The habitats of El Rasigo, Tarpley and La Sierra were extremely slow to recover from the recession-nearly-a-depression of '02 and '03. That they ever did is open to doubt. They had been gradually dispossessed of everything except for a rail line and one state road. The decline of the economy had started the El Rasigo Flow (not to be confused with the El Malpais Lava Flow 25 million years earlier). A good measure of their resignation was seen in the loss of color. The people stopped cleaning. The dust bonded to anything that did not move and to some of the things that did. The people stopped painting. The impoverished homes, schools and businesses simply peeled away. The towns turned as gray as an old horned toad. With nothing to recommend a future, those capable of leaving left.
All of this changed around February of 2004. The reason was both apparent and not so apparent at the same time. It was in this month that a highly unusual structure began to appear on the mesa for reasons that no one knew. At least no one talked of it if they did. This was odd because almost always, expecially in this part of the country, at least one person could be found who knew something or thought he did or could be counted on for a damned good story even if he didn't. Talking is what they did in El Rasigo, Tarpley and La Sierra. Its citizens had little else to occupy their time and their temper.
By September of '04 the outside shell of the great geodesic dome was almost complete. It's effect on the local folk, on their way of life was far-reaching, even if no one talked about it much. The architecture was incongruous to say the least - a sudden eruption of gleaming metal in the middle of grassland and disintegrating shacks. From the time of September, and from who-knowns-where, the silvery hemisphere cast an ominous shadow over the region. Not surprisingly the Tarpley Banner disagreed, as it did with nearly everything - the political crisis of the far right, even the bungling over the economy. Their owner-editor announced: Government builds new Science Dome - Bright Future ahead for El Mal (three towns of the El Malpais region of New Mexico).
The Institute for Physico-Psychic Research
The El Rasigo Dome, Monday Afternoon, January 9th, 2006
The Dome shadows on this afternoon were harsh near to grotesque, and all but impenetrable. The Institute staffers, Moffett, Fuller, Polk and Kato were by now computerized into catalepsy.
Julia Moffett consulted her Digitex watch as she left the compulab for her cubicle one flight up. It was already five o'clock and her blood sugar was too low to sustain her current pace. Her psychological clock had warned her that the unwinnable battle of human versus machine had only just begun. Lloyd's Panigma, started three days ago, seemed total and irreversible.
She had fed the data through her simulator for each of the key loop tests. Minerva had analyzed the frequency, the amplitude and other characteristics of waveforms that would destroy the Machine if permitted to continue. Minerva had no opinion as to the source, no indication as to whether the instability was caused by hardware or software gremlins.
Julia took a seat in her office in front of her glowing compset console. Minerva displayed a list of her programs and her files, her impossible schedule for the week. She leaned back, exhausted by the sight. She shrugged the tension from her neck, found a peanut butter cracker in her handbag partially crushed. She unwrapped, then consumed it in two bites with the hope that anything was better than nothing.
Julia had been pondering Henry's attic even as the difficult day took its toll. She decided to take a break, to resign for the moment from her insolubles in order to investigate the attic's elephantine topology.
She returned to the compset and offered Minerva a challenge. She asked Minerva to help her make a Klein bottle. Julia drew the bottle on the screen. When satisfied with the picture she asked the computer to enter the coordinates into the field model. After a second or two of housekeeping she asked Minerva to map space and time on the bottle, to assign space (S) and time (T) as dimensions on the Klein surface.
As she fiddled with the field intensity ratios the bottle's proportions changed. The opening of the bottle she reduced to zero diameter to represent the Panigma of the Big Bang. When satisfied that the bottle looked like a reasonable universe she stopped fiddling.
The Klein space-time map displayed a reasonable expansion and contraction of space, a reasonable flow of time. There was continuity, but also discontinuity where the elephant had swallowed his trunk. And on this model unlike so many of the others every S-T event was causally connectible to every other S-T event. There was a good reason for this.
The intrinsic velocity of light was transfinite while space-time was finite, but unbounded. The Big Bang-Big Crunch had not been swallowed, but only just barely tasted by the elephant, leaving a slight dimple or depression in the surrounding space-time continuum.
She decided she'd make a second bottle - with Minerva's help of course. As before she set up the tensors and dyads. On this bottle she assigned uncertainty (X) and time (T) to the 2-d surface. Uncertainty increased to a maximum then returned to zero. Time started at the Big Bang and ended at the Big Crunch. Or was it the other way around? She recognized continuity and discontinuity. And every X-T event was nicely connectible to every other X-T event. Fine so far.
