AN UNIMAGINABLE DISCOVERY Read online

  An Unimaginable Discovery

  Robert J Graf

  [Wednesday, January 9, 2041, Petaluma]

  Joggers and dog walkers called cheerful greetings to Ann as she strode through the sleepy, foggy neighborhood, but she didn’t hear them. She kept reliving that devastating moment when the EntComs had suddenly failed. Up to that instant the system had performed flawlessly, transmitting entangled messages between her lab and the UN moonbase. Then disaster—transmissions failed for no reason. Now she faced the unthinkable, a crushing finale to her life’s work. The stark possibility knotted her stomach.

  She had to swipe her access card twice before the door to the single-story building housing the research facility opened. “Be advised, CEO Hooper will be here shortly,” she warned the two uniformed guards as she signed the log book. She hurried through the door marked "Restricted” into her windowless lab.

  Ann hung her damp jacket with the technicians’, donned a white lab coat and checked her appearance in the mirror. Her middle-aged face with its worry lines and crow’s feet, topped by short-cropped blonde hair, couldn’t conceal her anxiety. She attempted a smile, but it wouldn't convince a three-year old.

  She walked over to the black, rectangular EntCom resting innocently on the workbench. And how are you this fine morning, she silently asked. The control panel’s green LED shone bright, mocking her. She resisted the urge to kick it.

  Farid, the lead engineer, broke off discussions with his technicians and smiled. "Good morning, Dr. Grey.”

  What’s he got to smile about? “Drop whatever you’re working on and take the rest of the day off,” she ordered, annoyed at his good humor and more annoyed that she couldn’t help it.

  Farid’s smile vanished. “But we haven’t finished evaluating yesterday’s failure.”

  Ann sighed in frustration. “I don’t want you or the techs around when CEO Hooper arrives.”

  With disappointed, uneasy looks, Farid and the techs shed their lab coats, donned their jackets and left Ann alone with her fears.

  The floor-to-ceiling wall screen displayed the empty lab buried beneath Mare Tranquillitatis. Her husband, wearing light-blue overalls, stepped into view. His thin, non-smiling face, regarded her. "When is His Mightiness arriving?"

  Ann glanced at the wall clock – 07:28. “Patience, Jon, a few minutes.”

  "I still don’t like your plan. This isn't an engineering problem. We've missed something."

  Why couldn’t he just let it go? "The problem’s not entanglement, and Farid swears it’s not electronics, so what the hell is wrong?"

  “I don’t know.” He sounded equally frustrated. “You have to convince Hooper to let us try your plan; he won’t like it.”

  On her, was it? She clamped down her panic. There was no plan B, it was either success and fame or utter defeat. “What choice does he have? His reputation’s on the line, too. Your EntCom ready if we have to perform?”

  He folded his arms and frowned. ”Of course.”

  Ann arranged the lab’s flat screen next to the EntCom and inserted the video’s memory card.

  The wall clock ticked away the minutes.

  The door banged open, and Roger Hooper, CEO of Global Communication, stormed into the lab. In his black suit, shirt and tie, he was the epitome of the devil she’d been threatened with in Sunday school by that creepy priest. Rumor had it his glowering, broken-nosed visage had frightened many a senior manager into pissing his pants. Right then she could well believe it. She’d never seen him so angry. Or was that anger a mask hiding his fear?

  “Show me your latest fuckup,” he demanded, looming over her, hands on his hips.

  “Yes, sir,” she said, shrinking back, and pressed Play:

  Farid’s image dropped into the operator's chair. The technicians hovered over their diagnostic instruments.

  "What's the message, Doctor?"

  "How about 'Did you watch the President's New Year’s speech last week?'" Ann’s image answered.

  Farid sent "Did Dr. Grey watch the President's New Year’s speech last week?”

  The question popped up on the remote EntCom's tablet. "Just send 'No. I worked late that Wednesday'," Jon instructed

  "No", appeared on Farid's tablet, instantly followed by a flashing scarlet octagon and "Receive Failed".

