A quantum computer, vox.com
So the work began in that ironclad room, code work by day, with Claire, Nicolo, Jason, Jason’s friend Tim, and Jaime, sitting around the table and designing the architecture to a strange new language.
By nights we reassembled without the two programmers, reviewed the work of the day, the sketches and scripts, and refined our plans for the group once the language was perfected and encrypted, discussing who should be included, how big the clan, and what were its purposes and ends.
The only place to manufacture it secretly would be the small lab on Mr. Tanaki’s island, still in operation and servicing the South Pacific islands. We gave him a call, and in a few days, he was sitting with us along with his daughter, in our panic room, now aptly named, as we explained our fears and Claire’s gleanings of a new geopolitical crisis. He agreed wholeheartedly with our mission. It was the scope of the project which baffled us. At first, we debated a small group of collaborators, in the tens or hundreds, for secrecy. But if the code were that impenetrable and unbreakable, even by us, or any spy in our group, why not expand it to tens of thousands across the globe, impervious to discovery and working together to counteract every state plot, as we faced thousands, if not millions, of opponents.
This broader vision won the day, and Mr. Tanaki agreed to hand over his whole facility for us to produce a hundred thousand of the altered chips as soon as the code was ready.
It was now early Spring. Tim and Nicolo went home, their minds erased by Claire of the details of what they helped create. The single drive on which the code had been written was now on a plane to Tahiti with Jaime and Samantha on board.
It was a perfect time for our plan because the world was still in a glow of harmony and cooperation. The last of the poorer populations around the globe were finally getting their wafers, and huge stockpiles were manufactured for the future. The problem of chip decay and the conflict with taking a replacement chip was now the focus of hundreds of teams of scientists.
The first and simplest solution was the invention of a mini EMP simulator, already past the trial stages. It looked like one of those round helmets of a deep sea diving outfit from a hundred years ago with a few fat wires attached, running to a transformer and battery pack the size of a suitcase. You clasped it around your head, your partner flipped a switch and zap, you were chip free in an instant, as simple as an x-ray, and with the same negligible side effects. Mr. Tanaki procured one such device for our house while he was here by gaining a controlling interest in the small, silicon valley company that made them, along with a dozen other ingenious gizmos. It was called ‘Zaptech’. He sent Claire and Akika there for a day as his agents to finalize the transaction and also make the delivery of our unit mysteriously disappear from all records. We set up our machine in the panic room. It took ten minutes to recharge but could service that many people in a day, every day.
Jaime and Samantha returned early one evening in June with half of the batch of altered wafers, all packed in twenty binders in one heavy suitcase. The code drive had been encrypted and buried on the island when they finished, and all the computers in the lab reformatted. The other fifty thousand sat in Mr. Tanaki’s safe. After a long, celebratory dinner and much catching up with wine and talk, we decided that tomorrow would be our ‘D’ day, ‘division day’, departure from the rest of the world, from all others, but only in one single aspect, their ability to possibly manipulate us.
“Here we go again” I said to Claire in the darkness of our bedroom.
Then I had this thought. “Claire, do you think you’ll still have your codes and your powers to program the original chips in people’s heads once you erase yours tomorrow?”
“Yes. I have all that information, all the programs I developed and refined over the years on drives, and I’ll review them when the new chip deploys. They represent years of hard work. I want you to study them too. For anything our group attempts, we’ll need to work in unison.”
“I agree, but how do I know you won’t be able to translate those codes to influence our heads?”
“This time it’s different” she replied. “I know nothing I could say would relieve all your fears, but I need you to trust me on this, and you can only find out by swallowing the new wafer and see what ensues. The difference this time is little Rollo. He’ll be in your arms and under your influence daily and you know I could never hurt him, or the man that’s holding him.”
"You could if you considered him a pawn” I replied sarcastically.
“He’s our flesh and blood, Roland. How could you say such a thing.”
“You know me by now, honey. I postulate the worst and hope for the best. I’ll trust you on this one. We’ll erase our heads tomorrow, and I’ll even be the first to eat the new chip, because I was the first in the beginning, and have the honors, so to speak.”
“Rolland, this is why I love you so much. You take such chances for hope and love.”
“Such ‘leaps’ is more like it. You might want to read ‘The Praise of Folly’ I suggested, right before I hugged her and we fell asleep.
The next morning Naomi and Jason joined the four of us for breakfast, after which we all headed upstairs. Samantha insisted she be the first to test the strange helmet, as she was the most in need of it. We all agreed. Jaime flipped the switch. We noticed a twitch through her body, unlike the real EMP blast, but as we helped her out of the contraption, she smiled broadly and said in a faint voice she felt better already and that it didn’t hurt at all. There was only a momentary flash and a mild shock. I suppose such a charge was overkill on the designer’s part, not wanting any lawsuits from the few thick skulled people who might try it.
