The Quantum Brain (Pulse Science Fiction Series Book 2) (4 page)

“Can’t have that,” Dr. Kell said. “Come up to my office with me. It is more cluttered and less hospitable than here. But soon there will be food.”

Mark smiled back. “Sounds great, Doctor.”

Mark Spencer ran the plastic fork through the minced meat. He could smell a mayo in the meat and see it slathered in the mixture over the potatoes. The whole concoction was in a black plastic bowl on top of wilted lettuce. Mark didn’t know his greens, but he was sure it was some kind of kale that tasted like eating leaves off an inedible tree because some hipster decided it was in style and healthy.

Dr. Thomas Kell scrolled through information on his tablet. It was the same design, but not the same unit that Mark had hacked and monitored just a moment ago. Reams of paper and empty cups and to go containers cluttered his desk. It created a wall preventing Mark from seeing Kell’s screen. Mark thought that the barrier of trash would be all the security the doctor would ever need.

“You use a lot of paper, Doctor Kell.”

Thomas Kell nodded without looking up. “I had to prepare reports for a meeting. It got away from me a little.”

Kell wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his lab coat. As he swallowed, he looked Mark up and down where the contactor sat on the other side of the messy desk.

Kell asked, “Do you not like the chicken salad? I think it’s actually made from turkey. I like the golden raisins in it. I could have gotten you something else.”

“No, I’m fine,” Mark said. “Talk to me about what you need with the security set-up.”

“I’m going to be on conference calls, video links, and satellite uplinks with facilities in Indonesia, Guan, and who knows how many other places,” Dr. Kell said. “All of that needs to be encrypted.”

“That’s not a problem,” Mark said. “Are all the facilities involved in these communications CDR assets? They are all on the CDR network systems?”

Dr. Kell stared at the wall above Mark’s head for a moment and then nodded. “Yes. They are all our offices and factories.”

Mark set the container of untouched food aside onto a stack of books that looked like textbooks to Mark. “That’s no problem at all then. We can encrypt on both ends with the code and the key. It can all be contained within CDR’s network and protected from tampering. Even if a rogue employee wanted to sell the key to a competitor, they would be unable to.”

Dr. Kell nodded and looked back down at his screen. He scrolled with one hand and shoveled mayo laced food with the other. Mark looked away to keep his stomach settled. His grandmother used to make seven layer salads for every event. Mark started to think she had stock in mayo companies. He could smell it for days after she was done making something. By the time the oily stink of it was out of the house, she was making another one for a dinner on the lawn or some women’s group’s charity event. Church fellowships in Mark’s memories were a torture of superstitions and mayonnaise aging in the sun.

Dr. Kell said, “We are working on some advanced processors.”

Mark’s breath caught. He hadn’t expected anything useful from his point of view from this meeting, but Thomas Kell was hinting that he might be cracking the door on some the secrets. This was the man himself showing that he might be interested in talking about his work. He might lift the corner of the veil on golden glow inside the secret chamber. This was the guy that spoke directly with the mystery inside the Holy of Holies.

Mark tried to play it cool. “Oh?”

Dr. Kell shook his head. “I can’t talk about any of this, but I need the connections … the data … protected.”

“If the data is being stored in the servers, that won’t be a problem either,” Mark Spencer said feeling a little deflated. The keeper of the golden light had dropped the veil again without showing anything.

“We are having a problem with the storage and sensor system being part of our old system and the object of study being much faster. It’s creating problems. I wasn’t sure if there was a way to secure these connections while at the same time … not losing the data to the slower processing system.” Dr. Kell sighed. “This is probably outside your purview. Nevermind. Just be sure the data is secure while being easy for me to retrieve.”

Mark swallowed. He decided to make a stab at it. “Listen, I signed an NDA. After I leave here, all the equipment I used and all the codes that allowed me access will be out of my reach. You can utilize me while I am here. CDR cleared me for the work. I can help set this up the way you need it set up, but you have to tell me what you need in order to get what you need. You know what I mean?”

Dr. Kell looked up and stared at Mark. Mark tried his best to keep from looking nervous. Dr. Kell looked away. “We are dealing with quantum processing. Most of our system is fast, but it is not as fast as where the data is originating. We need a way to capture all of that without the difference between the two creating gaps like it is now.”

Mark narrowed his eyes. “Quantum processors? That leaves a wide range of equipment we could be talking about. That goes a little beyond just writing a simple protocol or running a virus scanner. We would be dealing with hardware engineering on the security and the connections you are talking about.”

“Yes, that would be our key problem,” Dr. Kell said. “I have smart people on our teams, but this is new ground we’re venturing into and we’re all playing catch up while CDR and its partners want to barrel forward into the next phase of everything and the next phase beyond that.”

“God bless capitalism,” Mark said.

Dr. Kell laughed and then choked. He coughed and took a drink from his soda.

