Gods and Daemons
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I watched the retreating form of the professor, smiling to myself, then turned back to collect my sushi order and make my way back to my lab. I had been set the task of identifying a way to disrupt or disable the Nano-suppressors, although I had recently focussed on ways of detecting them without the inconveniently huge and expensive vacuum chamber and assorted electron emitters I had reassembled in my laboratory. My working hypothesis was that, when Nano-suppressors are quiescent, there is nothing to detect: they are just a bunch of complex molecules, not reacting with anything, not moving or changing and effectively inert. When they move, I reasoned, atoms and molecules are in motion relative to one another, the charges in their electron shells interacting with one another and therefore creating moving electromagnetic fields, also known as radio waves. The inside of my vacuum chamber, when operating, is an immensely electrically noisy environment, with all kinds of electric fields and electron beams and so on operating at high power. Still, I had acquired a very sensitive spectrum analyser, thanks to the ready availability of research funds this establishment enabled; it is, effectively, a radio receiver capable of listening to a huge range of radio frequencies simultaneously and visualising the result on a screen. I had long since perfected the technique of provoking a Nano-suppressor - or at least one kind of them - to appear and take action, and now I was in a position to sample whatever radio waves they might be producing. I had Introduced a small broadband radio antenna inside my vacuum chamber - it was getting pretty crowded in there - and, once I had confirmed using the Scanning Electron Microscope that the Nano-suppressor was up and about, I turned off the SEM and every other piece of equipment I thought I could do without, and watched closely the spectrum analyser screen. Actually, I had performed this particular experiment many times before. The results had been highly consistent; I was not really expecting anything different on this occasion. Still, I went through the motions, recording the spectrum analyser output, as well as enabling a function which provided an audio output, so I could effectively hear the Nano-suppressor in action. I listened to the chuff, chuff, chuff noise which I thought corresponded to the movement of the sprockets they used for motion, followed by the creaks and groans which I imagined meant molecular destruction. I thought that I now had enough samples to identify a characteristic radiation signature for Nano-suppressors, or at least the kind which I had been working with, and I wondered if I could find a simpler way of detecting the things in operation. Picking at my sushi, I thought about what it would take to build a portable detector. I would need a sensitive radio receiver, with some computation to perform analytics to identify the specific nano signature, and a display to communicate the results to a person, all powered from a rechargeable battery. I suddenly realised that such hardware was widely available; in fact, almost everybody in the world now has a general-purpose and immensely powerful computation and communication platform in their pocket although, for some reason, we still call them mobile phones. I could build an app, I thought while dipping the last piece of fish-and-rice into soy sauce. I would have to coop the signal processing chip in the device, so it would no longer actually function as a phone; this would not be a big problem since, as many people do, I had a second, older phone which I no longer use and retained for no very good reason. Any one of the several computers I had in the lab would support the necessary software development and there were, I already knew, many software programs which would provide an excellent starting point, although I might have to beg a few hours supervised Internet access to download all the tools I might need. It would take me several weeks, at the very least, and I would have to jail-break that old phone, but I suddenly could see a clear path to building a Nano-suppressor detector I could fit in my pocket. The following morning, after a night without much sleep, but with the creation of large numbers of notes on the Nano-detector I was proposing to build, I made my appointment with Professor Cooper almost on time. When I arrived at the coffee shop, perhaps only four minutes late, she was already sitting at a small table, a large beaker of a delicious-smelling beverage in front of her. She turned and smiled when she saw me stumble in, then shifting to genuine concern as she took in my slightly dishevelled appearance and, no doubt, the dark bags under my eyes. "Maeve, I'm so sorry I'm late," I stuttered, subsiding into the other chair. "You look terrible," she said, "What have you been doing to yourself, Joe?" "I had an epiphany in my own research," I said simply, "I've been up most of the night trying to make notes of everything before I forget." "Ah. Been there, done that," she replied sympathetically, "Let me get you a coffee." "Large black," I muttered. Maeve slid off her chair and went to tackle the barista while I sat with my head in my hands. After that rather shaky start, things went surprisingly well. Maeve presented me with a large strong coffee, which jolted me out of my somnambulant state, and I was soon able to ask pertinent questions while the Professor explained why her currently favoured - still highly theoretical - approach to space warps might require the use of - also still theoretical - nanotechnology to build asymmetric gravitational fields in order to fold space around a spacecraft and drive it at speeds which, from the outside, would look faster than light. I spent some time explaining about my work to disable Nano-suppressors, which would of course be necessary to build the kind of space-drives she had in mind. For some reason, I omitted to say anything about my ideas for Nano-detection, possibly because I had just spent most of the last sixteen hours fretting over the details. Our conversation, as good conversations do, veered over a wide range of topics. She told me about studying mathematics as an undergraduate at University College Cork, home of the only three-sided university quadrangle in the world, and sitting through lectures in the Sir George Boole lecture theatre - as in Boolean algebra, essential for modern computing - later moving to the University of Cambridge, Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics for Ph.D work. I countered with tales from growing up on Big Island Hawaii, spending days on the beach in between somewhat desultory schooling, the ratio of sports to study changing substantially as I moved to university and the subjects became more challenging and thus much more interesting. I moved from one island campus to another as I moved to postgraduate and then post-doctoral work, finally ending up in the university’s Low Earth Orbit outpost. She was clearly an extremely capable and intelligent physicist, while still managing to be witty and amusing with it. I could happily sat there all day, chatting on an increasingly diverse selection of topics, but Professor Maeve was made of sterner stuff and made it clear there were other things she needed to do with her day; still, she did agree to meet again for dinner, the evening after next, which probably counted as A Real Date.
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Part 1