Einstein's Bridge

by Cramer, John

  They had been gone for half an hour when a athletic dark-haired young man arrived, a notebook and pair of law books held loosely in his arm. He scanned the room, then approached a tall girl dispensing punch. “Jane, have you seen Alice?” he asked. “The library just closed, and I thought I’d come over and help you people celebrate.”

  Jane smiled. “Sorry, Steve. I’m afraid you’re a bit too late,” she said. “Alice left some time ago with a rich Texas oil man. He’s one of our big contributors.”

  “Oil man?” Steve said. “Who is he?”

  “I believe,” said Jane, “that his name is George Preston. You may have read about him in Business Week. He’s the founder and president of PetroGen. He’s supposed to be almost as rich as Bill Gates. Alice has already slapped him once this evening, but they seemed to be getting along fine when they left together.” She smiled after Steve as he stalked out of the room.

  “I’m still not sure I understand,” Alice said as the tuxedo-clad waiter was removing the gold-rimmed plates. “The universe, this future you came from was deliberately destroyed, you said. Then how can you be here? Shouldn’t you have been destroyed along with it?”

  “My friend Roger and I went through a wormhole as the future was being erased,” he said. “In a sense we’re an extension of the erasing process.”

  “But how ... ?”

  “The world has been given a second chance,” said George. “Have you ever played a computer game where you can save the game status and read it back in if you don’t like what happens afterwards? It’s rather like that, except with the real universe.” He paused, watching her reaction.

  Alice was frowning with concentration. “But how can there be two copies of you here?”

  “Because my friend and I came through the wormhole that destroyed the future universe, and when we arrived, an earlier version of each of us was already here. It’s really not much different from having an identical twin. Roger says that in order to conserve mass and energy, as we arrived the wormhole mouth lost an equal mass, allowing us to exist and the masses to balance. He’s derived some equations that explain the phenomenon, but I don’t understand them. Something about back reaction and annihilation of dark matter.”

  Alice shook her head as if to clear her vision. “Why are you telling this to me, George?”

  George looked deeply into her eyes again. “You’re the only person I’ve ever told, Alice,” he said quietly. “Perhaps that’s why I did it so clumsily. For the past six years I’ve thought about locating you and telling you what happened. I needed to tell you. In our world, the person you would have become was very brave, and I loved her more than I ever told her. She almost succeeded in stopping the Hive invasion, and she sacrificed her life in the effort. She was killed in a horrible way, and we were able to do what we did only because of her courage. I’m sure that she would have wanted you to know what happened.”

  Alice nodded. “I suppose ...,” she said.

  “And there is also another thing I need to tell you,” he flushed and looked down at the table. “I .... I’m still in love with that Alice, with her. At least ... I mean ... I feel ... Damn this language. It isn’t set up to talk about time travel. ... I think I’m in love with you.”

  She stared at him, wide eyed. “But why now? Why here? You waited all this time. You’ve been here for six years. Why didn’t you ...”

  He nodded. “In 1987 you were how old? Sixteen? Your mother had just died. You needed time to get over that. You needed space to grow, to become yourself. I couldn’t. Until I saw you tonight.”

  She looked down. “You know, after Mom died I began having strange recurring dreams. There was an older woman, but she was also me. There was a man with a beard. You?” Again she stared across the table at him.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “But I do know that I want you to join us. There are only Roger and me now, and there’s so much to do.”

  “But I’m only a junior in college,” she said. “I need to graduate. I can’t drop out of FSU. That’s crazy.”

  “You wouldn’t have to,” he said. “Your summer break is almost here. You can work with us this summer and decide later if you want to continue.”

  She paused, looking thoughtful. “I have been writing letters and making phone calls trying to find a summer job,” she said. “But I had also wanted to continue helping with the campaign. You’re helping to get Bill Clinton elected? Is that part of the work you mentioned?”

  “Yes, part of it.” said George. “But let me be quite clear about our support of him. Bill’s a very fine person, and I believe he’ll be a good President. But I must tell you that our support is a means to an end. We’re trying to keep the Superconducting Super Collider from being built. That’s the reason we came back here. If we can’t stop it, everyone on this planet will die in the year 2004.”

  “I still don’t understand why you have to stop the SSC project,” said Alice. “Does its operation do something unexpected?”

  “In a way,” said George. “The accelerator will work very well and will do just what it was designed for, but in the process it will make a signal that, um, will allow an enemy to find us and destroy our world. The only way to prevent the signal is by stopping the project.”

  “But Bill has already gone on record as supporting the SSC project,” said Alice.

  “He should support it,” said George. “Except for the unpleasant side effect I mentioned, of which Bill could have no knowledge, it’s an excellent science project that should be supported. But realistically, his support won’t be as deep-rooted as Bush’s, who is interested in anything in Texas and sees the SSC as a Republican project. Al Gore is interested in technology, but he also doesn’t have a strong interest in fundamental physics or any commitment to the SSC. And Bill’s new Science Advisor, whoever he will be, almost certainly won’t be as effective as Alan Bromley. Besides, our projections show that a lot of first term Democrats should be swept in with Bill, and those people, with no baggage of commitments and no particular understanding of science, should almost all vote to kill the project.”

