Factoring Humanity

The conventional computer they were standing in front of beeped and one of its monitors came to life. Precisely two strings of numbers appeared on the screen, each dozens of digits long.

“Are those the first two factors?” asked the lawyer, clearly anxious to start notarizing things.

Kyle felt his heart sink. “Ah, no. No.” He swallowed; his stomach was roiling. “I mean, yes, certainly, they are doubtless factors of our source number, but — but. . .”

One of Kyle’s grad students looked at him and then said the words that, at that moment, Kyle himself couldn’t get out. “The display shouldn’t have appeared until all the factors are ready. Unless by some miracle, the source number has only two factors, then the experiment didn’t work.”

The department head loomed in at the screen and placed his index finger on the last digit of the second number; it was a four. “That’s an even number, so there have got to be smaller factors that aren’t displayed.” He straightened up. “What went wrong?”

Kyle was shaking his head. “It worked — sort of. Our Democritus did do only one calculation. The other number must have come from a parallel universe.”

“You can’t prove that,” said the dean. “Only two calculations means that only two thousand atoms were involved.”

“I know,” said Kyle. He breathed out. “Sorry, everyone. We’ll keep working on it.”

The dean frowned, presumably thinking of all the money that had already been spent. She left the room. The department head laid a hand briefly on Kyle’s slumped shoulder before he, too, left, followed by the lawyer.

Kyle looked at his grad students and shrugged. Nothing was going his way these days…

After the students went home, Kyle sat down in his chair in front of Cheetah’s console.

“I’m sorry,” said Cheetah.

“Yeah,” said Kyle. He shook his head. “It should have worked.”

“I’m confident you’ll figure out what went wrong.”

“I suppose.” He looked up at the print of “Christus Hypercubus.” “But maybe it’ll never work; researchers have been trying to accomplish this for over twenty years without success. He dropped his gaze to the floor. “I just keep wasting my time on projects that never bear fruit.”

“Like me,” said Cheetah, without rancor.

Kyle said nothing.

“I have faith in you,” said Cheetah.

Kyle made a sound in his throat, a laugh aborted.

“What?”

“I dunno. Maybe that’s the whole problem. Maybe it’s my lack of faith.”

“You mean God is punishing you for being an atheist?”

Kyle did laugh, but it was humorless. “Not that kind of faith. I mean my faith in quantum physics.” He paused. “When I was a grad student, nothing excited me like quantum mechanics — it was mind-expanding, endlessly fascinating. But I felt sure that someday it would all click, you know — all make sense. Someday I’d really see. But I never have. Oh, I understand the equations in an abstract way, but I don’t get it, you know? Maybe I don’t even really believe it.”

“You’ve lost me,” said Cheetah.

Kyle spread his arms, trying to find a way to explain it. “I was at a party once, and this fat guy comes in, and he’s got a slice through a geode held to his forehead by a headband. I never asked about it — guy comes in with something like that, you don’t ask. But his companion, a scrawny woman, must have noticed me looking at the geode, so she comes over and says, ‘That’s Cory — he’s gifted with the third eye.’ And I’m thinking, Good Christ, let me out of here. Later, Cory comes up to me and says, ‘Hey, man, what time is it?’ And I’m thinking what good is the third eye if you don’t even know what fucking time it is?”

Cheetah was quiet for a while. “And your point would be… ?”

“My point is that maybe you do need some special insight to understand — really, deeply understand — quantum mechanics. Einstein never did, you know; he was never comfortable with it, calling it ‘spooky action at a distance.’ But some of these guys in quantum mechanics, they do get it — either that or they fake it really well. Me, I always thought I’d be one of those who’d get it, too — that it would click at some point. But it hasn’t. I never developed the third eye.”

“Maybe you should get a geode slice from the Earth Sciences Centre.”

Kyle grunted. “Maybe. I guess down deep, at some basic level, I just don’t buy quantum mechanics. I feel like a bit of a charlatan.”

“Democritus did indeed communicate with at least one other alternative reality. That seems to confirm the many-worlds interpretation.”

Kyle looked at Cheetah’s lenses. “That’s it,” he said simply. “That’s the problem. This type of quantum computing hinges on the many-worlds interpretation, but, come on, really, how plausible is that? Surely not every conceivable universe exists, but rather only the ones that have at least some likelihood of having occurred.”

“For instance?” asked Cheetah.