“Einstein didn’t like it either. He called it spooky action at a distance. However, another scientist, John Bell, proved that’s the way quantum mechanics works. And it is on those two functions that the theory of quantum computers becomes possible. Now, the advantage to a quantum computer is that it’s not restricted to going through a computer program step by step. It can, instead, consider all possible answers to a problem simultaneously and generate the answer in far less time.”
“What did Arthur C. Clarke say about magic and science? “It sounds like magic to me,’” she said, shaking her head and grimacing at all the hardware on the workbench. “You have a lot of work in front of you, don’t you?”
“‘Oh, lassie. You’re the most understanding woman I know,’” Paul said, quoting Scotty from Star Trek V, The Final Frontier.
• • • •
They threw themselves into the quantum computer project during the day but reserved their evenings to spend out on the town. Capie started first by researching the names of specialists and experts in a variety of related scientific fields: physicists in quantum mechanics, mathematicians, computer systems analysts, system designers, software engineers and so forth. When she found any such experts living in the Silicon Valley, Paul would then carefully create a microportal to that individual’s house or place of business and, through the portal, create an avatar of that person to consult with on the project. Most of the time, he did this in conjunction with a super-intelligence, to draw on that apparition’s superior intellect.
In addition, Paul researched material sciences on qubit technologies, creating lists of hardware and supplies needed so that Capie could start ordering some of the necessary material to begin experimentation. Furthermore, Paul found and purchased a used IBM Power Systems computer, a 755 Express Power 7 work station with four microprocessor sockets capable of handling up to thirty two cores. Paul was delighted when it arrived and spent hours setting it up in one corner of the garage and bringing it online.
Late each day, when they grew tired and had trouble focusing on the work, they went out for the evening, into the valley or even up to San Francisco or across the bay to Oakland to dance, attend a concert, go to a movie, or enjoy any of a multitude of other forms of entertainment.
Their progress seemed agonizingly slow to them, but by the standards of the rest of the world, would have generated unqualified respect and approval from any number of experts.
In a week, Paul thought he had it narrowed down to five possible technologies.
“Number one is trapped ions in electromagnetic fields,” he said, pointing to a list on a holographic display floating in the air in front of them at the breakfast table. He stuffed another bite of egg and sausage in his mouth, chewing rapidly and swallowing. “The second choice is quantum semiconductor dots. Third, optical lattices. Fourth is cavity quantum electrodynamics. And fifth is linear optical quantum computing.”
“Which is the best choice?” Capie asked as she buttered a slice of toast.
“Each of them has advantages and disadvantages,” Paul answered quietly before sipping some of his orange juice. “There is no clear winner. Not yet, anyway.”
“Let me guess,” she said, putting the butter knife down. “We’re going to try them all.”
“Which is why I asked you to order all of that material and hardware earlier this week,” Paul said, confirming her assumption. “We should run the experiments in parallel, trying all the technologies until we find one that works.”
She stared at him for a few moments. “Paul, there are literally thousands, maybe tens of thousands of researchers around the world experimenting with quantum computer technologies. They’ve spent years working on this. And will probably spend more years. How are we going to do better than them?”
Smiling, Paul reached out to lay his hand on top of hers.
“We have several advantages,” he pointed out. “We can access virtually all of their research to date and avoid the blind alleys that they have encountered up to this point. And we can consult with super-intelligences via our magic. Also, too, our magical powers allow us to very quickly manufacture the qubit prototypes in minutes—designs that might take other researchers weeks or even months to fabricate. And, on top of that, our magical powers will let us see and manipulate things almost down to the quantum level. We will know if our experiments are working whereas anyone else would have to determine their results in a more indirect fashion.”
“In theory,” she commented with a humoring smile.
“Yes, in theory, CB.”
She pulled her hand from his and gave him a studied look.
“I don’t think I’m going to be of much help to you while you are conducting your experiments,” she observed quietly.
Paul’s smile faded slowly to a frown. “I sense you are about to tell me something I may not want to hear.”
She fidgeted a bit, giving him a hesitant smile. “‘Exactly, Captain. How very perceptive of you!’” she said, quoting from an early Star Trek episode.
One corner of his mouth twitched slightly. “What is it, dear?”
She sighed. This was going to be harder than she thought. Perhaps if she tried to steer him down the same logical path she had taken.
“It’s what McDougall said. About the death of who knows how many Normals.”
Paul jerked his head back slightly in surprise. “That was just a ploy, to convince me to let him go.”
To which, Capie cocked her head to one side. “You’re betting the lives of real people here.”
He flinched then rubbed his chin. “What is it that you propose? You can’t be serious about releasing him.”
Leaning forward, Capie reached out to touch her husband’s hand again. “Not that, no, dear. We should check out his story, that’s all.”
Curious, Paul half-smiled and quirked an eyebrow. “How?”
“Well, McDougall is the Errabêlu wizard over the Canadian government, right? So, I could drop into Ottawa—”
“It’s a capital city, CB,” protested Paul. “There could be hundreds of Oni there.”