  “Your projections show that?” asked Alice. “But no one can ... What kind of projections are you running?”

  “My colleague Roger did them. Um, Roger is, ... how shall I put it? ... extremely smart to begin with, and on top of that he’s had his intelligence boosted by the advanced biotech I mentioned. He’s developed a new kind of projection technique that no one else has even heard of. And he has the advantage of knowing what happened, will happen, might happen, dammit, in our future. He has two histories against which to calibrate his technique. That turns out to be an enormous advantage.”

  “And what does, uh, did happen, in the universe you came from?” Alice asked.

  “Bush was re-elected, the SSC was built, and the universe was destroyed,” said George.

  “And how did that involve you, ... and me?”

  “That’s a very long story,” said George.

  “I’ve got time,” said Alice, looking at her watch. “Tell me about it.”

  After George had finished and was sipping his cognac, Alice remained quiet for a time.

  “If I can believe you,” she said finally, “you literally have the power in your own hands to cure all human ills. You can cure cancer, hemophilia, MS, AIDS, anything. And you can transfer that ability to anyone else. Yet so far you’ve only used that power to make money and to tinker with politics. Why haven’t you done more, George? How could you not do more?”

  “Ah,” said George, “you have arrived at the place where Roger and I have been living for the last six years, the central dilemma. Of course, you’re correct. We don’t have to keep the techniques to ourselves. We could spread Reading and Writing through the entire population of the world in a few months. We could put the Makers’ download on the Internet for anyone
to access, and we could mount a multi-million dollar advertising campaign to publicize it. And what would the consequences of that be?” He paused, looking at her.

  “I don’t know,” Alice said finally.

  “That’s the correct answer, Alice. I don’t know either,” said George. “And Roger doesn’t know. But his attempts at predicting the outcome are frightening. Riots, revolutions, wars, terrorism, you name it ... It would be too much of a change too fast. The human race is smart and adaptable, but probably not that smart and adaptable.”

  “But what’s the alternative?” Alice asked. “You can’t just do nothing.”

  “Oh, we are doing things,” said George. “But we’re proceeding slowly and carefully. We’ve prodded a few selected physicists and mathematicians in what we know are the right directions. We’ve encouraged them with research money. We’ve also done similar things on the molecular biology front. And in a few instances, we’ve acted more directly. No one has noticed yet, but the last flu virus to make the rounds leaves its recovered victims a bit smarter and with an improved immune system.” He smiled.

  “But you could cure cancer,” said Alice. “Every year thousands of people die of cancer while you do nothing. My mother died of cancer, dammit.”

  “I know that,” said George. “Look, we could save some people. In fact, we have, in a few cases. But releasing a general treatment in the correct legal way takes time because of federal government drug regulations. A biotechnology company I own is now in the middle of FDA testing of a drug that provides a fairly general cancer cure, but it won’t be available outside of test groups for perhaps ten years. We’re sure it works, but the FDA will only be convinced by clinical tests that take a long time. That happens to be the way our present medical system works.”

  “I still don’t understand,” said Alice.

  “Look,” said George, “Roger and I spent much of the first year we were here deciding how to proceed. We can’t do everything. Our top priority is to stop the SSC project in order to gain more time. We have to prevent the Hive from finding us in 2004. We’ve been focusing mainly on that.”

  “But you know how to do so much more,” said Alice.

  “Not really,” said George. “We didn’t have enough time to receive much instruction from Iris on how to use WRITING before the Hive arrived. Consequently, we don’t have enough experience to use the technique now with confidence. It has too much potential for mistakes, for doing things that are harmful and irreversible. We have to be careful, so we’ve only used WRITING in very limited ways so far. We’ve only made viruses and nanomachines that are guaranteed to stop reproducing and die out after a fixed number of generations. To do more, we need teams of the best people working full time on learning the subtleties of WRITING, not just two preoccupied people with only limited time to dabble at it.”

  “It must be frustrating,” said Alice, “having to move so slowly when you could do so much.”

  “If you join us, you’ll learn just how frustrating it is,” said George.

  CHAPTER 7.8

  DC Underground

  THERE IS an underground layer to the complex of majestic white marble buildings that are the center of the U.S. Federal Government. Under the busy streets and parklike lawns surrounding the Capitol Building a small subway system connects both the House Office Buildings and the Senate Office Buildings with the Capitol. Electric mini-locomotives tow chains of open passenger cars back and forth along subterranean tunnels. Senators and Congressmen are transported to their vast marble chambers in the Capitol Building to record their roll-call votes, then returned to the vast complex of congressional office buildings where most of the actual work of Congress is done and where most of the hearings and committee meeting are held. Congressional staff members, secretaries, interns, lobbyists, and visitors ride the same underground railway, playing their varying parts in the processes of the federal government.

  George Preston and his new lobbyist, Alice Lang, jumped onto a open subway car just as the little train was leaving its Capitol terminus. It was raining hard outside, and at Alice’s suggestion they had made the trip from House to Senate office buildings by riding the House subway, walking the length of the Capitol sub-basement, and then riding the Senate subway. It was a busy route, and to George it seemed to be filled with twenty-five year-olds in new-looking tailored business suits. These kids run the government, he thought.

