Analog SFF, March 2012 (22 page)

"Oh."

"So, you see, there's no way to read brain waves across a large spatial gap."

"Your mother's name is Gurneet and your father's is Manveer."

Singh tipped his head in a small sign of concession. “I admit I have no explanation for you knowing that."

"So, I'm what, six feet from you?"

"About two meters, yes."

"And this square-inverse law you mentioned—"

"Inverse-square."

"If I went to the far end of the building the signal should drop off to almost nothing, right?"

"The building is—I don't know—a hundred meters on its longest side perhaps. So, yes, if we were as far apart as we could get in this building, the signal strength would be one over one hundred squared, or one one-ten-thousandth as strong, assuming there
is
a signal, and assuming it is broadcast in all directions."

"What if it isn't? What if the linkage is just that—a link, like, you know, a line drawn between you and me?"

Singh stood up and spun in a circle. “And did the link maintain itself during that? What mechanism would there be to keep a beam focused from my head to yours, or from yours to Private Adams's? It's inconceivable."

"All right. Still, let's test it. I'm going to go as far from you as I can without leaving the building, and we'll see if the signal, um . . . attenuates? Is that the right word?"

"Yes."

Susan left the lab and headed down the long corridor, passing patients on gurneys, doctors, nurses, and other people—several of whom tried to question her about how much longer the lockdown was going to last. She made it to the far end of the building as quickly as she could—and then, for good measure, she entered the stairwell and headed up to the sixth floor, which was the highest level.

She found a janitor there in a blue uniform, pushing a mop. “You!” Susan said, pointing at him. “Name a topic."

"Excuse me?"

"A topic—something, anything—to think about."

"Ma'am?"

"Oh, come on, man! It's not that hard a question. Any topic."

"Umm, like, um, baseball, do you mean?"

"Baseball! Fine. Thank you!” And then she turned her back on the no-doubt bewildered man, closed her eyes, and concentrated on the first time she'd ever seen a baseball game live, and . . .

And a memory of her father taking her to Dodger Stadium came to her. She'd spilled her Pepsi all over him, and he'd laughed it off and squirted water at her. She shook her head, clearing her own memory, and tried to summon another, and—

And she was watching the Toronto Blue Jays play, and from a private box, something she herself had never done.

More details: others in the booth. Sikhs, remembered not because they
were
Sikhs but because the colors of their individual turbans had been noted; Sue had previously had no idea that such choices were individual fashion statements. A party, a celebration of . . . of . . .

Ah, yes. Of Ranjip's brother's eighteenth birthday, which—yes—had actually been the day before, but there'd been no game that day. A wonderful memory, a happy memory—and no sense at all that it was more difficult to access or recall than Singh's memories had been when they'd been much closer together. She didn't have to strain, didn't have to cock an ear as if listening to something faint, didn't have to do
anything
differently. It just came to her when she thought about it, as easily as when she'd been right next to Singh.

She headed along the sixth-floor corridor until she got to the stairwell near the elevator station, then went down to three.

Professor Singh was still in his lab. “The first baseball game you saw live was in Toronto, wasn't it?” asked Susan. “For your brother's eighteenth birthday? Your dad rented a private box at the SkyDome."

Singh nodded. “Although they don't call it that anymore. It's the Rogers Centre now."

"You remember it as the SkyDome."

"No doubt.” He blinked. “So you had no trouble reading my memories, even from far away?"

"None."

"I don't understand that. There should have been attenuation, unless . . ."

"Yes?"

He swiveled his chair, turning his back on his computer. “It's . . . no. No, it can't be that."

"What?"

Singh thought for a moment, then, seemingly out of the blue, said, “Do you ever watch
Saturday Night Live?"

"Not since I was a teenager."

"Remember when Mike Myers used to be on? He'd play a Jewish woman named Linda Richman, who had a call-in talk show. When she got emotional, she'd put her hand on her chest and say, ‘I'm all
verklempt.
Talk amongst yourselves. I'll give you a topic.’ And then she'd say something like, ‘The Civil War was neither civil nor a war—discuss.’”

