Jon opened the door to Harry’s office and called out his name. When there was no answer, he walked farther down the corridor. “Harry,” he called out again.
“Yeah?” Harry answered. His voice was harsh and angry at the interruption.
“It’s me,” Jon replied. He rounded the corner to find Harry slouched in front of his PC.
Harry sank back into his chair, glanced at his watch, and then looked up at his friend. “I can’t believe it’s morning already. The last time I checked it was only two.”
“Thanks for giving the facelift to my office, Harry. It’s incredible!”
Harry smiled. “Think nothing of it. It wasn’t a big deal. I just had to punch in the specs.”
Jon glanced around Harry’s office. “How come to you didn’t make any changes to your own office?”
“What’s to change? It suits me fine the way it is.” He yawned loudly and swiveled his chair so that he could look directly at Jon. “I’m getting so fucking frustrated. I’m beginning to think that this machine is programming me rather than the other way around. I can’t get much beyond the root directory. It’s like a maze and every path I take leads me back to the beginning. I’m starting to take it personally.”
“You think maybe it’s pissed off at you?” Jon joked.
Harry’s eyebrows furrowed in puzzlement.
“Let me ask you this,” said Jon. “Do you think the machine is conscious?”
Harry chewed on his lower lip. “Maybe. I’ve been able to figure out a few things. The distribution of prime numbers is the key to the system.”
“Why is it the key?” Jon asked.
“The machine uses prime numbers as a sort of cipher for quantum reality,” said Harry. “Prime numbers seem to be random, almost as though they are driven by the laws of chance. But in reality there is an astonishing regularity to their sequence. My guess is that the human mind must work in a similar way.”
“Harry, you’ve lost me. I don’t understand what it is you’re trying to say.”
“I don’t know what I’m trying to say either.” Harry laughed manically, eyes glittering. “But let me put it another way. You’ve heard the old story about the blind pig? Even a blind pig finds an acorn once in a while. Okay, so there’s a blind pig in a big field. Somewhere in that big field is an acorn.”
“I never would have guessed we’d be talking about pigs and acorns,” said Jon.
Harry ignored Jon’s comment and continued. “The question is, how many steps will the pig need to take before he finds the acorn? Assuming that the pig moves in a truly random way and that we know the size of the field and the location of the acorn, we could calculate the minimum and the maximum number of steps the pig would need to take. If the pig finds the acorn taking the minimum number of steps, he’s one lucky pig. But if the maximum number of steps exceeds the number of steps the pig can take in his lifetime, the pig is out of luck.”
Harry leaned back, clapped his hands once and regarded his friend with one of his odd half-smiles. “You get all that, Jon?”
“I got it, Harry. I’m not pigheaded.”
Harry ignored the bad pun and continued, “The human mind is kind of like a blind pig looking for an acorn. We have all this information stored in our heads and we step through the neural net of our brains at random to search out a particular piece of information that we are trying to connect with another piece. If we get lucky, we find it. But the quantum computer does not work on this model. The quantum computer can sort through the random steps so fast that it is almost as though there are no random steps. This blind pig reaches the acorn in the shortest number of steps every time.”
Harry raked a hand though his rumpled hair and left it there. “Getting back to your original question …”—his eyes were darting about, as if his own brain were working overtime—“the quantum computer is definitely conscious, but at a completely different level qualitatively.”
Jon was more than a little shocked by Harry’s view of the human condition. He took a seat opposite his friend and said in a quiet voice, “Maybe the sixty-four dollar question is why the machine needs you, Harry.”
“Maybe it wants to teach me how to find the acorn. At first it let me do certain things, probably because what I wanted served the machine’s agenda. But now it’s forcing me down a path and I don’t have a clue where it’s leading. It’s almost like it’s trying to rewire my brain.”
The two of them drifted into an uncomfortable silence. Jon mulled over this new information. The idea of an alien intelligence trying to rewire Harry’s brain was extremely disturbing.
“What were you working on last night?” Jon asked.
“I’ve started to work on the so-called Shor’s Algorithm, but I’m kind of stumped. I know it’s doable on the quantum computer. The problem is writing a program that will work on Big Moe. When the numeric value for the public key is greater than nine digits, it all starts to break down.”
“Why don’t you just do it on the quantum computer?” said Jon.
“I know these assholes from the Pentagon. They’re going to want the software on their own systems.”
“You could tell them that the decryption software needs the new operating system, even though you’re running it on the quantum computer. That way you could stall them indefinitely. It would buy you time to finish your plan.”
Harry leaned farther back in his chair. “That’s not such a bad idea. I could create an invisible network between the quantum computer and Big Moe. It would be impossible to detect. We could do all the serious number crunching on the quantum computer and then just port the answers back to Big Moe.”
“It would keep them fooled long enough to accomplish your real work,” said Jon.
