of the nineteen sixties and seventies were correct when they viewed Vietnam as being part of a domino effect, but they only saw it in a negative sense -dominos falling. Here, we build on our dominoes, we don't knock them down. Vietnam is at the center of the area South of China. It is the key domino for growth and prosperity."