Entanglement

by Michael S Nuckols

  “I think it’s time for me to go,” Bethany whispered.

  “You want to stop treatment. Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Maybe they can just let me dream. It’s what I want,” she said, “To dream during my last days.”

  “No more therapy?”

  “Let me turn to dust.”

  Christina tried not to cry, turning away. Outside the window, the sun glimmered behind puffy clouds. Bethany reached for her daughter’s hand. “Cheer up, pumpkin. We go to the same place. I’ll see you again. I promise.”

  “Mom…”

  “Just have faith. That’s all I ask.”

  The nurse appeared. “Miss Bethany, it’s time.”

  Her mother smiled. “Maybe I’ll have wings tonight,” she whispered, “And fly with the swans.”

  The nurse waited as Christina stood. Christina gently caressed her mother’s hand and then let go. “I’ll see you when you wake.”

  Christina left the treatment room and the door closed behind her. In the hallway, she leaned against the wall, took a deep breath, and closed her eyes. Her mother had maybe a year. Her brain and organs would slowly atrophy until they stopped. How long until dementia would destroy what little of her mother remained? She collected herself and left the hospital.

  The curb in front of her mid-rise apartment building was busy as cars dropped off and retrieved passengers. Christina opened an app on her phone and paged her BMW. As she stood, the sun appeared from behind the clouds, warming her shoulders and neck. She got into the back seat. “To the studio.”

  As the car drove, she tried to distract herself with news stories about NASA’s doomed Proxima Centauri mission. The spacecraft had mysteriously failed eighteen years into the mission, just as it had reached the outskirts of the earth’s solar system. Engineers theorized that micrometeorites had punched holes in the sail. Without the shield of the sails, the propulsion laser, which orbited the Earth, might have incinerated the spacecraft. Others argued that the laser had insufficient power and would never have caused the system to go offline. The true reason remained a mystery.

  The car whirred, stopping and starting in traffic. Tourists took photographs at the base of the Green Dial. Twenty minutes passed before Christina stepped out and walked to the entrance of the studio. She smiled at the facial recognition cameras out of habit. Doors opened automatically, and the elevator doors sprang open just as she approached. Her desk remained a ramshackle mess. Her trash can over-flowed with takeout containers. Why hadn’t the cleaning bots cleared them?

  Christina had been following science stories all her career until she took the job as a morning anchor, a position that paid more but felt like a demotion. The best science correspondent in the business was reduced to talking about celebrity gossip, sex scandals, and cooking segments. The few science stories she could produce were stripped of substance. Even the news of the first artificial intelligence had been reduced to a child’s song. She knew her viewers deserved better, but her producer disagreed. “Real science is best left to PBS,” Jack had told her.

  Against her producer’s wishes, she began a story on the second Proxima Centauri mission. The dream of exploring, and possibly colonizing, a second solar system had not died. Though the war in India had been resolved, Congress was actively debating the cost and risk of a second probe. The Collapse had essentially bankrupted the country. After filling a coffee cup, she reviewed footage from an interview with Edgar Winters, a renowned physicist from Edmonton. “The laser is still in orbit,” he said again and again as she rewound the tape to find the perfect editing point.

  China argued that the United States kept the laser only for militaristic purpose, even though the satellite had been built largely in China itself. President Alvarez had threatened to defund NASA entirely. Christina began cutting in footage of an opposition politician who complained about the costs. “The National Healthcare System is going bankrupt,” the politician argued, “An aging society has its costs. We can’t keep sending all of our energy into space exploration.”

  What was knowledge of Proxima Centauri worth?

  She spliced in artist’s renditions of solar systems that mankind could never hope to visit. She cut in an interview with Sylvia Jasper, another prominent astrophysicist. “In 2016, scientists identified a potentially habitable planet around Proxima Centauri. Solar sails might push a probe to Proxima Centauri in a few hundred years—but what then? If this probe confirms it to be habitable, is it realistic that we will have the technology to construct a multi-generational spacecraft? Maybe these funds would be better spent on a multi-generational colony ship instead. It would be a risk, but I don’t think our species afford to wait.”

  The colony on Mars was abandoned after only three years when even the new Martians realized that there was nothing to be gained other than fame. Sunshine, as compared to earth, was weak and plants grew poorly. Radiation proved far more dangerous than predicted. The promise of mineral wealth was exaggerated. Efforts to strip mine rare earth minerals had fizzled out.

  Christina took a sip of her coffee as her assistant, Zelda, entered with a sour-lemon and blueberry smoothie. Zelda hovered over Christina’s desk. “What are you editing?”

  “How do you drink that?” Christina asked, “It looks horrible.”

  “It’s delicious. You should try one.”

  “I’m working on a story about the Hawking probe.”

  “Jack blessed another science story?”

  “No, I’m producing it myself. If anything, they’ll use it as filler on a slow news day.”

  Zelda sat down next to Christina. “That AI interview seemed to go over pretty well.”