  Jon's furious "God dammit, not again!" echoed through the labs.

  Farid, his mustached face ashen, jabbed Reset. The scarlet icon winked out, and the tablet reverted to "Ready".

  The wall screen showed the same tableau: silent figures with stunned expressions clustered around the remote EntCom and the flashing scarlet icon.

  "Farid, I want you personally to compare the logs to the other failed messages," Ann’s image commanded, her face flushed. “The diagnostics aren’t working, and I want to know why.”

  “Yes, Doctor."

  Ann backed up the video to the flashing scarlet octagon.

  Hooper glared at her. “That’s it? The only symptoms are a few failed messages?”

  “Yes,” Ann answered, her stomach in a knot.

  “You’ve never seen this before, ever?”

  “No.”

  "You have no explanation for the failures? None?"

  She seethed at Hooper’s sneering tone but remained outwardly calm. "No."

  Hooper swiveled his head and glared at the wall screen. "And you?"

  Jon shook his head.

  Hooper shifted his furious gaze to the EntCom and then to Ann. "God help me, you're all I've got. How are you going to fix it?"

  "We need more data. We’ll send these cores to be re-entangled while we repeat the test with the old cores and expanded diagnostics. Also we’ll send the message in both directions."

  "NASA is threatening to cancel, and that’s all you could come up with?"

  "The system’s unstable.” Ann took a shuddering breath and gathered her courage. “The only alternative is to default on the contract." The vindication of years of frustrating effort and setbacks and ridicule teetered on a knife edge.

  Hooper’s eyes narrowed. "Don't push me, Dr. Grey." He held her gaze for a tense moment. "Very well, run your test. It better be decisive.”

  Ann heard the unspoken, “Or else.”

  Hooper scowled at the EntCom as if he could scare it into behaving. ”Keep me informed directly," he commanded and stalked from the lab.

  Ann trudged back to her office, collapsed in her chair and booted her tablet; in seconds Jon's worried face appeared.

  "Jesus, Ann, don't mess with him."

  "Don't tell me what to do! That's all bullies understand."

  "It's your neck." His image winked out.

  Screw you too. She sat and brooded, feeling sorry for herself, then shook herself. That doesn't get anything done. She picked up her phone and tapped Farid's link.

  His mustached face popped into view. "Yes, Doctor?"

  "Change in plans. Get back here and ship the current core to get re-entangled, and replace it with the old one."

  "But you gave us the day off."

  "I want this done today, and make sure to coordinate with Tranquility." Of course Jon had no staffing problems. What else was there to do on the moon except work?

  "Yes, Doctor," Farid replied in a resigned tone.

  She opened the logs recording yesterday's failure. Maybe she'd see something Farid and the techs hadn’t. But she had a bad feeling.

  Ann ate lunch in the small cafeteria by herself. Farid stayed in the lab, he wouldn’t touch the roach-coach food; it wasn't halal. Today her favorite burrito tasted like cardboard. She dropped it, half-eaten, into the garbage, and returned to her office.

  Ann rubbed her tired eyes, yawned and glanced at her t
ablet’s clock—21:10, and she hadn’t found any clues. She powered off her tablet and stared at it, blank as her mind. And then there was Jon. The final divorce papers were waiting at the lawyer’s. She dare not have them served until NASA accepted delivery. She pushed that worry aside; one disaster at a time.

  She signed out and trudged back through the now dark neighborhood to her empty house, brooding over the past days’ events. She hated to admit it, but Jon might be right, they’d missed something. But what?

  [Friday, Petaluma]

  Ann glanced up at the wall screen as her husband appeared and stifled a yawn. Despite taking a sleeping pill, dark dreams of smirking EntComs had kept her tossing and turning all night. "Jon, let's talk in the office." She snagged a cup of tea from the food cart, skipped the pastries and closed her office door behind her.

  She stabbed Jon’s link, and his angry face appeared in her tablet.

  “Jon…”

  He interrupted. “So much for your wonderful plan yesterday. The tests should have failed but didn’t. We’re back at square one."

