The Zero Game

“NOW WHAT’S THIS for again?” Dr. Minsky asks, unbending a paperclip and tapping it lightly on the edge of his desk.

“Just background,” I say, hoping to keep the discussion moving. “We’ve got this project we’re looking at-”

“A new neutrino experiment?” Minsky interrupts, clearly excited. It’s still his pet issue, so if there’s some new data out there, he wants to play with the toys first.

“We really shouldn’t say,” I reply. “They’re still in the early stages.”

“But if they’re-”

“It’s actually someone who’s a friend of the Congressman,” I interrupt. “It’s not for public consumption.”

The man has two Ph.D.s. He gets the hint. Congressmen do favors for friends every day. That’s why the real news on Capitol Hill is never in the newspapers. If Minsky wants any more favors from us, he knows he has to help us with this.

“So neutrinos, eh?” he finally asks.

I smile. So does Viv – but as she turns her head slightly, glancing out the window, I can tell she’s still searching for Janos. We’re not gonna outrun him without a head start.

“Let me do it like this,” Minsky says, quickly shifting into professor mode. He holds the unbent paperclip up like a tiny pointer, then motions downward, from the ceiling to the floor. “As we sit here right now, fifty billion – not million – fifty billion neutrinos are flying from the sun, through your skull, down your body, out the balls of your feet, and down through the nine floors below us. They won’t stop there, though – they’ll keep going past the concrete foundation of the building, straight through the earth’s core, through China, and back out to the Milky Way. You think you’re just sitting here with me, but you’re being bombarded right now. Fifty billion neutrinos. Every single second. We live in a sea of them.”

“But are they like protons? Electrons? What are they?”

He looks down, trying not to make a face. To the educated man, there’s nothing worse than a layperson. “In the subatomic world, there are three kinds of particles that have mass. The first and heaviest are quarks, which make up protons and neutrons. Then, there’re electrons and their relatives, which are even lighter. And finally come neutrinos, which are so incredibly lightweight there are still some doubters out there who argue they don’t have mass at all.”

I nod, but he knows I’m still lost.

“Here’s the significance,” he adds. “You can calculate the mass of everything you see in a telescope, but when you add all that mass up, it’s still only ten percent of what makes up the universe. That leaves ninety percent unaccounted for. So where’s the missing ninety percent? As physicists have asked for decades: Where’s the missing mass of the universe?”

“Neutrinos?” Viv whispers, accustomed to being a student.

“Neutrinos,” Minsky says, pointing the paperclip her way. “Of course, it probably isn’t the full ninety percent, but a portion of it… they’re the leading candidate.”

“So if someone’s studying neutrinos, they’re trying to…”

“… crack open the ultimate treasure chest,” Minsky says. “The neutrinos that we’re swimming in right now were produced at the big bang, at supernovas, and even, during fusion, at the heart of the sun. Any idea what those three things have in common?”

“Big explosions?”

“Creation,” he insists. “That’s why physicists are trying to figure them out, and that’s why they gave the Nobel to Davis and Koshiba a few years back. Unlock neutrinos and you potentially unlock the nature of matter and the evolution of the universe.”

It’s a nice answer, but it doesn’t get me any closer to my real question. Time to be blunt. “Could they be used to build a weapon?”

Viv looks away from the window; Minsky cocks his head slightly, picking me apart with his scientist’s eyes. I may be sitting in front of a genius, but it doesn’t take one to know something’s up.

“Why would someone use it as a weapon?” he asks.

“I’m not saying they are – we just… we want to know if they can.”

Minsky drops the paperclip and puts his palms flat against his desk. “Exactly what type of project is this for again, Mr. Defresne?”

“Maybe I should leave that for the Congressman,” I say, trying to defuse the tension. All it does is shorten the fuse.

“Maybe it’d be best if you showed me the actual proposal for the project,” Minsky says.

“I’d love to – but right now it’s confidential.”

“Confidential?”

“Yes, sir.”

The fuse is on its last hairs. Minsky doesn’t move.

“Listen, can I be honest with you?” I ask.

“What a novel idea.”

He uses the sarcasm as a mental shove. I purposely twist in my chair and pretend he’s got control. Rope-a-dope. He may have twenty years on me, but I’ve played this game with the world’s best manipulators. Minsky’s just someone who got an A in science.

“Okay,” I begin. “Four days ago, our office got a preliminary proposal for a state-of-the-art neutrino research facility. It was hand-delivered to the Congressman at his home address.” Minsky picks up his paperclip, thinking he’s getting the inside poop.

“Who did the proposal? Government or military?” he asks.