Einstein's Bridge

by Cramer, John

  “That’s very interesting,” she said. “What is it you were writing?”

  “I’m a physicist. I’m just returning from a trip to the CERN laboratory in Geneva,” he said. “I was writing a report on what I learned there about radiation-hardened electronics. It’s useful for the physics experiment we’re presently doing at the Superconducting Super Collider in Texas. I’ll finish the report with a bit more work, and then I’ll connect into the plane’s Airphone system and send it to my colleagues using the Internet.” He looked at his watch. “It’s a bit after 9 AM on the East Coast, so some of them will be able to read it even before we land in Seattle.”

  She brightened at the mention of the Internet and began to tell him about the web forum she belonged to which focused on medieval cuisine and recipes.

  The meal finished, George put the glasses and cuffs back on. He called up the LEM Handbook. The glasses darkened, and a bright multi-color image of the great detector hung in the dark volume of space before him.

  He reached out and lifted off the top of the detector, then gestured to expand the cut-away image. It grew until it had an apparent size greater than the airplane. George reached out and touched a region near the center of the image. The small region brightened, and the rest of the image vanished.

  Before him was the vertex detector, a barrel shaped object that was shingled with small slabs of silicon. Wires and fiber-optic cables snaked away on both sides. George enlarged the view until it was approximately true size, then he touched one of the control spots on the right edge of the display. It was as if the device had contracted a disease. Bright purple spots appeared at random places on the shingled surfaces.

  These were the failure points, the places where the “pixel” transistors created on the silicon surface with large-scale integration had failed and died in the hail of charged particles and gamma rays from the SSC’s ultra-relativistic proton-proton collisions.

  Perhaps, looking at the thing one more time would give him an idea. It was worth a try. George looked for a pattern, but could see none. Perhaps there were more dead transistors at the central region of the device than near the edges, but the effect was not striking.

  It was a fucking disaster, he thought. The fact was that the transistors were dying, more every day, and there was apparently nothing the LEM group could do but tear the detector apart, at great expense and down time, and replace the silicon slabs with improved ones, at even greater expense, some millions of dollars. There were lots of better things to do with that money. And there was no expectation that the replacements would work any better or live any longer.

  George blanked the display and called up the Handbook’s index, then selected the section on radiation damage. There, in beautifully typeset mathematical equations, were the calculations on which the design of the pixel-detector slabs had been based. ATLAS’s pixel detectors worked, and LEM’s died. Both designs were based on the same measurements, the same equations. What the hell was the difference? George banged his fist on the tray table, erasing the image before him and bringing questioning looks from his fellow passengers. He inhaled, taking deep measured breaths until his composure returned. Conceding defeat, he put the finishing touches to the radiation damage report, linked to the Airphone, and sent it on its way on the Internet.

  With a gesture he called up the book reader and mounted a detective novel set in Seattle, a ROM-book he’d picked up at the HUB branch of the University Bookstore just before leaving Seattle for Geneva. He would let J. P. Beaumont do the detective work for a while. George did not feel capable of solving any problem just now.

  CHAPTER 1.7

  Preparations

  THE Concantation of Individuals was ending now. Tunnel Maker watched as the Individuals exited the enclosure of meeting. In the low gravity of this part of the Station some rolled, some flowed, some floated, and some undulated, depending on their individual perceptions of taste, style, and convenience. The variety of sizes, shapes, and metabolic support systems of the Individuals did not seem unusual to Tunnel Maker. The extreme conservatism of their decision did.

  Perhaps Tunnel Maker should have expected this outcome. Many of the Individuals had their own programs and projects that competed for resources, and some resources were short supply at this remote outpost, so far from the Makers’ Sun. The Concantation had not been convinced by the evidence that he had been able to marshal. A vocal minority had favored no action at all until there was more conclusive data. But the majority had preferred a middle course.

  The consensus had authorized the opening of a Bridge to the neighboring Bubble, but it would be only a microscopic one. If the proton-size ultra-high energy concentration that had been detected, it was argued, was truly the product of a high technological civilization, then the microscopic Bridge should, with a high probability, be sufficient to attract their attention and accomplish the initial contact at a moderate cost in resources. Even if no contact was established through the initial Bridge, it could at least be used to accumulate more data that could be carefully weighed before considering the expenditure of additional resources needed to expand the Bridge to macroscopic dimensions.

  As Tunnel Maker floated to the equipment enclosure in which he would prepare the Bridge, he felt disappointment and frustration. He thought of the more compelling arguments that he might have made but had not. He had argued that the occurrence of the regions of ultra-high energy concentrations in the other Bubble had been very erratic. If the signals stopped altogether, it would be impossible to establish a Bridge. Therefore, it was important to establish contact at the next opportunity.

  He had argued that by hoarding resources that were presently available, the Concantation was risking the very possibility of contact. He had pointed out that contact was extremely important to the progress and prosperity of the Maker civilization as well as to the civilization that was to be contacted. After all, the Makers had originally learned to Read and Write from another civilization that had been reached through such a contact, using such a Bridge.