"No, I don't remember that. Oh, wait—um, yes, now I do."

Singh smiled. “Exactly."

"I think the one when the character said, ‘The peanut is neither a pea nor a nut’ was funnier."

Singh nodded slightly. “Perhaps. But the point is, if I tell you to remember something that you don't actually have memories of, but I do,
you
remember it, too. So, let me give you a topic—but don't discuss it. Think about it;
recall
it. Okay?"

She nodded. “Okay."

"Quantum entanglement,” he said.

Her first impulse was to pull a Linda Richman and say, “ . . . is neither quantum nor entangled,” but she didn't even know if that made sense, and—

And it
didn't
make sense. Quantum entanglement was a property of quantum mechanics, and it
did
involve entangling things, and—

And it was
weird.
She'd never heard of anything like it. When pairs of particles are created simultaneously under the right circumstances, they can become linked in such a way that they continue to be connected no matter how far apart they become.

"Wow,” said Susan.

"Wow indeed,” said Ranjip. “Okay. Another topic—well, not really; it's the same topic, but a different way of looking at it. Ready?"

Susan nodded.

"Spooky action at a distance,” Ranjip said.

Susan was startled that she knew this was something Einstein had said. And, yes, it
was
spooky. Change the spin of one entangled particle, and the spin of the other changes instantaneously; they are bound together in an almost magical way—again, no matter how far apart they get from each other.

"Got it,” said Susan, and then she surprised herself by asking a question. “But if it's quantum entanglement, why aren't the linkages symmetrical? I mean, if
A
can read
B,
why can't
B
read
A?"

"The linkages probably
are
symmetrical,” Singh replied. “That is, either
A
or
B
could change any specific shared memory for both of them—the shared memories are entangled, and changes to them at one location would change them at both. But symmetry doesn't imply reciprocity.
A
and
B
have symmetrically shared memories that happen to have originally belonged to
A.
Meanwhile,
B
and
C
have symmetrically shared memories that happened to originally belong to
B.
And so on."

"Ah,” said Susan. “I guess."

"Okay,” said Singh. “New topic, sort of: Penrose and Hameroff."

And that came to her, too: physicist Roger Penrose—a sometimes-collaborator with Stephen Hawking—and the anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff had proposed that human consciousness was quantum mechanical in nature.

It was astonishing: to know something so complex, and yet never have even
heard
of it before. It wasn't like university lectures were running through her head at high speed, and it wasn't like playing Trivial Pursuit, where she had to dig deeply to find the answers; these were things that Singh knew well, and so she knew them well, too, and they came effortlessly to mind as soon as he said the trigger words.

"Got it,” she said again.

"Okay, new topic: the design of my apparatus."

And she now knew all about that, too: a device that used tuned lasers—which emitted photons, which were a type of particle that could indeed be entangled—to selectively excite neurons. His design actually
displaced
the photons that were already there and
substituted
new ones.

Then . . .

"Cytoskeleton."

And:

"Microtubule."

And:

"Bose-Einstein condensate."

She shook her head, as if somehow that would get the pieces to sift out of the swirling jumble they were in and fall into place. And, after a moment, they did. “And this is legit?” Susan said at last.

"Well, it's a legitimate theory,” replied Singh. “Penrose and Hameroff say the actual seat of consciousness, which, of course, must somehow interact with memory, is not in the chemical synapses but rather in quantum effects in the microtubules of the cytoskeleton—the internal scaffolding—of brain cells. Their theory has its passionate advocates—and passionate detractors. But if we
are
dealing with quantum entanglement, that could explain why the linkages don't weaken over distance."

"And does it suggest how to break them?” asked Susan.

"Well, um, no—no, I don't have a clue how to do that. Entanglement is a tricky thing, and normally it's quite fragile. But I'll keep trying to find the answer."

"Do that,” Susan said.

"I will. What about you? Any progress?"

Susan shook her head. “I still don't know who's reading the president."

"What are you going to do if you can't identify who it is?” Singh asked.

