Einstein's Bridge

by Cramer, John

  August 16, 1988, was a very hot and humid Tuesday in New Orleans. The Republican Platform Committee had been meeting for a week to hammer out the new party platform. The Republican National Convention was to begin the following week in the Superdome, and thousands of reporters were converging on the Big Easy in preparation for the media feeding frenzy to come.

  George Bush had campaigned hard for the Republican presidential nomination, easily outdistancing Patrick Buchanan in the primaries and gaining President Ronald Reagan’s implicit support. He now had the lion’s share of the convention delegates and was assured of the presidential nomination.

  The real unresolved issue in New Orleans was Bush’s imminent choice of a candidate for Vice President. The eleven “finalists” on Bush’s short list were one-by-one making their way to the Marriott Hotel on Canal Street to be interviewed by Robert Kimmit, who had been an attorney with the Treasury Department before he resigned to join the Bush Campaign. Bob Kimmit now had the responsibility for checking out each candidate.

  PetroGen had rented an entire floor in the Canal Street Marriott just upstairs from the floors of suites that the Bush campaign organization was using as its base of operations. Roger “Fulton,” prominent British diamond merchant and member of the PetroGen Board of Directors, sat in the suite’s large living room with his colleague George Preston, rising star of the resurgent Texas oil business and “Eagle Class” contributor to the Bush campaign.

  “Any late-breaking news from Washington about the SSC?” Roger asked.

  “Not much,” said George. “There’s been no mention of it during the primaries. The focus of attention in DC is all on the campaign, and science has no value as a campaign issue. I heard recently that the DOE added a correction to its cost estimates for inflation and now admits that the SSC might cost $5.3 billion instead of $4.4 billion. Also, certain members of Congress have decided that a very visible opposition to drugs makes a good campaign issue, and they want to be assured that the SSC laboratory and other federal laboratories will be ‘drug-free work-places’, which had become their new buzzword.”

  “Drug - Free - Work - Place,” Roger repeated slowly. “It does have a certain cadence. And I suppose it’s preferable to a work-free drug-place.”

  George laughed. “There’s a story going around,” he said, “that President Reagan himself decided to set a good example for the nation by asking his Cabinet Members to submit to a urine analysis test during a recent cabinet meeting. They all complied, of course, and the following day the Surgeon General came to the President with the test results. ‘Mr. President,’ he said, ‘I’m pleased to report that you and all of your Cabinet Members have passed the urine analysis test, and I can certify that the Presidential Cabinet Meeting Room is indeed a drug-free workplace. But next time, Mr. President, please don’t ask everyone to pee in the same bottle.’”

  Roger chuckled. “I suppose,” he said, “that we’d best get on with revising history.” He looked uncomfortable. “I hope that we do it right.”

  George winced. “Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat,” he said, “worrying about whether we’re doing the right thing. What gives us the right to engage in this kind of manipulation? We think we’re saving the world, but suppose we end by making things worse?”

  “Worse than the Hive? I doubt that would be possible,” said Roger. “But in any case, history is already changing in subtle ways, even without our intervention.”

  “It is? How can that be?”

  “I’ve found evidence that events at the quantum level are having different outcomes,” said Roger, “even in situations where we could not possibly have had any influence. My lapstation contains an electronic almanac that, among other things, contains a 20 year database of stock market quotations and sporting event scores. I checked the correspondence of those from my lapstation against those in newspaper files. Up to February 2, 1987, the records are a perfect match. But forward of the date of our splashy entrance at Galveston, a difference between records sets in and the discrepancies grow with time. For example, within two hours after our splashdown, a Hannover soccer team won a close match played in Munich, Germany that should have been won by Bayern München. That isn’t something we could have affected directly.”

  “This is a different universe,” said George. “We melted it and it’s re-crystallizing.”

  “Exactly,” said Roger. “Iris described the effect of the time vortex as an unraveling of the frozen-in history of the universe, so that it has to re-evolve from the earliest point of the disruption. Apparently during that re-evolution, every quantum event is a new game of dice with a strong chance of a new outcome. This is a new universe developing a new and different history, with or without our intervention. The general trends should be the same, of course, but detailed events from the quantum scale up are different. We should think of what we do as steering an intrinsically chaotic process rather than altering history.”

  George looked at his watch. “History alterations or not,” he said, “we have to focus our influence on Bush’s selection of a vice-presidential candidate.”

  “Your system of government,” said Roger, “is still a deep mystery to me, I’m afraid. “We’re here in New Orleans to affect the nomination of the Vice President, but I fail to understand the political priorities. Why is this vice-presidential nomination so important to us? It was my impression that the U. S. Vice President is a kind of administrative spare tire, a non-functional ceremonial position that is of no importance unless something happens to the President.”

  “That‘s certainly been the tradition,” said George, “but during the Carter and the Reagan Administrations a new tradition was established. The VP was given a leading role in the areas of science and space, in part to give him a somewhat visible activity that the President was glad to relinquish. Since the Carter/Mondale Administration all the Presidential Science Advisors have worked closely with the VP in proposing new science initiatives and in defending the existing ones. And, of course, the VP normally has a good chance to become the next president, one way or another.”