“I’ll take McDougall’s talisman with me,” Capie countered. “At the first sign of trouble, I’ll leave, dear. But I’m a big girl now.” She paused. “Paul, as you yourself said, this is war. We have to take some risks, if we are going to save the people of Earth.”
Grunting, Paul glanced downward. Her proposal had truly caught him out of the blue. And not just the idea itself but her obvious emotional energy involved in proposing it.
His instant gut reaction to her idea was to reject it out of hand, to insist that she not go gallivanting off to Canada, let alone to Ottawa and thereby risk her life on the claims of an evil wizard. That was crazy, almost verging on recklessly insane. And he opened his mouth to utter those words, to tell her what he really thought.
But then he stopped and considered it a little more.
Yes, he loved Capie. Deeply. And after having lived all his life so far without her, he was loath to risk her life in so cavalier a fashion. He needed her, wanted her by his side for the rest of his life. Naturally enough, he wasn’t willing to risk her life, for any reason.
But, even though she was his wife, Paul recognized that he did not own her. He could not dictate how she lived her life, nor her coming and goings. He was not a ‘swaggering, overbearing, tin-plated dictator with delusions of grandeur’, a line from an early Star Trek episode.
What was more, Paul could see the determination reflected in her eyes. She wasn’t asking his permission. She was telling him what she was going to do. And if he disagreed, then there would be an argument, perhaps worse.
But maybe, just maybe, despite the risk involved, perhaps her idea did have a great deal of merit.
Ever since her father’s death, Capie had not been herself. Yes, she was recovering, that much was true. The trip around the world and their nightly outings had contributed substantially to that cause. But during the day, he still freque
ntly caught her staring out the window at nothing in particular, and there were times when she was obviously caught in a deep funk.
So, yeah, he was glad to see her interested in a project of her own devising. By why investigate McDougall’s warning? That was a real mystery. Odds were that there was nothing to it; just a ploy by McDougall, as Paul had said. So why had his lovely wife latched onto this for a project?
And then he thought, did the why truly matter? She obviously thought it important. Probably nothing would come out of her investigation. But just the act of investigating the threat might prove highly beneficial to her recovery. That itself was worth allowing her to conduct it.
On the heels of that conclusion, he realized that there was another reason to let her go, a reason nearly as important as aiding her recovery. Capie was growing, developing her powers, becoming a full-fledged and powerful wizard in her own right. She needed, in fact deserved, the opportunity to step out of his shadow and exercise her powers, develop her skills, and grow in her new role. Oh, yes, there was risk. But she was not a child. Without risk, she could not be all that she could be.
So he took a really deep breath and reluctantly said, “Okay, so you put yourself in the lion’s den. Then what?”
“From what McDougall said, other wizards of Errabêlu are planning something. That means other countries are up to mischief. Like maybe Russia, China, North Korea and the other usual suspects. I’ll go to the Canadian intelligence service, to their directors, and talk to their avatars—”
“At night, when they are asleep,” Paul interrupted her, “after you make sure that there are no Oni around.”
Capie smiled. “Does that mean yes, you approve?”
Paul made a sour face. “Yes. I think so. However, you are making the assumption that the Canadian government knows something and that McDougall got his information from them. But what if he found out from one of his own Oni or even from another wizard?”
His wife shrugged. “Then there won’t be anything I can do to stop those deaths he’s talking about. And all I have wasted is a little time.”
Paul grunted and glanced at the items on the dining room table without really seeing them. “Okay. But I expect to be kept informed. And I want your promise to be very very careful and to duck out at the first sign of trouble.”
“Done,” she faithfully promised him with a big smile. “I’ll leave tomorrow in the morning, right after breakfast.”
• • • •
Even though Capie had only been gone for two days, the garage had already taken on the look of a cluttered junkyard, with two large workbenches, assorted small tables, platforms, and metal support frames holding a wide array of tools, molds, widgets, glass, and cardboard containers of various types and sizes, small machines, a very wide variety of electronic equipment, and clusters of odd-looking doohickeys and thingamajigs of all sorts, sizes and descriptions.
A holographic image of Captain Montgomery Scott stood nearby, arms folded across his chest, a frown furrowed on his face.
Paul threw down a clipboard on the work bench and rubbed his temples in frustration.
“I think I am making progress. It’s hard to tell. This whole thing of building a quantum computer is really hard! It’s so terribly complex! But we seem to be making some progress with the quantum dot approach,” he told the hologram, nodding at the conglomeration of glass dishes with silicon wafers, circuit boards, electronic equipment, and a virtual spaghetti of various colored wires and cables on the near end of the work bench.
Scotty nodded with an enthusiastic smile. “This is based on the work by Daniel Loss and David P. DiVincenzo. They proposed using the quantum states of the intrinsic ½ spin of electrons in a semiconductor gate array.”
“Oh, I just love it when you talk techno-babble,” Paul commented as he rubbed his right arm.
“Keep going,” Scotty encouraged him. “Try decreasing the thickness of the substrate, but mount it on a silver-plated ground plane. And tighten the spacing between nodes.” He practically beamed with excitement. “You might just have the first qubit prototype ready to test before lunch,” he declared with a gleam in one eye.” He eyed the equipment again. “Well, maybe by dinner.”