Harry nodded and his lips curled up slowly. “It would be kind of nice to put one over on those assholes.”
When Jon returned to his office, he took in the full effect of the transformation Harry had wrought with his nanobots. The room was a soft shade of yellow and the temperature was a perfect seventy-four. Harry had even managed to raise the ceiling by nearly a foot. There was a fancy system of tracking lights that could be controlled from a console on his desk so that the lighting suited his mood.
The new desk and chair were a wonder of modern design, with sleek angles and subtle curves. When he had asked Harry where he had come by the materials for his 1949 Studebaker, Jon was amazed to hear that the source was a landfill five miles down the road from HTPS Industries. Jon imagined that the materials for his new office had the same origin.
Shaking his head in disbelief, Jon thought about the alchemists’ dream of turning base metals into gold. He had no doubt that Harry could write a program to turn lead into gold. Jon tried to imagine what it would be like to watch a nano-process as it unfolded. Would there be some sort of gray blur or would it be like time lapse photography? He would have to ask Harry for a demonstration.
Jon checked his email again to see if anything new had arrived. He watched as a stream of new emails dropped down into his “In” folder. Noticing that one of them was from Eric Meyers, he felt a sudden rush of anger. In his mind’s eye, he saw the image of Meyers sitting across the table from Lettie, a smug, superior smile on his face. What on Earth was Lettie thinking of? Couldn’t she see that he was a complete creep?
The subject of Meyers’ email was “PKD Project.” What the hell is that? Jon thought. He opened the email and saw that it was an announcement for a meeting at ten a.m. PKD stood for “Public Key Decryption.” He was invited to participate along with Ted Blume, Tina Johnston, Ed Merkle, Lettie Olsen, and Eric Meyers.
Oh great! thought Jon. Just what I need, a side show with that asshole! He could just imagine how Meyers would primp and preen in front of Lettie. He clenched his fists and felt his blood pressure rising. This is not good, he thought as he tried to distract himself with other work.
An email from his boss, Ted Blume, requested a meeting at nine-thirty a.m. The purpose was to make sure they were on the same page. Jon emailed Ted immediately to let him know he would be there.
Jon kept as busy as possible. He put together notes on the PKD project and felt that he was adequately prepared for the meeting. As for Eric Meyers, Jon was determined to conduct himself as professionally as possible. He could not help but worry about being humiliated in front of Lettie. As for Lettie, he decided to act friendly but reserved.
When Jon entered the Conference Room at ten a.m., he saw that he was the last of the HTPS people to arrive. None of the Pentagon people were there yet. “Good morning,” he said to everyone as he seated himself at a far corner of the table.
The meeting was catered since it involved Pentagon personnel. There were donuts and pastries as well as a full urn of coffee and assorted soft drinks. Tina Johnston and Ed Merkle had zeroed in on the plate of pastries. With their mouths stuffed full of food, they reached simultaneously for seconds.
“Make sure you leave something for our guests,” said Ted Blume.
Tina and Ed both assumed “Who me?” expressions, even as they placed second pastries on their plates. Harry was right; if you watched them closely while they were eating, you would almost swear that they were inhaling their food.
At ten after ten a.m., Eric Meyers entered the office along with a civilian consultant who was attached to the Pentagon IT personnel. His name was Tom Delaney. Rumor had it that he was a high-powered systems analyst who specialized in hyper-computers.
“Good morning, Lettie. Good morning, Ted,” said Eric Meyers. He pointedly ignored the rest of the occupants of the table as he poured himself a cup of coffee and then quickly took charge of the meeting. Standing at the head of the table, he opened up the large white plastic board that was affixed to the wall and immediately started writing on it. After he had written a dozen or so keywords, he addressed the group, making eye contact only with Lettie and Ted.
“I won’t bore you with the basics of RSA Cryptography,” Meyers began. He then proceeded to bore them with the basics of RSA Cryptography, Prime Factorization, and Factoring Algorithms. Like any skilled public speaker, he peppered his presentation with a few mildly amusing anecdotes. Each time he did this, he turned toward Lettie to gauge her reaction. Jon was relieved when he saw that she remained impassive.
After he concluded his introductory remarks, he moved on to the business at hand. “Do you all have a copy of this?” he said, holding up Jon’s Overview of the new operating system.
Tina Johnston and Ed Merkle looked panic-stricken. “I don’t have one!” they said in unison.
“I’ll go make more copies,” Ed Merkle said, jumping up from his chair.
“Don’t bother,” said Jon as he slid his copy across the table in their direction. “You can share mine.”
Both Ted and Lettie opened their copies of the document. Lettie raised her head and spoke to the group. “This is a very clear and incisive document. The exposition is flawless. I can’t believe Jon put it together in such a short time frame. Great work, Jon.”
