Friday Fiction is back, with a short story about a NASA scientist who wonders if he can make a difference for the world — or even for his family.
Jordan Elhaus turned off the television in disgust. The House and Senate hearing on global warming was a farce. No one would listen. He himself had been ordered to not offer to testify. He was the head of climate research for NASA, a position he expected to be shorter-lived than even the Institute for Advanced Concepts department.
The dog looked up at him in puzzlement. "Sorry, Terry, there's no point in watching that farce."
The administration claimed his research was classified because the calculations were done on quantum computers. While not the mystical machines of science fiction, they were still far more powerful than any modern computer. They could not instantly solve "NP Incomplete" problems, but they could grind them fast enough to enable real-time breaking of cryptography. That same power enabled them to give him an incredibly detailed model of Earth's future.
Jordan got up and poured himself another scotch. He added ice, thinking of the contrast. Humanity had a year at most to avoid doom. The tipping point was far nearer than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change hinted. The loss of the ice sheets at the poles were the clue. The permafrost was next, and when it melted, the methane release would push global warming far beyond human control. Thinking this, Jordan gulped the scotch down.
He looked at the glass. He wanted to throw it at the wall, to watch it smash into pieces just as the dreams for the future of the human race would be smashed into pieces. But he didn't. Jordan was too controlled to vent his rage that way.
He heard Laura pull into the garage. He went to the door to help her with the groceries. She came up the stairs empty-handed, with that smile on her face. That was the smile he'd seen when they met as freshmen at MIT, that smile she'd given him as she said "I do." She ran the rest of the way to him and hugged him fiercely.
"Jor…she started to say, but her voice broke. "I love you. We're pregnant!"
Terry jumped up on the two of them, sensing the excitement and trying to join in, wagging his tail with all his power.
At first, Jordan was overwhelmed with joy at the thought of a child. But then a cold chill almost knocked him over. What sort of world would they be bringing their child into? He continued to hold his wife tight, afraid to let her see his face. He barely heard her speak of baby names, Karen if it were a girl, Calvin if it were a boy. No, wait, his brother had chosen Karen for their girl's name; no matter. Laura felt sure that the child was a boy.
In one of those dark jokes that Jordan told himself and no one else ever knew of, he wondered what would happen to that liquid string Brane drive when they closed NASA's Institute for Advanced Concepts. But it wasn't a joke, was it? He only knew about the drive because it, too, required time on the quantum computers. Could he get some of that team to help him steal the drive? The IAC scientists were dying to test out the first faster-than-light spaceship drive, but with budget cuts, they didn't think they'd ever get the chance. Maybe he could give them that chance.
Only then did he hug his wife with hope. "Everything will be all right. I promise you everything will be all right for our child." Jordan would save his family.
At the very least, he'd save his child.
I told this story to the folks at the comic book store. Eventually someone caught on and advised me to not sell the idea to a comic book company for $125. What appears to be blatant beating-over-the-head to me is apparently obscure to everyone else.
That’s probably just as well. I don’t want to have to deal with DCMA takedown notices or lawsuits for copyright or trademark infringement. What I did is clearly within the realm of social satire, parody, and commentary, but who wants to hire a lawyer?
Jor El? Oh that’s bad even for you. And I thought you didn’t believe in quantum computers? They’re just like magic and prayer, right? Except that they’re testable of course.
Here’s a story you should read: Michael Moorcock’s Behold the Man. Also features some alt history stuff. Synopsis from Wikipedia:
He then makes his way to Nazareth in search of Jesus. When he finds Mary and Joseph, Mary turns out to be little more than a whore, and Joseph, a bitter old man, sneers openly at her claim to have been impregnated by an angel. Worse, their child Jesus is a profoundly retarded hunchback who incessantly repeats the only word he knows: Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. Karl, however, is so deeply committed to the idea of a real, historical Jesus that, at this point, he himself begins to step into the role, gathering followers, repeating what parables he can recall, and using psychological tricks to simulate miracles. When there’s no food, he shows the people how to pretend to eat to take their minds off their hunger; when he encounters illness caused by hysteria, he cures it. Gradually, it becomes known that his name is Jesus of Nazareth.
