Lift, p.10
Lift, page 10
“So, you don’t have a true universal language; you’ve decided the planet will have a number of similar languages.”
“I know where you’re leading me,” Charles said. “Does one culture care about the tweaked language of another?”
“And how do you educate all the peoples of the various blocs?”
Charles stood still. “I don’t know.”
“Can we get help from the dolphins? Do we have to explain and translate so much? This planet is almost three quarters water. How presumptive humanity was to call it Earth.” Ramanujan smirked and raised his palms. “Perhaps water creatures large and small are the planet’s true citizens.”
“They were the first,” Charles agreed.
Ramanujan nodded. “Take yourself out of this world. How would extraterrestrial beings solve our problem? I want you to think about everything we have talked about. For now, these are the topics I will discuss with you. Don’t worry; when the time comes you will be involved in mathematics above your eyeballs.”
Ramanujan stood and walked to the diagrams. He added “Dolphin” outside the circles. “Let’s say Dolphinese for now.”
“Do you think we can teach these cultures in time?” Charles asked.
“I don’t have a clue.”
“If,” Charles said, “our Tiers, their work, the academy’s—”
“Spare me what you’ve heard.” He threw up his hands. “Where are we? Are we on the correct path?”
Charles looked down at his own hands as they clenched and unclenched.
“The other night I came across an opposite quest,” Ramanujan said. “Did you know American Navajo Indians used their particular language in World War II to thwart the enemy? It was so difficult to penetrate, the Japanese gave up. Are we making our quest too difficult for humankind? Is there a simpler way?”
“I don’t know,” Charles said.
“Enough for now. Come back here with ideas, a plan, and one other thing: I want a large tin of Assam tea. Make sure it’s Assam, from my country; nothing else is suitable.”
21
CHARLES KNEW HE WAS DREAMING. WHEN HE KNEW, HE COULD sometimes nudge his dream. Archimedes had cornered him. But Archimedes had been Returned to his own time.
“Take me to your gears,” Archimedes repeated.
“What?” Even in the dream, Charles was puzzled.
“We are twisting. The wind is turning us, right?”
“We turn on huge ball-bearings, not by gears,” Charles said.
“Take me to your gears. I will show you something.”
The dream fast-forwarded to a darkened tunnel. The noise was deafening. Charles led the way, with Archimedes behind him. They seemed to be going uphill, but the noise had stopped, and there was brighter light ahead.
The calamity of sound started again, and Archimedes brushed by him. “Gears,” he hollered.
They emerged from the tunnel into a glass-enclosed cubby in front of three massive slicked balls that rolled to the right, then slowed, enabling another ball to edge into view on the left.
“These balls are taller than we are,” Charles said.
Charles realized the cubby overlooked a track he thought was straight, but he could see it curve into the distance. Suddenly, enormous splashes of liquid jetted from funnels above, onto the balls in front of them. Oil odors fouled the air as the dark-green liquid covered the massive bearings and dripped to the track below. Almost like an afterthought, a dumping of what had to be grease smeared over the oil and oozed.
“Ah,” yelled Archimedes. “And now you see. There.”
Charles looked below the track and saw what looked like cut-off T-bar. But, pressing closer to the glass, he saw it was one giant tooth of a gear.
Archimedes kept hollering: “Below, look beneath.”
Charles had to cover his ears as he watched the edge of a giant ratchet wheel turn, in sync with the gear under the massive bearings.
Archimedes smiled. “Just as I thought. Watch.”
The massive ratchet wheel turned one minuscule and a giant pawl clanged down and nested between teeth of the gear.
“But,” Charles said, “how will the gear move now?”
Archimedes looked at him. “Use your head, boy. How will new and different winds make a change? Who directs the winds? The winds of change are for us to control.”
Charles fought in his dream to see it, but he sensed the end of his dream. He heard the last words of Archimedes: “Ancient mariners controlled their destiny by controlling the winds. Didn’t you notice the counter-pawl? Without the pawls, the winds would spin us crazy.”