  “I see,” said Roger. “It’s the link to science policy.”

  George nodded. “In our version of the future, George Bush selected Bob Dole as his Vice President. He’s a rather reserved, taciturn person, but it proved to be a great choice as far as the SSC was concerned. There were some significant SSC Contractors in Kansas, and Dole was interested in the project. He retained powerful connections in the U. S. Congress, which he used to protect the SSC. And of course Dole was elected in his own right in ‘96 and continued his SSC support. He may actually have saved the project.”

  “And so,” said Roger, “ we need to find a less effective alternative to Dole.”

  “The less effective, the better,” said George. “Tell me about this person you and your computer picked out. What’s his name? Quade?”

  “Quayle,” said Roger, “J. Danforth Quayle, U. S. Senator from the State of Indiana. His father is a rich publisher who has pushed his son’s career. Hard. Dan is good looking. He looks rather like a vacant Robert Redford. He makes a very good first impression, has a pretty wife and an attractive family, and is an excellent and dedicated golfer. He’s actually done quite well as a Senator, with good press and no conspicuous screwups. Lately he’s been receiving press attention as a leading supporter of the Star Wars Initiative in the Senate. He comes from the right wing of the party and is one of the few VP finalists that can pass Senator Gordon Humphrey’s ‘True Conservative’ litmus test. And unlike Jack Kemp, he’s never offended George Bush. He perhaps has only one principal failing. He’s simply not very bright, even as judged by the rather undemanding standards of U. S. politics.”

  “Are you sure about that?” asked George. “Many politicians in this country act dumber than they are, in order to stay on the right wavelength with the home folks.�
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  “In my one conversation with Dan,” said Roger, “we discussed the space program. He’s sincerely interested in it, but he seems to think that the planet Mars had canals with water in them. I’d suppose that he read Edgar Rice Burroughs as a child and never learned better, except that he never seems to have read any book for recreation except a few about golf. Perhaps his notion came from a comic book. It would be interesting to watch him in the role of leading defender of the SSC. He’d probably claim that it was being built to find a cure for cancer or something.”

  “He sounds like just the man for us,” said George. “What did you Write for him, when you were with him?”

  “I boosted his output of an obscure human pheromone by two orders of magnitude. He would now reek of the stuff, except that no modern human is able to smell it. It comes from a feature of the human genome that was taken out of active service a million years ago when our sex and mating practices became non-seasonal. I Wrote a little targeted retrovirus and gave it to Danforth as we shook hands, when I was leaving after the interview.”

  “Was that good for him?” George asked. “I would have thought you’d be impeded by your Hippocratic wiring.”

  “It certainly did him no harm,” said Roger, “and I combined it with a neuro-coordination boost that will improve his golf game. I also Wrote in a temporary boost in his synaptine level, so he’ll be a bit smarter for about the duration of the campaign. All very beneficial to the recipient, and therefore I could Write them without feeling any Hippocratic qualms. So now the rest is up to you.”

  George consulted a piece of paper. “Quayle’s screening interview with Bob Kimmit is scheduled for tomorrow morning,” he said. “I’ve arranged to have dinner with Bob tonight, and I’ll be able to see Bush tomorrow to express my support for Quayle. If I provide a short duration boost in sensitivity to the same pheromone for the two of them, we’ll be able to create instant rapport between them and Dan Quayle.

  “Bush is going to love his new running mate.”

  Roger laughed, then frowned. “But isn’t there a danger for the U. S. in what we’re doing,” he said. “Suppose something happens to Bush, and Quayle has to actually function as President? We’re clouding the judgments of those who should be selecting the best person to serve as a substitute President.”

  “We’ll deal with that problem if and when it arises,” said George. “We can boost Quayle’s intelligence and provide him with similarly intelligence-boosted advisors, or if necessary we could get him out of the way with a debilitating disease. It’s a small risk for the country and the world compared to the danger of a probable Hive invasion. These are desperate times.”

  Roger nodded.

  There was a knock at the door, and George answered it.

  A young man with a shock of unruly white-blonde hair stood outside. He was wearing PetroGen coveralls and carrying a tool box. “Excuse me, Mr. Preston,” he said. “I just thought you’d want to know that I’ve got all the cables and wirin’ installed in the strategy suite, so you folks can watch the Convention next week and use those special computers and telephones, just like you wanted. Tested ever’thang myself, and it all works just fine.”

  “That’s great, Whitey,” said George, patting him on the back. “ I really appreciate your fast work.”

  He closed the door and returned to the conference table.

  “Was that ...?” Roger asked.

  “Yes,” said George, “that was none other than Whitey Buford. When I was busy buying up East Texas oil leases last year, I decided to hire his father, Ernest Buford, to help me. He did an excellent job, and he’s now a PetroGen executive. Whitey’s still in high school, but we hired him for the summer. He’s helping us with technical details for the Convention. He’s a very bright kid. He told me that he plans to go the Texas A&M when he graduates from Waxahachie High and take a dual major in Petroleum Geology and Molecular Biology. I think it’s very likely that he’ll get a scholarship.” He smiled.