  Arriving at the Senate end of the line, George and Alice followed the signs to the Dirksen Senate Office Building. After a cursory check inside their brief cases, a security guard directed them through the arch of a metal detector. They waited for a “non-Members” elevator and took it from the sub-basement to the second floor. Finally they reached Room 229, the offices of Senator Dale Bumpers of Arkansas. Alice was greeted by the receptionist, who seemed to recognize her from previous visits, and they were shown into a conference room. “Barbara will be with you real soon,” she said, her Arkansas twang proudly displayed in her speech.

  “Barbara Warburton is Senator Bumpers’ staff person dealing with energy-related matters, which means the SSC,” Alice explained. “She’s very nice.”

  “I’m not sure what we’re doing here,” said George. “I didn’t think Dale Bumpers was on the right Appropriations subcommittee to do us much good.”

  “I should have explained,” said Alice. “Last June the House, led by our friends Eckart and Boehlert, voted 232 to 181 to kill the SSC. They zeroed out all SSC funds in the Department of Energy Appropriations Bill. The Senate, over Bumpers’ objections, voted 62 to 32 to continue the SSC at the level of $550 million. Since the two houses of Congress passed different bills, they have to meet in a Joint Conference Committee to iron out their differences. Bumpers wasn’t appointed to that Joint Committee, but as an interested party he’s attending as an ex-officio member with voice but without vote. He’s there pushing for adoption of the House version of the bill. He’ll call Barbara immediately after the vote.”

  “Do you understand why he’s opposing the SSC?” asked George. “It seems out of character for him as a progressive.”

  “I talked to Barbara about that at some length,” said Alice. “Bumpers’ attitude is rather like Congressman Boehlert’s. He’s basically in favor of supporting science, but he feels that both the SSC and the space station are excessive and out of scale. At a time when the focus of the government should be on balancing the budget, he thinks spending on large and conspicuous science projects sends the wrong message. He’s lost some friends in the Senate over his opposition to the SSC and the space station, but he feels that it’s a matter of principle.”

  George nodded. “I can respect that,” he said. “It’s some of those ‘guns for hire’ over in the House that make me feel unclean when I meet with them.”

  “I know the ones you mean,” said Alice. “They’re against the SSC because they see it as a vulnerable target of opportunity and because they want another notch on their holsters, but they’re in favor of NASA’s space station boondoggle because there’s PAC money to be had from the big NASA contractors. The same day the House voted down the SSC by 232 to 181, the Space Station bill passed by one vote.”

  “That 50 vote difference didn’t come cheap,” said George. “Those swing votes were cast by some of the best Congressmen money can buy.”

  “While we have a moment,” said Alice, “let me ask about something. The question keeps popping up of whether the Japanese will contribute to the SSC. The SSC boosters say that the Japanese will join the project any day now and will contribute a billion dollars. Will they?”

  George laughed. “They’re just blowing smoke,” he said. “In my universe, Bush went to Japan in November, 1991, right after preparatory visits from Deutsch and Bromley, directly asked Prime Minister Miyazawa for a Japanese commitment to the SSC Project, and came home with a commitment of 150 billion y
en. But here and now, that November visit was canceled when the US economy took a turn for the worse. When Bush finally visited Japan this past January his Chief of Staff Sam Skinner, at our urging, dropped the SSC from the agenda of the meeting with the Japanese Prime Minister. The result was that Bush went to Japan and principally distinguished himself by vomiting on Miyazawa. He didn’t bring home any SSC commitment, or much else.”

  Alice looked at him suspiciously. “You guys had something to do with the famous International Up-chuck?”

  George smiled. “Roger gave the President a benevolent retrovirus so he’d be feeling a bit below par during the meeting and wouldn’t notice the absence of the SSC from the agenda. That virus may have produced Bush’s problem at the State Dinner, but I can’t say we planned it. After Bush had returned to Washington, Miyazawa set up a joint panel to ‘study Japanese participation in the SSC’. That was his inscrutable way of giving the proposal a decent burial. Don’t worry. We’re quite sure the Japanese won’t participate. The moment for that has come and gone.”

  The conference room door opened and a tall woman with long dark hair entered. Alice introduced Barbara to George. “What’s the news?” she asked.

  “Bad,” said Barbara, “we were ambushed. The House Members of the Conference Committee were appointed by Speaker Tom Foley. It turns out that despite the strong House vote, the House conferees were all SSC advocates, every one of them. The Conference Committee voted to continue the SSC at the full $550 million funding level approved by the Senate.”

  “At the full level?” asked Alice. “I thought that when there was a difference between House and Senate bills, the Conference always splits the difference, so at best the SSC could get only half the planned funding.”

  “That’s what we’d expected too, but there was a technical point we hadn’t appreciated,” said Barbara. “Since the House deleted the SSC appropriation altogether rather than keeping it in with zero funds, technically there was no difference to split, and so the project got its full funding. I think the SSC advocates in the House deliberately arranged to delete the appropriation, knowing full well that this would happen.”