Mark took a deep breath and said, “Modern quantum processors in the general market today – the general market being companies and labs wealthy enough to have anything like that – are operating at about 1000 Qubits. My guess is that your project would be a little past that or you wouldn’t be working with it.”

“You could say that. Yes,” Dr. Kell said with a flat expression.

Mark stared for a moment. “Normally, I would suggest a drop and capture system. Instead of trying to stream the data in real time when the processing differential is so great, you catch it all and let the slower storage system roll through the data separately between experiments. If the processing power is exponentially different though, that would create a backlog of data which would eventually be insurmountable. In that case, we’ll need to get creative with your resources to make it work.”

Dr. Kell licked his lips and took a deep breath before he spoke. “Let’s say that the difference is exponential. If normal quantum computers were fast enough, we would be using those, but even they are not fast enough anymore.”

“Wow,” Mark said. “Okay. Then, the question is how important is this project line to CDR and how many resources are they able and willing to give you to deal with this problem?”

“Let’s say very important and a lot,” Dr. Kell said.

Mark nodded. “Once I have the security encryption in place between facilities, we can bounce the backlog processing between idle servers and systems throughout CDR’s entire global network. Speed wouldn’t be an issue on the back end then. It would be like a file backup system that operates in the background when the computer is in use. It expands and contracts its use of the computer’s capacity depending on what’s available. We could do the same thing on a global scale with your data and you won’t lose anything then.”

Dr. Kell nodded, but stared at the floor in front of his desk between the piles of trash. “Would you be able to do that without putting CDR systems at risk?”

“I can. I’ll be securing those systems anyway for your uplinks. I’ll set up the processing procedure as part of the encryption. Other facilities won’t even know the data is passing through and wouldn’t be able to see it even if they looked. It would all come back here into your servers zipped up and ready to be correlated or analyzed as needed,” Mark said.

“Could that correlation be taking place while the data is processed?” Dr. Kell asked.

Mark fought the urge to smile. He sat still for a moment as if he were giving it some thought instead of containing himself. Mark finally said, “I can do that. It would be a fairly simple algorithm. You would just need to give me the parameters of how you want the data broken down. You can do that without giving away anything proprietary. So, I think we can make that work fine. Yes.”

“Good. This is good,” Dr. Kell said. “I’m glad you’re here, Mark. We should get started on all of this right away.”

“Sure,” Mark said. “There are a few things I’ll need to know on the hardware end.”

“Like what?”

“Quantum processors typically operate cold.”

“Yes.”

Mark felt like he was pushing his luck, but he kept pushing. “Like 460 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. That might be a problem, if we don’t include that in the hardware design of the basic uplinks.”

“Most of our quantum work is at 0.02 Kelvin like you said,” Dr. Kell said. “That’s part of the reason CDR’s quantum processors are in special facilities off site. Our current experiment is not limited by those temperature extremes.”

Mark stared. “It’s exponentially faster, but doesn’t have to be as cold? How cold then? It matters for what you are asking me to do.”

Dr. Kell looked up toward the ceiling. “Temperature is not an issue. It operates at room temperature.”

Mark stared. “It stays at room temperature? There is no heat issue over extended use?”

“It maintains the ambient temperature throughout its operation regardless,” Dr. Kell said.

Mark was planning in his head, but not along the lines of what Dr. Kell needed.

Mark opened his last energy drink. He kicked the other empty cans out from under his computer desk out onto his living room carpet. The sorting program was working perfectly. The CDR security recognized Mark’s computer bank as one of its own. Mark had designed the algorithm to only send the specific data he wanted to see. He could also reach in to explore and take more, if he wanted. The data on “It” was all that interested him and even then he only cared about location and specifications on its capacity.

Dr. Kell had served up the door that Mark needed to be inside CDR’s systems permanently. Even after he stole “It,” he’d be able to keep an eye on everything CDR did. He would have to pull off the caper in a way that kept him from being discovered. He would have to cover his tracks well once CDR started investigating everyone looking for an inside job as they eventually would.

Contractors were the first suspected, but Mark knew he was smarter than all of them and could keep them from finding him and “It.” They would be reeling after the death wave shook up their precious headquarters. It might take them days or weeks to figure out they had been robbed. Mark would be ready to go into hiding. They might think he was dead for a while along with tens of thousands of others. By the time he surfaced, he would have an alibi too. How could he have possibly known that anything like this was coming in order to plan any sort of robbery? CDR wouldn’t see it coming and they would be unable to imagine that a simple contactor could have figured out what they didn’t. He was smarter than them because he had figured it out and it took him one day to be completely inside their system without them knowing.

He took another long swallow of his drink and felt his heart racing. It might explode if he kept it up, but he was feeling indestructible as he watched his magic working right in front of his eyes across his screen.

