Factoring Humanity

23

The door chime in Kyle’s lab sounded. He got up from the chair in front of Cheetah’s console and moved toward the entrance. The door slid open as he approached.

A tall, angular white man was standing in the curving corridor. “Professor Graves?” he said.

“Yes?” said Kyle.

“Simon Cash,” said the man. “Thank you for agreeing to see me.”

“Oh, right. I’d forgotten you were coming. Come in, come in.” He moved aside to let Cash enter. Kyle took a chair in front of Cheetah’s console, and motioned for Cash to take another seat.

“I know you’re a busy man,” said Cash, “so I won’t waste your time on preliminaries. We would like you to come work for us.”

“Us?”

“The North American Banking Association.”

“Yes, yes, you said that on the phone. Say—a banker named Cash. Bet you get a lot of jokes about that.”

Cash’s tone was even. “You’re the first.”

Kyle was slightly flustered. “But I’m not a banker,” he said. “Why on earth would you possibly be interested in me?”

“We’d like you to work for our security division.”

Kyle spread his hands. “I’m still at a loss.”

“Do you recognize me?” asked Cash.

“I don’t, I’m sorry. Have we met before?”

“Sort of. I attended your seminar on quantum computing at the IA-squared conference last year.” The 2016 meeting of the International Artificial Intelligence Association had been held in San Antonio.

Kyle shook his head. “Sorry, no, I don’t remember. Did you ask any questions?”

“No—I never do. I get paid simply to listen. Listen and report back.”

“Why should the Banking Association care about my work?”

Cash reached into his pocket. For a horrible instant, Kyle had the crazy thought that he was going for a gun. But all Cash did was remove his wallet and pull out a SmartCash card.

“Tell me how much money this card has on it,” said Cash.

Kyle took the card from him and squeezed it hard between thumb and forefinger; the pressure powered up the little display on the surface of the card. “Five hundred and seven dollars and sixteen cents,” he said, reading the numbers.

Cash nodded. “I transferred the amount just before coming here. There’s a reason I chose that figure. That’s the average amount each adult North American has programmed into a smartcard on his or her person. The entire cashless society is based on the security of these cards.”

Kyle nodded; he was beginning to see what Cash was getting at.

“Remember the Year-2000 problem?” Cash held up a hand. “I think we in the banks should take the full blame for that, by the way. We’re the ones who produced billions of paper checks with ‘19’ preprinted in front of where the year goes; we pioneered the concept of the two-digit year and trained everyone to use it in their day-to-day life. Anyway, as you know, it cost billions to avert disaster from hitting the world at one second past 23:59:59 on December 31, 1999.” He paused, waiting for Kyle to acknowledge this. Kyle simply nodded.

“Well, the problem we’re facing now is infinitely worse than the Year-2000 problem. There are trillions of dollars worldwide that exist nowhere except as stored data on smartcards. Our entire financial system is based on the integrity of those cards.” He took a deep breath. “You know, when those cards were first being developed, the Cold War was still going on. We—the banking industry, that is—worried about what would happen if an atomic bomb were dropped on the United States or Canada, or on Europe, where they went to smartcards even before we did. We were terrified that the electromagnetic pulse would wipe the card memories—and suddenly all that cash would simply disappear. So we engineered the cards to survive even that. But now a threat is facing them that’s even greater than a nuclear bomb and, Professor Graves, the threat is from you.”

Kyle had been playing with Cash’s smartcard, tapping each of its edges in turn against the desktop. He stopped doing that and placed it in front of him. “You must use RSA-style encryption.”

“We do, yes. We have since day one—and now it’s the de facto standard worldwide. Your quantum computer, if you really can build it, will render every one of the eleven billion smartcards in use on the planet susceptible to tampering. One user could take all of another user’s money during a simple card-to-card transfer, or you could simply program your own card with any amount you wanted, up to the maximum the card allows, making money appear out of thin air.”

Kyle was silent for a long moment. “You don’t want me to work for you. You want to bury my research.”

“Professor Graves, we’re prepared to make you a very generous offer. Whatever U of T is paying you, we will double the figure—and give it to you in American dollars. You’ll have a state-of-the-art lab, in whatever city in North America you’d like to live in. We’ll provide you with whatever staff you require, and you can do research to your heart’s content.”

“I can just never publish any of it, is that it?”

“We would require you to sign an NDA, yes. But most research these days is proprietary, isn’t it? You don’t see computer companies or drug manufacturers giving away their secrets. And we will start looking for a secure alternative to the encoding systems we’ve been employing, so that eventually you will be able to publish your work.”

“I don’t know. I mean, the research I’m doing might even put me in line for a Nobel Prize.”

Cash nodded, as if he had no intention of disputing this. “The current monetary award that accompanies a Nobel Prize is the equivalent of 3.7 million Canadian dollars; I’m empowered to offer you that as a signing bonus.”

“This is crazy,” said Kyle.

“No, Professor Graves. It’s just business.”

“I’ll have to think about this.”

“Of course, of course. Talk it over with your wife Heather.”

Kyle felt his heart jump at the mention of Heather’s name.

Cash smiled a cold smile and held it for several seconds.

“You know my wife?” asked Kyle.

“Not personally, no. But I’ve read full dossiers on both of you. I know she’s two years younger than you; I know you were married September twelfth, nineteen ninety-five; I know you’re currently separated; I know where she works. And, of course, I know all about Rebecca, too.” He smiled again. “Do get back to us quickly, Professor.”

And with that, he was gone.

Heather, floating in psychospace, fought for equilibrium, for sanity, for logic.

It was all so overwhelming, all so incredible.

But how to proceed?

She took a calming breath and decided to try the obvious approach.

“Show me Kyle.”

Nothing happened.

“Kyle Graves,” she said again.

Still nothing.

“Brian Kyle Graves.”

No luck.

Of course not. That would have been too easy.

She tried concentrating on his face, on mental pictures of him.

Bupkes.

She sighed.

Seven billion choices. Even if she could figure out how to access someone, she could spend the rest of her life trying hexagons at random.

The intuitively obvious next step would simply be to move closer to the mosaic, to touch one of the six-sided jewels. She swam with cupped palms, moving herself forward, toward the curving wall of glowing lights.

She could perceive the individual hexagons, even though she was still a goodly distance away from them, even though there were so many that she shouldn’t be able to discern the separate components at all.

A trick of perception.

A way of dealing with the information.

She drew closer, and yet it seemed she wasn’t getting closer at all. The hexagons in the center of her vision shrank proportionately as she came nearer; those outside the center of her vision were a spectral blur.

She drifted, or flew, or was pulled through space, closing the distance.

Closer and closer still.

And, at last, she was at the wall.

Each honeycomb cell was now perhaps a centimeter and a half across, no bigger than a keycap, as if the whole thing was a vast keyboard. As she watched, each of the hexagonal caps drew away slightly, forming a concave surface, inviting the touch of her fingers.

Heather, bunched up in the Centauri construct, inhaled deeply.

Heather, in psychospace, felt a tingling in her projected index finger, as if it were full of energy, waiting to discharge. She moved the finger closer, half-expecting a spark to bridge the gap between her invisible digit and the nearest hexagonal key. But the energy continued to build within her, without release.

Five centimeters, now.

And now four.

Three.

And two.

One.

And, finally…

Contact.