  Some Individuals countered with the argument that if the signals should stop as Tunnel Maker had suggested, there would be no need to protect their originators from the Hive. They also argued that, since seventeen civilizations in other Bubbles had already been contacted, the benefits to the Makers of a new contact would, in all likelihood, be minimal.

  Tunnel Maker had not argued forcefully enough against these points, and now he regretted it. He might have reminded the Individuals that only a dozen gross of orbits ago the Makers had themselves been isolated, and by today’s standards had been impoverished both technologically and culturally. The paradox of the extreme rarity of the occurrence of intelligent life in the universe had at last been understood. Intelligent life was extremely rare and precious. Most Bubbles probably had none at all.

  The Makers were unique and alone, isolated by vast distances within their Bubble. Inhabitable planets around well-behaved stars were a gross of light orbits away, and the speed of light was an insurmountable barrier. Their ancestors had despaired of ever being able to realize the dream of escaping the confining boundaries of their own planetary system or the dream of contact, of meeting and exchanging ideas, information, and techniques with another intelligent species that had evolved and developed through completely separate evolutionary processes and local conditions.

  The Makers had simultaneously pursued other investigations, including the exploration of the realm of extreme energy densities and the search for new particle species that are the building blocks of matter and the keys to the fundamental forces. That investigation, most unexpectedly, had lead to the breakthrough of contact.

  Another intelligent and advanced species, the Rovans, residing in a separate Bubble Universe had used a region of ultra-high energy density produced by the Makers’ experiments to open a Bridge to the Makers’ world. The result was an ongoing rev
olution of ideas and technologies that had now been rolling forward for a dozen gross of orbits and showed no signs of slowing down.

  The Maker culture, having first learned the techniques of Bridge-making from the Rovans, had proceeded to use the technique to contact the Baltrons, from whom the all-important genetic skills of READING and WRITING had been learned and adopted by the Makers. The Makers had taken in hand their own biological evolution, which had previously been governed by random chance, and had placed it under the control of intelligence for the first time. They had subsequently located and contacted seventeen other civilizations in seventeen different Bubbles of the Cosmos. Each new contact had produced its own revolution in thinking and technology.

  And then they had been contacted by the Hive, and everything had changed. It had been a desperate time, a time when his race had come very near to destruction. If one Individual had not Read the initial Hive probe when that contact had been established, the entire Maker civilization would have been destroyed, taken over by cunning Hive nano-machines designed to convert whatever they found into another Hive world. Their world would have become a new Hive Bridgehead in a new Bubble which could then initiate new Bridges of its own.

  The Hive War had been brief. The Makers used an enormous allocation of resources to enlarge the Hive’s Bridge to large macroscopic dimensions, something the Hive apparently did not know how to do, and, with tragic losses and heroic sacrifices, had sent through Individuals and Similarica who had completely destroyed the Hive’s Bridge-making apparatus before retreating and sealing their universe off from further incursions by the Hive. Aside from that which had been READ during the initial attack, the Makers knew very little about the Hive. In subsequent contacts with other intelligent species, however, they had discovered that the Hive was continuing to use the Bridge-making process to systematically reach emerging civilizations and destroy them. To the Hive, this was simply a form of reproduction. It threatened every Bubble in the Cosmos as newly emerging civilizations were systematically located, contacted, and destroyed.

  The Maker civilization and some of its contact allies had effectively frustrated this Hive practice by mounting a systematic program of contacting each emerging high civilization before it was reached by the Hive. It was Tunnel Maker’s job to accomplish this for the Makers. And he was now expected to accomplish it without the optimal resources that were needed.

  He pushed his resentment to the back of his sensorium and busied himself with preparations for making the Bridge. For producing even a microscopic Bridge it would be necessary to accumulate a large quantity of antimatter in the storage receptacles, an operation requiring a time period of at least half a dozen rotations. When the antimatter energy level was sufficient, the waiting for another ultra-high energy concentration would begin. The apparatus would trigger on the next occurrence of a sufficiently large concentration in the target Bubble. When this happened, an unimaginably powerful stroke of topological lightning would flash between the universes, and a new Bridge between Bubbles would emerge from the quantum vacuum.

  PART 2

  May 29, 2004

  February 14, 1987

  “(The SSC is) the most challenging and exciting scientific project which this nation has ever undertaken on the surface of the earth. ... Give our physicists the tools, and they will do the work.”

  — Congressman Robert Roe (D-NJ)

  April 2, 1987

  “... particle accelerators ... have spent (pause) meant so much to our economic growth.”

  — President Ronald Reagan in a radio address

  August 24, 1988

  “I want to be ‘Robin’ to Bush’s ‘Batman.’”

  — Senator Dan Quayle after receiving the

  Republican nomination for Vice President

  November 15, 1988

  “(The SSC) is the most important scientific project that will be built anywhere in the world in the last quarter of the 20th century.”

  — Senator Phil Gramm (R - Texas)

  “Let’s find the Higgs boson for the Gipper!”

