Here & There (37 page)

I wonder if Reidier was indeed at least telling a half truth when he told Diderot he did this to help himself think. This method of maze making is a form of meditation in and of itself. This is supported by the piecemeal content that swings from the profound to the vitriolic. Meditation makes sense as a response to the challenges of inventing: trying to simultaneously create new worldviews while obliterating old paradigms. Perhaps this was a way of taming the wild, frenetic nature of his thoughts. The draining discipline of it provided a way to focus. The mental rigor of this process is staggering, even more so, bearing in mind that Reidier would switch ciphers from paragraph to paragraph, sentence to sentence, or even from clause to clause. This is why my source has only so far been able to disentangle these fragments. Still, the content that has been excavated is provocative.

A

Decoded:

That’s where my colleagues stumble. They “send” things. Slaves to hero worship.

TVAMT UMZWH ECWBI MPTAP XPUIJ CQZBX FGYFM AXAEE IXVWQ LEPBY OJVZM
Anarchist Al was fine kicking the legs out from Newton’s
GGIIT DAHEN EOTUU SNTAI NVDET RUSRE NIINN S
just so he was the one to do it.
73 69 36 60 65 16 59 54 49 56 24 29 19 96 17 67 40 49 82 03 30 00 11 97 80 44 69 13 68 76 95 78 41 46 49 73 27 55 54 61 85 73 91 60 92 52 96 56 14 79 32 79 66 43 41 07 58 86 70 79 64 80 00 80 89 78 40 95 55 79 50 88 86 07 60 59 62 90 58 62 46 95 85 36 69 23 33 75 23 44 06 40 98 60 40 99 72 17 76

AA adhered to locality. Refused to believe in cause and effect at a distance.

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

AA was a stubborn asshole. A narrow-minded prig determined to hang on to his own narcissistic legacy.

IUKKQ MATKY UQBWQ XOATO IRLSW STODQ BLJBR QMMWR LAFPU UJBTG IOEFT EIHZU XQPZP PTSHI GJXIY YUOOS BWEDU WZXNS ZRKVG EMSYW TZPVT EDJYK HIGKQ GAQEV OFVLP XGWZA JMGGP VAUXG TEILY SKQIZ ZAUGF RJNGK PCGYB PWLMD IZMFO SBOXX KGXMU PFLLB RUXEM WLNLO JUXUI RYMOF XXBGT BYWOH JVHBV GQUAI BLKDL FBJJN NWMSX KCKCC DRQUY TLNGI CETKZ NRILD HNIHR PNDOL JRKFH JNEMM FLGKD NYONB KWJFH OFGRR ATHPG BWXXX
because the speed of light is inversely proportional to alpha, and both have been considered unchangeable constants. Alpha appears to have decreased by 4.5 parts out of 108. If confirmed, this would imply that the speed of light has increased.
upJ6rqiXt7+1zb55zYTW3ZjPqMWiwdF8oJSep7mRjpaSn7OApam1oMCFxdyjpL66uYquvai1sKC/ibWWnbixsp4xZGirkZuk5rGo7u2pZnch8DgrajF4p6d3aKnpbOfuriGfZeh0H6kg56t15zc2ZemqKG6m5q7qM295snDrtOUlJOyn0ZVNbmkqGqZg9XJws7CktSYwOeXk6TGoq2vnJuipnmuy6uEqLDmvJy+l6LAwr7Vn7uH26SIxMaepN/Yv6+93qi6samQRkkxrLmHh6e92b3Dy7aTyIe76KWnxt+iitBqnp6qbg==

He couldn’t believe, couldn’t accept, insisted that particles have definite positions and momentums all the time, whether we’re watching them or not.

OECTS UAUEP TORRE RFRTE AEIHD GFNAS EFGND EALAC TITTF GIOAH DCST

WTHHO AARTT EIHAT ELFIA ZIELI ESDT
wasn’t moving faster than the speed of light. It was already there. Travel was unnecessary.
GZ RB NE GS SN UC ZG GN RP VO GZ NN GZ RJ
concept of speed is fallible it implies travel, movement relative from one point to another.

