Supersymmetry

CHAPTER 8

They abandoned Alex’s car at the Dunkin’ Donuts. Alex climbed into the green electric next to Dr. Oronzi, who gunned the little engine back toward I-95. She would have been forced to ditch the car anyway; the police would be looking for it, and she wouldn’t last long if she were still driving it. She worried about security cameras in the parking lot; if there was a record of her getting into Dr. Oronzi’s car, then this escape would be over quickly. For that matter, the fact that Dr. Oronzi had left the building before the police had arrived would put him under suspicion. She wondered if it had been wise to go with him.

But what other options did she have? It wasn’t like she had planned ahead for this. There was a friend of her uncle who sometimes helped abused women hide from the men who had hurt them, but it wasn’t a great option. Even if the friend had been willing to help her evade the authorities—which was a big if—the US government was a lot harder to fool than one angry husband.

The little engine whined as Oronzi coaxed it up to speed. Alex noticed that the speedometer, odometer, and fuel gauge were independent devices, bolted, and in one case duct-taped, to the dashboard rather than integrated as part of a single instrument panel. Wires showed under and behind the steering column. In fact, very little about the car seemed to have been designed to fit together, at least not in any aesthetic way.

“What did you do, build this car from a kit?” she asked.

Oronzi pulled an unfamiliar lever to his left, and the car jerked into a slightly higher rate of speed. “Nobody sells car-building kits,” he said, apparently oblivious to her sarcasm. “I built it from the ground up, from first principles.”

She couldn’t hide her surprise. “Seriously? Why?”

He stole a glance at her before returning his attention to the road. “That sleek little computerized bullet you drive—do you know how many moving parts it has? With every independent component, the probability of failure multiplies. Thousands of parts, each from a factory production line. And who was on duty when your part was audited for quality? What was his IQ? Was he having a bad day? Was it his first week on the job and he was afraid to make a fuss?”

Alex eyed the rattling contraption around her, which looked like it was held together with bits of twine. “And you think you can do better?”

“Don’t confuse polish for quality,” Oronzi said. “I know every part of this car. I know its design tolerances, its life expectancy, its performance over time. I personally designed every piece of it. I trust it.”

She held up her hands. “Okay. I guess it hasn’t killed you yet.”

They pulled back onto I-95, heading north, back the way they had come. Oronzi had insisted on going into the Dunkin’ Donuts before they left—for sustenance, as he called it—and he juggled a double latte and several glazed doughnuts as he drove.

“So, how are you going to hide me?” Alex asked.

“First things first,” Oronzi said. “You have to tell me about that creature.”

“The varcolac.”

“Whatever you want to call it. Tell me what you know.”

Alex looked out the passenger side window and saw a long-legged bird flying over the river. She wished she could fly away like that, unconstrained by gravity and unnoticed by the world. “Look, I’m running for my life here. You said you could hide me. Before we talk, I want to know where we’re going.”

Oronzi swallowed another bite of doughnut. “Back to the High Energy Lab.”

She whipped around to face him. “What? You’re turning me in?”

“No. I told you to trust me.”

“When you’re taking me right back again?”

“That’s what trust means. If I handed you a new identity and a plane ticket to Australia, you wouldn’t have to trust me. You’d know.”

Alex was starting to think this had been a very bad idea. “Fine. Then I don’t trust you. I barely know you. For all I know, you’re planning to turn me over to the police. Or maybe you’re a Turkish spy. So if you want to know what I know about varcolacs, then you’d better explain.”

Oronzi looked at her, considering. He kept eye contact long enough that she glanced nervously at the road, afraid he was going to veer out of the lane and crash into another car. Finally, he said, “I’m going to make you invisible.”

She wasn’t sure whether to write him off as a madman or take him seriously. This was, after all, the man who had made possible all the quantum technology in their demo. Those things were impossible, weren’t they? What made invisibility any different?

“Okay,” she said.

His eyebrows rose. “Okay? You believe me?”

“Should I?”

“Yes.”

“Fine, then. I’ll believe you.” She laughed nervously. “Though I may be just as crazy as you are.”

They were quiet for a time, the road rumbling by under the car. “The varcolac,” Oronzi prompted.

“They’re intelligent beings,” Alex said. “They’re living all around us, existing through the quantum interactions of particles, in the molecules that make up our air and food and our own bodies. The surfaces of things aren’t as important to them as they are to us, and things like gravity and electricity are just one more kind of particle interaction. They’re aliens, of sorts, but not from outer space. They live here, with us. They’ve been here all along.”

“We exist through the quantum interactions of particles, too,” Oronzi objected. “Everything does.”

“Not the way they do. They’re not biological, or even material. They’re more like artificial intelligences, only their computer is the whole universe.”

Oronzi’s face pinched in confusion. “What do you mean?”

Alex took a deep breath, trying to clear her mind. The conversation was helping her forget the horror of the demonstration, and so she welcomed it. “Okay. You know the argument that compares the universe to a quantum computer? It stores a finite number of bits for each particle: the type, spin, momentum—”

Oronzi waved his hand, dismissive. “It’s not a comparison. The universe is a quantum computer. Since you can simulate any set of particle interactions with a quantum computer made of the same number of particles, then there’s no practical difference between the universe and a quantum computer simulating the universe.”

“Exactly.”

“But what’s the point?” Oronzi asked around a big bite of doughnut. “It’s just a self-referential definition.”

“The point is, the universe is a computational device with sufficient complexity to generate consciousness. Life springing out of complexity.”

The car was silent except for the sound of Oronzi eating the last of his doughnut. Finally, he said, “You’re telling me the universe is conscious.”

“No. But varcolacs are. They’re intelligences that live in the universe—through all the universes—and are composed of the complex quantum interactions of the particles.”

Oronzi gave a short nod, accepting the explanation. “Why do you call them varcolacs?”

“A Romanian friend of my father’s named them that. After demons in Romanian myth that live on the mirror side of the world.”

“How do you know so much about them?”

“They almost killed my whole family fifteen years ago. They communicated with a colleague of my father’s, taught him things, but ultimately got him killed.” Alex narrowed her eyes and studied Oronzi for a reaction. “Have they communicated with you?”

“What? No. Of course not.”

“How did you discover all this technology?”

“I figured it out.” He cast a belligerent look at her. “I’m a smart guy.”

“Of course you are. But you knew what the varcolac was when you saw it today. You called it an intelligence from another universe. You’ve communicated with it, haven’t you?”

“Not communicated, no. But interacted? Maybe. I’ve always known there was something on the other side of the wormhole. Something intelligent, trying to get out. I designed barriers to keep it out, but it kept finding a way through. I made the barriers more and more complex, like mazes made from energy patterns, defined by complex equations. It always solved them. I had to use layers of them, continually adding new ones to the outer layers while it broke through the inner layers with increasing speed. Finally…” A dawning horror spread across his face. “Oh, no.”

“What is it?”

“I started using equations I didn’t have the answer for. Equations I didn’t even know were solvable. It would solve them for me.”

“And did these equations have anything to do with the technology you’ve been inventing?”

“They were crucial to it.”

Alex nodded, taking no pleasure from the revelation. “So you did communicate with them. They gave you the key to the technology.”

“I guess they did.” Oronzi nodded glumly.

“The technology which ultimately gave them entrance into the world.”

“They manipulated me,” he said.

“Don’t worry about it. You weren’t the first,” she said.

“They’re pretty clever.”

“When it comes down to it, they’re probably smarter than you are.”