  — A Senate Staff Member

  CHAPTER 2.1

  Texas Barbeque

  ROGER stifled a yawn. He had been in Texas for only two days, and the jet lag from the shift of seven time zones was still with him. He had been looking forward to attending one of Bert’s famous “Texas Style Barbecues,” but at the moment his body wanted desperately to be in bed sleeping. He’d met so many people here that their names and faces were beginning to blur into one another. He walked away from the gathering around the barbecue pit. Perhaps some exercise would help him to wake up.

  Once, when he was perhaps ten, Roger’s school class had toured the Pinewood Studios near London and had visited a western movie set there. The Bert Barnes’ “ranch” reminded him of that outing. The ranch house certainly looked authentic. Perhaps it was, although it had clearly been extensively remodeled and fitted with insulation, double-pane window glass, and central air conditioning. The interior walls were well varnished knotty pine decorated with cow horns, deer skins, branding irons, antique guns, serapes, and Remington prints.

  The barn was new but looked old. A veneer of silvery gray weathered wood, perhaps scavenged from some decaying local wooden structures, had been carefully attached to all exterior surfaces of a modern steel-frame building. Its interior was more like a laboratory than a barn. It smelled of plastic and disinfectant, not cow manure.

  The fence rails of the corral also looked authentic from a distance, but close up it was clear that they had been made in a factory from pressed wood chips and plastic overlaying a steel core. Their artfully formed “irregularities”, knots, and sweeps of grain could be seen to repeat from rail to rail, and at the ends the steel cores were visible.

  Bert strolled over while Roger was inspecting the fence. He clutched a long-neck bottle of Pearl beer in his plump hand and gestured with it, like a baton. “Roger, my lad, this is a party,” he said. “You’re here to meet people, not fence posts. As the most eligible bachelor in my group, you have, um, certain obligations and responsibilities to fulfill. Come on over to the grill. There are some folks I’d like you to meet.” Bert led the way behind the ranch house. Roger noted with interest Bert’s Stetson, his western shirt with pearl snaps for buttons, his factory faded and softened broad-cut jeans, his coordinated silver and turquoise bolo tie, belt buckle, and cufflinks, and his high-heeled rawhide boots, complete with silver spurs. Bert did nothing in half-measures.

  He walked up to a pair of attractive young women who were standing beside the stone barbecue pit. One of the women was tall and blonde, a slimmer version of Bert with the same narrow nose and rounded forehead. The combination looked much better on her. The other was shorter, with high cheekbones and long dark hair that glistened in the twilight. “Ladies,” Bert said, “I’d like you to meet our new arrival from CERN. This is Roger Coulton. He’s already one of the leading theorists of his generation, and he’s just getting started. He’s a bachelor and a Brit, Harrow, Oxford, Cambridge and all that. But don’t worry, ladies. I’m told he likes girls, despite his education.”

  Roger blinked.

  “He works in my group at the SSC, and he’s absolutely brilliant. Had to be, or we wouldn’t have hired him. And if he doesn’t stay brilliant, we’ll kick his ass out. Right, Roger?”

  “Of course,” Roger said smoothly and smiled, feeling an inner twinge of anxiety that Bert might know about the recent problem with his new approach. The women looked at him appraisingly, he noticed.

  “Roger, this is my daughter Virginia, and this is her best friend Susan Eliott. They were roommates in college. Virginia teaches History at Brown, and she’s here for a short visit. Susan is a molecular biologist. She now works for a molecular bio-engineering company in Dallas.”

  As they shook hands, Roger, instinct
ively veering away from a potentially awkward entanglement with the boss’s daughter, smiled at Susan. “Molecular bio-engineering,” he said, elevating his eyebrows. “What firm?”

  “Not one you’d have heard of,” Susan said. “I work for the Mitocon Corporation. It’s a small startup company put together five years ago with venture capital by some very sharp people from the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. I’ve been there for two years.”

  Roger nodded. She had bright greenish-hazel eyes that flashed when she talked, and she was quite beautiful. “And before that?”

  “I got my Ph.D. at Hopkins with Marcel Perez, and I did a postdoc at Stanford with Helmut Rohrlich. My specialty is the synthesis of neural proteins.”

  Roger revised his estimate of her age upward by five years. She must be almost his age, he decided. Out of the corner of his eye, Roger noticed that Bert and Virginia were moving off to join another group. He didn’t mind at all. “I really know very little about molecular biology,” he said, looking into the wide hazel eyes. “But I’d like very much to learn more about it.” He smiled.

  CHAPTER 2.2

  Moving On

  ALICE looked around the rented apartment that had been her home in Tallahassee for the last three years. With her books, papers, and file cabinets moved to storage, three years of clutter disposed of, and newly cleaned curtains on the windows it looked like a different place. Through the Florida State University housing office she had been able to sub-let it to a visitor to the university for the two summer months she would be away in Texas.

  She had never really liked this apartment. She hated the color of the tile in the bathroom, and the ceiling in the living room was cracked. Also, her furniture was showing serious signs of wear. Three years here was quite long enough. It occurred to her that when she returned from Waxahachie she should plan to move to a nicer apartment and buy new furniture.