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The Chronosphere, aka Time Machine, transported me from the black laboratory to the US navy’s black anti-submarine analysis enclave in April, 1984. A spectral engineer named Mulcady was my designated point of contact. He sat behind a broad library table stacked with hundreds of dead reckoning trace documents from a recent exercise in the North Sea.
“I’m Lieutenant Farnsworth from the office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”
Mulcady blew out smoke from his cigarette and blinked as he tried to focus on me.
“And you are interrupting my analyses. Why?”
“Rumor has it you’ve been playing with your computers to make them confused about their identities. My people believe you may have stumbled upon something important. Will you take a few minutes to show me what you’ve done?”
Mulcady shrugged and buried the butt of his cigarette in his already overflowing ash tray. He rose from the table and went to his desk, where two ancient computers sat side by side. He did not speak while he connected the two comptuers with a new cable I recognized as IEEE-488, a parallel data cable and protocol used for fast data transfer. I had seen the cable connected to an external hard drive, but never to another computer.
“Observe as I search for a file labeled, ‘Data.’”
The file appeared, and its contents were provided in a list.
“That’s not much of an innovation,” I remarked.
Malady smiled. He was about to return to his work when I held his arm.
“Please tell me the meaning of what you showed me.”
“Will you please let go of my arm?”
I did as he asked. Then he gestured at the machine on the right.
“The data file in question lives on the computer to the right. But when the query was initiated on the machine to the left, the file was shown as if it lived on that machine.”
“And the significance of this phenomenon is what, precisely?”
Mulcady’s eyes gleamed. He smiled.
“Imagine not two interconnected computers in one office on a single desk. Imagine a billion any computers in many forms all around the globe. What would it mean if any of those billion computers could access file belonging to any computer as if it were on his host?”
I gasped in astonishment. “I think it would change the world. In fact, the possibilities are mind boggling.”
He nodded. “Now go further. Think about applications on all the linked computers working together or separately to solve problems like the perplexing problems I’m trying to solve every day.”
“Why, that would change the very nature of work.”
Mulcady nodded and drew another cigarette from a box he kept in his pocket. He slapped his pants pockets for a match. I brought out my lighter and gave him a light.
“Thanks. Do you have enough to take to your masters, or do you want more?”
“How did you discover the possibilities in the connection?”
“I just made the connection and started playing. I was surprised at the result. I showed a few visitors the behavior you witnessed. Somehow the story got to you.”
“Do you know of any others who know computers can be cross connected like yours?”
“The folks in New Jersey working for Bell Labs know.”
“Can you give me a name?”
“Dr. Daniel Bell is one. He has published a lot of research on cybernetics. I don’t know of anyone smarter about the theoretical end. Before you go down that long trail, you might want to track down what’s happening with Soviet submarine quieting technology.”
“How critical is the situation?”
“All the DR traces in this space would be useless once their quieting systems have been installed as all their submarines will be invisible, or nearly so.”
“Excuse me, I’ve got to restructure my priorities.”
“After you do that, I hope you’ll do me the courtesy of returning here to tell me what we are going to do about the quieting problem.”
“Righto. Thanks for the pointer.”
I returned in the Chronosphere to discuss the problem with The General.
When I explained the situation, The General fulminated about the Chief of Naval Operations complaints about the USSR’s advances in submarine quieting technologies.
“Dammit, Farnsworth, their ballistic missile subs will be undetectable by the year 2000. Maybe the prophecies of the world ending will come to pass after all.”
The Commander tried to calm the old man down. “Sir, we have seven black programs working angles on this problem. Surely one will lead to a breakthrough before 2000.”
“Hope is not a strategy, Commander. Farnsworth, what you do think?”
“No, sir. Humph. I mean, yes, sir. But The Commander has a point.”
“Make a ranked list of the countermeasures and prepare a briefing for POTUS on the top-ranked item.”
I jumped right to the task. Within two hours I had listed ten possibilities, three more than The Commander knew of. My ranking placed a university project first among equals.”
The Commander immediately took umbrage. “Farnsworth, how many times do I have to tell you, a university project, or 6.0-funded effort, is often pure speculation? White papers. Airy, fairy nothings. Strike that from your list and think again.”
The General saw my vexation. He interposed to keep me playing ball.
“Before you strike it off the list, give me the gist and your justification for making it number one.”
I looked at The Commander, who shrugged. I decided to plunge ahead at the risk of being terminated forthwith from our team. We were a team of three in 1985, The General, The Commander and me. The Chronosphere, aka Time Machine, was our most secret weapon. It would help me vet any ideas we presented to POTUS, the president of the United States.
“It stands to reason that physics will render most of the submarine detection projects unworkable. Take, for example, Low Frequency Passive measures. Since signals diminish by the square of the distance from the source, long range detection of, say, a lightbulb humming at 60 cycles, will never be heard through aqueous media as we require. Active sonar has the critical problem of ambient ocean noise. Soviet nuclear boats and associated propulsion systems already disappear shortly after they enter international waters. Our hunter-killer subs cannot go active, or they’ll give themselves away and make themselves easy targets.”
“Those observations make sense, at least to me. But you’re avoiding the method you gave priority.”
“By eliminating the impossible, you narrow to the plausible. The university project is more than plausible. It’s genius. Think for a minute about how the ocean surface is read from space. Years ago, our astronauts saw the wakes of ships with their bare eyeballs. Those wakes remained long after the ships that made them had passed. Experiments done by the university recorded accurately the location of submarines deep underwater through the affects they made on the surface through surface tensions.”
“Bull shit,” The Commander muttered.