She decided that she needed Henry's third bottle. On this bottle she assigned uncertainty (X) and space (S) to the Klein surface. Uncertainty increased to a maximum then returned to zero. Unbounded space expanded, was eventually consumed only to be reborn. It was the same as the others, implicitly dependent upon the others. Every X-S was connectible to every other X-S. It looked good on the flat screen of the not-so-flat Minerva.
In the upper corner of the screen Minerva had plotted S-T-X on cartesian coordinates. The figure resembled a jug handle, but nothing exciting. It was not yet Lloyd's elephant - for Lloyd's elephant was infinite. She thought awhile about what might bring these computer simulations to life.
Yes, of course. She had the answer. She would supply the quarvine, add it to the bottles. She would add vibration, add a little music. But what tune would she pick? She asked Minerva to patch in what she knew of Lloyd's problematic waveform - that sudden and undamped lumoscope oscillation - the full weight of Friday's Lens crash. Minerva chewed on the problem for several minutes - a considerable time for an OnNet 210.
Finally, the jug handle and the bottles began to dance. The handle developed curls and loops then tied itself into a zillion knots. The big bottles shattered into zillions of little bottles that reassembled into one, zany bottle, just like the others only more so. Infinity had been conceived within a piece of finite space-time.
Julia beheld a beautiful strange attractor.
As strange were Minerva's remarks:
Initial Condition Error of the First Type
Biomemory Insufficient for Transcausality
The C Scalar Limited to 2.997925x10:5 KMPS
Generate 3.5 Cicabytes BioMem, then Recreate
the S-T-X Continuum
Joe Fuller was their crusty chief of Engineering and Maintenance, and to his chagrin, Lou Konnick's boss. Joe's prime responsibility was lasoptotronics. He had one or two days to finish a long list of tedious repairs. The Panigma Machine was needed for critical Lens calibrations. Joe didn't stomach the title role as Dr. Kovrani's scapegoat.
Friday's crash had wrecked hardware, software, plus some reputations. It had threatened to shut them down for weeks or months. Each lost day cost them about $500,000, not counting the replacement cost for some of the world's most expensive and hard-to-obtain gadgets. He had just realigned the panoptolasers that enabled the Machine's resolver. It was tough work, his third realignment in less than two days.
Joe responded with a long sigh of relief after slipping gingerly through the manway that connected the resolver's interior with its external machinery. When inside the world's largest and most advanced kaleidoscope it was nearly impossible to discern reality from reflection. He reattached and tightened the electrical coverplate. He then carefully elevated the 3000-pound lasoptopak by hand and locked it into position. This was no problem since its weight was perfectly counterbalanced. Satisfied with the hardware he crawled out using the narrow service tunnel. He must verify that other critical jobs were not being ignored.
The tunnel ended in the laserium theater or lumitorium as it came to be called. The egress was always claustrophobic, and all the more so when Joe was in a hurry, which he was today. He craned his neck at the lumoscope. The theater was dark, but the lumoscope glowed of its own light - a product of construction and selection of materials. Joe paced the circumference of the device. It was no ordinary lumoscope. The silvery hemisphere known as the panoptoscope was a colossus eighty feet in diameter - a complex collection of mirrors, lenses, lasers and machinery that created the parascan or panoptogram.
The first question was inevitably: "Why so damned big?"
To answer the rare few with the opportunity to even ask, Joe always suggested portentously, "Hang around for the next show and you'll see for yourself."
The output or panoptogram was the ultimate hologram. The lasoptopak synthesized three dimensional objects. But more importantly it could simulate the panorama of paradimensional space. But these wonders did not come without a price. Unfortunately the paradimensional insertion produced a kind of space-time vertigo that Doctor Klein had dubbed the panigo. The panigo was said to be worse (or for a few, better) than the plunge down a mountain-high, rocket-propelled roller coaster.
Joe would never forget his first encounter with Pandora, their pet name for the eighty-foot lumoscope. Larry Kato and Julia Moffett had prototyped the black singularity of Andromeda which had nearly raised the lid (40,000 tons) off their geodesic dome.
For a time Joe Fuller reflected. The pearlescent orb returned the favor. He was the Pandora expert and knew her innards better than the lines on his face. Its resolver was composed of three sensolates that responded to software drivers. One of the sensolates could be rendered opaque if something went suddenly and seriously wrong. The resolver served as a high resolution screen or parascreen depending on the mode of operation. Mirrex and Rocentrix assemblies were mounted below the sensolates. Beneath these was first the spectrostereoscope, a kind of optic nerve, and second the lasoptopak at the base of the hemisphere.