“Are the winds a language?” Charles asked. No answer, and Charles tried to nudge the dream.
But Archimedes was gone. Back to his old-time, and Charles opened his eyes in bed—alone.
Before class, Charles queried the obelisk specs and found drawings. There were gears, a sprocket, a ratchet wheel, and two giant pawls below the track where the balls rolled. How did Archimedes know this?
CHARLES WAS IN CONICS-MINUS THREE DIMENSION IN ACADEMY, sitting next to Andrica. They were listening to new developments in Mordell’s conjecture, which linked topology with number theory, and Charles couldn’t concentrate because Andrica was trying to excite him with footsies and drive him off his game.
But Charles had other thoughts on his mind—yesterday’s unresolved session with Ramanujan had unsettled him. As well as last night’s dream, which made no sense. He’d rolled and reviewed simulations several times with his father; the math was true—societal breakdown was near. Humanity was at stake, and this was no time for him to study conics. He’d discussed his feelings with his father, who understood, but Charles was not relieved when his father claimed the education of the masses rested with Tier. His father added, if one had to second-guess Tier’s dedicated support, it would serve to distract one’s individual commitment. “Stay focused, Charles,” he’d said.
Charles considered the plight of all those who would be left behind, like the non-gifted workers who added benefits to everyone. Many of them worked in elderly care and geriatrics. Seniors did not want androids caring for them. They insisted on humans. Tests showed human touch and companionship extended their lives. Common workers were also needed for water and food management—it was a fine balance between how much could be taken from the seas and from land. Freshwater management meant additional tunnels under mountains to lakes and reservoirs, the building of new dams, the repair and sometimes relocation of existing dams.
Charles thought of food processing and foodservice. He remembered seeing vertical farming inside greenhouses in Iceland, and he was told such greenhouses were abundant in Siberia and Greenland as well.
But it was still a war economy. Next to food processing, water management, ocean replenishment, and perhaps healthcare, most of the common people were involved with Security or Defense, and fought in Conflicts and Wars. The wounded also refused to be tended to by androids and robots. Thus, the constant need for health- and human-care workers.
Charles realized, more than anyone else, that if the new language was unlike anything heard by humanity, the world wouldn’t be ready in time. But, he thought, just as we force-feed Liftees to bring them up to speed in a matter of days, we can use Neuro-Linguistic Programming—
“Charles. Charles?” the instructor repeated.
Andrica swung a foot to his shin. “Psssst, Charles.”
“I’m sorry. I missed the question.”
“Give me two Diophantine equations that lead to solution here,” the professor said, pointing to the laser board.
Charles stared at the mess of mathematics on the board for over a minute.
“Can I give you one?”
The class roared and Andrica’s laugh was the last of them all. Later, Charles realized the professor had been looking for the one and only Diophantine solution.
AT DAY’S END, CHARLES MET ANDRICA AT THE MATHETORIUM. THIS had been their new ritual Monday through Friday after classes, labs, and sometimes after Charles’s sessions with a Liftee. Most young people went there in the evenings. On weekends, there were sponsored Fischer-Random chess tournaments as well as mathematical games, contests, and math-league playoffs. Even those not math-minded came to watch, much like the couch-potato athletes who went to sports bars in old-time. What was different for Charles was that he mixed with Andrica and her friends more than he did with his old gang. Some in the gang were jealous and looked away from Charles when he waved to them at the usual table.
“So, how is the genius Ramanujan?” Andrica asked, as she passed a textbook-sized magic square to her girlfriend.
Charles tried to think of an appropriate response, but words got tangled in his throat and from experience he knew that what he would utter wouldn’t match what he wanted to say. He wondered about this. What humans spoke in their language approximated their inner intentions and emotions. People write books, he thought, but at important meetings people don’t read from books, yet they may read from prepared scripts. But during confrontation, different questions are asked, challenges made, taking one off-script. On their own, the person is thrown into the fray of approximation.
