“What if you were given the funding to rebuild this the way I just described it, room-sized?” Tristan said.
Oda gave him a cautious, wise-old-man smile. “Scaling issues would become huge. The amount of computational power required goes up as the square of the cavity’s volume.”
Tristan made a quick mental calculation. “So, as the sixth power of the box’s size. That’s okay. We’ll make it a small room. Moore’s law will take care of the rest.”
“Don’t even suggest this in Rebecca’s hearing or she will chase you out of the house with her gardening shears. It was a very draining and humiliating period. She would never endure it being brought back to life.”
“This would all happen under a cloak of secrecy. The Howler would never hear about it. Nobody would.”
Oda pondered it.
“If Rebecca said yes?” I asked.
Oda shrugged. “It was my pet project, of course I would love to see it work. And I tend to say yes to things. But I would want to know why you were pursuing this.”
“I can tell you all about it as soon as you sign a nondisclosure form,” Tristan said.
Oda smiled to himself a moment, then returned his attention to Tristan. “Well, then you must ask Becca to sign the form as well,” he said. “I could not keep this from her.”
“Go on upstairs and work on that, Stokes,” said Tristan, without even looking at me. “I want to talk shop with the professor for a few minutes.”
Journal Entry of
Rebecca East-Oda
MARCH 6
Temperature today about 43F, fair and dry, with slight breeze from the west. Barometer steady.
Snowdrops blooming. Crocuses will bud soon, Buddleia just cut back, Hellebore has just come up. Witchhazel blooming and lilacs have tight buds. Planted the first of the basil, peppers, and tomatoes inside (under the grow lights) and harvested the last of the kale. Harvested the parsnips, sweeter for enduring the hard winter.
Strange event today. Frank received visitors, a couple named Tristan and Melisande who somehow happened upon his old ODEC patent application from DARPA, something I would just as soon forget ever existed. They appeared at the door without warning this afternoon. He is clearly military, has the energy of a Labrador retriever (thinking in particular of the one Uncle Victor trained for duck hunting). She milder, more reserved, better-spoken than he.
Frank received them in his current study, the dining room. (Melisande was charmed that although that chandelier was wired for electric lights about a century ago, and outfitted for gas light before that, it can still be lowered by a pulley system from the days of candle-lighting. Tristan was not as charmed, because the chandelier wasn’t the duck he was here to hunt.)
They told Frank they believe that they know why the patent application failed and that furthermore, they know how to rectify this—that, with his assistance, they can actually create an ODEC that will successfully suppress the collapse of the wave function. I was not sure how I felt about hearing this, remembering the stress and bother that went into our last go-round with this enterprise. Frank said they would have to convince me. Melisande was tasked with doing this. I could tell from the way she approached me in the kitchen that she did not expect to succeed. She was surprised.
I will support Frank in anything he does and any decision he makes. Since he did not immediately say no to them, it means he is excited by the prospect of being vindicated all these years later. I truly wish he wasn’t. But he is. And I understand that. To make a short story shorter, we both signed a nondisclosure agreement, and they joined us for tea.
Then things got quite strange.
They shared something preposterous, which is hard for me to write down without shaking my head. They claim to be interested in the ODEC not for its defensive capabilities, but because they believe it can be used to perform acts of—I cannot write this steadily—magic. Not sleight-of-hand; not wishful thinking. Sorcery. They are sincere about this. She attempted to validate the claim by citing ancient documents she has been translating. He gave a passing technical explanation, which I admit sounded as plausible as anything else re: quantum theory, but that’s not saying much, is it?
But Tristan played the winning card re: Frank’s mental constitution: he said that ultimately it should not matter if we believed about the magic or not, we should sign on to this for the sake of the science itself. That is like offering catnip to a cat. Of course Frank said he would assist however he could.
They’d explained why magic is no longer possible today, and further, why, even were magic to become possible (within the ODEC), it would require the application of specific people (“witches”) who could “perform magic.” So naturally, I asked them who they were expecting to “perform” it. It was the only time I saw them at a loss: this most obvious and basic of concerns had never crossed their minds.
I don’t know who they are, or where their funding comes from—it definitely isn’t MIT this time. God forbid MIT even suspect he’s tinkering with this nonsense.
Diachronicle
DAY 221 (CONTD.; EARLY MARCH, YEAR 1)
In which we divide to conquer
REBECCA EAST-ODA SERVED TEA LIKE a proper New England matriarch—not mugs with teabags, but loose-leaf tea steeped in and poured from a china teapot into teacups resting on saucers, with rock sugar on sticks and a little porcelain pitcher of milk, all set out on a wicker tray. She also presented a plate of biscuits both ginger and savory, which of course at the time I’d have called cookies and crackers. I spirited these to my side of the tea table so that Tristan would not swallow them whole.
For early March in New England, it was uncharacteristically gorgeous, and crisp afternoon sunlight streamed at a low angle through the bay transom windows, hitting the dangling crystals of the fancy old chandelier that hung incongruously above us all, throwing dozens of little rainbows around the walls.
“So we have this space. Not far away from here actually,” Tristan was saying, and on reflex glanced around for sweets.
“Have some more tea,” Rebecca offered Tristan, who of course had downed his almost instantly. She held out her hand for his teacup and saucer.
He gave it to her with a nod of thanks, but then his attention returned to Frank Oda, talking amps and circuitry requirements—
“How does he take it?” Rebecca asked me.
How odd that she assumed I’d know this. “Based on his dietary habits, probably milk and sugar,” I said.
“All right then,” said Tristan, staring fixedly at a blank place on the wall. “The human-rated ODEC has to be built . . . this becomes a four-part strategy.” (I had not realized he’d fashioned even a three-part strategy.) He held up a fist and stuck out his thumb: “One, extensive modifications to our building.”
“Hang on,” I said, “it’s not DODO’s building!”
“What is DODO?” Rebecca asked.