No one seems to see the secret
LmnodLAy9qxvpzszIawoKelm33Hpcx6tKiHlbOoioaWnqa3sJP
blYWbo+OqoqTZvsyht4Wrrp2flcmgzqq8u6ip05aXREpPtLeFp8iryN21vLKm25i0taiAfqO8k+qgnZd/z6XbuXepxIW5orXPnIC/p7yqop/i1r+Y7JWesqeYpqjJys+dwLu6l7aRMGRWoKqredqnqpmhg4ij3JywmKijfpnHtbx6noS+16POiqGWr6q2orW5dpWqw6Cqu7DK05e2pYvBwYevo4bn2JzEvqiqoJKfRGRhtriXot3NiKE= E’s abomination
PI PR BG DV
In a way, Anarchist Al was right with his bullheaded conservatism, he just didn’t take it far enough.
1s+5bpqVnrilhnp8j4ayxcKTpOahv5rXgZOIpa231cSCnrnatqWxoJ2Doemfx7mKnjNCRczbtaOpvqVzsYh6loOaxNm7tba2mpud5IrOmd+ntb/Flp/clLjN16Grmp7Zp5PBjo1RPT0=

zqWoprHOv96knZKqkK6horDfvZqvy6V2vM2GzaCIyNzCqYPHx8G2pJ65m3I=
Bhagavad Gita. They were tapping into the wrong ancients. The wrong continent. It’s all right
43 65 64 77 46 88 71 20 23 24
Incan 26 54 40 24 just not written down
qpWh xcWGyNemnJjx1Yfdx7iRm6/KmqmZsJ2qw5e5n4e6vKLJo8CZw4yd0sqlpKKhv6SnecWu3cOzw3p1y6uxjotFNW2b37rAw4Sh5Z+ru8PYvtnhzLmcj9muqdyzz3+ikaaKjamiqrU
= and his antithesis
KG ET KG IE PV GE LK GT CG PR SV TC RF HP PR PO YT VC KG MO FC SO TC QR PM UG PI
the essence of presence and absence where HUP actually moves from philosophical to actual.

To understand the transmission, you need to see that there is no transmission of information. There is no transmission. It’s like a coin’s head is either up or down. In turning it from up to down, the state is changed, but the information isn’t transmitted to the tail’s side. The tail’s end is already changed.

AHRII LTASE URDSL TQE
E’s acceptance and willingness
UPFOH BHFUP FNQMP ZUPDP
NNJUB MJUUM FYYYY
constructive destruction.

A

From what can be seen, his notes are neither chaotic nor ordered, neither nonsensical nor enlightened. What’s here is a key: a psychological cipher to the inner workings of Reidier. This was where or how he hashed out his ideas. It is his theoretical journal, full of questions and insights so volatile they needed to be buried inside of cryptographs.

What kind of a person does this?

Look closely at the scribbles above and below
The Vitruvian Man
. While Leonardo da Vinci wrote in Italian, he did so with a unique shorthand of his own invention. Not only that, he almost always employed “mirror writing,” where one starts at the right side of the page and moves to the left. (Most likely Reidier was performing some version of this using an actual mirror.
¹⁰¹
Thumbing through his notebooks there are numerous pages where the lettering itself is written backward.) Da Vinci only wrote in the normal direction when he intended for someone else to read his writings.

While the Florentine never proffered an explanation for this, at least as far as what’s been deciphered, there are some theories. Da Vinci could have simply wanted to make it more difficult for people to read his notes and steal his ideas. Perhaps Reidier similarly was concerned about his intellectual property. His innovations are certainly valuable in every sense of the word.

Some historians hold that da Vinci wrote in this manner to hide his scientific ideas from the powerful Church, as some of them contradicted the tenets of Catholicism (consider what happened later on to Galileo). Reidier’s theories, however, while threatening to shift scientific paradigms, were not undermining the powers that be. In fact, via the Department, he was working
for
those powers. Still, it’s worth considering who might have been threatened by or opposed to Reidier’s work.

1. Other governments: Reidier himself proclaimed how his work would unravel every cryptographic security system based on classical physics.
   ¹⁰²
   China, Russia, Iran—any nation deemed a threat, or even an ally, would be vulnerable. Exposure of Reidier’s work to the world would make him at best a pawn and at worst a target.
   
2. Various industries and multinational corporations: What would teleportation do to the automotive world, air travel, communications? Considering the cataclysmic effects Reidier’s paradigm shift could have on these well-funded powerful MNCs, it seems understandable that he would play his hand close to the vest.
   

With regards to Pierce, Reidier needed to take these measures (without even realizing) in order to maintain at least a shred of private space.