“Earth to Charles. Do you mind, Charles?” Andrica said.
“I’m sorry.”
“Think you’re slumming with the riff-raff here?”
“No, not at all.”
“You are condescending. What are you thinking about?”
“Approximations. We—humans—approximate when we try to put thought into what we verbalize.”
“Some are good at verbalizing their thoughts, Charles.”
Charles looked at her. “Yes: you, for example, are much better at verbalizing than I am.”
Andrica cross-eyed him and put her head down on her folded arms on the table. She twisted her head, pushed her hair to one side, and peeked up at him. “You get hung up inside, Charles. You spend too much time on exact and joyless passions.”
“But if I want to communicate truthfully, shouldn’t I be exact?”
“The truth can hurt, Charles.”
“Can we think about that? If leaders are trying to meet on common intellectual ground and are trying to avoid confrontation, they have to be truthful, don’t they?”
“Maybe they don’t want to meet on common intellectual ground. Maybe one side or sides is trying to outfox the other?”
Charles was annoyed with this; something else he’d overlooked. Casuistry.
“So … we use language in international meetings, or any meeting of note, to deceive, as well as to communicate?”
“You have an amazing grasp of the obvious, Charles.”
“Then how can our species enhance communication?”
“Language, linguistics as we understand it, doesn’t communicate all views simultaneously—never mind the so-called truthful ones.”
“Exactly,” Charles said.
22
OVER THE WEEKEND, CHARLES COMPETED IN A THREE-DIMENSIONAL Fischer-Random chess tournament. The mathetorium’s bleachers on all three floors were extracted from all walls and extended. Packed full, all eyes were on the screens of each wall. Each of the four walls’ screens was split: the left side showed the players in combat; the right side showed an enlarged board with positions of pieces, posting every move. Electronics muted conversations, coughs, and any extraneous sounds that might distract the chess players. Andrica and half the academy, those who had already been beaten in Fischer-Random Chess, sat to cheer on their remaining favorites. And Andrica had to admit it: she wanted Charles to win even though she expressed a different wish to her friends.
“Charles won’t fight it out in the endgame; he always pursues a draw,” Andrica said.
“Why are you always down on him?” Olivia asked.
“’Cause he’s a wuss.”
A cheer erupted as Conrad, last year’s champion, created a gambit, offering a pawn to Charles. While Charles considered options, Conrad played mathescrab on his touch phone. He was playing against two Samoans and had them on the ropes. After dispatching one of the Samoans, using a little-known equation from Boolean-Abstracted, he touched off the phone to pay more attention to the board. Charles had declined the gambit and with an unseen riposte was attempting to force the game into the Riemann variation.
A new cheer started and gathered steam as viewers realized the move’s potential.
“How about that, Andrica?!” Olivia said.
“Too little, too late.” But she smiled. Charles was going to fight it out after all. Conrad meant nothing to her; she could have him anytime she wanted.
Conrad countered in what looked like a protective move—but, after a deeper look, it was a veiled attack on Charles’s queenside pawn flank. It was brilliant, yet Conrad didn’t turn his phone back on; his eyes remained fixed on the board.
Charles lost the game, and two days later Conrad won the championship again. Charles took a bronze. After the tournament, Charles went up to Conrad. “That pawn you offered me, was it for real?”
“No, Charles. I wanted you to think it was.”
“So … there was no plan for it … if not, why did the audience cheer?”
“Stupid people don’t question, they assume.”
Charles looked at him.
“They would have figured it out, but not soon enough,” Conrad said.
That night, Charles replayed their game, and when he came to Conrad’s gambit, he studied the position. No, Charles said to himself, Conrad had made a blunder. What’s more, Conrad should have lost the game—and Conrad knew this: he just wouldn’t admit it.