“Wait just a minute, Commander. Farnsworth, how good are the data on which the university professors based their findings?”
“They were so good that they were immediately stamped Top Secret and confiscated by order of the CNO himself.”
“What? Can you prove that?” The Commodore was going apoplectic with rage at the very idea.
“Yes, sir. The lead scientist for the project, Dr. Melody Bodey, wrote a formal protest about the incident claiming that confiscation of the data would jeopardize the timely delivery of the product of her team’s research.”
The Commodore balled his fists and looked at the ceiling. The General chuckled.
“Commodore, perhaps you should track down the data and the protest document. While he’s doing that, Farnsworth, tell me what the product was supposed to include.”
“General, the hypothesis of Dr. Bodey and her associates supports the idea that large, moving objects at depths up to eight hundred feet can be tracked in near real time through monitoring millimeter differences in surface anomalies from space.”
Over his shoulder, the Commodore said, “General, theoretically, this is possible. Advanced mathematical modeling can provide the computational basis. The key obstacle is having a constellation of dedicated overhead satellites to provide the raw sensor data.”
I could not restrain myself. “We already have the constellation: the open Iridium satellites. The key will be loading the sensors into the sixty-six birds. The downlink can be integrated to provide the real time data.”
The General said, “This sounds both plausible and interesting. Farnsworth, write a one-pager on this and have The Commander help you crisp it up. I’ll take the final draft to the president.”
“General, I recommend writing a plan of disinformation to keep the implications of this from the Soviets.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“Right now, the USSR has a false sense of security about its quieting technologies. I don’t think we want to disabuse them of their current policies. It would behoove us to openly discredit the ideas of the university project and to make the link to the Iridium system most secret. That way, we’ll have a way to trump their quieting and retain our strategic comparative advantage.”
“I like your approach. Alongside your one-page description of the capability, provide a one-page plan to protect the plan and its inherent ideas.”
I had just made a lot of additional work for myself, but it was well worth the effort. With The Commander’s assistance, I put together the information The General desired. I also thought through using the Chronosphere to get me back to Lyudmila to plant the disinformation.
In the time machine, I was transported back the fall of 1984 when the American underwater gurus were first realizing the vulnerability of the submarine leg of the strategic triad. Lyudmila laughed at the Soviet advantage and bragged that, for once, the USA had a problem it could not solve.
“Farnsworth, admit it. Your people cannot overcome this vulnerability. Our submarines will be invisible. We will roam the world’s oceans at will. We can strike you with ballistic missiles without warning. Why don’t you just surrender?”
“I must admit, you’re right. Any way you look at it, the oceans will be your oyster. Our focus on increasing sonar power is doomed as an antidote. Of course, we could simply tag each of your submarines before they leave your home waters. They’ll carry our detection units aboard wherever they go. What do you think of that?”
“You can do this?”
“Think about it. We call the capability Sub Tag. Your submarines will be quiet but they will carry noisy riders. So much for quieting technologies.”
Lyudmila was devastated. She could hardly wait to get back to her masters in the Kremlin to report what I had said.
I could not stop with the Russian campaign. I had to let Dr. Bodey know how to play the press as well.
The Chronosphere took me back to 1978 when the earliest glimmer of the surface tensions became visible in academe at a symposium in Berkeley, California, where Urich, the master of underwater physics spoke about the future of submarine warfare. I invited bespectacled Dr. Bodey to have coffee to discuss a possible grant to fund experimentation to prove her thesis.
“Lieutenant Farnsworth, are you actually offering me money?”
“Yes, and I’ll fund a team of five, including yourself as the tech leader, satellite time and computer resources to do the job.”
“All this, and I won’t have to sleep with anyone?”
I shook my head. “What kind of creatures have you been hanging with?”
“It’s how I got my dissertation committee to grant my Ph.D.”
“Well, this is professional. It’s also going to be highly classified.”
“Does that mean the team will have to be pot-free?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Bummer. Tell me again how you discovered what I was doing.”
“Actually, I heard about your work indirectly from a Russian scientist who wanted to meet you. I diverted her and came as soon as possible to let you know you’ll only get the money if you play by our rules.”
“And your rules are what?”
“You’ll have to steer clear of the Soviets and limit communication to those who have the clearance and need to know. If anyone gets too close, you’ll have to confess your research is going nowhere fast and your money is running out. You’ll be assigned a coach who will drill you in what you are to say and how you are to say it.”
“I’m deducing you think my research is extremely important.”
“It is. But we can use it only if we protect what you are doing. You’ll be in grave danger if anyone suspects the truth. You might be kidnapped or killed.”
“I’m much too young to die.”
“Give me your phone number. My office will be in touch so you can fill out the paperwork for your grant. In the mean time, mum is the word!”
“What does my mom have to do with it?”
My head hurt when I left her sitting in the coffee shop. I arranged for her funding and for a brilliant, young naval officer to be her project manager. She had no way of knowing at the time that he would be her future husband and one day would be the navy’s counterintelligence czar.
Returning to 1985, I found The General in ecstasy about the president’s positive reception for the ideas in my two papers. The Soviets had taken my disinformation as truth. Dr. Bodey had proved her theories in hard experiments. She had also wed her project manager.
It was now time to travel to the year 2000 to gauge the success of my scheming. I decided to visit Lyudmila first. I found her drunk and weeping over a half-finished bottle of vodka.
“Why are you weeping, beautiful lady?”
She looked up with tears streaming down her face. She stood and grasped me in her arms.
“Everything I worked for all my life is gone. The USSR is no more. I don’t have a job. I feel so isolated and alone. What can you do to help me?”