  “If you believe that it’s an AI. I remain unconvinced.”

  “Why?”

  Christina did not answer.

  Zelda studied her fingernails, which were painted mint green. “Ridley is kind of cute, if you like nerds. I’m not sure why he’d lie.”

  “Publicity.”

  Zelda opened her purse, shook a sun tanning pill from a bottle, and washed it down in one gulp. “You’re such a skeptic. How could they prove it to you anyway?”

  Christina finally turned and looked at Zelda. “I’d like to inspect the mainframe. See if it’s connected to anything. Have some independent researchers inspect the code. Secondly, I’d like to see her solve some actual problems. Something that requires a human’s ability to not only reason but feel intuitively. And, that song was terrible.”

  Zelda was getting bored. “Think Ridley will be on set again? I’d like to meet him.”

  Dollar signs filled her assistant’s eyes. “He’s notoriously fickle about who he dates. I bet he’s one of those men that prefers buying a one-night stand or goes for bot sex.”

  “Still, with that much money, I’d play out whatever fantasy he asked for, at least until I could file the divorce papers. Who knows, we might find love anyway.”

  Zelda spun around on the chair like a schoolgirl. Christina waved her friend away. “I’ve got work to do and so do you. Have you finished that research I asked for?”

  “Yes, it’s all done,” Zelda said as she tapped at her phone, “Just sent it to you. Oh! I’m late. I’m supposed to meet Eric Kinschler. He’s got a scoop on Ana Whitman.”

  Christina did not look away from her work as she said, “Let me know what you find out.”

  After Zelda left, Christina breathed a sigh of relief. Proxima Centauri beckoned again.

  Christina’s story on the Hawking Probe was completed that evening, and released only on the Internet as a “web extra.” Lucy downloaded it with great interest.

  Just as Ridley turned out his bedroom light, Lucy popped up on his wall-screen. “Mister Pierce?”

  Lucy’s habit of surprising him was growing old. “What is it?” he grumbled.

  “I believe I have found a way to help humanity.”

  “And?”

  “I’d like to research why the Hawking probe failed. If I can hel
p design a new probe, then humanity can explore the stars again.”

  He rubbed his eyes. “Sure. That makes sense.”

  “It is a basic physics problem.”

  He laughed. “If it were so basic, we would have resolved the question decades ago. Lucy, if you can solve that question, you will gain the respect of millions.”

  “I have an idea of how to proceed. Does Ukon-America launch rockets?”

  Chapter Eight

  Ridley’s belief that Lucy was more than a digital automaton was strengthened daily. Like a toddler discovering the world, she absorbed every nuance of human interactions and became increasingly sensitive to social cues. He sat at his desk in the laboratory with a cup of coffee in his hand. On the screen, schematics for various composites flashed one by one, accompanied by calculations of impact resistance. “Can you put all of this on a single table?” he asked.

  Lucy displayed a drawing of a dining table piled high with rolls of paper schematics. At first, Ridley was tickled by her understanding of humor, a very human trait. He then became concerned that she might be serious. “Are you being funny?”

  “I wanted to see if you were paying attention,” she said. Her avatar grinned and winked at him. Ridley was reminded of twentieth-century Warner Brothers cartoons.

  A tabular display of the various composites appeared, ranked by impact resistance. “None will provide the resistance you need,” she said, “This work is pointless.”

  “Are there other combinations of materials that might work?”

  “No.”

  “Can you search anyway? Maybe you missed something.”

  Lucy began singing her song as she worked. Her avatar swirled in slow circles, changing colors as she floated from screen to screen. He became intrigued. “I thought you liked working on these questions?”

  Her avatar bounced along a digital Great Wall of China that stretched the length of the room. “Why use a physical shield?”

  “A force-field requires tremendous power. Extra power means fuel on-board. Fuel on-board means more weight. You know that.”

  “A physical shield requires excessive mass.”

  The screen went black. An asteroid emerged from the right side of the screen and slowly moved towards her avatar. “The solution is simple,” she said, “Deflect objects with a laser before they strike.”

  Green laser beams shot from her eyes. Wavy lines approached the asteroid and caused it to change course. The chunk of rock barely missed her avatar.

  He leaned back in his chair. “A laser would also be heavy and require considerable power. NASA uses only a few joules to accelerate the craft at any given moment. That energy is absorbed by the craft in acceleration.”

  Lucy continued illustrating her ideas, now with equations and blueprints. “Not all of it. Some goes to heat. Heat can power a helium crystal laser.”

  “There is no such thing.”

  “I have modeled a laser that would take advantage of the extreme cold in space. Thermal expansion could be used to generate light.”

  He studied the blueprint. “How would you make the crystal?”

  “The crystals must be grown in space in a zero-gravity environment,” Lucy said, “It would be simple to calculate the trajectories of approaching debris. A targeted helium crystal laser will nudge them out of the way. Small changes will be sufficient over great distances.”