“Okay,” Paul said and then made a face. “I hope you are right.”
“Call me when you are ready for the test. This I want to see.”
• • • •
“And now, Jace Abernathy, what can you tell me about various plots around the world that could involve the death of a lot of people,” Capie asked, cupping her chin thoughtfully with one hand.
The avatar of the Director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service seemed to consider its response to the question for several seconds before replying in emotionless tones.
“There are many such plots, from a variety of countries. Most of the groups involved are being monitored carefully and have little or no chance of succeeding.”
Capie sighed and tugged on one ear lobe. Without knowing what she was looking for and having next to no experience in matters of spying or the operations of Errabêlu, she just didn’t know the right questions to ask.
She was parked, in the dead of the night, in a large rental GMC Yukon on a side street not far from the director’s home in Manor Park, not far from downtown Ottawa. Parking here, close to where the director lived, was primarily to keep the distance short and the energy of her microportal as low as possible. Outside the car, she could hear the sound of the crickets chirping away endlessly in the still of the warm night air. Abernathy’s avatar was sitting in her passenger seat, looking back at her with those dead expressionless eyes. It gave her the creeps. Still, this was important. If she couldn’t handle this, she might as well go home. Well, back to San Jose, anyway.
Her father wouldn’t give up this easily and neither would she.
“Tia, some assistance here, please,” she said.
The holographic image of the Queen of the Fairies leaned forward from the back seat, between the two front bucket seats, craning her neck for a better look at the avatar.
“Ask him about the briefings McDougall gets,” the simulacrum suggested.
“Ooh, that’s a good thought,” responded Capie, turning back to the avatar. “Tell me, do you know if Kenneth McDougall receives intelligence briefings from the Canadian government?”
“Yes, he does.”
“And what sort of briefings does Kenneth McDougall get?”
“Weekly in-depth security briefs. The same as for many of the cabinet ministers.”
“Ah! And the last two – no, make it the last three such briefings. Was there anything specific, anything new that might involve a threat, perhaps a terrorist plot, a new weapon of mass destruction, a new strain of disease, anything like that?”
This time the pause was much longer before Abernathy’s avatar replied. “There was very little that was new in any of those briefings. Only minor updates and status reports of security measures and programs. Some information from friendly governments. Nothing significant. There was one exception. The American CIA reported the suspicious death of a Russian citizen in the Middle East. However, in the briefings since, no additional information has come to light.”
“That’s it?” Tia asked, doing a double-take before turning her head to give Capie a look of disbelief. “McDougall considered one mere death to be a major threat to world peace?”
Capie closed her eyes, her shoulders dropping in silent submission before replying, “So Paul was right. McDougall lied. There was no threat.”
Tia snorted. “You think? Can we go home now?”
Capie bit her lower lip, thinking hard. “And tell Paul that he was right all along?”
The Queen of the Fairies chuckled. “You have a good point, young one. You should never tell a man he’s right. It’ll go to his head for sure.”
Capie leaned forward, wetting her lips. “Tell me, Jace, was McDougall interested in the death of that Russian?”
“Ye
s. It was reported to me that he asked several questions about it.”
“That’s interesting,” Capie commented, a thoughtful frown on her face now. “Tell me about the death of the Russian.”
“The Americans did not provide many details,” the image of the director reported. “A Russian collapsed at an amusement park in Dammam, Saudi Arabia. He was suffering from a gunshot wound. He was rushed to a local hospital but pronounced dead on arrival.”
“Died in an amusement park, heh?” Capie mused sadly, obviously now uncertain that this little interrogation was going anywhere. A lot of people died from bullets in the Middle East. “So what was so special about the death of this man?”
“The Saudi Investigative Police Force looked into the death. Since it involved the murder of a foreign national, they passed on their report to Interpol who passed it on to the Americans. The CIA has a file on the man. He was a former member of the Russian military, an expert on munitions. He worked on a number of different ordnance systems, including Russia’s largest laser guided bomb, the KAB-1500. The CIA suspected him of selling his expertise to terrorists in the Middle East.”
Capie’s mouth dropped open, aghast and speechless.
“Well, well!” Tia remarked sagely. “A Russian bomb expert in the Middle East, heh?” The simulacrum cocked her head. “Care for a suggestion? Let’s go talk to the CIA and find out what they know.”
Capie finally found her voice. “Washington, D.C.? That would be really dangerous.”
Tia shook her head. “Maybe, maybe not. The information we need, if it exists at all, might be in multiple places and with multiple people outside of Washington.”
Capie gripped the steering wheel hard in her left hand and closed her eyes. She wasn’t quite sure of her motivations for proposing and making this trip, despite what she had argued with Paul. A part of her—a logical part of her—argued that it was likely a wild-goose chase, as Paul had so succinctly pointed out.
But what if it weren’t? What if a lot of Normals were about to die at the hands of a wizard of Errabêlu? Just like her father had.
Orders of Magnitude (The Genie and the Engineer Series Book 2) Page 12