In the end, determined to live the story of Jesus to its decidedly bitter end, he orders a puzzled Judas to betray him to the Romans, and dies on the cross. His last, agonized words, however, are not Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani, but the phonetically similar English it’s a lie….it’s a lie…it’s a lie…
I certainly believe that quantum computers are possible. You misread, misinterpreted, or deliberately misconstrued my comment. Your choice.
Quantum computers cannot solver the NP-Incomplete problem, although that is how they are portrayed in science fiction. You need to write a program such that some commonality of all the calculations can be discovered. Picking one correct answer out of 10^23rd possibilities is not something a quantum computer could do.
The Michael Moorecock story is an old one I read a long time ago — probably before you were born. It’s cute, similar in vein to Arthur. C. Clarke’s The Star. Of course, both are speculative fiction, with Moorecock’s story having the added problem of being time travel. (I did a recent post on time travel — it’s probably impossible on a macroscopic scale or in any useful way.)
It’s one thing to imagine a 20th century man pulling those stunts back in the first century, but a bit more difficult to imagine someone with those skills from that time period. Strange, I wouldn’t have expected you to mention that story for that reason. I’m assuming you don’t actually believe Jesus was a time traveler.
What any of that has to do with this short story, I fail to see. One might almost suspect that you were trying to pick a fight. You’d never do that, never stoop to attempting (albeit failing) to insult someone, simply to try to get them angry.
Strange thing, I’m not really into game playing lately.
I am pleased to see that someone was able to catch the drift. It wasn’t a pun so much as an homage to a tradition in the comics genera. Alternate world stories are often used where similar names are used to clue the reader into who the characters represent. I was following in the tradition. I suspect you aren’t familiar with that.
I was, I’ll admit, proud of the dog’s name. Krypto is the dog from Krypton, so Terry would be the dog from Terra. A bit obscure, but the parallels work.
Most important, to me, is the comparison between Jor-El, who was banned by the powers that be from speaking about the danger to Krypton and those government scientists whom the Bush administration has attempted to muzzle.
Well, here’s what you wrote in the past about quantum theory:
I really should do a parody of that video, though. I think I could do a great “Mormon, Mohamed, and Dark Matter” one that would be hysterical. There’s lots of “magical” things about dark matter, almost no evidence, and unless you’ve actually studied the quantum and astrophysics, it does sound delusional. “Ghost” matter that passes right through you and can’t be seen? Magical particles that leave no trace of their existence?
Yes, there are magical and incongruent and difficult things about quantum theory. There’s also a testable working prototype of a quantum computer. If it fails, then we discard it, ever so wisely. Unlike delusional faith. But that’s a discussion that we’ve had and that you’ve abandoned (unless you’ve read the Big Three of Dennett, Harris and Dawkins and you can now tell me what the evil atheist agenda actually is…)…as far as the anger comment: do you want to hear only good things about your work? I suppose that is the Christian ideology in a nutshell: good news only here and in the beyond…
And so, Phillip, by your own admission, I never said I didn’t believe in quantum computers, did I?
I was pointing out that there are bizarre, nonsensical aspects of quantum physics and astrophysics. Near-macroscopic cats — 60 and 70 carbon buckyballs, for example, can exist in two places at once. Once, there was thought to be a vague boundary between quantum and macroscopic behavior. There’s good evidence the boundary was wishful thinking and fully macroscopic objects can exhibit bizarre quantum behavior — granted, usually in extreme conditions, but still…. If you take these strange quantum behaviors out of context, they don’t make sense. In context they don’t make sense to human logic. They make sense only in mathematical terms and in results, but not in ways that the human mind (developed for a Newtonian world) can not fully comprehend.
