joke.”
“Bill, on Everest, when the guides talked, I listened. It was the same when I learned to fly helicopters, and I’ll do the same here. Trust me.”
As Markowitz stepped away, I glanced over to see Lavon slide next to Sharon.
“I hate to ask this, but it could be important,” he said. “Are you close to, um, your time of the month?”
She smiled, though more at his hesitation than from the nature of the question.
“Happened last week,” she said.
I just sat there and shook my head. A woman’s monthly cycle; such a simple thing, yet I had not thought of that.
Chapter 12
We didn’t have any more time to reflect, though. Bryson knocked on the back door of the chamber. A few seconds later, a geeky kid in coke-bottle glasses opened it from the other side.
“Allow me to introduce my assistant,” she said. “This is Scott Ellison. He’s one semester away from completing his Ph.D. I’m serving as his informal dissertation advisor.”
“What is your specialty?” asked Markowitz.
The young man’s eyes lit up. “I’m writing about Non-Abelian Anyons and Topological Quantum Computation.”
He waved his hands excitedly as he launched into a description of his work. “It is inevitable that the next generation of quantum devices will depend on the existence of topological states of matter whose quasiparticle excitations are – believe it or not – neither bosons nor fermions , but instead are particles known as non-Abelian anyons, meaning that they obey non-Abelian braiding statistics.”
I nodded as though I understood more than a single word he had just spoken.
“I’d expect that to be obvious,” I chuckled.
“You lost me at ‘is’,” said Lavon.
The young man laughed, though a bit uneasily, since he seemed unsure what the rest of us found so humorous.
“How old are you, if you don’t mind me asking?” I said.
“I turn 23 next week.”
“I brought Scott here to explain some of the transit procedures,” Juliet said; “to give you an idea what to expect.”
“I hoped you knew that,” said Lavon.
“Yes, I do,” she said, “but much of Scott’s work is out of the mainstream. To progress in this field, he will need to become more comfortable making presentations to skeptical audiences, so this seemed like a good opportunity for him to get some practice speaking to total strangers in at least a partially scientific context.”
Ellison coughed and led us over to another thick plexiglass window. Looking through it, we saw an adjoining room about the size of an average bedroom, though the walls had been polished perfectly smooth and the corners were rounded. At the center, we could see a cube delineated by what appeared to be thin yellow twine.
“The walls are coated with a specialized ceramic,” said Ellison. “They are essentially frictionless, for reasons it would take me hours to elaborate.”
“We don’t have hours,” I said, hoping to avoid a long, incomprehensible lecture. “What’s all that string at the center?”
“I believe that Dr. Bryson has already described to you the limits of the transport apparatus. That marks the departure point.”
I considered this for a moment. “So we have to go back one at a time?”
“That’s correct. You sit on the floor within those string markers.”
Lavon turned to face Bryson. “You told us the return key would bring back all mammalian life forms within a two meter radius.”
“Our calculations point to that conclusion. That’s why the transit room itself is larger.”
“But you’ve never really tested it?”
“Only Henry went back. How else would we have had the opportunity to do so with more than one person?”
I glanced at the kid. He seemed competent enough; but I had enough experience with human nature to realize that under the right circumstances, this young man would be perfectly
“Bill, on Everest, when the guides talked, I listened. It was the same when I learned to fly helicopters, and I’ll do the same here. Trust me.”
As Markowitz stepped away, I glanced over to see Lavon slide next to Sharon.
“I hate to ask this, but it could be important,” he said. “Are you close to, um, your time of the month?”
She smiled, though more at his hesitation than from the nature of the question.
“Happened last week,” she said.
I just sat there and shook my head. A woman’s monthly cycle; such a simple thing, yet I had not thought of that.
Chapter 12
We didn’t have any more time to reflect, though. Bryson knocked on the back door of the chamber. A few seconds later, a geeky kid in coke-bottle glasses opened it from the other side.
“Allow me to introduce my assistant,” she said. “This is Scott Ellison. He’s one semester away from completing his Ph.D. I’m serving as his informal dissertation advisor.”
“What is your specialty?” asked Markowitz.
The young man’s eyes lit up. “I’m writing about Non-Abelian Anyons and Topological Quantum Computation.”
He waved his hands excitedly as he launched into a description of his work. “It is inevitable that the next generation of quantum devices will depend on the existence of topological states of matter whose quasiparticle excitations are – believe it or not – neither bosons nor fermions , but instead are particles known as non-Abelian anyons, meaning that they obey non-Abelian braiding statistics.”
I nodded as though I understood more than a single word he had just spoken.
“I’d expect that to be obvious,” I chuckled.
“You lost me at ‘is’,” said Lavon.
The young man laughed, though a bit uneasily, since he seemed unsure what the rest of us found so humorous.
“How old are you, if you don’t mind me asking?” I said.
“I turn 23 next week.”
“I brought Scott here to explain some of the transit procedures,” Juliet said; “to give you an idea what to expect.”
“I hoped you knew that,” said Lavon.
“Yes, I do,” she said, “but much of Scott’s work is out of the mainstream. To progress in this field, he will need to become more comfortable making presentations to skeptical audiences, so this seemed like a good opportunity for him to get some practice speaking to total strangers in at least a partially scientific context.”
Ellison coughed and led us over to another thick plexiglass window. Looking through it, we saw an adjoining room about the size of an average bedroom, though the walls had been polished perfectly smooth and the corners were rounded. At the center, we could see a cube delineated by what appeared to be thin yellow twine.
“The walls are coated with a specialized ceramic,” said Ellison. “They are essentially frictionless, for reasons it would take me hours to elaborate.”
“We don’t have hours,” I said, hoping to avoid a long, incomprehensible lecture. “What’s all that string at the center?”
“I believe that Dr. Bryson has already described to you the limits of the transport apparatus. That marks the departure point.”
I considered this for a moment. “So we have to go back one at a time?”
“That’s correct. You sit on the floor within those string markers.”
Lavon turned to face Bryson. “You told us the return key would bring back all mammalian life forms within a two meter radius.”
“Our calculations point to that conclusion. That’s why the transit room itself is larger.”
“But you’ve never really tested it?”
“Only Henry went back. How else would we have had the opportunity to do so with more than one person?”
I glanced at the kid. He seemed competent enough; but I had enough experience with human nature to realize that under the right circumstances, this young man would be perfectly
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