I was next and felt a definite jolt. As I stood up I noticed a bit of dizziness, so I sat down again, in a mild state of confusion. My head seemed muddy, so I tested it with a few questions, my mother’s maiden name, a poem by Horace, a math question. The words and numbers came as they were called for slowly, so I concluded that my intellect was unimpaired.
I told the others what to expect and they proceeded in turn, chatting idly during the ten-minute waits. Most of our attention was directed towards Samantha, who was now pacing the floor, full of energy but also full of thought. We had the six new wafers on a platter on the table waiting for when we’d all be ready. These were two hundred thousand chip units, totally unprogrammed, like the very first ones. We spent the next hour in that little room each taking a turn. While waiting, we discussed who we should include in our group. We all agreed upon Scout, Mary and Monique, right away, and with a little more debate included Charlie, Rebecca and her parents. Lucille and the Abbotts came next to mind. We had so many wafers there was no need to exclude any of our acquaintance. Jason wanted to include Will, as he helped design the chip and several others on his staff whom he trusted implicitly.
Naomi said we should include Natalie, her husband and Bill and the governor himself. We accepted the others, but the governor brought up a sticky issue. If we added him, whom I knew to be trustworthy and in no way a party to any secret government plots, he might insist on other governors and officials who might be complicit. Then our group would be compromised. Secret leagues of any kind were complicated. A single infiltrator, like a virus, might uncover and destroy us. We wisely decided to put the discussion on hold until the chips kicked in the next day and we could attack this issue with better insight.
Just as the last of us, Jason, was finishing his ‘scrub’, Samantha turned to us:
“I’ve decided I’m not going to ingest another wafer today. I’m going to give myself a thirty-day break to think about it and get back in touch with my simple self. I want to see who I am before I go about radically changing my brain again.”
This comment, such a deviation from our plan, took us all by surprise. But as I gave it a moment’s reflection, it seemed like a wise idea.
“She’s right” I said. “Samantha that’s a great idea. I’m going to follow suit. Look, we’re in no rush. Let’s all enjoy a break from the madness, perhaps the last time we can. I’m sure it will do our heads good to clear and recalibrate before we jump into the game again. I say we all swear a pact right now to join Samantha in this moratorium.”
The others slowly turned their heads from me to their undecided companions, in deep reflection. Jaime spoke first:
“You know, I think she might be right. I have no pressing duties right now. I’m on vacation, and this pause might be just the break I need, we need, Samantha and me. We can rest without a care in the world and when we feel like it talk and reevaluate all that’s happened between us and in the world. Jason, do you think you could go a whole month running the lab on the hill without chip enhancement?”
“Ya, sure. I’d just need to use my office computer a lot more. But I’m sure my secretary would catch on before lunch. She reads me like the morning paper. But I could throw her some excuse and everything would be fine. I am her boss. Naomi, do you think you could handle it. It would be like a picnic in a park we’ve never been to before, just the two of us.”
“A month-long picnic” she replied. “But yes, I think it would be good for all of us. How about you Claire?”
I could see from a sort of twisted smile on Claire’s face that she had some serious doubts.
“I don’t know if our plans can wait, or if the world will wait, but I’m willing to try. Thirty days of normality before the plunge, I’m in.”
We all hugged or shook hands, and I whisked away the platter of wafers to the safe before anyone changed their mind.
It was still mid-morning, but a beautifully June day, so we repaired to the deck and the lawn chairs.
Samantha spoke up:
“Roland, since we’ll be staying here, you have a good deal of space in your garage, would you mind if I ordered some gym equipment and set it up in there. I’d like to spend a part of each day working out as I used to long ago. I want to get back in touch with my body before I send my mind who knows where.”
All of us immediately agreed to such an excellent plan, lying there on lazy chairs and bored and wanting some activity in our daily schedules. So that very hour we all repaired to my old computer and ordered the equipment online. Charlie had come by and fixed it years ago, and the internet and Amazon were in full swing again. But the thing was antiquated, as Claire kept mentioning, a relic, as we all peered at the small screen and picked out four large pieces of gym equipment, mats, water coolers, etc. The items arrived, and the gym took shape the next day. We even moved the large screen TV from the basement to a wall of the garage so we could watch the news while working out.
Samantha was a marvel of energy in the following days, jogging with Jaime an hour, first thing in the morning, then straight to her new gym after breakfast. Jaime would head to the lab at that point. Naomi had arranged for him an office beside hers as a technical advisor, where he could tackle any little queries he chose, with full freedom to roam the expansive facilities and poke his nose into all the operations. He had star recognition and many of his old colleagues were there, all managers of sorts now.
