Dark Tales Of Lost Civilizations (45 page)

“Thank you all for the long hours you’ve put in, great research, and clear executive summaries. Get some sleep, A-team. Let’s reconvene at 0900 hours. Sweet dreams of nanotechnology!”

8. Gilgamesh’s Galaxy

The moment arrived full circle. Since the earliest announcement of the Nippur tablets, I had been a part of every discussion and committee forum, merely listening, taking copious notes. Now it was my turn to present to the Director and assembled chairmen. My conclusions were beyond incredible.

“Please explain to this IID group why Niels Bohr matters, since his model of the atom as a little solar system with electrons whizzing around the nucleus like planets orbiting the sun, is
wrong
. We non-physicists have a hard time understanding why Bohr is considered such an influential scientist. And, of course, how does this bear on the matter of the tablets?” the IID Director asked.

I stood and faced the packed audience. “Sir, physics observations must be expressed in unambiguous language with suitable application of the terminology of classical physics.”

“How did they deal with this 117,000 years ago? And what does it mean for us now?”

“They seem to have invented or discovered
topos theory
, way beyond
category theory,
” I said.

“What’s a topos?”

“A universe of discourse, to which a mathematician or observer may wish to confine himself. Even the internal language and associated logic can alternatively be studied externally with classical meta-logic. Various entities at play in our application of topos theory to quantum physics are illustrated in figure one.”

I put up the first slide. On the projection screen appeared an image of a rounded rectangle labeled
Ambient Topos
. Inside that, a fancy-font letter ‘A’ with a label
C*-Algebra
. Near that was an icon of an open human eye and the label
Mathematician using Meta-Logic
. Inside the rounded rectangle was a smaller rounded rectangle containing an underlined-font letter ‘A’ labeled
Inner C*-Algebra
. Near that was another icon of an open human eye, and the label
Internal Observer
.

Everyone squinted at the slide. It looked profound, but I could tell its meaning was unclear to them.

“This illustrates that our quantum logic is meant to be the logic of an
internal
observer, with all the restrictions it brings with it. Whereas the quantum
logic
of Birkhoff and von Neumann, to the extent it is a logic at all, rather pertains to a fictitious entity like
Laplace’s demon
, to whose intellect
nothing would be uncertain and the future, just like the past, would be present before its eyes
.”

“This may be clear to you, but I don’t see anyone nodding their heads in agreement,” said the Director.

“Not many people have expertise in
quantum physics
,
category theory
, and
operator algebras
,” I said. “That’s what one needs to follow the state of the art as of, say 2007 in Communications in Mathematical Physics, let alone what the ancients did with it 117,000 years ago. Let me try to explain, more precisely.

“The goal is to relate algebraic quantum mechanics to topos theory, so as to construct new foundations for quantum logic and quantum spaces, motivated by Niels Bohr’s idea that the empirical content of quantum physics is accessible only through classical physics.”

“Sorry, you lost me again. Are you suggesting that the Proto-Sumerians went into a quantum phase space like some kind of Hilbert space?”

“No. I’m saying they had some deep understanding of infinite dimensional Hilbert space that gave them a handle on how to reconcile
quantum mechanics
,
general relativity
, and
string theory
. If we even begin to understand what the equations imply, and it’s going to take new departments at a hundred universities to even scratch the surface, they could have skipped the solar system completely. They could have wormholed to anywhere in the galaxy they wanted to go. Or
beyond
.”

“They could travel faster than light by going off the brane?”

“That’s what the tablets hint at, although we’re not sure. If we read the cuneiforms correctly, they figured out how the supersymmetric actions of closed multiple M2 branes with flux for the BL and the ABJM theories have been extended to the construction of the case of open M2-branes with flux, and derive the boundary conditions. This allows them to derive the modified Basu-Harvey equation in the presence of flux. As an example, when they considered what we call the Lorentzian BL model, they get a new feature of the fuzzy funnel solution describing a D2-D4 intersection that is obtained as a result of the flux.”

“Fuzzy funnel?”

“Yes. Informally, our team calls it a
chronosynclastic infundibulum
after the science fiction novel
The Sirens of Titan,
by Kurt Vonnegut. It’s kind of a wormhole through time and space.”

The Time Travel Committee leaned forward again.

“I want a full briefing before close of business today. Tell me again how this connects with Niels Bohr? At least I get the little solar system atom thing.”

“In a short yet immensely influential 1948 essay titled,
On the Notions of Causality and Complementarity,
Niels Bohr articulated a principle that has served the quantum physics community well for more than sixty years:

‘Well-defined experimental evidence, though not analyzed in terms of classical physics, must be expressed in terms of ordinary language making use of common logic.’

“Thus for more than eighty years we have been able to read the quantum literature without any risk of feeling cheated, confident that toward the end of most articles, a concrete reduction to
experimental evidence in terms of ordinary language making use of common logic
will be presented.

“It seems to this committee, as we contemplate the wisdom of the tablets, that the world would benefit substantially if a similar principle was explicitly formulated and widely adopted, regarding in particular the discussion of oracle-dependent theorems. Here the point is that oracular models of computation differ as substantially from physical computation, as quantum state-spaces differ from classical state-spaces.”

