The Death of the Universe: Rebirth: Hard Science Fiction (Big Rip Book 3)

by Brandon Q Morris

  The chairwoman wrinkled her nose and threw her a disapproving look, so Sasha didn’t dare reply. He gave Katya the thumbs up and then put his hand on hers.

  Tea and cookies were served after the presentation. Vitali, the Moskvitch driver, made his way over to Katya. Sasha was torn, but then decided to go to the German who was standing next to the table looking a little lonely. He introduced himself as a mathematician from Moscow. Dr. Geier spoke surprisingly good Russian. He only occasionally struggled to find a word.

  “So how is that you, as a chemist, became concerned with the search for patterns?”

  “Professionally, I’m involved with spectral analysis,” said Geier. “That’s primarily about patterns. It’s my dream to have a computer that I can send my data to via remote transmission, and which can then tell me the composition of my samples.”

  “We’re probably still a long way off from being able to do that.”

  “Not at all. The algorithms I’ve developed save at least half the time needed for conventional technology. That’s gradually approaching the range that today’s computing machines can manage.”

  “This is very interesting to me. I also have a kind of spectrum the composition of which I would be keen to clarify.”

  “In which field?”

  “Thermal.”

  “You’re working in the energy sector?”

  “I... Yes, more or less.”

  The German looked at him skeptically. Sasha felt cornered, but Geier didn’t ask any more questions. He was probably used to encountering the occasional secret here. “If you like, I can send you the FORTRAN source texts that I’ve already written for it.”

  “Can’t you hand them to me yourself? That might be quicker. I’m at a kind of turning point in my work and I could really use some new inspiration.” At least that wasn’t a lie.

  “You underestimate the technology that’s available here. I can send you the source texts over my data terminal quite quickly. Which institute are you working at?”

  “In the Computing Center.”

  “Oh, so you’re the reason I couldn’t compile my most recently designed modules. They’re saying all sorts of things about your work.”

  “Such as?”

  “Oh, everything from nuclear weapons research to the crazy idea that you’re trying to investigate the remains of an earlier universe.”

  “You know how people like to talk. I can understand that, and we’re making every effort to free up the Computing Center again as soon as possible. Your offer might even help with that.”

  “That would make me happy,” said Dr. Geier. “And if you write a paper on it, don’t forget to add me as co-author.”

  Sasha laughed. “I understand. You have to look after your interests.”

  “‘Publish or perish,’ that’s my motto.”

  He nodded. He’d love to include Dr. Geier as a co-author.

  But there’d never be an internationally published paper on their work.

  April 22, 1984, Akademgorodok

  Sasha was the first to get to the BESM-6 control room the next morning. The source texts the German had promised him were already waiting for him in his mailbox. He must have sent them the previous evening. At the end of the event, there had been tea with a shot—more shot than tea. So Sasha couldn’t remember exactly what had happened. Katya and Vitali had left while he was talking to Geier. Katya must have just been tired. He had weighed up whether to ask her dezhurnaya if she was in her room, but she would probably have just snapped at him for being nosey.

  He downloaded the source texts. Then he pulled up the first file on his screen and scrolled through it. No, this wouldn’t do. The 16 lines just weren’t enough. It would better to print them all out. He copied the texts to the printer port. He hadn’t actually seen a printer, but there must be one somewhere. Those hellish machines were so loud that no one would voluntarily have them near their workspace.

  Soon after, he heard a screeching sound from the back of the warehouse. He stood up and followed the noise until he was standing in front of a printer bearing a label in Latin letters: ‘Robotron 1154.’ The machine was powerfully pulling perforated sheets of paper from the feeder and printing them with a long list of FORTRAN commands. The characters were pale on the yellowish paper. Hopefully there was enough ribbon left!

  It was finished half an hour later. A continuous ribbon of paper was protruding from the printer. It looked like the machine had gorged itself on paper and then vomited it all back up. Sasha tore it off at the last sheet and folded up the whole print-out.

  “Sasha? Are you there?” Yuri walked back to their work area, where Katya was sitting at her terminal, typing. She must have come in while the printer was making all that noise. She turned and waved to him briefly before plunging back into her work.

  “The German sent me some exciting programs,” he said.

  “See, I knew the German Club would be worth your while,” said Katya. “Are you going again next time?”

  “Aren’t you?” he asked back.

  “We don’t have to spend every evening together. You’re welcome to do things for yourself sometimes. That Dr. Geier seemed like an interesting guy.”

  And that Vitali also seemed like an interesting guy, he thought.

  “After the German Club yesterday, I looked at a couple more models and I’ve already implemented one of them.”

  She had gone back to work! Why was he so happy about that? “What kind of model?” asked Sasha.

  “Well, if neither of the two inflation theories results in the values we measured, then maybe there was no inflation.”

  “But isn’t that the prevailing opinion?” asked Yuri.

  “When Einstein developed the theory of relativity, classical physics were the prevailing opinion.”

  “So you’re our Soviet Einstein?”

  “More of a Lebedeva.”