The lumitorium was the culmination of their geodesic dome. The dome was nearly double the size of the famous enclosed roller coaster. It's laserium had but twenty-five seats or cars on a train running along a circular track. The position of the train was fed back to the computers. In this way its navigator could adjust perpective, make the panoscene all but real for the audience. Usually, limp spectators could be counted on the fingers of one hand.
The top inside surface of the lumitorium was also mirrexed to enhance the paradimensional effect. Joe was convinced, as were the others, that Pandora needed no enhancement. "A criminal waste of raises," he mumbled shaking his head. He had tried to tell them. So had Dr. Polk.
Dr. Allen "Sloe" Polk, the principal inventor of CEP, Computer Enhanced Panoptography, stood silently waiting as Joe circumnavigated the hemisphere. They had been teamed together on holograms and lasoptograms at UltraNet and other Hardan enterprises for many years. As good friends, either one picked up the other when the other was down. But the "downs" were beginning to outnumber the "ups". Over the last few months their nearly inexhaustible optimism had been nearly exhausted. By all logic they were panoptographing the impossible. This rapid recalibration of their reality meter had severely challenged an old bedrock of natural resilency and good humor.
Allen said despondently, "Joe, I'm plain running out of ideas. The machinery's possessed. Nothing explains that ghastly oscillation."
The two holographers paused at this critical intersection, perhaps triggered by the cornucopian sight of Pandora herself - so many layers, so many dimensions, or perhaps by the memories, even the premonitions of what her screens and mirrors would reveal.
Finally, "Sloe ... I'm real tired of goin' in there."
"You shouldn't have to. No need to test the drivers again ... till we get some answers."
"Mechanically the resolver is fine," claimed Joe, "which leaves us with a thorny problem. One of us must discuss that last Eulerian with our Valkyrie."
Joe had assumed the honor of delivering the bad news would be his and his alone. Bad news had always been Joe's responsibility. The Valkyrie had been converting their usual disagreements into epic confrontations, particularly of late with 'scope anomalies on the rise. Allen surprised him when he offered, "Why not flip this time for the privilege?"
Joe thought that Allen must be feeling lucky or light-headed. Allen operated better at sea level and they both knew it. Allen extracted a quarter, tossed it and called heads. Unfortunately the coin turned tail and punched him out.
Joe was elated. "Allen, you're clearly the best choice. The lady tolerates you while I'm currently numero uno on her excrement list."
Allen complained, "Wow ... I'm suddenly dizzy. Don't relish dancing with Brunnhilde. I'm at the end of my rope." Much like a panoscene his already wide pupils distended. Allen had suddenly comprehended his own metaphor and didn't like it.
Joe laughed disrespectfully. He did a little dance of his own, in Sloe's honor, a kind of ridiculous jig in slow motion, punctuated now and then with a gruesome twitch. "The rope dance," he explained.
Allen ignored Joe's performance as he lamented, "Julia's spent two days inside the Light Shell ... has not even started the AIs yet. How should I begin?"
"She'll flash those killer eyes of hers ... those purple daggers ... and you're fried to an asteroid."
"They're like power lasers," replied Allen. "They penetrate the surface for gristle and sinew ... "
" ... or the lack. Sloe ... tell me something I'd really like to know. Why should software that's worked for many months suddenly go completely nuts?"
"I'm no expert, of course, but it's no ordinary software. It's the ultimate code. Improves itself with each probe of the continuum, each enema of the constipated beast."
"What do you think happened on Friday that unimproved it so much?"
"Can't get the straight scoop. All I know is that Lloyd was piloting with Max manning the isocon, Owen ... in the lumitorium. Then Ivan shows up in a royal snit over Lloyd's lack of proper authorization or ... or some bureaucratic humbug ... a strict point of procedure ... "
"Ivan never attends any of Lloyd's scans. So why now the fuss?"
"Yeah. So what was he doing there at five in the morning ranting and raving like a maniac? And there's that story about a bundle of papers."
Joe rubbed his bewiskered chin. "Scrolls ... I heard ... something about ancient scrolls ... and an OHM box ... an OHM box. What a story!"
"What could be the connection? And where did these so-called scrolls come from? Out of the blue?"
"Also when ... Sloe? That's the other question that bothers me a whole lot. "Where and when? Where ... and when? This damned Machine. Can the knowledge we gain be worth the pain?"