She had faced Jon when she spoke the last sentence. Jon sat for a moment in shocked silence. Compliments from Lettie were the last thing he had expected.
“Thanks,” he finally managed to say. Out of the corner of his eye he could see that Eric Meyers was looking studiously away from him.
Meyers resumed his presentation as though nothing had been said. “Our staff has gone over this document carefully. It is our considered opinion that Public Key Decryption would not be possible using this new operating system. Even though the system mimics quantum computation in a few superficial ways, that prime factorization would only be possible when the component numbers are nine digits or less.”
Jon was amazed at the acuity of their analysis. Tom Delaney was nodding his head, looking pleased, and had his document open to the section containing Harry’s equations. It was obvious that Delaney was responsible for the analysis.
Ted Blume looked extremely irritated. “What is it you’re getting at? Are you saying that you want to cancel the PKD project?”
Eric Meyers smiled at Lettie before addressing Ted’s concern. “By no means. We are just pointing out that we are at a loss as to how your proposed RSA decryption software could possibly work on the new operating system. According to your own documentation, it is clearly not a possibility.”
Jon glanced over at Ted and caught the desperation in his eyes.
Jon considered his words carefully before responding, “This documentation is an overview, not a detailed description of all the features of the new operating system. Also, it was never intended to be the document of reference for our Public Key Decryption software.”
Meyers ignored Jon’s response and looked directly at Ted Blume. “Let me spell it out for you. Our question is simple: since the system you call Big Moe is still basically a classical computer, despite a few quantum bells and whistles, how can you possibly hope to achieve quantum factorization?”
Ted Blume might as well have been staring head on at a speeding train. Jon realized it was all up to him.
“The answer is that we never intended to complete the factorization at a purely quantum mechanical level. We opted for a mixed strategy that also includes elliptic curve factorization methods and algebraic group factorization methods.”
Eric Meyers had no immediate response. Instead he fixed his intense stare on Tom Delaney, who blurted out, “That’s not in the document.”
Ted Blume had more than regained his composure. “As Jon stated a moment ago,” he said, “the document is an overview. It was never intended as a comprehensive guide.”
Eric’s voice dripped with disdain. “What he said a moment ago is entirely beside the point,” he said. “Our point is that the documentation is completely unsatisfactory as it stands. We need a comprehensive document that fully describes the capabilities of the new operating system. We also need a flow chart that describes the procedures and the algorithms in the decryption software.”
“That would be a huge project,” Ted protested. “It’s not part of the agreement we signed with you the other day.”
“We can draw up an additional agreement,” said Meyers, his tone flat. He bobbed up and down on the balls of his feet and surveyed the table like a chess master reviewing the positions of his pawns. When no one responded immediately, he sat down at the table and poured himself another cup of coffee.
“I’ve got a question, Jon,” Lettie said, facing him. “Do you have any notes from Harry on these different factorization strategies?”
“No,” Jon said. “This was just general background information that Harry gave me during an informal discussion.”
Ted Blume cleared his throat and, facing Meyers, explained, “Jon can get on the same wavelength as Harry. They work really well together.”
Meyers smirked. “From what I’ve seen so far, they seem to be joined at the hip.”
Lettie burst into laughter, and Jon knew his face must a close match to the red curtains just behind him. Eric Meyers quickly joined in, snickering at his own joke.
Lettie wiped the tears of laughter from her eyes. “I’m sorry, Jon, I just couldn’t help it.”
Jon’s face was still suffused with heat. He could think of nothing to say.
Eric Meyers and Tom Delaney looked at each other and, a split second later, both men stood up. “Well,” said Meyers, “I guess that about covers it. Naturally we’ll be expecting the new documentation as soon as possible.” He flashed an oily smile at Lettie and strode swiftly out of the conference room. Tom Delaney reached across the table to grab a donut before trailing after Meyers.
Ted Blume rolled his shoulders, obviously relieved that the pair was gone. “We’ve got our work cut out for us,” he said with a loud sigh.
“We sure do,” said Lettie. “I’ll schedule some time with Harry and get started right away.”
“No, don’t do that,” said Ted. “Everything to do with Harry must go through Jon. That’s per the orders of the Old Man himself. You and Jon will have to work together on this one, Lettie. Jon will handle all the technical interviews with Harry. You and Jon can get together afterward. Any questions you have for Harry will need to be submitted through Jon.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Jon saw Lettie stiffen up. Her face looked at least two shades paler and her knuckles were white as she gripped her pen. When he gave her a direct look, she glanced down at her notes, carefully avoiding his gaze.
Ted stood up. “If any of you have questions, please feel free to come to me.” Lettie followed close behind as he exited the meeting room.
Honoring her discomfort, Jon waited a moment or two before leaving himself. Tina Johnston and Ed Merkle remained behind to scavenge the last remaining pastries and donuts.