You have read Feynman’s lectures on QCD, right?
The start of this debate that you’re obsessed with began with you pointing with approval to a web presentation that that took Christian doctrine out of context, misinterpreted them, and then made fun of them based on the misunderstanding and incorrect context. It made as much sense as mocking QM for wave/particle duality or astrophysics for dark matter — in other words, none. If you misrepresent anything, it can be mocked. It doesn’t make the mocking correct.
That was my point, not that QM and astrophysics (Which, by the way, I’ve studied. Have you worked out Hamiltonians for hydrogen in a magnetic field and then measured the spectrum? Calculated the heat capacity for carbon dioxide based on classical and quantum theory and then done the lab work to compare the results? Can you name the top contenders for what dark matter is and what the effects would be on the Standard Model and on development of galaxies and galactic clusters?) don’t work.
You distorted my position in a attempt to win “points” in some mythical combat you perceive. This is why I’ve given up debating with you. There’s no purpose to debating someone who twists your words to mean things you didn’t say.
The only reason I’ve permitted the discussion to continue here, where you have deliberately derailed the discussion about the story, is to document on my own blog some of your tactics for a friend. The friend’s an atheist, but doesn’t feel the need to try to insult and antagonize people or to hijack threads on other’s blogs for their own purpose. I’ve asked him to comment on your blog, but he doesn’t even comment on my blog. He’s not a blogger, and not into the whole “blog” thing.
From this point, the discussion of religion in this thread is closed. This is a thread about a story. My blog, my rules.
As always, if I believe a comment to be offensive or inappropriate, it will be deleted. Again, my blog, my rules.
If you wish to be civil, rational and discuss things without resorting to tricks that would be banned from a freshman forensics match, you are welcome. If not, well, I’ve explained my editorial position.
And yes, I’ve stopped reading your blog. In the past, you were annoying to others you became obsessed with. They gave up on you. When you began with the attempt at insults (pathetic, by the way — I could come up with 10 insults that would be better and funnier — I realized you were just like some others I’d come across on Fidonet and other forums over the years.
And so I stopped reading your blog. I cover about 150 blogs every day on average (mostly in RSS), and there’s only so much time to do it in. I try to pick people that are fun, insightful, and/or interesting.
Friday Fiction is fun! Have you ever read anything from the Quantum Leap Fan Fiction site?
http://www.quantumleap-alsplace.com/starbrightproject/starbrightmain.htm
There’s a lot of good stuff in there. I am always amazed to see what people can come up with Quantum Leap. I miss that show a lot, and I don’t believe it ever was lived to it’s full potential. I always thought that they should of told more about how Sam came up with the idea of Quantum Leap and the Starbright Project behind it. That was make a very cool big-screen film. But then again, I’m a major computer geek nerd so I may be way off base here.
Braden,
I haven’t checked out the fan fiction site before. The last episode…I have to leave it there, because Sam never came home.
BTW: In this Friday Fiction, I threw a lot of contemporary stuff. Obviously, there’s the congressional hearings on global warming. The Institute for Advanced Concepts may be closing due to budgetary cuts. As Shropshire pointed out, there is, in fact, a company claiming to have a 16 bit quantum computer, although whether it is actually a working quantum computer is disputed rather greatly. Several sci-fi books I’ve been reading lately assume that quantum computers can solve NP-Complete instantaneously, let alone polynomial time. This ability is widely doubted. I threw in the NP-Incomplete as a joke. Whether NP-Incomplete (i.e. P≠NP) even exists is not known.
Strangely, last night at Borders, I found a book “It’s Superman.” Usually, the universe of Superman is the universe of Metropolis and Gotham. This book takes place in New York City, and so far appears to be far more realistic than any version of the Superman mythos that I’ve read. So far, I’m having fun.
Welcome back! I’ve missed the Friday Fiction (it was the thing that brought me to your site in the first place). I’m glad to see that it’s back.