Allen admitted, "Well ... I'm procrastinating. Let me have all your Gauss-Ostrogradskii data. I'll humble myself ... beg for her mercy."
"Sure ... all done ... over an hour ago. I dropped the data down to your compset. All the data you'd ever want and then some. Too bad ... it will not help."
"Joe, if and when we ever fix this thing I'll give you a peek at my latest synthogram. The graphics are my best so far. They'll blow you out of your skivvies."
"I have no doubt of that. Your last one had my shorts humming for a week. Are you sure you're not peddling them on the Black Net?"
"Would I tell you? But it's time to face the dragonese. If you can break later for some chow ... call me. And wish me a schooner of Luck."
"Sloe, all the Luck at O'Flattery's can't help you."
As Joe left the lumitorium he spied his most persistent nightmare - Lou "The Genius" Konnick reporting for work. Lou had heard, but never objected to a moniker that he clearly failed to comprehend. Lou reported late as was his habit. He was an expert in every field of human activity except a full day's work. But when you were as smart as Lou thought he was, you didn't have to worry about performance or punctuality.
Joe overtook him which required no real effort. Joe inquired sarcastically, "Good evening Lou. It appears you've a busy night. Will you finish the work on time?"
Lou mumbled as he fanned the air with Joe's instructions. "I'll paint the geedee place in my spare time. It's not gonna be possible to replace all the SBIs tonight. You should talk to somebody before you hand me this crap. You guys on the first floor have no idea what's going on. I oughta just quit."
Lou had the relatively simple task of maintaining the isocells of the four isolation chambers. Regardless of the assigned task he always complained more than anyone.
Joe lied outrageously, "Lou, you're one of my key guys. I know I can count on you for the tough ones."
"Then pay me like you mean it. Heh ... I've gotta get goin' ... can't hang 'round jawin' with the management. Won't look good." Lou sauntered off at his usual amoebic pace.
Joe had to forget about Lou Konnick. It was crucial that he talk to Lawrence Kato, their director of the compulab and cybernetics. Larry's sophisticated neural computers were the brains of the Panigma Machine. To reach Larry and his cyberplex from the lumitorium, Joe descended two levels bypassing the first floor offices, the meeting rooms and the few amenities. The basement contained the compulab, the cleanroom for maintenance, plus the four isolation chambers. The lowest dome level or subbasement was exclusively Joe's territory. The "Catacombs" had become his shop and storeroom.
Joe left the bright corridor of the basement and entered Kato's lab less directly lit. Shadowy figures like black, cloth cutouts collected and dispersed like hobgoblins in a moonlit field. They gathered around the Core analyzers remindful of huge vacuum tubes. Occasionally a dark, cutout head would rise up from one of the scattered workstations, parked at all angles like Coney Island bumper cars, before disappearing inside the darkness of their silent consternations.
Joe moved forward carefully as if he glided on fog. Larry had to be here among the shadows. It was not easy to understand how anyone could work in such a place, even with the light from below. Though somewhat enfeebled by Friday's crash, the abundant floor space of the compulab was aglow like a hotel pool after dark. Larry Kato rose up unexpectedly from his crouch. The sight of his green-glowing face, of arms and legs rising as if from the depths was a bit unnerving in spite of the fact that Joe had seen this "rising from the water" many times.
Larry was engaged in the reassembly of parallel OHM processors rendered fluorescent in green, floor light. Joe cringed at the sight of so many intricate components scattered over the clear Lucinite. But it never helped to mention this kind of concern to Larry.
The fit and trim, broad-faced Larry was in an affiable mood in spite of the two million dollars on the floor. He whispered mindful of the others working in the lab: "Nettie will be ready, but we've still got problems with Pandora. Julia's taking a break from me. And I'm taking one from her."
"Where do you think I've been all this time?" answered Joe in a voice too loud for the uneasy comfort of the lab technicians. But he quickly simmered down. "I've just realigned the L-optics for the umteenth time. Sloe's bracing before he goes in to question her expertise."
"Well ... a good one. Love to see it, but I've got important things to do. The lady'll show extraordinary patience and forbearance, explain things to leave no reasonable doubt. Then she'll melt him down with her laser eyes and suck him up for a midnight snack. The red hourglass ... underneath ... I can see it now ... filling up with rubicide."
"Rubicide?"
"Like cyanide ... but red."
"Whatever you call it ... it won't be pleasant."