For his part, Pierce never seemed concerned with the notebooks. Perhaps he didn’t see them as integral as long as Reidier was producing results. Or he immediately classified them as unbreakable and a waste of resources. As far as the aforementioned dangers, Pierce saw himself as Reidier’s paladin, and was confident (albeit mistakenly so) that he could protect Reidier and the Department’s intellectual property from any threat of espionage.

Clearly, though, Reidier’s instincts and precautions were right as confirmed by Gio Brent, Pierce’s former assistant. “He [Pierce] knew there were sharks in the water. He just never figured any of them would be brash enough to try and nibble from his plate. Obviously the real mistake was that he and Larry were focused on Reidier’s potential enemies and never really considered how dangerous champions could be. Neither did Reidier for that matter.”

Da Vinci and Reidier could have shared another motivation for their secrecy: psychological deficiencies. Many believe that Leonardo suffered from a number of learning disabilities, including dyslexia and attention-deficit disorder. Some have wondered if he didn’t have a form of Asperger’s. The artist took twelve years to paint Mona Lisa’s lips. He could write with one hand while drawing with the other. Perfectionist tendencies, moderate crossover discrimination deficits, savant skills—did Reidier have similar tendencies? Bertram has described on numerous occasions Reidier’s peculiar habits of friendship: drastic absences broken up by sporadic bouts of intensity without even a howdy-do. On the other hand, the mysteries of Reidier’s motivation might easily be explained as the meditative machinations necessary to calm his own particular brand of OCD.
¹⁰³

What’s more important than the Why of it is the What of it.

“That’s where my colleagues stumble,” Reidier writes. “They send things.” Presumably his colleagues are fellow scientists. Their sending is their mistake. They try to transmit something from one point to another. A faulty premise, according to Reidier, that will never get them anywhere. Apparently, Reidier’s work approaches teleportation in a manner unhampered by getting from Point A to Point B.

Travel is unnecessary.

Speed is fallible.

Locality, Bhagavad Gita, Incans—all meditations on the nature of the universe or how to kick the legs out from underneath it. But what do they mean?

Excerpt from University of Chicago iTunes episode, Dr. Kerek Reidier lecture from his Physics of Science Fiction course, February 11th, 2005

“In physics, the principle of locality asserts objects can only be influenced directly by their immediate surroundings. I hit the ball, the ball moves. For me to hit it, though, I have to be within arm’s reach. Or at least have an instrument that can reach it. I hold a gun and squeeze the trigger. The hammer hits the firing cap, which instigates an explosion, throwing the bullet out of the barrel, across the field, and into the ball. Through direct physical interactions within a locale, I have hit the ball.”

He smiles at his students.

“But this isn’t necessarily always the case. Experiments have shown that quantum mechanically entangled particles must violate this principle or obliterate the entire idea of philosophical realism and counterfactual definiteness. Can anyone explain those terms for me?”

The class shifts in their seats.

“Ok. I’ll give you this one, it’s a bit tricky. Philosophical realism states that reality is ontologically independent of our conceptual schemes, linguistic practices, and beliefs. The world is what it is, whether we can see it for that or not. In this system, truth is based on how closely a belief corresponds to reality.”
*

*
Too true. Just in my case, I can’t wait around to find out how close I am. I had to go on predictions. Rely on answers to questions I couldn’t risk asking. It was time to take action.

Across the iron bridge, just inside the back door of 357, there was an old rolled-up rug tossed into the trash under the stairs. I dragged it back along the gangplank. It was heavier than it looked, but still light enough to schlep. So I took a good stance and heaved.

Thwack. Got it in one. It unraveled smack dab over the barbed wire and dangled over the carriage house’s gutters, providing me a barb-free, vertical escape route.

Yes, I was desperate. But it worked in the movies. The hard part was going to be the briefcase. Mom’s report was heavy. Tossing it up and over
onto the roof would be hard enough. But I could just imagine it popping open and all the loose sheets blowing out over the rooftops. That happened in the movies too.

Once again the garbage was the answer. I dug, and I sifted and came up with an old extension cord. I tied one end around the briefcase, the other around me. All I had to do was stand on the railing, jump to the carpeted neutral zone across the barbed wire, climb up onto the roof, pull up the report, and find some way down on the other side to 40th Street, far away from any would-be watchful gazes, safe from any snares.