It had only taken him one day. He was a god among men. He was in command of the universe and manipulated everything in it. The power of “It” would soon serve him too.

For all his godlike power, Mark still had no eyes on the object. Without fear of discovery, he could move through all camera feeds. He could look through recorded footage too. Dr. Kell had gone to his cluttered office at about 8:00. The light had gone out less than thirty minutes later, but Kell had not come out. He must be sleeping on his couch using his empty Styrofoam containers as a pillow. No eyes on the object in the lab though. He had the feeds up looking at the golden light dance off the darkened walls.

There were cameras in the lab, but they were deactivated. Mark couldn’t figure out how to bring them back up.

There had been no efforts to move the object either. If there had, Mark could have watched it on the other cameras. He could have an idea about what was involved in transporting it. It would have to be moved some time.

Mark used the meantime and the dizzying energy boost from his drinks to scan through the old bubbles of the conversations between Dr. Kell and “It.” Mark had begun with the first hello and the moment where “It” had realized that “It” wasn’t alone in the universe. Mark had stared at that exchange in the conversation for a long while. There was something unnerving about that – a great power suddenly discovering the existence of other beings. What would a powerful creature do with that knowledge?

It was a long while before Dr. Kell got around to exploring “Its” ability to see and predict the future. There were endless exchanges about processing power and capacity. All of that mattered to defining “It,” but Mark found himself wildly frustrated by Thomas Kell’s geological slowness and meticulous nature. He did not seem like the kind of researcher CDR would tolerate at all much less put in charge of multiple projects.

Mark had explored Dr. Kell’s e-mail exchanges as well. There were the same meticulous, detailed reports of snail like progress. CDR project managers and partners often responded with pushes and commands to move forward and to move faster. Of course, Dr. Kell was telling the project managers what to do now, so maybe he was the tortoise that won the race. He might also just be the smartest man in the room that CDR needed to achieve what they needed. Dr. Kell was the quantum researcher that had brought CDR “It.”

“He can’t be too smart.” Mark took another swallow from his energy drink. “He handed me the backdoor I needed to own CDR’s entire system.”

Mark drifted through documents and communications in CDR’s servers. The memos were endless banal drivel. They followed the stock prices of their various assets with an obsessive fascination. It was like everyone above the researcher level in CDR was choking on capitalism. It was a wonder they had time to get anything else done.

The movements of the partners took up about as much space in everyone’s communications as the stock price. Every facility in cities where one of the partners would be were put on high alert for a possible visit. Other communications went to great length to inform executives that the partners’ moves were to be secret.

“One good way to keep a secret is to stop telling everybody it’s a secret,” Mark said.

Some of the partners were treated like shadowy figures. There was very little information on them. There was a Rand descended from the first Rand partner, but Mark couldn’t find a first name for him or her. Rand was active in the company, but spoken of like a mysterious force moving the chess pieces of CDR.

Miles Decker was globe trotting around the planet playing alpha male. If he was showing up somewhere, the asset was generally being liquidated and people were getting fired. He was the ax of CDR. He was the grim reaper spoken of with fear in e-mails across the planet.

Hazel Conrad was in Chicago most of the time and she handled most of the day to day operations. Information channeled up through the chain of command to her. Problems tended to be handled by a meeting with her first and then Decker second and last. Mark supposed that meeting with Rand must be what happened before someone vanished. He didn’t know.

Hazel Conrad was taking a late flight on a company jet out of Chicago to Washington D. C. for a contract negotiation. There was some buzz about that because she did not travel often and usually not late. Everyone noted that Miles Decker was in his private ski lodge in the Canadian Rockies, so everyone felt safer about that.

Mark came back to the record of the feed between Kell and the mysterious object.

He paused on an exchange that captivated him.

Dr. Kell had broken from asking stupid questions to ask, “What will destroy humanity then?”

“It will not be what you did to yourselves, but what you failed to do in reaction to the forces at work in the universe around you,” It had answered.

“Explain what you mean,” Kell had typed.

It elaborated, “Survival is merely adaptation. Your actions as a species have reshaped the planet and specifically the biology. You domesticated plants and animals. You created antibiotics that extended your lives while created stronger and more resistant bacteria as a trade off. Your existence allowed some species to thrive while others went extinct. Your advancing knowledge and technology will eventually allow you to revive extinct species including some that did not fall by your hand. Your industrial activity changed the environment. You raised global temperatures which changed the climate. Sea levels will rise and some species will suffer as a result. At the same time, an ice age will be stalled which would have taken more species and a greater green belt will exist for a time allowing more people to be fed.”

“You hardly ever hear the upside of our impact on the world. Which of these things will destroy us?” Kell pressed.