  She was tired of the continual blame game. “Which is where, exactly? A message can’t both fail one day and transmit the next.”

  “Remember Schrodinger?” he asked, smirking.

  “Forget the damn cat! If superposition were the issue we never would have made entangled communication work. We have to determine the system's quantum state."

  He snorted. "We already did and found nothing amiss.”

  She sipped the hot tea, trying to control her temper. "You have any bright ideas?"

  Jon smiled coldly. "Unlike you we found an anomaly." His image vanished, replaced by thumbnail images of binary numbers. "The failures’ acknowledgement qubits aren’t set."

  “What?” She studied the images. He’s right, the ACK variable was blank. "So? We suspected that. That's what triggers the error logic. That's how the system is supposed to work."

  His image reappeared. “So this. They’re not set because the messages never arrived."

  She stared at him, dumbfounded. "That's impossible, entanglement was unbroken; the status LED remained green. There has to be an electronic component failing intermittently."

  He shook his head impatiently. "Why didn’t the real-time diagnostics detect it? These are mil spec components, and your favorite engineer found nothing wrong. Have you been listening to me? We’re missing something."

  "Resetting the EntComs works, the entanglement is unbroken," she repeated.

  "Nevertheless the anomalous condition persists. Failures go somewhere else."

  Ann barely reined in her temper. "What nonsense are you babbling? There is no ‘somewhere else.' I repeat: entanglement is unbroken."

  His lips thinned. "We have a seriously weird anomaly that flies in the face of everything we know about quantum mechanics."

  Unhappily, she had to agree. Focus.

  "Say you’re right, then the messages are the triggers." She sorted her log by entanglement dates and studied it:

  EC1 (8/7/2040)

  Watson, come here

  Stock market will go up

  Is NASA on schedule?

  As of yesterday

  *The cow jumped over the moon

  (Transmit/Receive fails, entanglement OK)

  President’s speech, Wednesday, 1/2/2041

  EC2 (1/3/2041)

  Giants will win the pennant

  *Giants won the pennant in 2019

  (Transmit/Receive fails, entanglement OK)

  Did Dr. Grey watch the President's New Year’s speech last week?

  No. (Transmitted/Received without error)

  *I worked late that Wednesday (1/8/2041)

  (Transmit/Receive fails, entanglement OK)

  EC1 (8/7/2040)

  Did Dr. Grey watch the President's New Year’s speech last week?

  No. I worked late that Wednesday (1/10/2041)

  (Transmitted/Received without error)

  Repeat above, reverse endpoints

  (Transmitted/Received without error)

  "Maybe there's a magic letter combination?" she asked, half in jest.

  Jon sneered. "Now who's spewing nonsense?"

  "Look at the logs. Other questions and answers transmitted without error, same for predictions. Your answer failed using one pair of cores yet not the other." She was beyond frustrated. "Your reply was in two parts. ‘No' transmitted..."

  "I get the idea. I said I worked late. What's that...?" Jon stopped in mid-sentence, his expression frozen.

  She knew that expression; did she ever. "What's her name?"

  He glared at her without answering.

  Ann flushed, angry and embarrassed at her slip. Thank God she wouldn’t have to put up with his dalliances much longer. Think! What was different about the failures? A half-remembered dream nibbled at the edge of her mind. What had Farid said? Dates.

  Ann expanded her personal calendar. She'd marked the President's New Year's speech, Wednesday, Jan 2. She compared the entanglement dates with the failed message dates. EC1 was entangled earlier than EC2. All failures were factual errors —cows didn’t jump over moons, and the Giants? Enough said. Transmission failures occurred after the respective entanglement date but referenced events prior to entanglement. So? A cold shiver slide down her spine as the impossible implication sank in.

  "Quit sulking and listen. Your response didn’t transmit when the entanglement post-dated the President's speech. The other failed messages also post-dated entanglement. When we reused the old cores the entanglement pre-dated her speech. That’s why your lie passed, there was nothing to test against. The EntComs detected your lie!"