With this insight, a lever tipped in Charles’s brain. He went straight to Lussier’s proofs. Even before he found the smoking gun, he realized Lussier’s mathematics in support of this one obscure proof, proof of a minor point in a little-known subset, was designed to fool the reader. It wouldn’t have made any difference to most quests, but this particular proof had been accepted carte blanche in the scaffolding of a mathematical alphabet used in finding the language optima.
RAMANUJAN LISTENED. “VERY INTERESTING INDEED. YOUR DISCOVERY may be of profound importance. I shall not deal with meta-mathematics but will notify my logician-minded colleagues. Bring this discovery to your father and have him inform Popov.”
Charles consulted with his father on Lussier’s proof. He wanted his father to admire him, and Charles was pleased when his father congratulated him on his discovery. Yet Charles remained unsettled. Our language, any language he knew of, did not reveal exact thoughts, just approximations, and it didn’t reveal all views simultaneously—how could it? “Read between the lines” was still the adage. That had to change, but how?
“Let’s review this again,” Wang Chen De Costa said to his son. “Right now, the WCM and Liftees are integrating minus three-dimensional mathematics with chaos, catastrophe, and fractal mathematics. We are applying recursions to linguistics and musical theory. If Lussier’s proof doesn’t stand up, everything we’ve done is in question.”
“If it doesn’t stand up, we may still be right,” said Charles.
POPOV LISTENED TO GENERAL BRAUN’S UPDATE ON THE CANADA-Siberia war. Since Popov’s private attempt, over eighty thousand Siberians had been killed and twice as many West-Canadians. A Controlled-Nuclear was not authorized.
She glanced at the afternoon agenda. Popov had decided to meet with both Wang Chen and his son. If what she was hearing was true—she got wind of it from Ramanujan and Krebs—she wanted to meet the young man who had made the ominous discovery.
THAT AFTERNOON. “RIGHT. I UNDERSTAND,” POPOV SAID TO DE Costa and Charles, “just don’t ask me to Lift Lussier to get to the bottom of it.”
Popov knew she was showing her agitation, her sleep-deprived pettiness. But she could see no way around the fact that Charles’s deconstruction of the subset was correct: the proof was false. And it looked like a deliberate cover-up by Lussier, who was known for rigor. He’d soiled the language of mathematics. What wasn’t known was whether the oversight would affect the mathematics following the faulty proof, which had been used to develop M-L-M.
“We don’t need to Lift Lussier,” Wang Chen De Costa said.
“Why not?”
Charles stood, but sat back down, realizing the inner sanctum they were meeting in was different from a discussion room with a Liftee. “We are running out of time,” Charles said. “We are looking at new advances which would make the proof moot.”
“Right. We’ll press on. Maybe this will force us to leap in new directions. At the present rate, what we’ve achieved isn’t near enough.”
“We need to find a wormhole to a new language,” Charles said. “We haven’t found a wormhole into an alternate universe; maybe we can wormhole to an alternate way of communication.”
When the meeting concluded, Popov requested Charles meet with her one-on-one every weekend, beginning the next day. She faced De Costa squarely.
“I need more perspective from our young people. I shall, from time to time, meet with the young, the creative, and I would like to start with Charles.”
“I think it’s a wonderful idea. Charles?” De Costa said, turning to him.
“Yes. Thank you, Ms. Popov.”
That evening, after long and solemn thoughts, which wound her up, Popov closed all outside communications and went to her harp. This was the best way she could triage and manage her thoughts properly. An hour later, she decided the time had come. She’d hoped she would never have to pursue this avenue, but for the sake of humanity, she knew she had no choice. She would apprise WCM tomorrow and put it to vote.
She put on special glasses and tapped a sequence over both ears.
The Department of Security, Division of—Oh, Chair Popov, I’m sorry …
“General Braun, please.”
General Braun speaking. Yes, Chair Popov.
“About our starship,” Popov said.