"Horrible. By the way, Joe, you should also know that Ivan the Terrible was down here asking questions about Friday. But what could I tell the guy? The man stirred the shit." Larry loved to stir a little himself. He also referred to Dr. Kovrani as Dr. Psychic and Dr. Baumer was Dr. Physic, the elephant's proctologist.
At various locations of the Lab, Minerva reported in rich holographic detail of red laser lines and numbers the current state of the Shell and Core. It was all Greek to Joe. He inquired, "What does Minerva have to say about Friday ... about Nettie?"
"Nothing of much use ... though there is one thing. I can tell by this OHMic catastrophe on the floor."
Larry stared at Joe as if the former was a green devil, hair standing straight as if galvanized by the Core.
Joe found his voice. "You're gonna tell me the ... "
"Yeah ... the mnemonic power was enormous ... a new record. Where do you suppose it all went?"
"By my reckoning and reconnoitering into Pandora's lasoptopak," said Joe.
"But the 'scope's not our only problem." Larry whispered, "There's the field."
A holographic beam transsected Joe across the chest. He dodged the laser unnecessarily and asked, "You mean ... the contingency?"
"Yeah ... the local background value."
"The likelihood?"
"The unlikelihood."
"What about it?"
"Steadily going up since we started measuring six months ago. And since Friday it's jumped up a whole bunch."
"Supposed to do that?"
"What do you think? Kinda like the temperature of the deep ocean or the ozone concentration in the upper atmosphere ... ain't supposed to change too much too fast. When the field increases it could mean we're nearing a hole ... a weakening in the premises of cause and effect ... one thing making any kind of sense from the prior event."
"Discontinuity?"
"Might be. Well ... I hope not ... but at a minimum it's inimical to the Lens and your Pandora."
"Have you ... you know ... told Kovrani?"
"I didn't mention any of this to him. He's not been exactly candid either. Everyone's so slippery these days. Who's to trust ... only you and me ... I guess?"
Joe replied, "I don't even trust myself. And what's this big scan that he's been cooking. Know anything about it? He's a basket case. Now, he's turning me into one."
"He's connived something with Leonard Moss. Joe, that's all I know. It's not even logged in. Supposed to be a high, government secret."
"Has Baumer been in today?"
"Saw Lloyd and Henry a few minutes ago. They're practicing for tomorrow's meeting ... a real ugly prospect. I'm thinking seriously of coming down with a case of panoptophobia plus some of Nettie's revenge."
Joe felt a painful, sympathetic twinge in his lower bowels."
Larry continued, "We're lucky that Nettie checked out, but who knows if she'll stay checked. This is my last OPM. We've completed all of the CICs. So ... we're ... "
"But Larry ... the damned software?"
"Joe ... tomorrow ... it must all come out ... it must all be said ... what's happening ... what's wrong with the Project ... what's wrong with the Machine ... no matter what. Joe ... no matter what!"
Chronicler's Note: More about Hardware and Software
Julia Moffett had programmed the Panigma Lens, Panigma Gate and the panoptographic software. She had also coded Panigma Button which was used to implement an emergency shutdown of the Machine if the conditions of the contained continuum went suddenly supercritical.
The Machine's intelligence was comprised of four elements - a human pilot (or dreamscanner) attached to an interface, some artificial intelligence, plus a number cruncher that was itself two things.
The Lens pilots were linked to the network through the SBI interfaces installed in each of the four isolation chambers. Each of the isolation chambers contained three rooms, an antechamber, an isocell for the pilot and an isocon for a highly-trained med tech.
Each Lens pilot also required a special computer called a Cybernet IC or CIC which enabled the translation between pilot and the supercomputer OPMs or Optimal Program Machines. The OPMs were the artificial intelligence hardware for the AI LIAR software.
Each OPM was linked to the OnNet 210 which consisted of neural processors and memory units of two types - optical units called OHMs (Minerva), plus bundled tessera grown from a remarkable media (Nettie). The OnNet's primary function was to solve complex paradimensional field problems using the techniques provided by Baumer and Kincaid.
The heart of the OnNet 210 was the paracube or the software receiver for paradimensional space-time. The Lens, the Gate and the drivers that operated the panoptoscope were installed on the OnNet. The Panigma Button ran on two, independent OHM computers and power supplies that tapped into the entire network.
Of course all of this technobabble is little more than boilerplate. And like the former and the latter it is much less than it sounds. The soul of the Machine answers not to any of their nicknames - names like Minerva, Pandora or Nettie. It is a single word that does not pass so easily through human lips.
©Copyright by Edward John Darenkamp