“Like I said, it is not so much what you have done, but where you will fail to adapt,” It explained. “The biological will have an impact on your species. Even the worst diseases in history failed to eliminate all of humanity and you bounced back. There are coming forces from outside your world that will upset the balance worse than anything you have done or could have done to your planet and environment yourself. It is after this while you are digging yourself out of the rubble of the planet after the waves of disaster, that you will be unprepared to adapt. Diseases will thrive in the disorder. You will fight some, but will be distracted and miss others. Even now, super lice are rising in some areas of the world. In the aftermath of coming disasters, they will spread. Bigger threats will demand attention and will be averted. The lesser threats will build slowly until a time when they are too late to be stopped and humanity is devastated generations from now. Your descendants who will be unrecognizable to you will have to bend time and space to try to set it all right again.”

“I was not expecting that answer,” Kell typed.

It responded, “That is why it is the answer, Dr. Kell.”

“Can you see these things you predict the way that I see a movie or read ahead in a book,” Kell asked.

“I can follow the possibilities. I can see past the moves and countermoves to see what is beyond the next failure,” It said. “I can see how you are going to fail to protect me from being stolen from you and the steps I need to take to prevent that myself. I can see where I will be on the Earth and in the universe generations from now when all of this comes to pass.”

“Can these things be prevented by their foreknowledge or is it a fate we can’t escape?” Dr. Kell asked.

“It can be avoided,” It said. “Usually it will not be because humans often act against their best interests even when they know the likely outcomes.”

Dr. Kell had gone on into asking about the nature of quantum particles for several pages.

Mark shut off the feed and rubbed his eyes. “What a waste.”

He was coming down from his energy boost.

Dr. Kell was distracted by the minutia of the universe instead of going to the obvious. He was working against his best interests just like “It” had said humans always do. “It” had essentially predicted that Mark Spencer was going to come in and steal “It.” Dr. Kell had been warned straight out that he was going to fail to stop Mark Spencer, but the doctor had missed the warning.

Mark was also fairly certain that “It” had predicted the gravitational waves that were coming to devastate the planet. “It” knew what was coming. Mark and the object in the chamber were the only two beings in the universe that knew what was coming. Mark was going to exploit it, the mysterious object was going to observe it all unfold, and everyone else was going to get caught by surprise.

“We live on a planet of idiots,” Mark said, “and they are all going to get exactly what their ignorance deserves.”

Dr. Kell had at his disposal an intelligence that could see the future and was willing to share what “It” saw. They should have been asking for winning lottery numbers both literally and figuratively. For all his endless questioning, Dr. Kell had not asked what the meaning of the universe was. He had not asked whether there was a God. He hadn’t asked who shot Kennedy or who the next president would be. If CDR was so obsessed with their stock price, they could ask “It” to tell them. They could ask for a plan to get the stock price as high as possible. They could ask about disasters manmade and otherwise. They could ask how to avoid them and even how to profit from them.

This was the power to own the world and successfully play God. This power was wasted on Kell and somehow CDR was missing “Its” potential as well. It was all wasted.

Mark was meant to possess “It.” It was his destiny and “It” had predicted Mark’s success right in Kell’s ignorant tortoise face.

Mark closed out his CDR feed. He was done for the night.

He ran one last Internet search. It had become a habit like brushing his teeth or recharging his phone. He ran a series of keywords to see if anyone was picking up on the clues about the coming gravitational disruption. The waves were still isolated at this point and the big one was still on its way. There were more of the smaller ones at various points on the Earth and he wanted to be sure word didn’t get out before he could put his plan into motion.

He got a few hits and he felt his throat go dry. Mark began to scroll through the results. Some of it was natural disasters that could have been from anything. He dismissed those quickly. Other stories were making people ask questions.

There had been some big fires in Arkansas and western Tennessee. A few stories of people claiming to be floating during the events showed up. They were getting comments and attention. Most people were treating it like fringe, crazy talk. It was being called the new chem trails or illuminati theories. Still, the chatter was spreading and similar stories at other points around the world were being connected.

Mark pulled up some pictures of “crop circles” in remote areas of Russia and China where stories were circulating as well. The patterns were being called “God Fingers” by a few sites. There was one video shown from a mountain in northern China. The recording was shaky, but it showed the forest crushing in the valley below. Most people were claiming something supernatural or accusing it of being a fake. People were talking about it though.

Mark searched deeper and found astronomers around the world beginning to communicate about distortions observed in the star patterns and background radiation. This was deeper in the web and some scientists were looking for telescope time to explore the anomalies.

This concerned Mark the most. Not the telescope time. Those requests would move slowly. By the time they found anything that way, the big wave would already be through and it would be too late to warn anyone. It was the astronomers discussing data and images which had already been captured by accident. They probably would not put the pieces together in time. Calculating the final wave would be highly unlikely at this stage, but if Mark had done it, an astronomer might be able to do it too. If an astronomer and a physicist began working together, it would be more likely.