  “And what does your model look like?” asked Sasha.

  “It’s possible that the speed of light in the previous universe was much faster. Meaning it could have expanded much faster.”

  “And you’ve applied that to your model?”

  “Yes. If that were the case, then the fine-structure constant must have had a different value back then, which must also have been visible in the background radiation, in a very particular way. Let’s test it.”

  “I think that’s a waste of time,” said Yuri. “I’ve never heard of this idea as an alternative to inflation.”

  “But inflation theory hasn’t even been around that long,” said Katya. “Who’s had time to develop an alternative?”

  “You two have to decide. I’m just a mathematician.”

  “Come on, you have to tip the scales,” she said, looking at him with big eyes.

  “We have enough time,” said Sasha. “I still have to take a closer look at the algorithms before we can let them loose on our data. You carry out the experiment and I’ll wade through this stack of paper.”

  “Are you sure?” asked Katya.

  “Yes, I am,” said Yuri.

  Sasha reemerged from the world of FORTRAN programs and pushed the printout to one side. Katya looked dissatisfied and he had the impression Yuri was annoyed.

  “But you should still—”

  “No, Katya, no way, we’ve played it through with seven different parameters now. Your model just doesn’t fit the data.”

  “I was so sure!” said Katya.

  “It’s best not to get fixated on one idea.”

  “Yuri, I’m not fixating on anything!” She was close to throttling him. Sasha laughed out loud, and Katya and Yuri spun around to face him.

  “You’re still here?” asked Katya.

  “I was looking at what Geier’s put together. Very interesting.”

  “Why?”

  “First of all, he developed it specifically for spectra, and what we have here is data on a spectrum, and maybe also in other wavelengths. Secondly, models aren’t necessary for his analy
ses. We just let the program run through our data, and it tells us where it finds possible structures. Then we just take a closer look at them.”

  “I don’t know,” Katya shook her head. “First we have to have an idea—a model—of what we’re even searching for. Otherwise it’s like asking you to fetch something from a dark cellar without telling you what you should bring me.”

  “That’s a good comparison,” said Sasha. “Our measurement data is like a dark room. We suspect there’s something in it. No matter what it is, we want to bring it out into the light. Then we can examine it. So we don’t need to know beforehand what it is.”

  “But that’s just blindly feeling around,” said Katya.

  “An uncomfortable feeling, I know, but the program does it for us.”

  “Fine, let’s try it,” said Katya.

  “When can we start, Sasha?” asked Yuri.

  “I just need to adapt it to the BESM-6. I should be finished by the end of the day.”

  April 23, 1984, Akademgorodok

  Sasha put down his snow-laden lambswool coat next to the entrance. A dark trail led from there through the computer hall. Winter was back. A cold wind was blowing fat snowflakes through the streets. He followed the trail. Its width suggested it must have been two people. Sasha felt like a hunter stalking his prey.

  Katya and Yuri were sitting in front of the BESM-6 and turned around in unison when he approached.

  “It’s about time you arrived,” said Yuri.

  “Now show us your magic program,” said Katya.

  Sasha smiled. He’d prepared everything the day before. He’d briefly considered running a test, but that would have ruined the surprise for all of them.

  *EXECUTE

  He pressed the button slowly. The screen went dark.

  “How long will it take?” asked Katya.

  “I don’t know. This is the first run-through with real data. So far I’ve only tried it out with test data.”

  A minus sign appeared on his terminal screen.

  “Something’s happening,” said Katya.

  “Yes, the program’s letting us know it’s working.”

  “How much processor time did you give it?” asked Yuri.

  “A day.”

  “That should be enough.”

  The next minus sign lit up.

  “I think it’s crashed,” Katya said after three hours. The whole screen was covered in minus signs. There were 16 rows of 80 short dashes.

  “It’s still running,” said Sasha. “Look, when the screen flickers, it means another minus sign is being added at the end, and one disappears at the top.”

  “You’ve got parsley between your teeth,” said Katya.

  Sasha licked the front of his teeth.

  “Still there. Your right canine.”

  He loosened it with his index finger. The fresh parsley had been the best part of the soup. The cook at the hostel had grown it herself on the windowsill in what remained of the sunlight. Fresh vegetables in winter were usually only the stuff of dreams.

  “The program’s finished,” said Yuri.

  Sasha strode quickly over to the screen. “Run time five hours and sixteen minutes.”

  “And the result? Tell us!”

  “Not so fast, Katya. It’s writing the results to a file. I’ll send it to the printer.”

  The dot-matrix printer at the back of the warehouse began to screech.

  “I’ll go,” said Katya.

  The noise stopped surprisingly quickly. Katya returned with a single sheet.

  “I’ve got no idea what this means,” she said. “You take a look at it.”

  She flopped down on her chair. Her obvious disappointment rubbed off on Sasha before he’d even seen the result. He held the paper under one of the overhead light bulbs. The print was barely legible. The printer ribbon urgently needed replacing.

  “What does it say?” asked Yuri.

  “The algorithm has found structures,” said Sasha.

