Factoring Humanity

“No problem. We’ve got a machine all set up to turn out plastic building panels for the School of Architecture; I could modify it easily enough to turn out the tiles you need. Do you want them to have smooth edges or would you like a tongue-and-groove arrangement, so they can snap together?”

“You mean so they form a big solid piece?”

Komensky nodded.

“That would be great.”

“What about the painting on of the other chemical?”

“I figured I’d have to do that by hand,” said Heather.

“Well, you could, but we’ve got programmable microsprayers that can do it for you, assuming the substance has a low enough viscosity. We use the sprayers to paint patterns onto the panels we make for the architecture students — you know, little outlines of bricks, or little dots to represent rivets, stuff like that.”

“That’d be perfect. How soon can you do it?”

“Well, during the school year, we’re usually pretty backed up. But in summer, we’ve got lots of free time. We can get at it right away. We’ve still got a couple of grad students hanging around; I’ll have one of them look into manufacturing those chemicals. As I say, at first glance they look simple enough, but we won’t know for sure until we actually try to synthesize them.” A pause. “Who’s going to pay for this?”

“What’ll it cost?” asked Heather.

“Oh, not much. Robots are so cheap these days, we no longer amortize their cost over manufacturing runs like we used to. Maybe five hundred dollars for the material.”

Heather nodded. She’d find some way to explain it to her department head later, once he got back from vacation. “That’s fine. Charge it to Psych; I’ll sign the requisition.”

“I’ll e-mail you the paperwork.”

“Terrific. Thank you. Thank you very much.”

“You’re very welcome.” He smiled and held her with his eyes.

14

There was a bleep at Kyle’s office door. He pushed the button that caused it to slide open. A middle-aged Asian woman in an expensive-looking gray suit was standing in the curving corridor, the atrium with its tumbling tapestries visible behind her.

“Dr. Graves?” she said.

“Yes?”

“Brian Kyle Graves?”

“That’s right.”

“I wish to talk to you, please.”

Kyle rose and motioned for her to come in.

“My name is Chikamatsu. I wish to speak to you about your research.”

Kyle indicated another chair. Chikamatsu took it, and Kyle sat back down.

“I understand you have had some success with quantum computing.”

“Not as much as I’d like. I ended up with egg on my face a couple of weeks ago.”

“So I heard.” Kyle’s eyebrows went up. “I represent a consortium that would like to contract for your services.” She pronounced consortium “consorsheeum.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. We believe you are close to a breakthrough.”

“Not judging by my current results.”

“A minor problem, I am sure. You are trying to use Dembinski fields to inhibit decoherence, are you not? They are notoriously tricky.”

Kyle’s eyebrows climbed again. “That they are.”

“We have monitored your progress with interest. You are doubtless very close to a solution. And if you do find a solution, my consortium may be prepared to invest heavily in your procedure, assuming, of course, that you can convince me that your system works.”

“Well, it will either work or it won’t.”

Chikamatsu nodded. “Doubtless so, but we will need to be sure. You would have to factor a number for us. And, of course, I would have to provide the number — just to be sure it is not some trick, you understand.”

Kyle narrowed his eyes. “What exactly is the nature of your consortium?” He preferred the hard-T pronunciation himself, but matched Chikamatsu’s usage.

“We are an international group,” she said. “Venture capitalists.” She had a small cylindrical leather purse, with metal end caps. She opened it, removed a memory wafer, and proffered it to Kyle. “The number we wish factored is on this wafer.”

Kyle took the wafer but didn’t look at it. “How many digits in the number?”

“Five hundred and twelve.”

“Even if I can work out the current bugs with my system, it’ll be a while before I can do that.”

“Why?”

“Well, for two reasons. The first is a practical one. Democritus — that’s the name of our prototype — is hardware constrained to factor numbers exactly three hundred digits long, no more, no less. Even if I could get it to work properly, I can’t do numbers of any other length — the quantum registers have to be carefully jiggered for the precise total number of digits.”

Chikamatsu looked disappointed. “And the other reason?”

Kyle raised his eyebrows. “The other reason, Ms. Chikamatsu, is that I’m not a criminal.”

“I — I beg your pardon?”

He flipped the memory wafer over and over in his hand as he spoke. “There’s only one practical application for factoring large numbers — and that’s cracking encryption schemes. I don’t know whose data you’re trying to access, but I’m no hacker. Find yourself another boy.”

“It is just a randomly generated number,” said Chikamatsu.