  CHAPTER 7.3

  Windfall

  ROGER looked at his reflection in the mirrored back of the car sun visor. He stared at the lines etched deeply into his face, the sparse gray hair, the puffy skin near the eyes. His direct control of his appearance was improving, but he’d never before used it for such extreme aging. Was he really going to look like this at age 65? He looked older than his father. Perhaps it was the gray beard. He pressed his chin again, reassuring himself that it would remain in place.

  Emerging from the Bentley, he retrieved his slim black leather attaché case from the back seat and locked the doors. Then he strode across the small parking lot, down one side of the cloister, and into the quad. The old Cambridge buildings brought back pleasant memories of his student days. He identified himself to the porter, pushed through the massive entry doors of the building, and climbed the worn marble stairs to the second floor.

  Dr. Stanley Tern’s office door was open a crack, through which Roger could hear one side of a vigorous telephone argument. “Please understand,” a cultured voice said emphatically, “I do appreciate your calling me directly and relinquishing the usual anonymity, but as referee you’re supposed to either approve or deny publication of my paper. You may not instruct me to rewrite my paper in order to make more generous references to your own work.” Pause. “Actually, you should be glad that I did not say more about your last paper, because I’m afraid it’s dead wrong.” There was a long pause. “Of course it’s wrong! I proved that unambiguously in Section 2.” Pause. “May I ask if you actually read my paper before you wrote this referee report?” Pause. “Did you then understand what I was saying, before you produced this peculiar critique of my arguments? I’m receiving the definite impression that you did not.”

  Roger listened quietly outside the door, recalling his own scars from past encounters with mush-headed but iron-willed journal referees.

  There was another long pause before the voice continued. “Well, it appears that you leave me no alternative but to protest your misconduct in the refereeing of my paper to the journal’s editorial board.” Pause. “I was not aware that you were a board member.” Pause. “You leave no choice, sir, but to withdraw my submission so that I may submit my work to a reputable journal that employs more rational refereeing policies. It appears that we have nothing further to discuss. Good day, sir.” There was the sound of the telephone receiver being slammed into its cradle.

  Roger retreated a few steps, walked forward with loud footsteps, and knocked on the slightly open door. “Dr. Tern?” he said.

  A gaunt-faced man with shoulder length dark hair looked up from the desk. “Yes?” he said.

  “I am Roger Wilkins of the Iris Foundation. I’d like to speak to you if I may.”

  “The Iris Foundation?” Tern repeated.

  “Have you heard of us?”

  “Of course,” said Tern, visibly brightening. “I read something in the news recently. In the past few months you’re supposed to have been giving what the Guardian termed ‘genius grants’ to worthy individuals in the sciences.”

  “Yes, we have,” said Roger.

  “Well, what can I do for you?,” asked Tern, “Is there something you want from me? A contribution, perhaps?”

  “Not at all,” Roger smiled. “Rather the reverse. But perhaps you could tell me about your new work. I’ve read your recent publications, but I’d like very much to know about any research directions that may not yet be in print.”

  Tern swiveled his chair to a file cabinet, opened a long drawer, and extracted several documents from folders. “Here are three preprints that are not in journals yet,” he said, glancing furtively at the referee report on his desk, “and also two papers presented at recent conferences on quantum gravity and on relativistic cosmology, respectively.”

  Roger nodded, accepted the papers, scanned their titles,
then moved one to the top of the stack. “Application of Clifford Algebra to Quantum Gravity ... ,” he read aloud. “Interesting. Tell me about this one.”

  “Very well,” Tern began. “What do you know about Clifford algebra?”

  “Only that it’s an alternative mathematical formalism for dealing with complex numbers and functions. I’m aware that some feel it provides a superior mathematical basis for some physical theories.”

  “Exactly,” said Tern. “Last summer in France I viewed some cave paintings made by Cro-Magnons a hundred thousand years ago. Animals were painted on the cave walls, and the artist used the natural curvature and irregularity of the walls to give depth and three-dimensional character to the animals he was painting, somehow fitting the animals to the bulges and depression of the cave wall.

  “In my view, mathematics is like that. The right underlying mathematical structure enhances and enriches the physical theory that uses it, because the physical theory ‘fits’ the mathematical formalism. If the wrong mathematical structure is used, the physical theory does not fit. The formalism must be bent out of shape to conform to it, leading to obscurity, paradoxical implications, and other problems.

  “In my view, all our present theories, but particularly quantum mechanics and general relativity at small distance scales, are cast in an inappropriate mathematical framework. The paradoxes of quantum mechanics and the lack of progress toward a valid theory of quantum gravity are both symptoms of this problem. My students, postdocs, and I have been working in this area for the past five years. I believe that we are on the verge of a real breakthrough.”

  Roger nodded. “We think so too,” he said. “Let me ask how much of your time is spent writing research proposals and seeking research funds?”