  Jon’s jaw dropped. He stared at her, eyes wide in disbelief. "Are you nuts? That's bizarre even for you. Are you seriously suggesting the EntComs are some sort of omniscient truth tester? For Christ sake, they’re bottles of gas hooked to fancy electronics." He shook his head in bewilderment. "That's too weird. There's got to be a rational explanation."

  "Quantum mechanics is weird, and entanglement is its heart, that's what makes it so fascinating. What do we have? The accepted interpretation is a particle’s wave function collapses when it’s properties are measured; no more probability superposition, the particle becomes fixed in space-time, immutable. Suppose no collapse. Instead the entangled quantum state remains linked to a past relative to the entanglement date.”

  The more she thought the clearer the fantastic concept became. “I was wrong; it’s not electronics. Messages are tested against that past. Anything post-dating entanglement is the future, undefined, so there's nothing to test. Only the past matters."

  “You’re out of your fucking mind! Tested by what, and why would there be a test at all?” His face settled into his “You can't make me” expression.

  Incredible and impossible as it seemed, Ann knew her idea was the answer, but how to convince him? Then inspiration struck.

  "Go back to your lab. I'm going to try something."

  His eyes narrowed in suspicion. "What?"

  "Just get out there.” She hurried into her lab, shooed the tech out of the operator chair and sat. Ignoring Farid’s surprised reacrtion she switched on the video. As soon as Jon appeared on the wall screen, she hastily sent “In 1492 Christopher Columbus did not discover the Amerixas.”

  Jon studied his tablet and snickered "Forgot your spell checker?"

  She felt Farid's gaze boring into her back. Slow down. She changed “Amerixas” to “Americas” and tapped Send.

  The error octagon flashed bright red; "Transmission Failed."

  Ann expected the result, yet the reality shocked her. She glared at Jon gazing open-mouth at "Receive Failed." "We've created a truth detector, an honest-to-God real one. Can you get that through your thick skull?" She was shouting and didn't care. Farid and the technicians stared at her in alarm. She blushed, embarrassed by her outburst.

  "Don’t believe me?” she asked in a quieter voice, “You try something."

  Jo
n’s expression settled into a troubled grimace. “Let’s talk offline.”

  Back in her office she tapped Jon’s link.

  A window popped open with his unsmiling image. “Ann, your little demo is very, very upsetting, but I can’t accept your conclusion, it’s too…” he stopped speaking and glanced off screen, then back. “It’s beyond belief.”

  “I admit I was wrong. My ‘impossible’ conclusion explains all of the messages, both successes and failures. What’s yours?”

  His expression grew sullen. “I don’t have one. But a few data points don’t refute a century plus of research and experiment. Try publishing this and you’d be shunned, ridiculed, and deservedly so.”

  “We’re hardly ready to publish anything. We do have to tell Hooper.” First she had to get Jon’s buy-in. “What if we test historical events that we vet via Wikipedia.”

  Jon grimaced. “All right, just stick to obvious events, nothing controversial.” He paused. “And let’s not advertise.”

  What’s he talking about? “Oh, the techs. We can give them the rest of the day off.” They’d love that after Wednesday.

  “All right, let’s try it, and we video everything.”

  Ann stood. “Of course. See you in the lab.”

  For the first couple hours they stumbled from one frustration to another, trying combinations of Past, Present and Future events. Just make up a statement: Event X did or did not happen. What could be simpler?

  In Jon’s attempted lie "No" had passed, "I worked late" didn't. The latter failed for both Jon and her because it was equally false. They tried "Jon Grey is Ann Grey’s husband" followed by "is not". Both transmitted successfully.

  Ann changed the topic. “Try ‘NASA bought the Entangled Communication system.’” It passed, "did not" failed. Better. However, adding to their frustration, “will buy” and ”will not buy” also passed.

  “Something about present or future tense is opaque to the truth checking function,” she complained, feeling overwhelmed.

  “Fucking weird,” Jon snarled, tapping Reset.

  Ann added more entries to her spreadsheet. The entire experience was weird cubed, and she admitted, frightening.