  “That’s good, isn’t it?”

  “I’m not sure. This printout has all sorts of mathematical parameters to describe what the program has found.”

  “Then we just need to find the physical mechanism behind it,” said Yuri.

  Katya said nothing. She’d probably already recognized the problem. Because it was quite clear that their measurement data was unusable.

  “The results can only be interpreted if you permit non-continuous functions,” explained Sasha. “But that kind of physics doesn’t exist. So either we’ve found a phenomenon with completely new physics—which is pretty unlikely because... Well, it would be totally crazy, science just doesn’t work like that.”

  “Or?”

  “Or we’ve measured nonsense and our data belongs in the trash.”

  They sat around for a while. They should really call Shostakovich immediately and give him back his Computing Center. They had no right to monopolize valuable resources.

  “Do either of you have Shostakovich’s number?” asked Katya.

  She was obviously thinking the same thing he was, which was somehow comforting. “There’s a phone on the wall near the entrance,” said Sasha. “His number’s probably on it.”

  Katya stood up.

  “Wait a minute,” said Yuri. “You seem pretty certain, but I don’t understand. Don’t you want to explain it to this idiot?”

  Katya sighed.

  Sasha picked up the printout. “Look at this curve. First it approaches the X axis, then the function value suddenly jumps. Nature doesn’t behave like that.”

  “But if lightning strikes, or a tile falls off the roof, there can be sudden changes.”

  “Yes, but we’re talking about a different level here. Believe me, it’s impossible.”

  Yuri continued to regard him doubtfully.

  “Sasha’s right,” said Katya. “It’s unmistakable.”

  “And what if it’s not about physics at all? It could be an alphabet or something.”

  “Do you believe in Komikov’s weapon, Yuri?” asked Katya.

  Yuri shook his head. “I just don’t think we’re done here. We can’t just try out the algorithm once and then abandon the whole project!”

  Sasha was tired. He’d rather just lie down on his jacket and go to sleep. Yuri had less of an idea about physics than he and Katya, but he wasn’t willing to let it go. That impressed him.

  It was true, too—no one dropped an experiment just because it didn’t work after the first attempt. They should definitely continue. He shouldn’t let himself be influenced by Katya’s mood. “Thank you, Yuri,” he said. “That’s a good point. We can give up later.”

  “But what else do you want to know?” asked Katya.

  “The German’s algorithm is an entirely new tool for us. Imagine you’d never held a knife in your hand and someone gave you one. You test it on your hand and cut yourself. Do you discard it as useless?”

  “You mean it might be down to the algorithm?”

  “Who knows? We simply don’t know our tool well enough. So I’d like to try it out on different kinds of data, the nature of which we already know. We should have done that from the start. We acted like first-year students.”

  “We could get the Chemical Institute to send us a few well-known spectra,” Yuri suggested.

  “First we’ll test the null hypothesis.”

  “Sorry?”

  “We give the program no data. We simply let it run on the BESM-6 drives. If something still comes out, then there must be an error.

  The test had been running for an hour. The terminal screen was filled with minus signs again. “Shouldn’t it go much faster without any data?” asked Katya.

  “No, the program still has to check every memory cell,” said Sasha.

  “Then I’m going for a walk. Is anyone coming?”

  It was cold and wet outside. Sasha shook his head. He’d rather read the German’s FORTRAN source texts, since he could still learn a lot from his techniques.<
br />
  “Yuri?” she asked.

  “No, thanks.”

  “Then I’ll be back in four hours. I should make it to the reservoir and back in that time.”

  “Have fun, Katya,” said Sasha.

  She went to him, kissed him on the forehead, and then left the warehouse. The heavy door fell closed behind her. Sasha sprang up and then sat down again. He should have gone with her! Would she think algorithms were more important to him than her company? But it was too late now. He’d have to explain himself tomorrow.

  Four hours and thirteen minutes. The algorithm had taken significantly less time without the data. Katya still wasn’t back.

  “The program’s finished,” said Sasha. “Shall we wait for her?”

  “It’s only a test,” said Yuri. “I don’t think she’ll mind.”

  “Okay.” He sent the output file to the printer. The device was still screeching when he arrived at it. He took out the printed paper. Another ten pages, and then there was nothing more he could make out.

  “And?” asked Yuri.

  Sasha held the paper under the lights and tilted it so the letters and numbers were visible. But he didn’t find what he was expecting. It should be nothing but zeroes—after all, the dataset was totally empty. But the algorithm had found structures anyway. And the parameters it had determined were strikingly similar to those from the first run-through.

  Sasha started to sweat. “Look at this,” he said, passing the sheet to Yuri. “And compare it to the first printout.”

  Yuri walked over to Sasha where there was more light. Then he looked from one printout to the other. “That’s crazy,” he said. “Looks like they’re the same structures.”

  “But how can that be?”

  “No idea. Maybe you made a mistake when building the Relikt instrument?”

  “You were there, Yuri. We tested it thoroughly.”

  “On Earth, yes, but that’s not the same as testing it in space.”