“That’s where Hilbert Space comes in?” asked the IID Director.

“Yes,” I replied. “What is conspicuously missing from many quantum information theory articles, even articles that explicitly link theorems to experiments, is a Bohr-style discussion of the analysis of experimental evidence that expresses its conclusions wholly
in terms of ordinary language making use of common logic
. That is, without any reference to Hilbert spaces or computational oracles.”

“Are we equipped to do the experiments?”

“Not yet. Decades of quantum physics articles have conditioned many people to expect a conclusion to the Bohr-reduction in the first article that can link theoretical models to concrete experiments. Perhaps this has been a globally beneficial practice that the community would do well to embrace in coming decades.”

“Does this connect with that
Pratt Principle
thing?” said the Director.

I nodded. “Yes. Vaughan Pratt is a pioneer of computer science and asked the following:

One. Is the space that quantum mechanics currently models as Hilbert space really flat?

Two. If not, would that compromise quantum computing in any way? Is there some curvature, positive or negative, at which the current best error correction methods fail?”

“Bottom line?”

“The point here is that the IID accommodates many Holy Grails. It very commonly happens that in seeking one Grail, researchers find a very different one!” I said.

“Gentlemen, ladies, I think we should break until the end-of-day breakout sessions. It is my considered opinion that the national security threat is actually the greatest opportunity in human history. Our species had our singularity, and we don’t even remember it, or we scattered out fragments of its memory into myths and legends. The ice age wiped out almost all physical evidence. We have been incredibly lucky to unearth these tablets. And we have worked incredibly hard to figure out what they mean,” the IID Director said.

I replied, “We’ve got to search for more Sumerian tablets, reconstruct the ancient nanotechnology, and figure out if this was mere theory, or whether they really built a fuzzy funnel
chronosynclastic infundibulum
.

“And if they did, where did they go, these interstellar pioneers of 117,000 years ago?

“If they did, then they have achieved the kind of immortality that King Gilgamesh sought in his epic story.

“If they did, then we can do it, too. The human race may be on the brink of going from Sumeria to the stars. Of exploding out into Gilgamesh’s Galaxy!”

=[]=

Jonathan Vos Post
has been a Professor of Mathematics at
Woodbury University
in Burbank, California. His first degree in Mathematics was from
Caltech
in 1973. He has been also a Professor of Astronomy at
Cypress College
in Orange County, California; Professor of Computer Science at
California State University, Los Angeles
; and Professor of English Composition at
Pasadena City College
. He is a widely published author of Science Fiction, Science, Poetry, Math, Drama, and other fields. In his so-called spare time, he won elections for local political offices and produced operas, as Secretary of
Euterpe Opera Theatre
.

Co-Webmaster, Vice President, and Chief Information Officer of
Magic Dragon Multimedia

4,200+ publications, presentations, broadcasts

co-author with Ray Bradbury

co-author with Richard Feynman, Nobel Laureate physicist

co-editor with David Brin and Arthur C. Clarke

co-broadcaster with Isaac Asimov

quoted by name in Robert Heinlein’s
Expanded Universe

Winner of 1987
Rhysling Award
for Best Science Fiction Poem of Year

Published in
Nebula Awards Anthology
#23, 1989

Semifinalist for 1996
Nebula Award

Joe R. Lansdale

=[]=

Joe R. Lansdale . . . what else can I add that has not already been said of one of the most accomplished names in modern writing? Master, legend, inspiration; his list of honors is a long one. Personally, I’ve been a Lansdale fan since 1992 when, as a high school sophomore, I first read
Love Doll: A Fable
in the
Borderlands 2
anthology. That’s two decades since, of enjoying Lansdale fiction. To bring it full circle now, by including him in my own collection, is beyond thrilling. His contribution to the
Dark Tales
anthology is actually a bit of a departure from his characteristic rough-and-tumble characters and outrageous adventures. The following tale is a quiet one, written in the fashion of traditional ghost stories. The people found in this tale are not ones you’d ever wish to encounter.

=[]=

I can’t really explain this properly, but I’ll tell it to you, and you can make the best of it. It starts with a train. People don’t travel as readily by train these days as they once did, but in my youthful days they did, and I have to admit those days were some time ago, considering my current, doddering age. It’s hard to believe so much time has turned, and I have turned with it, as worn out and rusty as those old coal-powered trains.

I am soon to fall of the edge of the cliff into the great darkness, but there was a time when I was young and the world was light. Back then, there was something that happened to me on a rail line that showed me something I didn’t know was there, and since that time, I’ve never seen the world in exactly the same way.

What I can tell you is this. I was traveling across country by night in a very nice rail car. I had not just a seat on a train, but a compartment to myself. A quite comfortable compartment, I might add. I was early into my business career then, having just started with a firm that I ended up working at for twenty-five years. To simplify, I had completed a cross country business trip and was on my way home. I wasn’t married then, but one of the reasons I was eager to make it back to my home town was a young woman named Ellen. We were quite close, and her company meant everything to me. It was our plan to marry.