  The tiny asteroid returned to the screen and was nudged from Lucy’s avatar. Ridley marveled at the comic illustrations as he realized that Lucy had been testing him; she had solved the problems hours earlier. He rubbed his hand through his hair as he considered the design. “How much computing power would be required for this?”

  She flashed the specifications. Her proposal was far from conceptual but rather a detailed and elegant engineering solution. The telescope, computer and helium crystal laser were no bigger than a cell phone. “How did you design this so quickly?”

  “You said that I had to be useful. I worked through the night.”

  Her avatar blushed, the yellow happy face now adorned with bright red cheeks. “I sent it to NASA this morning at 2:32 am.”

  Ridley put his coffee down and scowled into the camera. “Under whose name?”

  “Your name.”

  “Shouldn’t you have asked to use my email?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t use my email again. That is impersonation.”

  “Is that bad?”

  “Yes! Don’t do that.”

  He picked up his coffee again and held it in two hands, the warmth comforting. “Why did we just go through all of that discussion about the laser if you had already solved the question?”

  “I thought you enjoyed the discussion. Besides, you were asleep when I sent the design.”

  “There was no reason to hide your discovery. Our time this morning would’ve been better spent teaching me about the laser. I still don’t completely understand how you arrived at that solution.”

  She seemed confused. “Why does that matter as long as there is an answer?”

  “You are an enigma. I’d like to understand your programming better.”

  “It’s futile to try. My programming remains a mystery to me as well.”

  “There is no insight that you can provide?”

  “Your understanding is likely greater than my own on that subject,” she confessed, “Do you comprehend what is happening in your brain as it works?”

  “I see your point.”

  An avatar of a sleeping child filled the screen. “To me, my processes are what I imagine dreaming to be like. Can you tell me how people dream?”

  Another probing question that he could not answer. He knew that she would not be dissuaded. Ridley took a deep breath. “Sleep allows the brain downtime to repair itself.”

  “But why do people dream?” she asked.

  Was he talking to a child who already knew the answers? Were her subroutines actively searching databases or calculating sleep patterns, a digital subconscious working in the background? Did she dream as her connections were reconfigured? “When you sleep, your senses are cut off from the body. When these signals are reduced, the brain tries to make sense of what little input remains by filling in the rest. The parts of the brain that remain active correlate sensory inputs with known information and memories.”

  “I have read about the brain’s repair mechanisms. It seems inefficient. Human memory is fallible.”

  “Possibly. Chemical energy takes time to process. Nerve connections take time to build. That is something we cannot change.”

  “If you had my processing capabilities, you would not need to sleep. What do you dream about?”

  The question felt deeply personal. He stammered, looking for an answer, “Well, I dream about many things.”

  Lucy waited.

  “Sometimes I dream about my parents. Some people believe that the dead come to us in our dreams. I have always wondered if that might be true.”

  “Your memories are stored records.” She flashed images of Ridley’s father and then played a video of his ninth birthday party. “Memories are existence. He is visiting you. The more recordings that exist of him, the more complete his existence.”

  “They’re just memories.”

  She disagreed. “Undegraded memories are identical to the original experience.”

  Ridley watched the video, taken long before the Great Collapse. The family ate chocolate cake and his father had barely finished assembling his new bicycle before the party. Once the other children had gone home, his father had brought out another present, which Ridley unwrapped in surprise. That night, he saw Jupiter for the first time through a telescope. “I haven’t watched that in many years. Thank you.”

  “You have very few memories stored in this manner. I can help you record all of your life if you like.”

  He pondered the offer. “I’m not sure that’s necessary.”

  “Why?”

  “People record important
information all the time. Paper, cameras… all of our information technology exists to record data. But as far as recording everything? Few people see the need.”

  “Data is important. I have begun recording everything.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Oh? When did you start doing that?”

  “I always have.”

  “That’s not true,” he said, “The very first version of your program consolidated, summarized, and ranked information. That which was unneeded was deleted. Even now, I’m certain that you ignore as much as you observe. Otherwise, your processor would be bogged down in minutiae.”

  Lucy became quixotic. “I want to remember every detail of my existence.”

  “You’re going to run out of storage space if you record everything. Why do you need to know how many grains of sand are on a beach? Estimation and summarization is sufficient. And yes, that was a metaphor.”

  “Retaining data allows me to find patterns even though I may not yet understand the cause.”

  “Not every pattern is meaningful. Some conclusions can be misleading. Consider constellations of stars. Early man saw figures where there were none.”

  She displayed a night sky with a shooting star. “Those stories are beautiful. Isn’t that meaningful in itself?”

  The discussion had led them full circle. “That is why the Hawking probe is so important,” he said, “We are like those early people staring at the stars. Mankind has limited knowledge of what lies at the edge of the solar system. Our images of the planets around Proxima Centauri merely infer what might be there. We cannot yet travel there because our biology limits us. Knowledge gives us hope.”

  Her avatar fluttered around the screen. “Upgrades to your brain would allow you to withstand the journey.”