Claire and I would try to keep up with Samantha on the machines in her after breakfast regimen, Claire always leaving first to collect Rollo from the Abbott’s house. He was the morning darling there, eating breakfast on a propped up seat, a purple cushion, like royalty, the attention of all. Claire would rescue him from this adulation, bathe and dress him for the day in our house when I would follow around eleven to take him by the hand to the library. We set up one corner for his toys, Lego blocks and such like things, but I also took the time, when I saw he was willing, to teach him the alphabet or at least to look at pictures in books with me, sitting on my lap, listening to my long descriptions and digressions.
Claire and I would then manage the few household chores, fixing lunch, Rollo at our side, while Samantha was all the while in the makeshift gym pumping iron. Afternoons we spent on the deck. A sandbox had been set up for Rollo right next to it. The jacuzzi was now in full operation again after many years of disuse, every night after Rollo was put to bed, filling up with the four or six of us, where we would discuss the petty affairs of the day in our bathing suits, relaxing, sipping wine.
But I could see after the first week that Claire, though she tried like a trooper, was getting bored. So she addressed me one afternoon:
“Rolland, if I can’t have a computer in my head for another twenty-three days I think I’d like to have a fancy new unit set up in our basement where the eagle's nest used to be. Yours needs to be put out with the trash.”
“That’s fine with me Claire. Do you have one in mind?”
‘Yes I do in fact. I saw it set up in the office of the head of Zaptech, a young German fellow named Hans. It had six beautiful, large monitors in a curved array in two rows on wall mounts along with two keyboards, two chairs so we could sit together and explore, and below the long desk a quantum computer, a million times faster than regular computers, which he boasted about, linked to routers and hubs and other gadgets. Ever since I saw that set-up, I can’t get it out of my mind. And one other thing Roland, I keep thinking that I know Hans from somewhere before, briefly, a long time ago, but I can’t place where.”
“Well let’s give him a call and invite him over” I said. We own his company. He can give us an exact list of components and where to get them, and we’ll duplicate it here. I remember when you came home that day you said he was an intriguing fellow. I’d like to meet him.”
“Yes” Claire expanded. “At that first meeting in his office, he tried to bowl me over with his telepathic powers. It started with a few invasive probes, so I threw him back a few jabs of my own. Then it quickly devolved into an all-out sparring match.”
“Who won?” I asked rhetorically.
“I did, of course. He conceded right before I was about to deliver the KO. He saw it coming.”
"Claire, your daily social interactions amaze me, give him a call.”
Claire made the call right away.
The next day, about noon, he was at our doorstep with a big grin on his face. We shook hands, introduced ourselves and invited him in.
“Claire” he began, “I knew your face was familiar when I first met you but I couldn’t place it. After you left our facilities it came to me. You’re the one in the background of all those successful UN missions on the news. I’m honored to meet you.”
“And I keep thinking I know you too, from years ago” Claire said.
“I rather doubt that” he replied.
We got straight to the business at hand, showing him the house and the basement where we wanted to set up a mirror image of his office array. He told us he’d just finished his, that he knew exactly where to purchase all the components, the technicians to install it, and would be glad to arrange everything. But then he added:
“You know this is going to set you back almost a million.’
“Not a problem” I replied, “sky’s the limit.”
At this point, Samantha stepped into the basement in her skimpy workout shorts and bikini top, still covered in sweat, with Jaime holding her hand. He’d come home early that day on a whim, to spend the afternoon with his girl.
Hans gazed at the both of them for a second then blurted out:
“I know you two. You were in Australia making the lab there, changing the continent. You were constantly in the news. What kind of place is this? I thought this was just a house.”
“Why don’t we go upstairs and have lunch and talk” I offered.
Soon we were sitting in the dining room. I went next door to ask Lucille to bring over some treats. Rollo was taking his afternoon nap there. Claire had a sense that this was going to be an important event, so she snuck off and called Jason to get Naomi over here right away. Soon they entered the room, and Hans again had the very same reaction:
“You two run the lab up on the hill. I can’t believe the company I’m in. You’re all famous, all except you Roland. Who are you?”
Jaime broke in: “Roland is probably the most famous person here. He was the first one to eat the wafer.”
Then we heard the most unexpected reply.
Hans began: “No one ever believes me when I tell them this story, but I’m telling you I was the first.”
Claire burst in: “What do you mean?”
“I was given the experimental chip by a scientist named Bob. It almost killed me.”
Now Jaime spoke up: “Hans, Hans, I remember that name. I know who you are. I believe you now. You were the first human trial, the first victim. You’re supposed to be dead.”
“I almost was” Hans replied.
‘Yes” Claire broke in. “Now I remember you. You were sitting next to me in that ugly office on those plastic chairs as we waited hours and hours for our interview to do the mind experiment, to make three hundred dollars.”
Hans turned to Claire: “I don’t remember you.”
Then peering more intently: “The redhead next to me, was that you? You’ve changed so much.”
“So have you” Claire replied. “Tell us your story."