Susan said nothing.

"You can't keep all the people here prisoner indefinitely."

Again: nothing.

"They've committed no crime!” said Singh.

"One of them has in his or her possession classified information."

"Not deliberately."

She shook her head. “Doesn't matter.
Possession
of such information is a felony, and they're all suspects."

"You'd like to . . .” Singh began, and then, not able to give voice to it, he tried again: “You'd like to have them
disappear,
wouldn't you?"

Susan lifted her eyebrows. “It's an option."

"They've done nothing wrong!"

"Professor Singh,” Susan said, “look at me. My job is to die for the president, if need be: my life instead of his. I didn't vote for him, I don't agree with most of his policies, I don't even particularly
like
him, but none of that matters. We live in a system in which the president is more important than
anyone,
and this president has been compromised in a way that has to be contained or eliminated. In fact, even breaking the link may not be enough. Yes, once it's severed—if it ever is—the person may not be able to access new memories, but presumably they'll still remember anything they've recalled while the link was intact, right?"

"I don't know,” Singh said. “Honestly. No one has any experience with this."

"Which means,” Susan said, “that we may indeed have to lock these people up indefinitely."

"You can't,” said Singh. “I'll go public."

"It's not my call to make,” said Susan. “But don't count on having that option. In fact . . . “

Singh narrowed his eyes. “Yes?"

"Your work may end up being classified. You have to recognize that you've developed the ultimate interrogation technique. Replicate the linking effect, but with only two people within the sphere. They'd each link to the other, right? An interrogator would know everything a prisoner knew—plans, names, dates, codes, whatever."

"And vice-versa, Agent Dawson. Don't forget that."

"Yes, you'd have to carefully choose your interrogator—make sure
he
doesn't know anything vital . . . that is, if you ever expected to let the prisoner go free again."

Singh had a shocked expression on his face, but Susan pressed ahead. “Let's update the chart,” she said. The Sikh had redrawn his chart on the lab's whiteboard. The grid had twenty columns and three rows; the rows were labeled “Name,” “Can Read,” and “Is Read By."

Susan pointed to the column for Orrin Gillett. “Gillett can read Ivan Tarasov, a security guard."

Singh filled in this information with a blue dry-erase marker.

"Ah,” said Singh. “I interviewed this Tarasov. He can read Dora Hennessey, who was here to donate a kidney to her father.” He wrote this in.

"Yes, I know who she is,” said Susan. “I interviewed Dora just before coming here. She's able to read the memories of Ann January. Mrs. January is a surgical nurse, and—"

"Excuse me,” said Singh. “I'm sorry, but—are you sure?"

"Well, Dora didn't tell me Ann's exact job title,” Susan said, “but she's
some
kind of nurse."

"No, no. I mean, are you sure that Dora Hennessey is reading Ann January?"

"Oh, yes. No question."

Singh pointed at a square on his whiteboard. “Because David January is reading Ann January, too. I just interviewed him."

Susan came over to look at the board. “Husband and wife? Or brother and sister?” But before Singh could reply, she had the answer from his memory. “Husband and wife, right?” she said.

"Yes."

"That's very strange,” said Susan.

"Indeed it is,” said Singh. “We haven't had two people linked to the same person before, and . . . “

"Yes?” prodded Susan.

Singh looked frustrated. “Well, I thought I was making progress puzzling this out. But multiple linkages wouldn't work with the kind of quantum-entanglement we were just talking about; a double linkage would require a complex superposition that I should think would rapidly decohere."

Susan was astonished that talk like this actually now made sense to her. She thought about Singh's theory—not so much the details, but his level of confidence in it. He
had
been sure he was on the right track, and—

"He's lying,” Susan said.

"What?” said Singh.

"He's lying. This David January fellow is lying."

"Why would he lie about who he's linked to?” asked Singh. But then he got it: “Oh! The president!"

"Exactly,” said Susan. “I'm going to have a word with Mr. January myself.” She looked at Singh. “Cheer up, Ranjip. Maybe we'll only have to eliminate one person."